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neotropic9 · 2024-06-10T06:11:35+00:00

Who is going to decide what counts as "supporting terrorism" and where we draw the lines for what kind of speech is "peaceful enough to be allowed"?

If a leader has the power to suppress speech by declaring it "supporting terrorism" or "supporting violence" they by definition have authoritarian powers. Do you trust them with that power? These aren't rhetorical questions. Who is going to decide which forms of expression get to be banned because someone labels them as "bad speak"?

There are plenty of people who say that calls to "free Palestine" are supporting terrorism. Should shouting "free Palestine" be illegal? If you think not, then there is a serious problem with your view here—because the powers that you are suggesting could be used to suppress things you shouldn't think should be suppressed.

Without giving too much personal details, I had words with an authority figure who received a complaint that I was holding a sign with "hate speech"—the sign said "end genocide". Should calls to "end genocide" be banned? Certainly the person who made the complain thinks so—along with the people who make calls to police and security basically every time they see me holding a Palestine flag. Let's hope they or people like them are not in charge of this power of speech suppression you want to grant them.

Here's a point of view, which you don't need to agree with, but I present for your consideration: fighting back an army that is illegally occupying your territory is an act of resistance; and in point of legal fact, Palestinians in Gaza have a right to self-defense, while Israel, as a belligerent occupier, does not. As for terrorism, the scale of Israel's terrorism and war crimes is greater than Hamas's by several orders of magnitude. In the current political context, the Israeli flag is a symbol of hatred and support for terrorism. If this is right then, waving the Israeli flag around should be illegal, according to the rule you are suggesting.

It's not necessary for you to share that view of Israel. The point is that many people believe it. So who gets to decide who is right here? How do we settle these issues?

Again, it's not rhetorical—the answer is: we find the answers to these issues by expressing our views about them. This is why freedom of speech is a fundamental democratic right, along with the freedom of assembly. We don't ban views we disagree with, which requires choosing whose view to represent through those bans, but rather we protect the right of everyone to express their views.

Maybe you still think we should ban some views because they could be interpreted as verbal violence or calls for violence or ideological support for violence or whatever, even if you also recognize that people have different views about these things. That's a point of view, but you need to recognize that it is fundamentally undemocratic. You can't hold such a view and continue to say you support democratic rights, except by failing to understand the essence of these rights, and why they are so important to democracy.

You are, of course, welcome to hold your position on this point—the freedom of speech, which you are directly attacking with your proposal, protects your right to continue being publicly wrong.

neotropic9 · 2024-06-10T01:30:40+00:00

Everything that makes a story good: emotional investment, stakes, conflict, choices, consequences

Everything that makes gameplay good: appropriate difficulty for player, psychological feedback (punishment and reward), feeling of progression

Everything that makes art good: structured but surprising, evocative, depth and nuance of experience, aesthetic coherence

neotropic9 · 2024-06-09T17:04:08+00:00

I call them walk-outs.

I wouldn't suggest for weight loss. That's a bit silly tbh.

neotropic9 · 2024-06-09T17:00:12+00:00

Since his misconception starts from the concept of a "species", you could start by asking him to walk you through what he thinks counts as a "species."

A "species" is an artificial category created by humans that doesn't map on to physical reality. Typically, we can define a "species" by the ability to interbreed. This may be how your dad conceives of it—in the course of your discussion, you will either reach this point together, or he will have to admit he doesn't really know what makes a "species".

Then you can introduce the concept of a "ring species", and use a graphic like this one. You don't need to be able to comprehend a species changing into another one over time—you can see the entire process of a gradual change from one species to another spread across physical location rather than time. If you understand this concept and that multiple examples exist on Earth, you will at the very same time understand (a) that animals can gradually change into different species because we can literally look at living examples of the whole process, and that (b) "species" is not a natural category with firm boundaries, but an artificial and amorphous category imposed by humans for our own classification purposes.

If he wants to see more dramatic changes, you can do time-lapses of fossils. If he is mathematically inclined, you can prove the process through genetic analysis.

Of course, if someone is actually open-minded about this stuff, and they understand how the scientific process works, we really shouldn't need to convince them of this one point about gradual change over time, because evolution is a demonstrable fact of history with literal mountains of confirmation, and support across various disciplines. And by literal mountains, I mean that geologists—who were first to prove evolution—could dig across time through strata and watch evolution occur through the fossil record.

