But I don’t know. another name for that process is “empathy”.
Absolutely. And empathy is commodified, abused or otherwise exploited as well, which sucks. Like, advertising leans heavily on your ability to feel empathy. And many kinds of scams. It's not just AI stuff.
You can do that with plushies, with pet rocks or Furbies, with deities, and I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing; it’s like exercising a muscle, If you treat your plushies as deserving care and respect, it gets easier to treat farm animals, children, or marginalised humans with care and respect.
I think many muscles operate in pairs; empathy is the "agonist" in an "antagonistic pair". The "antagonist" isn't something like apathy; it's the ability to tell when your empathy and other emotions are being played. In this sense, it's fine to mourn the loss of Google Assistant, because how exactly could that be exploited, beyond a replacement product (as you've noted)?
I saw a real stupid post (reposted on the sneersub, I think) about how all the people wanting OpenAI to reinstate o4 after GPT5 was released were soldiers converted by o4, and that o4 had achieved the superpersuasiveness that Yud froths over. Good to know that a pair of googly eyes probably has the same level of persuasiveness.
but I’m not sure I can connect the defacement of a little trashcan with some broad rejection of the liberal status quo.
Well, it’s a metaphor, you see. It’s a comparison, not a direct connection.
we’re talking about a culture that delighted in breaking this stupid thing that wasn’t hurting anybody, and then that culture elected Trump.
Well, that’s just a very first order way of looking at it. I’m not saying “the US is filled with meanies, it killed a robot, of course it elected Trump!”, I’m saying: “Hitchbot was shattered and a collective fantasy was ended. This mirrors how Trump was elected, which shattered liberal fantasies about the US, the west, and the state of politics around the world in general.”
Yes, it’s funny that this happened in the US, and even funnier that it was in Philly. That has nothing to do with the metaphor. Hitchbot could have died anywhere, people would have mourned it, and it would still be an appropriate analogy. Try process that 🙂
But I realized it was just… fucking… music… I could ignore it
well duh if you break down an analogy it breaks down dawg.
I think dgerard has hit upon a microcosm with this post. I’ve half joked about it elsewhere but this project of collective fun and whimsy and its fate is a crystallization of the life of liberal optimism from early 2015 onward. Hillary was predicted to win, Marvel movies hadn’t majorly fallen out of favor yet, and most people weren’t hip to the tech industry being the sociopathic behemoth that it always has been. But then, as we know, all that rosy-cute whimsy was shot to shreds like a Cincinnati gorilla.
Look where we are today. Canada and Europe are also facing the rising tide of fascism. Western governments are still by and large facilitating a genocide through Israel. That the author, probably not some scholar of geopolitics, had the wisdom in 2015 that liberal optimism was a pile of garbage should be lauded.
If Hillary were president HitchBot would still be alive
E: followup, from wikipedia:
Smith and Zeller recreated their invention as hitchBOT 2.0 in 2019. The robot was sent to Paris, France, where it was touring about and appearing in a play, Killing Robots, by Linda Blanchet. That tour was put on hold indefinitely due to COVID-19.
As a metaphor for liberal fantasy and optimism, hitchbot was doomed to die, one way or another.
Author recounts shitty conversations that men have where they objectify women
Author thinks about women that are "known quantities" of conventionally attractive, and says they are "only as attractive as the pretty women one meets in real life," and attributes the difference to things like makeup, posing, photography etc.
Author refuses to comment on why men have conversations mentioned in 1. (basically just perpetuating the amirite guys? chauvinism)
Author proceeds to speculate on why women talk about other women's appearance.
This is just a LWer's version of a shitty greentext ending with "why are women like this?"
E: sorry for necroposting, this came up somehow and I didn't check which sack it was under.
To understand this posture, you need to know Aaronson’s self-story. He has long written about being a bullied nerd, ignored by women, and obsessing over feminism in his youth.
My developing headcanon is that Scott missed out on a Birthright trip and this is a core aspect of his personality.
Zionism, to define it in one sentence, is the proposition that, in the situation described, you have not merely a right but a moral obligation to keep digging—and that you can do so with your middle finger raised high to the hateful mob.
Yeah, if I had to guess, it would be that that in part 3 of this shit, Scott begins advocating killing the "zombies". So what he's going for is "manufacturing consent".
Absolutely. And empathy is commodified, abused or otherwise exploited as well, which sucks. Like, advertising leans heavily on your ability to feel empathy. And many kinds of scams. It's not just AI stuff.
I think many muscles operate in pairs; empathy is the "agonist" in an "antagonistic pair". The "antagonist" isn't something like apathy; it's the ability to tell when your empathy and other emotions are being played. In this sense, it's fine to mourn the loss of Google Assistant, because how exactly could that be exploited, beyond a replacement product (as you've noted)?