Make up a guy
antipope.org
antipope.org
So as a joke we invented a fake employee with a fake name. I think his first name was Joe. We gave this person an email address and I made a voicemail recording for him.
When a time-waster was bugging us we'd tell them to contact Joe, "who is in charge of that" and provide the contact info. What started off as a joke ended up saving us a fuckton of time, effort, and hassle. For some reason Joe's incredibly upbeat and douchy sounding voicemail message was like manna from heaven for the relentless salespeople that refused to stop calling. It was an interesting social experiment of sorts. Joe was essentially a /dev/null bucket and never responded. But it worked.
This lasted for years and was really beneficial for us. Harder to pull off these days, but not impossible I imagine!
Chat-gpt + text-to-speech? Seems like AI-employees who 'handle' marketing calls would be quite possible.
Of course, then the marketers make their own AIs, and it will end up with the majority of phone calls being robots talking to robots.
When both sides are using AI's for the call, that's not going to work. ;)
I do have my cell phone in my internal contact info but the culture where I work is that pretty much no one makes a voice call to anyone out of the blue. And I'm very selective who else I give the number to.
But there's another way. Just hang up on them. I know it's considered hostile but it's just an outdated social more at this point.
To your point, I think it will shift in a different way over time. Gen Z can't imagine hanging up on someone on the phone, they can't even imagine signaling to the other person they don't want to be on the call anymore (aka saying "goodbye"). But they don't end up on endless phone calls. They just never pick up the phone.
Have you ever been in young person's home when someone unexpectedly knocked at the door? It could be Tuesday afternoon and their whole body takes on this dread like they're realizing their life has suddenly turned into a slasher film.
I don't mean "kids these days are destroying society". They have other ways to connect than just showing up where someone lives. But I wouldn't start a business selling vacuum cleaners to the next generation of homemakers door-to-door.
The moment it's clear they are selling something (it's usually pretty quick) the reply is "fuck off, never call this number again, and go fuck yourself" then I hang up and block the number. I only wish I could be vengeful in response and actually retaliate in some meaningful way to those that are particularly annoying or persistent.
The same applies to door-to-door sales people, moreso to door-to-door missionaries.
Consider the return you’re getting by handing over your aggression to them. I don’t think you’re getting a good trade there. Saying “put me on your do not call list”, hanging up and blocking will have nearly the same benefit to your future but without the costs that the misanthrope brings.
Before: "I'm acting uncharitably by not reciprocating attention."
After: "I recognize this person is attempting to influence me. I'm choosing not to engage."
I prefer to leave them talking while I do more important things. Wasting their time is a better MO than anything.
It's surprisingly easy to make up a LinkedIn profile. I have one that has over 50 connections. Many sales people accept connections requests, and some non-sales people do as well. It just goes on from there.
I use him for looking up people without leaving a trace, and it's generally great fun to make him do posts on various topics.
I didn't put much effort in it though (for example, his photo is just a random stock photo, not anything AI-generated). I wonder how many virtual people exist on social networks.
https://soundcloud.com/user-237714155/sales-call-abyss
Explanation of how/why they came up with it here: https://www.theregister.com/2016/04/29/it_helpdesk_creates_o...
It’s one of the most deeply disturbing sci-fi horror stories I’ve ever seen. To be clear, most of the horror is implied rather than described, which I think only makes it worse. Part of me wishes I had never read it.
Highly recommended, but if you’re at all in doubt if you have the stomach for it, maybe stay clear.
It wasn't stomach turning because of the pig thing, it was stomach turning because we knew, deep down, that we were exactly who it depicted us as.
Not fully virtual, though. Just the badly maimed torso and head of a victim of a terrorist attack on a train, brain wired to systems, stimulating the last working remains to replay the last 8 minutes over and over again. To gather information and reconstruct 'whodunnit'.
( BSG - Cavil's 'I don't want to be human' monologue
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VhqsFRTTTo 1m48sec )
Bobiverse came so often into my peripheral vision, yet I haven't found the time to dive in, so far.
https://web.archive.org/web/20140224051031/https://subterran...
You mean the redoubt at the end? Didn't they go through a portal to get there? Didn't seem to be an uploading machine. Also, why would they need fighter jets then? But it's an interesting thought...
It's not at all about uploading, but it is very much worth a read.
This is such a haunting story. I love it so much.
The future is going to be weirder than we can even imagine.
Also, check Peter Watts.
SCP-3125 does not exist, as it is not an officially recognized SCP number within the SCP Foundation universe. If you're looking for an SCP entry related to the number 3125, you can create one yourself or ask the community to create it for you.