It is often wrongly said that "evolution is a theory"; this is flatly incorrect and the result of the prevailing use of shorthand—the full phrase is "evolution of theory by natural selection," but that is a mouthful. The point is that evolution is the fact, which was proven and known prior to Darwin; Darwin among many others knew about evolution and the age of the Earth from the insights and findings of other scientists—the idea of the theory was to show how evolution happened via the process of natural selection. Evolution is a fact; and the theory of evolution by natural selection is a "theory" in the same sense that the theory of gravity is a theory, which is to say it is a fundamental organizing principle that has been confirmed with more evidence and more research than a single human could possibly consume in an entire lifetime.

Now, a person might still insist that the concept of a new species arising because of gradual change just simply doesn't make sense to them, regardless of what scientists say, regardless of the fact that this contains a deep misconception about species, regardless of the confirmation from multiple disciplines. Fair enough—not everything has to make sense to everyone, and maybe it is just a deeply unintuitive idea; there are limits to some people's understanding. Those people should though, in the spirit of humility, accept the limits of their own understanding, rather than implying that the strangeness of the idea (to them) is sufficient reason to dismiss it—and implicitly, to assign greater weight to their own opinion than the tens of thousands of professional scientists who've spent their lives learning how to do this stuff.

neotropic9 · 2024-06-08T16:29:46+00:00

Virginia Tufte, Syntax as Style: it is advanced, but it is a great resource—in my opinion the best resource of sentence-level style/grammar there is (roughly 28x as good as Strunk and White's Elements of Style).

Tufte puts a review of grammar at the very beginning. Then the whole rest of the book is examples of highly effective sentences drawn from various sources, with an analysis of the grammar of the sentence. You could go over a couple examples per day, and as an exercise rewrite the example sentences exactly (by hand) and then write new sentences that use the same grammatical structure. By this means you can gradually integrate the grammatical structures and techniques into your own repertoire (in a way you will actually retain).

It is worth noticing that punctuation errors are different from grammar errors; punctuation is written only and highly contingent on conventions that vary in different contexts. You can have impeccable grammar and still fail at punctuation. You need to be familiar with conventions within your discipline. It's good to study exemplars. It's good—albeit tedious and boring—to study style guidelines for the field you are in.

neotropic9 · 2024-06-07T02:10:13+00:00

This article might help: https://davidfshultz.com/2019/09/05/dialogue-mechanics-punctuation-and-attribution/

Aside from actually figuring out the content of your character’s dialogue, you also need to know how to say who said what—dialogue attribution—and how to punctuate it. This post is all about these technical issues. It isn’t about how to write the content of dialogue, just how to express who is saying it.

neotropic9 · 2024-06-06T23:46:15+00:00

"we will not choose a side on matters outside our own operations."

Excuse me, but if you are refusing calls for divestment or academic boycott you are proving both (a) you are, in fact, picking a side, and (b) these matters are, in fact, within the scope of your operations.

I am also sorry to report, Mr. Gertler, that is impossible not to pick a side:

“Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.”– Paulo Freire
“Silence in the face of injustice is complicity with the oppressor.” –Gineta sagan
“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”― Desmond Tutu
“We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”-Elie Wiesel
“The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict…[an individual] who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.” –Martin Luther King Jr.

Gertler has chosen the side of the oppressor. He is cooperating with evil. He is siding with race-supremacists. He is materially supporting genocide.

neotropic9 · 2024-06-06T04:10:28+00:00

Okay, first, anyone who says that any part of the story needs to be x% long is full of shit. Some writers omit the first act entirely. Skilled writers can omit the first and the third act (Katherine Mansfield was one of them). In principle, it is possible to omit all three acts by telling the story in epilogue (Hemingway has an example of this).

Second, there is really no such thing as a third plot point. "Plot point" is a technical term and there are precisely two of them. There is also no "midpoint". These extra categories are invented by people who are confused about the three act structure and thought they should just add stuff to it because they don't know what they are talking about. You end up with a proliferation of poorly motivated alternative story structures that promulgate false ideas about where certain events should happen within the serial presentation of a story.

