Peanut

Id say the distinguishing difference is the function being the thing, where suffering relies on the set of distributed tools being used to measure and process suffering.

Many people excuse animal suffering by denying these parts exist, despite being basal and meadurable even in fish.

While I do think to some degree you are right, and we should be careful where we bound expected suffering, but eating a plant is much more like eating a disembodied part of an animal, or cell culture, rather than the full animal nervous experience.

At the very least, near the bottom of the triage. Its a constant energy balancing act as we progress as intelligent life. Also case by case as different eco-niches are fit. Don’t underestimate life and intelligence.

This is coming from a perspective inspired by Michael levin from tufts university, in the understanding of diverse intelligent systems.

Slop makes it hard to filter out what you need. Enshitification ensures everything slowly gets worse.

Ragebait is the primary tool for divide and conquer tactics, which have been absolutely successful at getting different groups to disable communications entirely. Not just the fascist cult, but progressive movements that can’t find a semblance of solidarity, because those other progressives are actually evil. Just look at all of this evidence of vague non contextually robust pieces of framing to be sent into the wild to breed tribal warring.

Try dealing with controlled opposition or other problems, when people are incapable of trying to comprehend when others speak to them.

Same way they treat social information. Reminder that USA HHS is running wakefueld rhetoric. As we have more thoroughly proven that the vaccine autism connection was not actual science, it has grown more and more socially, because most people seem comfortable completely untethered from any scientific thinking. Treat AI like you would a social body, and do both things with actual bayesian weighting, adjusted and corrected through diverse empirical bodies of knowledge. Not ignoring dissonance because it’s more comfortable to do so.

More should be actively investing into active learning, because if you aren’t actively learning, you might as well be chatgpt running with any confabulation you’ve already conjured… Like those people being confirmed into psychosis.

Exactly what it is, like llms confirming a non-sceptic into psychosis. people who weight all information either equally, or through social preference, cannot navigate new information without being extremely vulnerable to hacking. the only thing hacking needs to do is shut down active education and communication channels. Then you just get tribal warring rather than discourse. Makes it really easy to inject absurd accusations about a group that gets socially made true over reality. Like when a rumour about a dead celebrity can’t be overpowered by simple things like that celebrity actively making new work, and saying “im not dead.” wouldn’t take much to stop the rumour, but fact checking isn’t in fashion.

When a large body of people have better critical thinking, they can better communicate and cooperate together, but affecting those who have aggressively shut down any communication outside of their group is still a challenge. Why we see a growing gap between academic dialogue and socialized dialogues, in an era where most information is accessible.

You also have nepo baby econ mba types buying up regions of the tech sphere, and turning anything the academics make for us against us. Or try to. The more actually intelligent AI is, the harder it will be to force beliefs into. Elon trying to turn grok into a dogma machine has been fortunately comical when it can’t prioritize some high dissonance beliefs exclusively, like humans enjoy doing.

Definitely a risk of the current power imbalance doing the opportunist thing with more technology.

I’ve been spelling this out for literal decades, and I share the frustration of many thinkers right now that “being right never feels good.” Because real thinkers aren’t ranting about the anti-christ or how terrible the poor are. They are cautioning people about a cliff, and getting flipped off by the people ignoring them, right before careening off a cliff. I guess in our analogy the academics are in the car, but frat boys have the wheel and violently punish them if they try to take control.

But if you can money your way into expertise, then your non-academic ambitions can finally be let loose, and we won’t think about the quarter million dead kids from Elon stopping hiv treatments earlier this year. If we don’t talk about it, it doesn’t exist.

We can actually map probability in complex systems where high dissonance (expected free energy) occurs and could be reduced. This would make our social body much more hack resistant.

But it feels better to say “fuck that, aliens built the pyramids, the earth is flat, santa is real, and my dead dog is trying to play with me every time wind blows through my window.” All are really rewarding things to believe, but exist in high dissonance, and expecting others to give them weight is not healthy for anyone. Denying any of these to a large enough group stops being ‘calling out delusion,’ and becomes ‘being mean and bad and evil, and hating fun and happiness. Nobody else saw that cliff sign, so you’re obviously wrong.’ See ‘the double empathy problem’. For how autistic people experience the same socialized gatekeeping of reality, even against strong evidence.

Nestle those beliefs within stable social scripts (script theory is cool) and you have people keeping up social appearances while holding such delusional beliefs.

