The new culture war is real vs. bogus
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This is grotesque. :(
Too bad they went ghoulish instead
People already feel this way.
> What’s next—Is disease the new health?
People currently are conflating body shaming with pointing out someone is unhealthy
> Is losing the new winning?
Being part of a minority is better than being good at something.
> Is stupid the new smart?
Tell someone you are good at something like computers. Way too many people use this as an opportunity to cope.
I hate to break it to the author of this article but we are already here.
50% of stuff I read about victims, is about some dogs. The AI generated fantasies are not far from "serious journalism". AI just captures current public sentiment.
AI generated "content" is just fulfilling the demand. Before AI we had army of human copywriters, the same person would write articles about movies and nuclear physics. And lets not forget SEO spam and SEO farms.
AI is just generating slop in a cheaper way, and much faster.
No, people will demand more of what they really know, if you feed them with better things they will demand more better things.
But the point is, the cheap news are related to junky ads and this is the point where it gets spoiled: selling shit is easier when is tied to spreading shit.
Fix the greed behind the news distribution and you will have better content plus a demand for a better content.
If AI authors start vacuuming up all the revenue the original journalists will be out of work and AI will, I dunno, start making up even more nonsense than it already does?
> As another example, in 2020, I consciously stopped trying to write “viral hit” type posts, and even bent over backwards to try and write anti-viral posts. ... The cozyweb zeitgeist favors a deeper, quieter sort of writerly ambition, with classier, more high-minded aspirations. ... Why can’t anyone see I’m only wearing the Substack Suit ironically!
The masses get ignorant dreck, and people in the know get the scoop. When the genx people like me are rocking on the porch in retirement, we’ll be babbling about the golden age we lost.
Nasim Taleb said that in 2010, and you can find similar sentiments running back a long time. Sensationalism has been the name of the game all along.
"I am a great opponent of newspapers," said Mr. Muddle. "I don't want any newspapers." Mr. Keuner said, "I am a greater opponent of newspapers: I want different newspapers."
Back before the start of the Eternal September.
Back before there were masses.
I don’t know if they are naive, stupid or genuinely are saddened by their loss of control.
Journalism was more of a profession, there were editorial best practices and more factual accuracy. TV media was a loss leader. Social media is a dick measuring contest. Popularity correlates with volume, so the incentive is to shout whatever will get a reaction.
So low-information consumers are spinning about how the government is both completely incompetent, yet capable of using some magic to create hurricanes for some reason. That’s a feature of social media.
I was a bit cautious of Photoshop adding watermarks into pictures generated by their software but I think it's time LLMs implement this feature. It will be the only way to filter and clean the spam from your feed.
That's the real AI revolution. Not in manufacturing content for the masses, but how to sell ads when the vast majority of consumers could be suspected to be bots.
To pick on one example: he writes of the linked NYT essay:
> Is greatness overrated? What’s next—Is disease the new health? Is losing the new winning? Is stupid the new smart?
At risk of sounding uncharitable, this is the kind of reaction one might have to the essay if they read the title and skipped the content. The author is specfically talking about the idea of the Nobel canon and its orthogonality to other reasons you might want to read an author. (I don't think it's a particularly good essay, but it's certainly not saying "bad stuff is good, actually"!)
The levers of reality building include the ability to mass disseminate ideas. When social media co-oped the public to generate content in order to sell ads for money, it handed over the mechanism of reality construction to the masses - we de-monopolized reality construction for a few trillion dollars in market cap.
It's weird to see reality sold out to the highest bidder, but at the same time, I couldn't see it going any other way. The reptilians have a strange affinity for hording gold. Modern day dragons.
I do agree that the “reality vs fiction” battle, which has been raging for years now will get absolutely insane with AI created lies. I don’t think it’ll really continue to be that much of a battle though. We’re already living in a world where people have extremely different perceptions of reality, and it’ll probably be hard to teach critical thinking to the people who are already believing the bogus.
It's no surprise that we similarly export our politics. Conspiracy theories are fast food. They come cheap, are accessible with no effort, and make you feel like you've gotten a lot. We didn't invent any of this but we've got a national genius for optimizing it.
I think it is even worse for people who live in US.