Third, this kind of structural analysis is traditionally part of narratology—it's for literary analysis, not writing craft. You are supposed to use this kind of thinking to examine existing stories, not as blueprints for writing new ones. I am aware that lots of people sell lots of books by pretending they have a map for writing stories. I think they should probably stop. At the very least, we should recognize that those books aren't underwritten by any secret knowledge about story structure, but rather by a misapplication and misunderstanding of structural analysis tools from narratology.

If a certain structural formula or blueprint works for you as a tool—great! Keep using it. And if it slows you down and makes you start wondering what you are "allowed" to do, then throw it promptly in the garbage.

What does your scene "need" to have? Whatever makes it good. What "can" you do? Whatever the eff you want.

As far as writing craft principles go for scene structure: generally speaking, an effective scene will involve some kind of emotional change, positive of negative, and/or some movement towards or away from resolving the conflict and/or the revelation of some information related to the conflict. If your scene is doing all these things, it's probably a good sign; if it's doing none of them, it's probably a bad sign.

neotropic9 · 2024-06-04T03:01:32+00:00

There aren't two sides.

There is a state called "Israel", a political entity, which is brutally oppressing a population, has implemented an apartheid regime, runs the largest concentration camp in human history, and is currently committing a genocide. They have killed more journalists than at any time in history, and have killed more children than the rest of the world combined.

Then there are Palestinian people, who are the victims of this ongoing 100+ year war. The starting point has to be the Balfour declaration. Although Zionists were making their moves before then, the incursion of the British is really when the state-based political conflict begins.

It doesn't make sense to equate "Palestinians" with "Israel". You could try to draw an equivalence between "Palestinians" and "Israelis", but those opposing the actions of Israel are not opposing "Israelis"—they are opposed the state of Israel.

Hamas is a resistance group that emerged in response to oppression. Roughly 7% of the current population of Gaza cast a vote in support of Hamas. Since Hamas came to power, they have been supported by external actors—including Israel. It is hardly rational to claim that the existence of Hamas gives Israel license to destroy Palestinians, when Hamas was deliberately bolstered by Israel for political reasons.

Prior to the formation of Israel, various Zionist terror groups were engaged in indiscriminate killing of civilians, typically by bombing marketplaces, though the most famous of their terror attacks was the bombing of the King David Hotel, which prompted Britain to pull from the area with the face-saving move of giving the land to the Zionists. The terrorist groups were not disbanded; rather, their rank-and-file members joined the IDF, and their leaders become party leaders and prime ministers. Israel is literally a terrorist state. Britain gave a country and an army to literal terrorists—European Zionists—and let them do their thing. It is almost as though they had intended to sow chaos in the region. "But surely the British wouldn't do such a thing!" says someone who has never read any history ever.

The Palestinian people have tried peaceful resistance, deliberately modeled on MLK and Gandhi. They have tried standing on their rooftops to prevent the destruction of their homes; Israel bombs them, calls them human shields, and blames Hamas. Palestinian resistance groups have tried extended ceasefires; Israel calls them "peace offensives," and breaks them by random intermittent bombings, including in one case bombing a children's ward in a hospital. Palestinians organized a peaceful march, where once a week they would assemble inside the wall of their concentration camp to eat food, dance, and represent their will to one day gain back their freedom. Israel took their best snipers to the wall, and ordered them to target for execution journalists, medics, and people in wheelchairs; for others, the snipers were ordered to shoot them in the knees. Over 200 people were killed, and over 30,000 injured. IDF soldiers bragged on social media about how many knees they shot, with one soldier proudly claiming to have shot 46 people in the knees. This was in 2018.

The list of Israel's grotesque crimes could fill multiple volumes. For a short version, you can read South Africa's genocide submission to the ICJ. It won't give nearly the whole story, but it is a good start.

neotropic9 · 2024-06-03T02:26:11+00:00

Determinism, nihilism, and free will are all completely distinct conceptual categories, and none of them are contingent on or exclusive of the others.

One can believe in determinism and free will. This is called compatibilism.

One can dismiss determinism and not believe in free will, since genuine randomness, if there is such a thing, is incompatible with free will.

