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Comment by ChatGTP | Hacker News Reader

Why am I seeing more of this lately? "just a", "just a meat bag", "just monkeys".

I think it's a degrading and disrespectful way to speak, not so much that I'm offended, but I think it's actually a non-intelligent way to view the world. Also probably not very healthy.

Feels like there is a little bit too much of this self-degrading language used in science and technology circles now.

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Why is finding that we are not that different from other mammals degrading and disrespectful?

That is not intentional in case of GP [0]. But this disrespectful perspective towards other animals is rooted within us culturally. As example some religions: there is heaven free from other animals, because they are not worth it.

[0] Which was probably just take against nihilism that sometimes occurs in current AI discourse.

You're interpretation of my comment contains the opposite message from that which you've perceived.

I'm proud to have the brain I have, even if it's like an Ape brain. It's not "just something".

Ok, so, given that comment I've just got to ask even if only for the sake of my own curiosity: that username ironic or (modulo ordering) literal?

For more than two thousand years the lunatics have been running the asylum spewing all kinds of horsefeather metaphysics about spirits, souls, heavens, hells, gods, demons, turtles, triangles [1], and so forth. We will need to remind ourselves for the next 4,000 years at least that down there is just physics, chemistry, voltage-gated information processing with collective emergent properties, functionalities [2], and so forth, to clean and escape our selves, our languages, our behaviour, our conceptual frameworks from all the drivel. After those 4,000 years, yes, it will probably feel as demeaning to call the universe, the only one we've got, Everett be damned [3], just physics.

Watched recently on the Applied Science channel how to "identify chemicals with radio frequencies - Nuclear Quadrupole Resonance" [4]: just the universe as it is is more impressive than one could ever imagine.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timaeus_(dialogue)

[2] Michael Levin, The collective intelligence of cells during morphogenesis as a model for cognition beyond the brain, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSNasSsiTlY

[3] Even this expression, "to be damned", is a remnant, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JO_EHceV9sk

The logos with which they apply the rationalism of the position that as biological creatures we do not hold a special place in the cosmos is not the offensive part. It's the ethos part that they really don't want you looking at.

Human history has always been tumultuous, and now we get to the present day, where we have extreme inequality, world-ending weaponry, and destabilizing global climate, contracting resources, and social upheaval as a result. There's no pretty solution to be found. Now we have the latest zeitgeist of AI, already threatening the economic wellbeing of the multitudes if you believe Altman & co.

The rights of humans throughout history has been predicated on the idea that humans are special somehow, deserving of dignity. Get enough people to really lean into the idea that they're just a meaty LLM and the foundation of human rights crumbles. You can get away with quite a lot of evil if you take care to dehumanize those you want gone.

Part and parcel of the desacralisation of the human being, unfortunately, which is so hot right now, and has been since the start of the twentieth century.

Fairly dangerous view, I feel it's definitely going to ramp up now we can apparently be replaced with LLMs.

It is, absolutely. Even to the level of socialisation where chatbots start to replace in-person connections.

I truly feel things are about to get a lot worse for most people (.i. Those who don't control the systems) and it won't be pretty. Sadly I don't think those who do do this stuff care one bit. The whole 'Did it because we could without asking whether we should' type problem.

It might be a reaction to the centuries of the opposite position, that humans are divinely created, and rule the world with the Devine right handed down by god. So now as the human is picked apart by science, and we see we are just primates, monkeys, and we tend to form groups and throw our crap at each other, the 'just monkeys' seems apt.

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