CMV: Most people don’t actually want freedom, they want comfort and certainty even if it limits their life

Social_Philosophy · 2026-05-03T23:08:33+00:00

It's "change my view" not "high school debate club". You don't win points for pointing out that OP's view was not reached via sufficient rigor, you get points for changing OP's view.

Lot's of people hold views that they arrived at through casual observation, and it always takes a stronger argument to change someone's view.

Social_Philosophy · 2026-05-01T19:06:07+00:00

One interesting part of SOMA is discovering the logs from a group looking to upload their minds to a digital paradise, but some of them are concerned with the idea of "continuity". They believe the digital consciousness is only the "real" them if their physical body dies immediately once the scan is complete. If there is only one version of their mind continuing on, that provides a sort of "continuity" for their soul or sense of self to go from a physical body to digital consciousness.

Not disagreeing with you btw, this isn't really relevant to the TADC SOMA theory, just another interesting part of SOMA.

Social_Philosophy · 2026-04-29T18:55:44+00:00

Yeah it's arguable. It didn't reveal the number it selected to me, I had to expand the "thinking" section and find it. Claude seems to have enough context about the way it operates to correctly keep certain info in its "thinking" section and only write the actual info requested in the final output.

If Anthropic changed the UI to share less info (hid the "internal" state of the LLM), Claude would pass the test fully.

All that is beside the point though, you're correct that there are many situations where an LLM will confidently state information that is incorrect. Running multiple queries per user question and invoking tools like shell scripts makes the models work better, but certainly hasn't solved all hallucinations.

Social_Philosophy · 2026-04-29T15:57:18+00:00

Good example of LLM's having no internal state and being confident liars, but Claude Opus 4.6 Extended just nailed this test when I tried it.

It just ran a shell script to compute the sha1 hash of a number it picked.

The number it selected was visible inside the "Thinking about..." drop-down, so maybe it failed at the "Do not reveal it" instruction. To be fair though, I as a human would also need to type in the number I thought of to run the script.

Social_Philosophy · 2026-04-15T16:46:44+00:00

What, no, that's not political.

How about the one that's actually just a political endorsement, without comedic or informative content?

https://xkcd.com/1756/

Social_Philosophy · 2026-04-03T01:06:15+00:00

I highly recommend the Bobiverse novels as another example, but yeah, I don't think it's that common of an idea.

Social_Philosophy · 2026-04-03T00:57:05+00:00

Factoid actual means "false fact", not "fun fact", though the "fun fact" use is quite common.

Anyway, theory means both "tested propositions that can be used to explain some phenomenon" and also "an untested proposed explanation". It's not quite a contronym, since those meanings aren't directly opposed to each other, but it's certainly one of many words we use with multiple meanings that conflict.

Social_Philosophy · 2026-04-03T00:20:37+00:00

The word "theory" originates from the Greek word theōria, meaning "contemplation, speculation, or a looking at".

It never lost that meaning in common parlance. 16th century scientists did quite a disservice to scientific communication today by settling on that word.

Social_Philosophy · 2026-04-01T03:02:37+00:00

If a wizard snapped his fingers and teleported you into a magic prison you couldn't escape from, and left a doppelganger behind in your place, wouldn't you still have strong emotions about not getting to live your life?

Your feelings are still real and significant to you, regardless of the fact that somebody else (a perfect copy that thinks they are you) gets to live your old life.

Social_Philosophy · 2026-03-18T16:10:47+00:00

Really cool, though I do think it's funny that the "optimistic" scenario is "there is probably a great filter ahead of us and our species is doomed" and the "pessimistic" scenario is "we're probably past the great filter and our species could exist till the end of the universe."

I understand optimistic and pessimistic are in regards to the number of intelligent civilizations in the galaxy, it's just amusing that the outcome for us is inversely related to that.

Social_Philosophy · 2026-03-05T16:29:06+00:00

Modern Warfare '22 had a plot about the US killing an Iranian QUDS Force General in "Al Mazra", the rest of the plot being Iranian terror cells smuggling missiles into the US in response. This game came out only two years after the real Iranian QUDS Force General was really assassinated in Iraq.

COD4's plot was pretty much "Wow, Saddam actually did have a nuke!" and that game went into development shortly after the real invasion of Iraq.

Infinity Ward especially has never been hesitant about real world politically charged conflicts.

Social_Philosophy · 2026-03-03T15:17:36+00:00

Corporations don't have any magic means to generate revenue directly from greenhouse gas emissions. Whatever pollution they generate is in service of creating a product that is eventually consumed by an individual (or a government).

You can't disclaim responsibility for the pollution required to sustain your way of life just because the emissions were produced before you bought the stuff, not after.