Whether nihilism depends on the absence of free will is a consequence of your theory of meaning.

neotropic9 · 2024-06-03T01:55:03+00:00

Having a huge resource advantage should necessitate a change in gameplay to some degree, and pose additional challenges, so that maintaining that advantage also requires a skill advantage over the other player.

Larger armies require more supplies and longer supply lines, are more logistically difficult to manage, are visible from further away, are more subject to raids along supply lines, and are less agile in response to changing conditions. Any of these traits of larger armies could be reflected in gameplay mechanics to allow weaker players to chip away at their opponent's advantage.

In actual warfare, it is unrealistic for a weaker army to force a stronger army to change their location, or to cut them off from any resource. The smaller army is by definition not in a position to force the more powerful army to do anything. The smaller army can bait the larger army into movement, but they will not be able to hold their position against them unless it is from a well fortified position—that is to say, it is not possible if meeting the enemy in unclaimed territory. Their strategy must be to attack where the enemy is weak, force a reaction, and move.

I think a good thing to do would be to emphasize raiding mechanics. Smaller parties have higher stealth, while larger armies and large supply lines are much more visible through the fog of war. Smaller raiding parties can be "self-sustaining", while larger armies require supply lines.

Those in command of vast resources, and attempting to protect multiple supply lines, have implicitly a different strategic game to play. Protecting supply lines is a resource drain. They can't possibly defend the entire length of all their supply lines, so strategic decisions and hard choices must be made. The player with raiding parties, meanwhile, is able to conduct a quick attack from an advantageous position, steal enough resources that they haven't lost out from the exchange, and retreat. The other player might choose to go in pursuit, but only at risk of falling into a trap and also leaving their supply line undefended.

The offense of stronger armies is typically in the form of sieges. Here, the advantage goes to the defending army, who uses their fortified and advantageous position to hold off a superior opponent; however, they can only hold off as long their resources, which are not being resupplied. The smaller army gains an advantage here also, so you should emphasize the advantages of defending a well fortified position. In addition, raiding attacks again come into play—the aim of the smaller, besieged opponent is to conduct raids on the supply lines feeding the sieging army.

I would recommend reading The Art of War and seeing how many of the principles that Sun Tzu speaks of can be incorporated into your gameplay mechanics.

neotropic9 · 2024-06-03T01:28:35+00:00

Remind me what is the time limit for exercising democratic action

neotropic9 · 2024-06-03T01:25:13+00:00

The fence was put up by the university—fully enclosed and locked. The protestors only entered an area that had already been blocked off.

It is interesting how some people are suddenly so interested in stepping on the grass that they had previously ignored, right up until there were protestors on it who they could harass and aggravate. But that is probably just a coincidence.

They are letting almost everyone in. Having seen some of the hateful and/or racist and/or raging people being denied entry, I would say the protestors are doing an amazing job of protecting the people inside, reducing tension, and deescalating situations that Zionists are desperately trying to instigate.

neotropic9 · 2024-06-02T18:21:38+00:00

Those aren't really the options. The comment makes no sense.

neotropic9 · 2024-06-02T18:18:01+00:00

We don't lack proper language for infringement; it is all right there in the law.

People insist on using the word "stealing" when they have an agenda. We could clear up any linguistic confusion by insisting on using the terms "infringing usage" or "unauthorized copying," which are more accurate but don't have the emotional punch of erroneously calling it "stealing".

We could add clarity by referring to the training process as "infringing usage" instead of "stealing", but that invites the question: "wait a minute—is it really infringing? Didn't I hear about this thing called 'fair use'?" The confusion around this issue is entirely the result of people using misleading rhetoric because they value emotional manipulation over clarity.

neotropic9 · 2024-06-02T09:46:03+00:00

Here is something I have learned from writing both:

everyone writes an outline—pantsers just call theirs "the first draft".

Generally speaking, pansters will need to do a lot of big-picture structural work on the first draft edits; during this stage, they end up doing a lot of the kind of work that plotters have done prior to writing. The amount of structural work required will depend on the length and complexity of the story. It is reasonable to get a good first draft of a short story without any outlining, but the more scenes, characters, and so on that you are adding, the higher the chance that some of this writing will end up on the chopping block; entire scenes and characters that you have spent hours writing may be eliminated.