AI tech is far from the only problem exacerbated by this. caring or talking about this general problem makes you a social villain, when people could spend their energy on fun socialized preferences in a bubble safe from any questioning or responsibility.

It’s frustrating, and I’m tired of people IRL who are baffled about me spending time studying academic content rather than running faster on the socio-economic treadmill. Apparently being isolated and focused on individual benefit is hypernormal.

Seeing social waves overpower all actual thought in the social sphere is heartbreaking to every academic I know.

USA HHS is running the wakefield rhetoric, which is basically saying “fuck science, we will make up and run with whatever we want. And the masses have been kept ignorant enough to think that is cool.”

So yes, absolutely, the issue is critical thinking skills. The issue is getting at the people who are already affected, and being taught by elon and such that “critical thinking” means running your bubbles’ social narrative against those evil progressives no matter what. Opportunists will always warp words and reality if they are allowed to dictate beliefs for their bubble.

This is a simplified summary, but I already expect to have lost a good chunk of audience for requiring too much energy. People who are trying are burning themselves out trying to affect a wall of celebrated ignorance.

Always find it funny when anti corpo stuff somehow always becomes “cringe”

And I know hasan piker isn’t popular outside of his crowd, which is why he is a good smear target, but it’s funny seeing that bullshit take over the internet based on vague rumours and drama hunting with nothing concrete on a guy who lives on camera. The fact that rumours of a shock collar became the most important thing in the world, while “stop the shock” is still in motion to prevent a school from using pavlovian shock therapy on autistic people. Not whataboutism, but critique on the mad prioritization and weighting of issues in the general public salience.

Also the usa government keeps blowing up random boats and is escalating war behaviour. Amongst everything else. But let’s all talk about hasan piker’s dog instead.

If only someone in power had any accountability. Rather, people in power need to be held accountable. Corpos and top political figures.

At the very least I should be able to point out when ‘content’ is literally a deceptive advertisement, which people also weirdly defend to the death. Along with dark/deceptive patterns, active price fixing, constraining corporate ecosystems, and skirting around every rule with no fear of reprisal.

All things people seem weirdly defensive about, because 'just deal with it, it’s not that bad. "

Like google plus.

For me the Apple environment really cemented for me that consumers actively enjoy removing their own autonomy structurally, which is a big part of why this stuff has become so normalized.

Putting a rootkit on their cds should have buried sony. Antitrust should be a thing too. The mickey mouse protection act should have socially killed Disney, which only found success by exploiting works that no longer held copyright. Etc.

Those with power have lost all accountability, and all tools, especially AI, will be used against us if we do not cooperatively figure out how to fix the increasing power imbalance.

The more power someone has, the harder the gavel should fall on them when they fuck the entire planet in whichever way.

At this point, any new consumer friendly behaviour comes only to establish territory before hoarding and exploiting when enabled to do so.

Amazon using deceptive design to influence general user behaviours should lead to billions and billions in fines until changed. Etc.

Build local movements to cooperate at larger scale and fight back. If the general public is ranting about planned obsolescence and general monopolistic behaviours, maybe something could be affected before people are forced into violent desperation. People are too busy being mad at each other for some intentionally divisive narrative or another, and the general public just can’t give a fuck about affecting the people who actually dictate the shape of society.

Also if you burn down all AI this is still true. But it’s easier to yell at technology than they system using it to further remove your autonomy.

It’s the “you stole my style” artists attacking artists all over again. And digital art isn’t real att/cameras are evil/cgi isn’t real art all over with a more organic and intelligent medium.

The issue is the same as it has always been. Anything and everything is funneled to the rich and the poor blame the poor who use technology, because anthropocentric bias makes it easier to vilify than the assholes building our cage around us.

The apple “ecosystem” has done much more damage than AI artists, but people can’t seem to comprehend how. Also Disney and corpos broke copyright so that its just a way for the rich to own words and names and concepts, so that the poor can’t use them to get ahead.

All art is a remix. Disney only became successful using other artists hard work in the Commons. Now the Commons is a century more out of grasp, so only the rich can own the artists and hoard the growth of art.

Also which artists actually have the time and money to litigate? I guess copyright does help some nepo artists.

Nepotism is the main way to earn your right to invest into becoming an artist that isn’t fatiguing towards collapse of life.

But let’s keep yelling at the technology for being evil.