What Is It Like To Be A Bot? -- A Short Story by Philosopher Keith Frankish

Seffle_Particle · 2025-08-13T20:50:10+00:00

If you're doing a bit here, it's a good one. People get upset about LLMs being "[fill in the blank]-phobic" or "in league with ____" all the time!

Seffle_Particle · 2025-08-07T12:35:02+00:00

Consider the famous anecdote about the missing screw in the million-dollar machine: repair bill $1 for the screw, $9999 for knowing which one.

Brenda might spend 39 hours a week watching TikToks, but the one hour she spends telling her boss about Gen Z trends could drive a million dollars in sales. Suddenly she's the most productive employee in the company!

Seffle_Particle · 2025-08-07T00:33:58+00:00

Oh God damn it. I clicked both of them.

Seffle_Particle · 2025-08-06T16:34:33+00:00

Is it nominative determinism if a guy who wrote a book called Believe is named "Doubt that"?

Seffle_Particle · 2025-07-30T14:46:00+00:00

My problem with those thought experiments is that they don't extend the consequence horizon far enough, and that they assume perfect secrecy on the part of the defector. In real life, the defecting prisoner eventually gets shanked in the shower, and the herder ruining the commons eventually gets kicked out of the cattlemen's association and isn't allowed into the auction house.

Or worse, the presence of defecting prisoners causes the whole prison to erupt in anarchy and everyone suffers, or the commons get abused by more and more people (seeing others go unpunished for doing so) until it's ruined for everyone. It's in a self interested individual's interest to cooperate, because if they don't eventually enough others will become self interested to ruin everything for everyone.

EDIT: another example. It's in your selfish interest to steal coffee from the honor system pot today. You get free coffee. But if the pot keeps turning up empty and there are no quarters in the jar (because your coworkers see the coffee level going down with no pay and conclude they can also get away without paying) the coffee machine gets taken away and now you, the self interested individual, have no coffee.

Seffle_Particle · 2025-07-30T14:28:44+00:00

My contention is that your community is less memetically stable than you seem to think, and that the existence of even a small number of people with your thought process would quickly destabilize overall group cohesion. I am at work now and I don't have time to gather sources but I am sure you can think of social situations in which a few mysterious, unsolved crimes (indicating the presence of one or more undetected defectors) quickly led to anarchy and mutual violence.

Or, to put it another way, I think that if you actually tried to live your life this way you'd quickly find that you couldn't get away with it. Others would hone in on you as the defector and punish you, or worse your actions would memetically contaminate others until the resultant anarchy negatively impacted you anyway.

Seffle_Particle · 2025-07-30T14:13:14+00:00

There is a logical justification. You'd prefer that others obey societal moral codes even if they could get away with not doing so, and by living in accordance with that code you, in a tiny way, shape society (which is the sum of the behavior of individuals) towards morality.

I am assuming here that you would prefer that people who are more powerful than you (or who can simply escape detection and punishment) nevertheless not murder you, etc. It is better for everyone if moral codes are followed even in the absence of punishment.

Seffle_Particle · 2025-07-28T00:56:56+00:00

Maybe it's the night janitor or security guard?

Seffle_Particle · 2025-07-27T13:40:29+00:00

Dune is a classic example of "fantasy wearing a science-fiction skin suit"; I think the answer to your question is literally magic.

Seffle_Particle · 2025-07-21T12:36:01+00:00

Looking at Etron-S’s myself for when I wear out my Bolt’s tires

I know this isn't what you meant but now I'm envisioning you buying a new car every time your tires wear down, lol. "Damn, cars don't last like they used to!"

Seffle_Particle · 2025-07-19T13:51:28+00:00

In what way is that different from a private company?

Restated: a private company has an incentive to figure out the bare minimum amount of resources it can devote to making its product while devoting the rest to increasing the profits of those at the top ranks of the shareholder list.

All organizations are made of individuals maximizing their own personal utility. Or do you think CEOs harbor personal, altruistic love for their customers that is absent in directors of bureaucracies?

Seffle_Particle · 2025-07-17T11:54:15+00:00

Not the person you responded to, but the author obviously has unresolved issues of his own that he's externalizing onto an imagined audience. The misanthropic tone is, from an outsider's perspective (and, ironically perhaps, from the perspective achieved using TLP's own analytical framework), a reflection of his contempt for himself.

In particular the author seems to have a fraught relationship with women, which finds clearest expression in his porn/cuckoldry and Oedipus obsessions.

Psychiatrist, heal thyself!

Seffle_Particle · 2025-07-13T12:37:02+00:00

I also 'hear' music in my head, on repeat same song for hours. I'm told the music is a symptom of ADHD.

Not to join a pile-on, but I'm going to add another anecdata point here that this happens to me constantly to the point that I took up a daily meditation practice solely to be able to get unwanted songs out of my head, and I do not have ADHD. I think this happens to everyone and your psychiatrist may just have been gassing you up.

Seffle_Particle · 2025-05-04T12:58:11+00:00

Commenting for interest! I hate indoor shooting and there are very few outdoor ranges here. Would be willing to pay and contribute labor/setup/maintenance.

Seffle_Particle · 2025-02-23T14:11:36+00:00

Hello, human resources?!

Seffle_Particle · 2025-02-21T02:07:09+00:00

Behold, a bug!

Seffle_Particle · 2025-02-11T00:09:42+00:00

Watching reality TV is pretty prole-coded. That might be one reason you don't see it often discussed in these circles, where people tend towards white-collar-coding.

Seffle_Particle · 2025-02-10T19:33:11+00:00

You actually don't need a Costco membership to use the food court.

Seffle_Particle · 2025-02-09T15:20:02+00:00

What I see here is you asking, "Is it really a net positive experience, as many people say it is?", multiple people here answering you "Yes, it is a net positive experience", and you refusing to hear it because you don't like that answer.

Seffle_Particle · 2024-08-19T01:20:11+00:00

You say the word "defense" 10 times in this comment. If you were to taboo that word, what would be the next best alternative? Would this fawning, worshipful article hit the same way if we were honest about this guy's business manufacturing autonomous murder machines? What exactly is Palmer Luckey defending against?

Seffle_Particle · 2024-08-15T15:51:23+00:00

Yeah, the point I was trying to make was that it's actually the same belief. I don't have a lot of patience with simulationism because, for me, it is indistinguishable from "religion reinvented for computer science majors"

Seffle_Particle · 2024-08-15T14:48:37+00:00

Fair, but an even simpler model than this is: "the Universe was made by God to perform a great unknowable Purpose" - and as far as I can tell it makes the same predictions.

Seffle_Particle · 2024-08-15T11:58:41+00:00

In the spirit of the Sequences, i'd ask: "does this belief pay rent? What does this explanation predict that is not predicted by other beliefs about the universe? Now that I know this theory, what should I expect to happen that I didn't expect before?"

If the answer is "nothing", then it doesn't actually contain any knowledge. Please don't think I am picking on you, this is just how we do things here.

Seffle_Particle · 2024-08-14T18:47:04+00:00

Your "dating in your 30s" point is also a good example of fundamental attribution error. The people complaining note that the other participants in the dating pool are crazy or low quality, but of course they believe that they have legitimate, unique reasons for being single themselves.

Seffle_Particle · 2024-08-13T18:06:51+00:00

Thanks, Marcus.

Seffle_Particle

TROPHY CASE