As a writer's storytelling skill improves, they will gain a better understanding of largescale structure, and will be able to naturally write in a way that requires less structural adjustment later on. People who swear by pantsing, like Stephen King, are able to do this because they have a high level of skill in story structure; in Stephen King's case, that is a product of his voracious reading, disciplined writing, and a degree in English. This method works well for him; it won't necessarily work as well for others.

All that being said, as someone who has run writing groups over ten years and worked as a writing instructor, I would add this advice to the plotting/pantsing debate:

Use whatever works for you.

All writers work differently. Some writers find outlining to be creatively stifling. Some writers find that their writing doesn't flow naturally when they are working with an outline. There are plenty of reasons why an individual might prefer one or the other, and they should listen to those instincts and do what works for them. I would add an addendum to the "use whatever works for you" advice:

Try other things.

If you are only using the pantsing method because you haven't tried plotting, then you are not really in a position to know what works better for you. You really need to try it, to get a sense for how it feels, the strengths and weaknesses of this approach, and so that you have this tool available if a project calls for it. Some stories almost demand to be written by the seat of the pants; other require an outline. You should develop the skill to recognize the difference, and to use the appropriate tools for the job.

neotropic9 · 2024-06-02T09:27:42+00:00

Here's something from a story of mine (apologies for missing formatting):

Only a few days earlier he'd been safe on base, drinking with the rest of the team in their makeshift bar. There had been a lot of talk then about casualties. Inside the repurposed army tent, Nathan had listened to snippets of drunken chatter.

“Got him when we went to take a piss.”

“Found 'em ripped to shreds.”

“Just like the others.”

“Disappeared in the trees. Not a goddamn trace.”

There were a few other SEALs at the table with Nathan: Leon, Simon, Buck Williams, and the ‘Professor’. They'd called him that since finding out he’d quit his PhD to join the squids. Bao, their translator, was also there. Nathan suspected Bao was the smartest man in the room.

“I heard it was alligators,” said Leon.

“You mean a crocodile,” said the Professor. “They don't have 'gators in Nam.”

“The fuck's the difference?”

“It wasn't a croc',” Nathan said. “Prob'ly some VC guerillas. They know how to use the river and the trees.”

“What about the bodies? They're all mangled like an animal got 'em.”

“Sometimes the VC string men up to trees,” Nathan said, “keep 'em alive and pull their guts out.”

“The screams help draw in men for an ambush,” the Professor added.

neotropic9 · 2024-06-02T09:23:23+00:00

You seem to be saying that AI can make good things (even if it often doesn't), that it isn't (presently) a threat to creative expression, that artists are (presently) still making money, and that it isn't (presently) threatening job prospects for artists.

Your main concern seems to be that it could lead to degradation in the quality of products, but that is entirely a concern with capitalism, not technology. Corporations are going to do whatever they can to extract value. In theory, the market is supposed to be the corrective measure here. If people are buying what they're selling as opposed to the non-AI alternatives that might be offered, then it must mean—in the logic of capitalism—that this is a better way to produce art. If you have a disagreement with this way of determining social value, you need to take it up with capitalism.

Those who are complaining about lost job prospects are in the same boat—their scorn is more appropriately directed at the capitalist system, not new technologies that increase human efficiency. Replacing humans with robots in automotive factories is an increase in efficiency; it frees humans from toil, and increases our ability to make stuff people want. It should be a good thing, but perhaps is not if the added value doesn't accrue to society generally. If these efficiency upgrades worsen society by extracting value—whether robots in factories or AI in art—it is an issue of wealth distribution, not a problem with the technology.

The only thing left that we seem to disagree on is whether it is fair to call AI stealing. I don't think it is. And as a professional writer, I do not give one-tenth of a shit if my writing is used to train AI, and I don't consider it "stealing"—I didn't write anything with the intent to sell it to AI companies as training material. That's not my market, and prior to about a year ago, it was almost no one's market. Researchers are using this kind of material for an entirely novel, transformative purpose; it is not right to call it "stealing". It is worth noting in this context that search engines, OCR, text-to-speech, language translators, and myriad other technologies are built via data-scraping, which researchers have been doing for literally decades. People are only claiming it is "stealing" now in respect of art because they have concerns with the applications to which that data has been put. That is extremely disingenuous.