The current potential exit from AI dark winter has made me go from; "the singularity is very very far away" to some rather dark philosophical extrapolations becoming relevant.
I mean if you play along with Bostroms theorising, who's to say we, or I am not living in some "trickster god" reality.
Lol. That's the only answer to that question.
But I’m clearly in the minority here in my views of humanities treatment of non-humans. Perhaps that’s the real disturbing part of that story. It’s believable (if not technically yet).
But it is so for now and our chemistry is made to make more out of meat quicker, and to feel good eating it as result: we cant stop nor expect others to stop just yet.
Dont tell yourself that by selecting superior and inferior species you allow yourself to destroy, you're more than an animal yourself. You're still, like the rest of us, victim of your body. Find a way to abstract us away from our body.
More to your philosophical point, the beauty of life is always transitory. Life begins, blooms, withers and dies but also passes on the small immortal spark that it all came from to the next generation so it can repeat the cycle. I'm against cruelty to animals but I also recognize that eating them is part of life and that it is possible for us as conscious beings to give them a better life than they would have in the wild and then kill and eat them and I'm ok with that. I don't want to live in a world where all cattle or pigs are reduced to a few wild populations scrabbling for survival against the elements and disease while being occasionally mauled and devoured alive and screaming by wolves and other predators. To me that's more immoral than a properly maintained herd that is sheltered, fed and given medical attention and then slaughtered as painlessly as we can manage.
Before all y'all reply with "factory farming", yes I'm aware of its prevalence but that just means we should be working to reduce that type of treatment, not eliminating raising animals for meat entirely.
They started it first, Your Honour!
not eliminating raising animals for meat entirely.
I wonder. If we genetically engineered, maybe via a bio attack, so all cows were effected at once, a deadly disease?
This disease would be a genetic illness, so that just a while after maturity, cows would become sick with crippling pain.
Thus, we would be helping them, to kill them before the pain and agony started, and therefore... none would question what we do with the meat.
...
Now replace the disease with "it all goes downhill after 30". Really, it's sorta the same thing.
Or, should we let cows go extinct instead? Or suffer?
Just a thought and logic experiment.
A) breed them into a life of constant suffering
B) Start providing the same cramped, unhealthy, and unpleasant living conditions at a young age that we already do
C) Once the physical pain inherent with living past ripeness sets in, let them experience that just long enough to slaughter them
D) Slaughter them, even though we likely haven't bred out the desire to live, just piled on more pain. No matter that despite experiencing mutiliation, pain, and poor conditions throughout their lives, these animals still often display a desire to live and additional fear of death.
For example, slaughtering them before the disease exhibits symptoms, means we are 100% preventing that pain. Thus, C is null, and void.
I don't get A. Properly treated cattle, such as in most of the world, are grass fed, or grass fed harvested hay, and free roaming. Thus, A makes zero sense, as A doesn't even take into account medical care (vaccination, antibiotics, vets, birth assistance), nor does it take into account immense protection from predation. Cows properly raised, live pampered, easy, happy, lives.
In terms of slaughter, old factory methods let cows horribly hang by their legs for hours, while they slowly bled out. Smaller concerns were more humane, but at least most of the world insists of quick, painless death for cattle. Where I live, it's destruction of the brain, such as a bullet, immediately stopping all thought, and frankly, far better than a death where (for example) wolves rip you apart while still alive, experiencing hours of agony.
(I have listened, where I live, at 2am to a pack of coyotes eating a large kill, its mewing, and cries of pain going on for more than an hour, it is NOT nice.)
I really think that if people care, really care, they need to stop basing opinions on false realities, and understand that often humans are far far far less brutal, than other animals.
Do you think a wolf takes care to kill a creature it is ripping apart? No. I just eats.
Cats "play" with mice, sometimes for hours before fully killing them. Mother cats also maim mice, so their children can learn.
Do you know why mice can breed from 2, to > 60, in a mere few months? To hundreds and hundreds in a year?
Because most of them are eaten alive, ripped apart while still living, by predation.
Nature is far, far more brutal than proper human animal husbandry.
I'm not sure that's true.
The Old Testament has spells out that if you want to eat part of an animal, you have to kill it first which is a huge step forward in being kind to animals if hacking off part of an animal to eat while keeping it alive was something that happened enough to need a prohibition against.
It wasn't that ago that Edison electrocuted an elephant as part of a marketing stunt and it wasn't particularly quick. I don't think that would fly today.
