We are unconsciously becoming someone else
souravinsights.com
souravinsights.com
Sidenote: An interesting less spoken about part is Rene's idea of the scapegoat. Any good mimetic desire needs a scapegoat for when competition and rivalry ultimately occur as a byproduct of many people wanting the same thing. Is the LLM the scapegoat in this new equation? This article certainly blames it.
I think what I'm getting at is being a little more conscious of what we're consuming and how much of our preferences/behaviour we're adopting unconsciously.
That can, also, undoubtedly be a powerful tool in overcoming cultural brainwashing of sorts, but I think the knife cuts both ways. The "authentic self" term makes it sound ontologically real and suggests that there is merit in searching for "finding oneself" when no ther motivating need exists. That road leads to pathological definition writing, IMHO.
But when I say "be authentic" I don't necessarily mean about finding a hidden real you. It's a very difficult quest anyway but I think we can start with spotting where we're performing for an audience.
Anyway, I started this post with a very simple surface level observation but now it's getting a little deep haha
Burning Man has a lot of things I’ve never seen before that I wind up liking without anyone else’s validation
Most of that experience is still different than what gets posted online about that experience
If you’re looking for what this article is talking about, it’s there
But yeah I wasn't stressing much on this specific idea/notion in my post though.
Before looking for a solution, just stop for a second and evaluate whether we need more problems. If so, ask yourself for whom we are creating more problems?
If you can trust people, then knowing when and how to trust them matters, and thus authenticity is a concern.
The author's gripe is about losing one's self to the influence of society.
Being driven, rather than doing your own driving. Following instead of leading.
And then once you're in this rut, it becomes difficult to connect with you. Trust is an issue because the reader doesn't know who is writing anymore. Hence his disclaimer at the start.
I don't know what to say though. Careful, authentic writing takes time that everyone seems to be running out of.
When I'm talking to a person irl or even chatting online I would find it very weird if the the person is always conforming to me and rarely brings up a new genuine insight or a contrary thought to add to the discussion. I'm not looking for a debate always though, sometimes just listening to someone is enough. But I hope you understand what I mean here.
so did someone come up with a solid authenticity benchmark for humans yet?
They bolded that section. I’m not saying we need to give over all thinking to AI, but it is helpful for spotting typos.
Secondly, and even more dangerous, is to assume you had an identity in the first place. What the author probably mistakes for his identity is an image molded into him by parents, early circumstances, and societal norms and rules at the time. A “violation” of these internalized rules later in life can feel life-threatening, or wrong, and invoke shame, because in early age, belonging was strictly necessary for survival. Later in life, that limits your options, but has nothing to do with “who you are”. You create who you are, moment to moment.
Consider an inquiry when you think “that was not authentic” (by yourself or other). What kind of internalized rules does it touch? Do you actually still consider these rules to be correct and useful today?
The past can and will haunt you, but it’s not real. It’s ghosts. You need to decide how to deal with them. But “lack of authenticity” is not it.
You are the ongoing creator of your identity. And you still want to belong. But maybe not to the church of your upbringing. You’re free to burn it down any time.
I set the line at "people" questions. I'll ask an LLM about math, programming, or how to better take care of my flowers. But turning to an AI for the human questions, relationship advice, I don't even understand why one would do that. The machine hasn't experienced that. There is no objective truth to these questions. Asking other people these questions lets you connect and bond.
I noticed a long time ago that each personality trends towards an average of the community they interact with - which makes me even more hesitant to use LLMs outside of work. I don't want to start talking like a clanker myself. I go out of my way to interact with weird people.
Thinking back to pre-LLM days, I would have the same line with classical search engines. I would never Google for relationship advice, since it doesn't know me well enough to actually say something worthwhile.
Sorry for the snark. I like the idea of the article. I'm becoming an asshole day-by-day, I don't like it, I wonder if it's because of the deluge of idiocy that we're confronted with, that grows and grows, also thanks to comment sections (spot the irony). The sad thing about the Internet is it's a high speed tool to bring idiocy in front of you.
But even without the Internet, isn't culture a way of creating society of similar people, ie. people influenced by others? Taylor Swift is gigantic pop star, but so were the Beatles. Different regions had different local recipes, that all the moms knew how to make, spread in a memetic way...
so unconsciously in that context is absolutely correct but not in a way one would expect while "someone else" is incorrect. Monkey see monkey do until monkey is (immersed) in a loopy-do flow. This goes on until monkey finds one of infinite doors to consciousness and a part of it's self.
The crazy part is another one: once people successfully mimic, and they don't feel fulfilled, they often don't have the guts to admit that and just roll with it because "social proof". A bit fucked up in the head, if you ask me, but whatever. A lot of people also rather roll with wanting what others want even though there is a distinct feeling of disgust (*guts out, not mine, doesn't belong to _self_*) ...
Full disclosure: didn't even open the link.