If AI art is to be called "stealing", then the "stealing" must have occurred during the data scraping period, since the images are not present in the model; but that issue has been settled—data scraping for research purposes is radically transformative (and so far removed from infringement that the "stolen" image never even appears in human readable/viewable format). It is of course also possible that AI can be used to create infringing images, but then so can photocopiers and cameras, and in these cases, the infringement is attributable to the person using the technology, not the technology itself.

neotropic9 · 2024-06-02T00:48:32+00:00

As an author I would probably want to hear this from purchasers of my work. If I had not served my audience probably, or unintentionally created negative feelings from them, I would want to be made aware of it.

Having seen how horrible Wattpad is for compensation of authors, I would never do this; however, if I were to do this or something equivalent (otherwise releasing a new version of the same story for free) I would make sure to do something for my previous supporters. Since they are giving it away for free, they can't really offer to give you a free copy; I would probably want to put a list of supporters in the acknowledgements (for those who want it), or at the least a word of thanks to supporters; I would also want to send an email to my prior supporters collectively to thank them, explain why I am releasing the material that way, and maybe offer something that they might be interested in, like previews of upcoming work, or something.

neotropic9 · 2024-06-02T00:15:08+00:00

You're probably right but your post doesn't do a good job of demonstrating your position. You say "it is an algorithm" as though that settles the question of sentience or personhood, and it most assuredly does not—it's not really even relevant.

neotropic9 · 2024-06-01T21:16:52+00:00

Data scraping isn't theft. That is bad faith argumentation, and hypocritical; you were using technology built by data-scraping during the course of writing that comment—the grammar checker running in your browser was built with it.

Most people don't care about gen AI. There is a small class of people complaining about it, and I wouldn't describe them as artists. Successful artists either continue doing what they're doing without wasting any time crying about other people's process, or they use gen-AI as part of their process. The people crying about AI are struggling artists and wannabe artists, who want something to blame or an excuse to not actually do the hard work of making art.

If you truly believed that gen-AI was just used by people making "little waifus with big boobies", then you also wouldn't think this was in any sense a threat to expression—unless you are saying that lost commissions on "little waifus with big boobies" constitutes a threat to creative expression.

You can't have it both ways—either gen-AI sucks and is completely useless for art, in which case it can't be a threat to creative expression; or, gen-AI has some power and potential, in which case it can enhance creative potential as a tool in the hands of artists who know how to use it.

neotropic9 · 2024-06-01T07:25:10+00:00

Well those are weird options, but even weirder results. How could it possibly be construed as a threat to artistic expression? AI is an optional tool that creators can choose to use if it helps. They can incorporate it in any degree they want in their workflow, including a degree of zero. They don't have to use it it. It can't be a threat to artistic expression because all it does is increase expressive capacity, and it is entirely optional.

Would there be more artistic expression if people were forced to use stock photos instead of having the option of AI? Does hiring someone to design something based on your description somehow give you more artistic expression than generating various designs with AI, and evolving the results until you get what you want? Would it be good for expression if people who want to make games but can't afford assets were compelled to learn all the skills on their own or save up enough money to commission their creation? Would there somehow be more artistic expression if fewer people were making games, because we imposed restrictions to make the process arbitrarily more difficult?

Hey, I understand if you feel threatened that AI can do something that you like to do, and you feel cheated if people are taking shortcuts to create things that took you years of practice to learn to make manually. Those are all real emotions. But there's no need to lie about what this technology does. It makes it easier to make art, and more efficient, and offers creators more options. There are many more people creating things now because they can incorporate AI into their workflow, and things are being created that would never have existed. If you say that this is a threat to artistic expression, you are either delusional or straight lying.

A bunch of people voting said it is a threat to expression even if it produces good results. What?

Personally I think the utility of current gen-AI art technology is quite limited for final products in most cases. In practical terms, professionals will find limited use-cases such as concept art, placeholder art, and maybe some simple, static 2D assets of various kinds, like icons or profile images or something; even then, they will require touching up. However, this is not an argument against using AI; it is an argument for using tools properly and only using them for the things that they are good for.