"American" food is different outside of US. For example there are norms in most countries for meat, so the "beef" burger has more meat. We have less limitations on allergens, so we can add peanuts for a taste. Also foreign Coca-Cola has proper sugar, not corn based fructose (Mexicoke). I can never eat in US, even chocolate tastes like vomit!
As for cinema, only good stuff is released outside of US. There is no oligopoly in cinema, you get way more diversity in movies. Some countries have censorship that removes some type of scenes. And garbage TV shows, are never released on foreign markets.
If you're looking at McDonald's and saying American food sucks, you're missing a whole hell of a lot.
Where we'll be told the "correct" way to think. I'd rather see it all and decide for myself. And end up watching PBS but never, never pledging in their interminable pledge drives. Somehow, they still manage to stay on the air.
By the way, in Hell they have PBS pledge drivers on the TV, 24x7, for all eternity. You can't mute the sound.
How can you honestly believe this with a straight face?
People consume American culture abroad because they enjoy it. It’s not like they are colonies.
The contrast between what they say they like, and what they actually seem to want, is striking.
I’d go even further and say that (some) Americans’ mistaken belief that their culture/media still dominates stuff at the global level, unencumbered, is a good explanation for many of the US’s geo-political missteps from the last 10-15 years or so. The age of Rocky/Rambo and Michael Jackson is long gone.
https://www.boxofficemojo.com/year/2023/?area=RO&sort=rank&s...
Though it looks like there were a few extremely popular Romanian films in the top ten.
The US has for the most part produced the best movies since... The beginning of movies I'd assume.
Study any European culture and how it was Christianized, and how the local culture, folklore, and mythology melded with religion to become a unique tapestry. Look at Ireland for a really pronounced example. Look at the folktales and revered fables that came out of those cultures for a synthesis of what rural folk really believed and talked about over dinner, and by the hearth in the evening times after work was done.
But the United States has none of that. The New World came of age during the Enlightenment era of reason and rationality. Now we're in a post-Christian society, one rooted in science and empiricism, but we're still yearning for the supernatural, and it's manifesting in unique ways for us. Americans don't have faeries or unicorns or goblins, we've got chemtrails and little green men. Furthermore, as the U.S. and other New World cultures progress, we're making our own mythology and legends. Look at how much of the American Revolution and Civil War is already steeped in pious fairy tales, such as young Washington's cherry tree, Betsy Ross, Paul Revere, or that utterly fictional, feminist chick who supposedly rode horseback like Revere.
Personally, I believe that this fake stuff that people believe is one of two things: either there are kernels of truth and allegory to them, that they're masking a deeper truth that's too dangerous to discuss openly or brazenly reveal; or that they're utter distractions and designed to keep people busy and concerned about utterly irrelevant things. Panem et circenses.
Conspiracy theories are a 20th century coping mechanism for an oversized, seemingly-omnipotent federal government.
Like Greeks inventing Zeus as a coping mechanism for the malevolent, all powerful and vengeful nature.
Hope it will not be another 2000 years until some of today's inexact beliefs get forgotten.
The pagan religions were not merely created to explain the unexplainable. Pagan myths and legends imparted greater truths and wisdom, they encoded history and science, and they explained psychological human behavior and interactions with nature. These truths were conveyed very precisely, intricately, exactly as they were, from the cultural perspective, but they are nonsensical to you who will always be outsiders to that tribe, space, and time. The ancients, even illiterate peasants and slaves, had a marvelous grasp of metaphor, allegory, and allusions even to the "pop-culture" of their day! Some of us still do!
Pagan religion was a unifying force for any tribe or nation. The reason it was supplanted with monotheism was because those tribes were unable to unite, or even interact, trade, and communicate efficiently, while still worshiping multiple pagan gods. Therefore, Abrahamic religions became an even grander unifying force on global scales, while still serving the purposes of those ancient myths and legends. As popular piety and local legend was permitted and absorbed, those monotheistic religions were able to flourish and intertwine with those cultures.
To repeat the tired old canard that religion was perpetuated by ignorant benighted dullards, in order to cope or merely survive, is scurrilious, anthropologically ignorant, and shockingly arrogant. The hierarchies and rulers of the ancient world knew exactly what they were doing in every respect. YOU are afraid of spiritualities and the supernatural which you do not understand, and so you denigrate them. Likewise do President Trump and the wisdom of Qanon know what works. Just because they don't think or act the way you expect, doesn't make them stupid or inferior to your atheism/scientim.