In any case, we're not talking about isolated incidents of torturing animals. Today, we keep hundreds of millions, if not over a billion, of animals in captivity just in the US. Captivity is a nice word for it, too. I encourage you to research about what that captivity looks like.
I have always wondered why reincarnationists, when I talk to them, presume time is a directly mapped thing. I say to them, how do you not know, there is only one "soul", but you are just seeing it at different points in existence?
How do you not know that you are that grasshopper, and your parents, and your kid, and your grandmother, all at different points of linear experience, but at the same time, maybe you were your child, then the grasshopper, then "Grogg" 30k years ago, the grandma, then you? Because the order is random?
I tell them this, and some ponder.
Then I go have a steak.
Because it's good for me, and I don't want to disappoint myself, when I'm a cow.
(the name eludes me)
As an aside, try reading Bobiverse.
People most of the time have scope insensitivity, while sometimes it hits home
There is always death at a relatively soon point in the real world. The scan slave can be tortured with the worst methods you can think of for hundreds of thousands of relative millennia at will, and it will have happened countless times for different copies
You can always hang yourself if existence is pain in the real world, and if not... it will end up soon enough anyway. There is no such relief in the story
It never occurred to me to think about the metaphor though. Prior to child labor laws most children were born to accomplish labor. This is evidenced by the demographic collapse following the automation of farm labor and protections for child factory workers. I imagine people loved most of those children, but once they stopped being a financial asset, they stopped being made. Soldiering has almost certainly been a motivation as well. If it is illegal to use AI instances in the ways described, they won't be made.
With the scenery algorithmically blanked to marginally improve productivity, your mind-state will be considered no different to an ESP-32.
Part of the horror of Lena is that the readers get to fill in the blanks: we all know how the machine works against real humans today, when the gloves gloves are truly off would be the stuff of nightmares
I have not yet read the story but if the human is recreated every time from the same immutable data, and doesn't have any recollection of other experiences, then each new instance is pretty much exactly like us? And death is indeed a relief because the instance that does die stops suffering?
It's one of the very, very few plausible "immortality would be a curse" scenarios out there, because "immortality" means forcibly experiencing things for a subjective amount of time that can be as big as it gets
I've actually suspected for a while that it's not such a minority on HN, based on the discussions that happen every time clean meat tech posts get shared.
Unfortunately I've only worked with one other vegan "in the wild" so if this is true, I wonder if HN skews more "vegan" because people more likely to post on HN are overall more contemplative.
That, or we're just a very vocal minority (which I suppose is more likely than 30% of HN commenters being vegan or vegan-sympathetic).
There is quite a spectrum of positions one can hold on this issue and it's not binary. One can be sympathetic to the perspective of vegans without being willing or able to become one themselves due to practical concerns.
The natural result is selection bias for any progressive viewpoint, because there is inherently more to be said and more motivation to say coming from the progressive perspective than the conservative one.
One thing I don't get is, why is the title "Lena"? There seems to be no relation between the story and the title (maybe I'm inadvertently missing something from the story?)
The image is banned from use in certain scientific journals, and the subject herself has asked people to stop. But given its digital nature... it can't be stopped.
[0]: https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/acceler...
This reminds me of Searle's Chinese Room thought experiment. In order to upgrade the Chinese Room to modern deep learning: suppose we run a brain image by instructing each human being on Earth to act as one neuron. Would "we" "feel" discomfort?
1. https://books.google.com/books/about/There_Is_No_Antimemetic...
> More modern brain compression techniques, many of them developed with direct reference to the MMAcevedo [person] image, have compressed the image to 6.75TiB losslessly.
This says losslessly which is very different, but I still get such a mega Permutation City vibe from this.
And there certainly seem to be some similar threads, about trapped uploads.
// She is currently now Ex-W.I.F.E. // end of line
Here are some examples :
> Riemann counterexamples
> Unicode Corporation
> Google Sex
> procedurally-generated regulations
> denim skin
> peak humanity
There is an Emoji Corporation [1], which as far as I can tell exists to try and trick people into thinking they've got to pay them to use emojis. Looks like they got some Danegeld out of Sony Pictures for the Emoji movie.
> We are the exclusive rights owner of the registered emoji® trademark
”We own the word and they used it!”
Playground logic from adults. Of course there are legitimate use-cases for a trademark but this is pretty plainly not one of those.
I asked chatgpt to make up a guy.