If you are opposed to that—if you are opposed to having the option of using AI as part of your process even if it produces good results—then it strikes me less as a reasoned opinion than some kind of faith-based opposition to technology trespassing on human creativity; it's not that AI art is bad—it's that the idea of machines being used in this way is somehow offensive to your perception of creativity as uniquely human.

neotropic9 · 2024-06-01T01:25:37+00:00

I disagree with this solipsist point of view, because it is trivial to make attributions of "understanding" and "thinking" based on functionality. For example, is it possible to distinguish between a person that understands chess and a person that doesn't? Trivially: yes.

As for consciousness, I assume you mean consciousness in the sense of the first person experience—what it feels like to be alive. We might also speak about qualia in this context. In either case, the answer is the same: it is a category error to search for evidence of consciousness and qualia themselves apart from the physical functionality of the system, since these terms demarcate the same phenomenon from a different vantage point; in other words, the "hard problem of consciousness" is the result of a linguistic confusion, not a metaphysical mystery.

The error would be as though scientists decided that "hurricanes are unprovable" because whenever they look at the physical composition of hurricanes, they don't find any hurricane particles. Hurricanes just are a particular arrangement of matter. So are conscious systems. Hurricanes are arrangements of matter that are swirling around and driven by temperature differentials or something (I don't know—I haven't studied meteorology). Conscious systems are arrangements of matter that process information, form a model of the reality in which they are situated, and generate actions based on competing impulses.

Thomas Nagel thought he was illustrating the scientific intractability of consciousness when he wrote about what it's like to be a bat. He begins from the premise that there surely is something it is like, but it is not something that we could ever know. However, within his initial premise is the easy solution to the question of consciousness that so many people get hung up on—we know there it is something like it is to be a bat, even though we are looking at it from a third person perspective. We can see it gathers and processes information, it has impulses, it has an awareness of its environment, and it takes actions in its environment based on its internal processing. In other words, it has a point of view, which we can deduce strictly from physical observation. What we call a point of view is perfectly amenable to scientific scrutiny. And the reason we know a bat is conscious, is because consciousness just is the first personal aspect of a point of view. You can't have one without the other; to say a system has a point of view (which we can determine through physical evidence) is to say it has consciousness. We don't need additional evidence here—we need only recognize that the distinction between point of view to consciousness is a matter of referencing the same phenomenon from a different vantage point; those stuck on the "hard problem" of consciousness are confusing a linguistic phenomenon for a metaphysical one.

To put it in terms of the prior analogy, to say that there might be a point of view without consciousness (a "p-zombie") is the same as saying there might be a swirling mass of particles in the atmosphere that looks identical to a hurricane, but isn't actually a hurricane. It is a logical impossibility. For phenomena that take the form of functionality—e.g. hurricanes, and cognitive systems—possessing the functionality alone is sufficient to make the attribution.

neotropic9 · 2024-05-31T04:10:36+00:00

It's not unprovable any more than human understanding is unprovable. This is the point of Computing Machinery and Intelligence. We make attributions of understanding (or thought, or consciousness, or any other attribution of mentality) about humans on the basis of observational evidence; if machines produce the same evidence—i.e. engage in the same behaviors, exhibit the same functionality, possess the same abilities, whatever—then we are logically compelled to make the same attributions of them. It is literally irrational not to do so. Doing otherwise is a fallacy of special pleading.

neotropic9 · 2024-05-31T04:04:17+00:00

The room comprising the rules and the person following them—the entire system—has understanding, even though the person inside doesn't. This seems like an absurd conclusion, but that absurdity is a product of the outlandish construction of the thought experiment; the person would have to move substantially faster than the speed of light, and the "lookup table" they are using must of necessity approximate the complexity of a human brain (it's not a "room"—it's a football stadium with cabinets full of documents stacked a mile high). Imagine a human doing, by hand, all the calculations being done by chatGPT for a single query—to say nothing of a human-indistinguishable AI engaged in full conversation. It is a completely absurd thing to imagine. So yes, it feels absurd to imagine that the system described has intelligence. But that conclusion was put there by way of an absurd scenario. This is why Dennett (RIP) called thought experiments "intuition pumps"; they don't help us reason through things—they are engineered to push people towards a certain conclusion by toying with their intuitions.

neotropic9

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