I never claimed religion did not fulfill sometimes good purposes. But it perpetuated many bad, incorrect beliefs based on fear that slowed progress. For example not doing to your peer something that you don't like yourself seems something positive for society. Going to hell if you try to understand astronomy seems quite negative for society.
If we obstinately persist in willfully misunderstanding how religion, obedience, and sacrifice operate, then we will always reach the same conclusions and be met with a cold shoulder from people who get it.
As we discussed very recently in another thread, priests and priest-scientists were the original scholars and intellectuals, and they knew astronomy intimately well. The astronomers indeed worked out among themselves how the heavens operated. The reason that ordinary laypersons should not learn this was because it was (1) useless to them, (2) quite complex and error-prone without collaboration and a solid background, and (3) extraordinarily perilous to their own well-being, and to the social order, if they should acquire skills and notoriety with it -- "knowledge is power -- absolute power corrupts absolutely". It was treason to be a heretic or usurp the power of clerics.
Galileo and his ilk weren't condemned for "trying to learn" it. Far from that. That's another red herring and canard that's perpetuated by scientism.
But companies pull that crap all the time. It's because when people do good faith things we don't correct them on their technical loopholes. We don't ask people to cut the loophole off we just presume that they wouldn't use it.
I saw an ad today that said $999 desktops and PCs. Most people think it's fine. That ad is deceiving you though. It's trying to make you feel like they are giving you information. They aren't though. I can go on Amazon and buy a computer at nearly every conceivable price. They don't say it's a good PC or even what that might mean. They are just saying the will take $999 from you and a lawyer probably wouldn't go to court about the definition of a computer over it.
"Made with real cocoa"
There is no such thing as fake cocoa, that's why. I don't give a shit what's "real" I know I'm eating sugar and palm oil
I've yet to meet a Human for whom down the curve of their position is not ~idiocy, and up the curve is not ~pedantry (or something invalidating of a more absolute view on things).
As long as the only serious problem is those other people, I think we remain trapped in this local maxima.
This encompasses 100% of people so you would have been better of leaving it off as it downplays the severity of the situation we are in.
> and when you see someone trying to be specific you confuse it for 'pedantry'.
This is what ~smart people typically go for if one includes too much detail or accuracy in the context.
This encompasses 100% of people so you would have been better of leaving it off as it downplays the severity of the situation we are in.
I didn't say that.
This is what ~smart people typically go for if one includes too much detail or accuracy in the context.
I lost track of what you are trying to say and why, sorry.
That's why I'm complaining.
> I lost track of what you are trying to say and why, sorry.
Well I interpreted your comment as saying that I would accuse someone of pedantry, but it was me who accuses others of doing that (explicitly or implicitly), when someone points out technical errors in their reasoning that are beyond the culturally conditioned thresholds of acceptability.
Extreme detail and attention to correctness when discussing science or computers or software = Good.
Extreme detail and attention to correctness when discussing, say, geopolitics = Bad.
We are taught to think this way, pay attention when reading the newspaper or Internet forums, you can see it everywhere.
Isn't this the same thing?
And so the point isn't lost: I believe this cultural norm to be a substantial cause of the initial complaint.
Demographically speaking, most of the people who latch on to conspiracy theories feel lost and want to be a part of a group, even when they don't agree on the same level ads the others. So they are not likely to be generating their own movements. I wouldn't be surprised if many of the movements are information warfare targeted primarily at the US.
I think that's a major source of the problem here in the US. We have gotten away from outright calling stupid people stupid. The morons spouting the conspiracy theories, the emotionally charged stories, and the anti-intellectual nonsense do not deserve time or consideration. Yet we continue to be sensitive to their screeching about censorship and bias. Let them screech all they want. Their opinions don't matter.
We don’t really have a “rural” area as such. In the way you will have in huge countries like America. We obviously the the same urbanisation everyone else has, and the issues which comes with it. Even if you live in the parts of the country which are “left behind” or however it’s described you’re still very likely to have neighbours who work in a large city that just wanted a “country side” home. Which is possible because 95% of our rural non island areas are typically less than an hour in car from one of our major cities.