ehh, probably
ebu
joined 1 year ago
Maybe I'm missing something.
translation: thinking about this too much, or at all really, would be disastrous for my political ideology and ego, so someone else please waste their time and energy typing up a reply i won't read, so i can continue having the image of an intellectual engaged in vigorous debate without actually having to do anything
best of luck with android bullshit. i'm not familiar with either psychedelics themselves or their evangelists, but yeah, would love to hear thoughts
never read this one before. neat story, even if it is not much more than The Lorax, but psychedelic-flavored.
unprompted personal review (spoilers)
it makes sense that the point-of-view character is insulated / isolated from the harm they're doing. my main gripe is that in doing so, the actual problems of the hypothetical psychedelic healthcare industry (manufactured addiction, orientalism and psychedelic colonization, inequality of access, in addition to all of the vile stuff the real healthcare industry already does) wind up left barely stated or only implied. i was waiting for the other shoe to drop; for Learie to, say, receive a letter from a family member of a patient who died on the bed due to being unattended to, a result of stretching too few staff too thin over too many patients, et cetera. something that would pop the bubble that she built around herself and tie the themes of the story together.
instead it feels like she built the bubble and stays in the bubble. she's sad her cool business idea outgrew her, that the fifty million dollars she got as a severance package doesn't fill the hole in her heart she got by helping people directly. which is neat and all, but, like. what about all the uninsured and poor Black people who never got to even try to see if psychedelics could help? what about the Native Americans who watched their spiritual medicine, for which they were (and still are) punished heavily for using, get used to make Learie's millions, for which they will never see a penny? what about your overworked staff, Learie!?
from a persuasive and political perspective, to me it seems the non-sequitur ending leaves the entire story up for ideological grabs. think it sounds like capitalism is bad? sure, go for it. think the problem is that we need to do capitalism, But Better™? sure, go for it! hell, that's basically the author's own conclusion:
But what we really need are psychedelic models for business - business that defines new standards for integrity, equity and ethics; business reimagined with a technicolor glow.
sorry, but a can of glow-in-the-dark paint over the same old exploitative business practices is not a solution. it's just more marketing. where is this even going?
If you feel called to share a message with the world, consider taking the course to work with David, and gain structure, fellowship with changemakers, and accountability to breathe life into your story.
a $3,000 value course for only $999! what a steal!! order now, seats are first-come first-serve!
humans are just like linear algebra when you think about it
truly one of the thought leaders in philosophy. surely no one has ever... oh wait, no, you're about 2400 years too late
i suppose there is something more "magical" about having the computer respond in realtime, and maybe it's that "magical" feeling that's getting so many people to just kinda shut off their brains when creators/fans start wildly speculating on what it can/will be able to do.
how that manages to override people's perceptions of their own experiences happening right in front of it still boggles my mind. they'll watch a person point out that it gets basic facts wrong or speaks incoherently, and assume the fault lies with the person for not having the true vision or what have you.
(and if i were to channel my inner 2010's reddit atheist for just a moment it feels distinctly like the ways people talk about Christian Rapture, where flaws and issues you're pointing out in the system get spun as personal flaws. you aren't observing basic facts about the system making errors, you are actively in ego-preserving denial about the "inevitability of ai")
i really, really don't get how so many people are making the leaps from "neural nets are effective at text prediction" to "the machine learns like a human does" to "we're going to be intellectually outclassed by Microsoft Clippy in ten years".
like it's multiple modes of failing to even understand the question happening at once. i'm no philosopher; i have no coherent definition of "intelligence", but it's also pretty obvious that all LLM's are doing is statistical extrapolation on language. i'm just baffled at how many so-called enthusiasts and skeptics alike just... completely fail at the first step of asking "so what exactly is the program doing?"
i cant stop scrolling through this hot garbage, it just keeps getting better
Wait a year and see how kids get on blockchain to sell and buy GPU resources for rendering ‘trans furries’
excuse you, i render my fursona with my own GPU
i'll take trolls "pretending" to not understand computational time over fascists "pretending" to gush over other fascists any day
maybe you're referring to when i brought it up in last week's thread? and yeah, this is basically the same
can't wait for AI bros to invent the trolley problem