Write a 300 word biography of a fictional man who lives in Idaho
---
John Smith was born and raised in the small town of Boise, Idaho. Growing up, he was always interested in the outdoors and spent much of his childhood exploring the nearby mountains and forests. After graduating high school, he attended the University of Idaho where he studied forestry and wildlife management.
After college, John landed a job with the U.S. Forest Service and spent the next several years working on various projects to protect and preserve the natural resources in Idaho. During this time, he met his wife, Sarah, and they eventually settled down in Boise to start a family.
John has always been an active member of his community, and in his free time, he volunteers as a youth sports coach and is a member of the local conservation group. He is also an avid hunter and fisherman, and often takes his family on camping trips to explore the beautiful wilderness of Idaho.
In the last few years, John decided to go into business for himself and started his own outfitters company, which specializes in guided hunting and fishing trips in the Idaho wilderness. It quickly became a successful business and he was able to provide a better life for his family.
John is known for his strong work ethic and dedication to preserving the natural resources of Idaho. He is well respected by his peers and is often sought out for his expertise in conservation and outdoor recreation. He is a loving father and husband and takes great pride in his family and community. Despite his busy schedule, he always makes time for the things that matter most to him, and is truly an inspiration to those around him.
Quite amazing
[1] https://www.teamten.com/lawrence/writings/coding-machines/
It's a position of antinatalism. Antinatalist philosophy roughly claims that sentient beings are harmed when they are brought into existence, and it is therefore wrong to procreate.
I think everyone ought to consider this philosophy / argument before having children - as to recognize the severity of the act. At the very least, not having children should be the default, and to have a child one needs to think thoroughly and clearly, and to have a clear reason in mind when saying "yes", as it's one of the most important decisions in one's life.
I do doubt many folks do this but I’d be willing to bet most who have given any thought to their existence probably do.
I think life is an amazing thing. A miracle. And it’s very special. For all the angst and fear that comes with life, there is so so much beauty. I wanted to share that with a person, a new person who would have the ability to see the world like I do (since we share genes, my hope is some of that comes along with it).
One concern is wild animal suffering - https://wildanimalsuffering.org/
Go to the desert, tell the rocks not to sit idle anymore.
Go preaching to stars the futility of converting elements into energy.
I don't understand the criticism. This is an argument in practical ethics; it doesn't matter how unpalatable the conclusion. It took 300 years for people to catch up the utilitarianism arguments Bentham was making in favor of gay rights (for example).
> the vast numbers of people who make that choice
Something tells me that this is going to hmmm... auto-regulate in no time. (reaches for popcorn)
Sure, but that doesn’t seem to contradict anything in the original comment you were replying to. Just because every single human doesn’t abide by a code of ethics, it doesn’t mean we should abandon ethics entirely imo.
That voice misleads you. There are things that can be altered via evolution, and many that aren't - or over such a timescale that it practically doesn't matter. For another example, take a look at the topic of suicide. If it would work in the way that this evil little voice implies, we wouldn't even have heard about a single case.
Another angle to consider is not taking everything at face value, and also separating the contemplation of something from agreeing or supporting it. There's something to be gained from exposing oneself to a wide variety of topics, thoughts and experiences, no matter how outlandish they seem at first. And you'll find that you are free to distance yourself from the undesirable thing, exactly as free as before. But if it leaves a mark, you can learn something new, which can't happen without the experience.
I don't take life advice from people whom I don't trust; it's just too risky. If you have a strong broad argument up your sleeve, it might work better than the "evil" voice.
Yes, let's simply delete the evolution from the model, just leave the self-replication.
(Mentioning this because I've just seem some drive-by commenters attributing "Lena" to me. I didn't write that; I wish I could.)
It's still an interesting read a few years later but it definitely needs a follow up.
Psalm 139 expresses this insight:
For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.
Have you tried "kill all the poor?"
Solution: put them in a simulated environment running at a higher than normal rate. Then, from their standpoint, it would be e.g. two 8-hour workdays per week, with the remaining 5 spent on (simulated) sailing/hiking/DIY/having fun with virtual concubines, you name it. These conditions could be legally mandated.
Wrong. Pretty much every time I'd do it. Just coz. ;)
What do you mean I'm "Chaotic Neutral"? :p
Every human life has value. There is no instance where I would value the life of a frog over the life of a human being. By logical consequence, I should always prefer one more human over one more frog. QED.
You say that because you're a human. If you were a frog, I bet you'd value frogs' lives more than humans. Why do you think it's your place to change others' lives into whatever form you personally prefer?