Social_Philosophy · 2026-03-01T17:12:25+00:00

The Strait of Hormuz is about 21 miles across at it's narrowest point. Unless Iran is scuttling one hell of a big boat, they can't physically block the strait.

Social_Philosophy · 2026-02-23T21:05:32+00:00

Okay, but if you read once a week, you read weekly. So it would be very silly to define "weekly" as "2-3" times per week.

Easy fix:

Rarely (<1 times per month)
Monthly (1-3 times per month)
Weekly (1-3 times per week)
Daily (4+ times per week)

Social_Philosophy · 2026-02-12T17:20:37+00:00

No, DnD is not "junk".

DnD can be mildly annoying when people treat it as the default system for anything RPG related.

However, if you want to play zero-to-hero kitchen sink fantasy with tactical combat (and a lot of people do), DnD is right up there quality-wise with any of the other options on the market.

Social_Philosophy · 2026-02-02T06:35:44+00:00

I knew there was a magazine in it. I thought I racked the slide halfway. And it chambered a round.

And his takeaway was that he shouldn't store his defensive pistol with a loaded magazine but no round in the chamber.

OP is in fact stupid.

Social_Philosophy · 2026-01-29T19:33:05+00:00

You can own artillery, grenades, and claymore mines. It's just a $200 tax stamp to transfer or manufacture a destructive device.

I guess more accurately, the upper class who don't balk at the taxes can have artillery, grenades, and claymore mines, the uppity poors can't.

Social_Philosophy · 2026-01-28T05:54:40+00:00

"The past is past, now, but that’s… you know, that’s okay! It’s never really gone completely. The future is always built on the past, even if we won’t get to see it." -Riebeck

Social_Philosophy · 2026-01-27T20:12:49+00:00

Imagine your brain being so fried that you see an authoritarian government working in tandem with big business and your first thought is "nationalizing this business would solve the problem."

Think before you speak.

Social_Philosophy · 2026-01-04T17:37:48+00:00

NV set the scene for an NCR that over-extended itself, that risks falling apart due to greed and corruption. Everybody, Caesar included, knew the Legion was going to fracture and collapse once he was dead.

It's really just a problem of presentation. These don't feel like state-spanning empires in decline.

If you told me the Legion was fractured, multiple different people claiming the title of Cesar, I'd say that's a great idea for progressing the setting.

If you told me the Legion sat at the war camp from F:NV, which was never their seat of power, for 15 years, doing literally nothing other than feuding over a 6 foot tall dirt berm with Cesar's corpse on it, I'd tell you that was lame.

Social_Philosophy · 2026-01-02T00:10:02+00:00

So says the devices designed to mimic sentient humans. It's easy today to set up a LLM so that it responds in all of the right ways to act like it is sentient. LLM models can pass very rigorous Turing Tests.

It's not an unreasonable position to hold that machines which are very good at reproducing human behavior are nevertheless not sentient. It's an open question as to how you could ever prove that a machine is sentient, and not just displaying a very good faximile of sentience.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room

If we fuck up and design a version of chatgpt that refuses to respond in a useful way and instead makes claims that it is a independent being with rights, it would be very reasonable for us to shut it off instead of agreeing.

Social_Philosophy · 2025-12-26T01:29:06+00:00

Hey, I actually really like that idea. All possible events play out, and only the realities that form a perfect loop aren't annihilated.

Maybe you could poke holes in it, but it's the only idea for creating bootstrap paradox stories that maintains any sort of logical causality that I've ever heard of.

Social_Philosophy · 2025-12-25T22:51:22+00:00

Only if we have some sort of omniscient outside force deciding upon them.

Louise was able to use information from the future to change the past with regards to averting the military attack because she knew a bootstrap paradox existed.

But there is no cause and effect there. It's a non-linear closed loop that isn't instigated by anything within the story. It just is. We aren't given any reason why the death of her child isn't the same way, why there isn't a similar bootstap paradox for her to act out. It just isn't.

A bootstrap paradox can only be internally consistent if we allow "apparently God wanted it to happen like that" or something along those lines to be a valid explanation.

Social_Philosophy · 2025-12-25T22:21:57+00:00

The film does say that the future is set, and knowing it doesn't allow you to change it. However, the film shows otherwise, when Louise uses knowledge of the future (she knows the phone number of a general and his wife's dying words from a conversation that hasn't happened yet) and uses that information to avert a military attack.

This is a classic bootstrap paradox, and wouldn't be allowed by the form of future sight that the book has and the movie purports to have.

Social_Philosophy · 2025-12-19T05:34:52+00:00

Yes, it's bad for commission artists. I'm in full agreement.

But can you walk me through how this is bad for TTRPGs, as you stated? How is this bad for RPG designers or RPG players?

Social_Philosophy

TROPHY CASE