:melon-musk: has incited the Rocko's Modern Basilisk dudes into infighting. :simpsons-monkey-fight:

  • Mardoniush [she/her]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Incredible watching them go from "we must dismantle the homeless to build a Matrioshka Brain" to "The consequences of the industrial revolution have been a disaster for the human race" in a week because of Big Yud's continuing slow-motion breakdown as he tries every possible ideological framework except the ones that might help him.

    • UlyssesT [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      I think the throughline they're trying for is "you can't do anything but 'unfettered unregulated technology obeying every whim of :porky-happy: ' unless your alternative is to destroy all technology forever." It's a lazy cognitohazard that certainly convinced some bazingas.

      • Mardoniush [she/her]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Yeah, I know. Even if you accept the premise of DDDDOOOOOOOOMMMMMMM!, varying levels of regulation would help delay the DOOOMM, since currently LLM and similar systems require huge resources.

        "bUt WhAT If cHInA" if Evil China has a secret DOOOOM project they're gonna finish it a heck of a lot faster if there's not an agreement restricting research and application and they can just read the research papers.

        They're just so dumb. How are they this dumb I can't even analyse it correctly, normal capitalist self interest usually results in a more banal, reasonable dumb

        • Tankiedesantski [he/him]
          ·
          2 years ago

          they can just read the research papers.

          There's actually a theory going around that one of the elements of China's R&D advantage is that most Chinese researchers speak enough English to read and understand English-language research papers in their field, whereas the vast majority of Westoids doing research cannot string together a single sentence of Chinese.

          This disparity will only get worse as Western Sinophobia ramps up and more ethnic Chinese researchers seek work in China instead of the West.

          • 420blazeit69 [he/him]
            ·
            2 years ago

            Hilarious consequence of neoliberalism example #69420: the hollowning out and eventual inversion of the core-studies-periphery dynamic.

            Start with all the huge government, academic, and business institutions dedicated to managing imperialism, which produced a tremendous amount of knowledge and area experts that made the periphery legible to the core. All of that gets defunded, cut, or outsourced due to neoliberalism, which also produces a steady stream of educated people flowing from core to periphery to teach ESL classes. A few decades later your core-studies-periphery institutions are failing right as the core becomes more legible than ever to the people of the periphery.

        • UlyssesT [he/him]
          ·
          2 years ago

          “bUt WhAT If cHInA”

          Back when I still posted on :reddit-logo: , I remember :obama-drone: apologists justifying everything from war profiteering to war crimes to nuclear proliferation to eugenics all because CHINA MIGHT DO IT FIRST :maybe-later-honey: