No, I think they disagree. Or at least, I don’t mind treating them as such.

From sudoer:

Basically what they are saying is just praying > praying + smoking > just smoking.

This is the basis of the entire argument. What I see them doing is hyperfixating on an alleged flaw as a rhetorical tactic to defeat you.

I want to be clear: the point being made by the A and B versions of the smoker’s question is… obvious. It’s framing. Framing is a very well understood concept.

When I challenge people on grounds like these, I appear friendly, I make it explicitly known that I agree with the broader point, I offer alternatives that would make the point better, I refrain from damaging the rhetorical momentum (that is, we shouldn’t be bickering with each other because, to an audience, we should be a united front), and, I dunno, a fifth thing I’m sure I’ll come up with later.

If sudoer doesn’t disagree with you, they are still acting in opposition to you, which is 1) inconsiderate, and 2) demonstrates very poor social skills.

This was really funny to read.

I don’t know if you’ve ever heard it said, but really argumentative people are sometimes so “smart” and ready to go to bat that they end up suplexing their own IQ into a pit, and actually end up stupider than the average person on some issues.

I don’t think sudoer realizes it, but they’re arguing against, like, the concept of a seedy car salesman. Or, the tactic of acting sweeter than usual to get your dad to do you a favor. Or I guess just being manipulative in general. It’s really bizarre.

Hm, I guess that makes sense. I have a friend who behaves a little like that.

Well, I’m sorry it took decades, but I admire your hard work. :)

I’m just asking out of curiosity: why do you think you care so much about the negative comments?

I am one of those people that shrug it off, and if I were to try to rationalize my emotional armor, I’d say that the places these matters of taste and disagreement come from, like psychologically, are often not you’re own fault and wouldn’t really be fixable even if you tried.

But, I wonder if that might be missing the mark. The futility of trying to appease people who are unappeasable might actually have nothing to do with it.

Palantir is trying to abuse a Swiss law to intimidate any negative coverage of themselves. This is a SLAPP suit. The headline is just fine, actually.

Switzerland’s right of reply law exists so people can correct factual errors, not so corporations can force publications to run PR copy because they didn’t like the tone of accurate, document-based reporting.

Steelmanning is what wins arguments.

Actually, no, it’s not. Steelmanning is a tactic.

I mean, as long as people believe in the truth, it’s a tactic I’d hope they use.

The main reason that I’m not engaging with the paragraph-by-paragraph is that I just don’t feel like taking 6 months to explain a systemic view of society. It is obvious to me that you view an AI education as no different than opening a textbook.

I don’t know how you live, so let me tell you something. If you wanted to, you could: work from home (to be fair, I love doing that), get all your trinkets and toilet paper from Amazon, spend your off-time watching vtubers pretend they’re uncomfortable with the word ‘penis’, order all of your food through UberEats, talk to people, if you do, exclusively through Discord and Reddit, ignore all phonecalls and have AI write your texts back instead, skip bathing entirely because what purpose does that even serve at this point, and spend the rest of your time being intellectually stimulated by gacha-game roulettes and call of duty lootboxes.

For a lot of people, school is the one time when they can’t do this. They are forcibly dragged by their heels over gravel and concrete into a community with other people. This is a place they can look up and see other faces. They can stand in places where their obscene body odour is shameful enough that they may be bullied into bathing again. They could, perhaps, see another person struggling and offer to tutor them.

Yes, technically, you could educate from an AI, and separately, socialize with people elsewhere. Technically, and I’m not saying these are strictly equivalent, you could segregate your schools by color, but still offer your jobs equally to any applicant, whoever they may be.

The question I ask is, “but would they?”

The social ramifications of teaching people to be dependent on this technology, and this includes their social skills, their sense of community membership, where they feel like they get their friends from (the sycophantic chatgpt is much, much better at affirming your bad habits than any person will be), are so dangerous that I don’t really want this technology anywhere. Certainly not in a classroom before anyone has even learned to be self-actualized.

I would rather imagine a world where teachers are paid well. Where more faculty can be hired. Where classroom sizes are systemically allowed to be smaller than they are. Where no-child-left-behind laws, which are destructive, are broken and shattered to pieces. Where students form study groups and support each other, something they should be doing their entire lives, instead of asking a T-1000 that pretends it can giggle.

This is a really basic one, probably not viable for the modern age: every time you need to ask a person a question is an opportunity to make a friend. If you are asking your questions of an AI, where are you making your friends? I’m not implying an answer, this is an open-ended question.

PS: No, but this summary is really fucking funny:

a man grieving his wife’s suicide by huffing gasoline fumes and avoiding her suicide note

You’re asking how an AI that tutors you might displace the need for people who tutor you? Hm.

You know that people used to know their tailor? You could bring your son in, get him a suit for his birthday. “Hey, this is my boy, William. William, this is Richard, I’ve been coming to him for years. He does great work. How’s the wife, Richard?” I have never spoken to the Amazon website like this. I don’t think it can hear me.

You learn social skills from people.

Imagine a future where we could disseminate custom AIs to teach kids

I want kids to have social skills, so I will not imagine this.

Ha! I have never had a disease nor one sip of the alghoul’s poison.

Well to be fair, we’re putting those resources into AI and not schools.

It’s the consultancy class, mostly. Corporate money.

Being the lesser evil means never taking action. Never taking action means nothing difficult for Amazon ever happens.

Yeah, yeah.

God, this is cringe. Like, it’s embarrassing to be on the same team as them.

Goodbye, Alan Wake. We’ll miss you.

Oh, hold on, I am absolutely not against bullying these people mercilessly. I’m probably meaner to them than you are, if I were just guessing.

The thing that I don’t want people to do is treat a cultural critique as if it were a personal one. A lot of the pushback that you’ll see from the fragile male types is just manifested insecurity over the fact that they think they can’t go up and talk to a woman without her splashing her drink in their face. The critique is just describing the currents of the ocean, but they will treat it as if it were a personal attack because what you’re really arguing with is their hurt feelings.

If you’re black and presently in confederate country, maybe a little?

The sweeping conclusion, by the way, is “it seems risky,” and I know you know that it is.

Oh, race! I love race.

Do you think it would be wrong for a black person to be a little bit nervous about wandering through some small, predominantly white town in middle America? 'Cause I’m gonna be real, I think that’s probably a valid fear.

Okay, I feel like this needs to be addressed as well: this, like, public self-flagellation is not useful either. I have never once been ashamed of being a man.

The problem that men have here is cultural and systemic, it’s expressed with statistics and social norms—it really, really has nothing to do with you or me specifically.

If you’ve already done the work of recognizing that negging women is extremely rude, then you’ve already improved as a person. There’s no reason to be self-loathing about it.

I’m friends with several women: no it doesn’t, and no it doesn’t.

Having your shit together means your room doesn’t have a pile of garbage building on the floor. It means you’ve hung up 1 piece of art to make your white walls more interesting. It means your carpet was washed within the last 3 months.