My point is that it would be vastly more cruel to turn a frog into a human, let them live a little and then abandon them to fend for themselves after they've outlived their usefulness to me (which is how I understood your point above) than to leave the frog alone entirely. By turning them into a human you have acquired a degree of responsibility for their well being which I would argue you can't shirk under normal circumstances. (C.f. making babies.)
This logic hinges on the assumptions that 1) humans have a higher state of consciousness than animals (which might be debatable in certain cases, ok) and 2) that a frog is indifferent towards its current state of existence because it doesn't know any better.
Lastly, you write "every human life has value" but in that thought experiment in the OP, they are not humans so far so that logic doesn't hold. Just because you have the ability to elevate/create life of a higher consciousness, absolutely does not mean that you have to do so IMO and that it can be downright inhumane to do so. (Again, babies, contraception, abortions etc.)
Would you let the alien do that?
(Caveat: I don’t believe this hypothetical is possible anyway. I am of the opinion that there is a dividing line in sentience beyond which improvements are possible but are more like upgrades than something more radical. There’s a phase change between sentience and non-sentience, but no further ohase changes to be had (I think))
A frog spends its time chilling in a pond and swimming all day. People pay good money for vacations where they can do exactly that. Sounds like a good life to me.
If I was a frog and you turned me into a homeless guy who has to go get a job at an Amazon warehouse to afford food, I'd use my newfound intellectual capacity to plot revenge on you and everyone you love.
On a side note, I get the impression most people just don't have a gut instinct for just how awful natural life is like for the most part
>They mind it about as much as we do, judging by how hard they try to avoid it
If there's an example of something trying hard to avoid it that's clearly incapable of minding anything, then you cannot establish a certain link between the capacity of minding it and trying to avoid it
He can just hang out in a makeshift shelter and eat whatever free food he finds. He'll be in way less danger at any given time than a frog would be, with a vastly longer and more fulfilling life ahead of him.
I mean, just think how you would react if you found yourself in dire straits and someone told you "hey don't worry, at least you are not at risk of being eaten by a bird" That would be a ridiculous argument no?
Would you argue we have an obligation to turn every fruit fly into a human? What about every tardygrade? Bacteria?
hehe this is great. What a delightful read this was.
Where X could be something like employee engagement or the like--something nebulous that could be made concrete, or to reduce uncertainty.
From How to Measure Anything 2e
I wouldn't say "never." We can push a button and create a new piece of art with stochastic uniquenesses. Maybe one day we can push a button and create a whole "AI" with all the random traits that come with being a human. I can imagine the value, and people tend to ignore the horrifying nature of things when there's value.
- - - -
Ultimately this is a metaphysical question: What does it mean to be human as opposed to merely a digital model of a human?
Martin Buber wrote "I and Thou" about how "we may address existence in two ways:"
> The attitude of the "I" towards an "It", towards an object that is separate in itself, which we either use or experience.
> The attitude of the "I" towards "Thou", in a relationship in which the other is not separated by discrete bounds.
> One of the major themes of the book is that human life finds its meaningfulness in relationships. In Buber's view, all of our relationships bring us ultimately into relationship with God, who is the Eternal Thou.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_and_Thou
- - - -
As a hard sci-fi fan I feel that a lot of modern sci-fi is really a kind of sci-fi-flavored fantasy (I'm talking about written sci-fi, not TV/Movies.) Which is fine for entertainment value, don't get me wrong. It's just that without a deeper metaphysical grounding there's not a lot to think about, eh? With hard sci-fi you can at least pretend that you're exploring the possible consequences of actual scientific advances. But with e.g. the Acevedo Álvarez image it's up to the author if the instances of the image are people or things, "I" or "It", and to decide what that means.
This is coming out more critical than I intended. I like metaphysical fiction, and fantasy, and Star Trek, etc.
- - - -
The core question, when you really get down to the essence of intelligence and motivation, is, "What is good?"
It's an open-ended intelligence test.
(SPOILER ALERT, consider the character Teela Brown.)
There's an old story:
The farmer caught a wild horse and his neighbors all congratulated him on his good fortune, but he just said "Hmm."
His son tried to ride the horse and it threw him and he broke his arm, and all his neighbors consoled him for his misfortune, but he just said "Hmm."
The King came through drafting young men for the war but the farmer's son couldn't go because of his broken leg, and his neighbors all congratulated the farmer again on his good fortune, but he just said "Hmm."
Anyway, the story goes on like that for a few more reversals, each time a new event happens that changes the meaning of the previous event.
except the covid vaccine please cos its not mandatory anymore.