Related Recs

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big tech

@theclack

May 1, 2025

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'Big Tech broke its promise' by dan sheehan

A great writeup about the recent Apple iPad commercial and how it's a perfect indicator of the noxious relationship between Big Tech and art/creativity. It's also worth subscribing to the newsletter - pretty much everything Dan writes is gold.

@theclack

May 14, 2024

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Mourning how capitalist frameworks limit the applications of revolutionary technology

i think that large language models like chatgpt are effectively a neat trick we’ve taught computers to do that just so happen to be *really* helpful as a replacement for search engines; instead of indexing sources with the knowledge you’re interested in finding, it just indexes the knowledge itself. i think that there are a lot of conversations around how we can make information more “accessible” (both in terms of accessing paywalled knowledge and that knowledge’s presentation being intentionally obtuse and only easily parseable by other academics), but there are very little actual conversations about how llms could be implemented to easily address both kinds of accessibility. because there isn’t a profit incentive to do so. llms (and before them, blockchains - but that’s a separate convo) are just tools; but in the current economic landscape a tool isn’t useful if it can’t make money, so there’s this inverse law of the instrument happening where the owning class’s insistence that we only have nails in turn means we only build hammers. any new, hot, technological framework has to either slash costs for businesses by replacing human labor (like automating who sees what ads when and where), or drive a massive consumer adoption craze (like buying crypto or an oculus or an iphone.) with llms, it’s an arms race to build tools for businesses to reduce headcount by training base models on hyperspecific knowledge. it also excuses the ethical transgression of training these models on stolen knowledge / stolen art, because when has ethics ever stood in the way of making money? the other big piece is tech literacy; there’s an incentive for founders and vcs to obscure (or just lie) about what a technology is actually capable of to increase the value of the product. the metaverse could “supplant the physical world.” crypto could “supplant our economic systems.” now llms are going to “supplant human labor and intelligence.” these are enticing stories for the owning class, because it gives them a New Thing that will enable them to own even more. but none of this tech can actually do that shit, which is why the booms around them bust in 6-18 months like clockwork. llms are a perfect implementation of [searle’s chinese room](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/) but sam altman et al *insist* that artificial general intelligence is possible and the upper crust of silicon valley are doing moral panic at each other about how “ai” is either paramount to or catastrophic for human flourishing, *when all it can do is echo back the information that humans have already amassed over the course of the last ~600 years.* but most people (including the people funding the technology and ceo types attempting to adopt it en masse) don’t know how it works under the hood, so it’s easy to pilot the ship in whatever direction fulfills a profit incentive because we can’t meaningfully imagine how to use something we don’t effectively understand.

@alaiyo

Mar 24, 2024

Top Recs from @daphne

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REALIZING THIS IS MORE ABOUT WHO YOU ARE THAN WHAT YOU KNOW/HAVE/DO

It occurs to me... that the posts I most connect with are ones where people unfurl their weirdo habits, values, inner lives (i love the "crush" genre of pi posts), ways of living, likes, dislikes, life philosophical points of view etc. I do treasure proper recs with an object, i.e. a new record or book or 8 hour youtube video, but I find myself really moved when someone shares how they live a good life. appreciating!!

@daphne

3d ago

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saying hi to acquaintances in public

I've been on a real journey lately. You see the person across the room and you know them... and you know they know you... but you know that they aren't going to come over and say hi... do it. Take the plunge. However the approach needs to happen, make contact. Don't wait until you see them at the next networking event and say "hey were you at the taco place the other day?" It's surprisingly empowering and frankly kind of an impressive social maneuver. The reward is giddy and powerful and immediate. It makes me feel like I've broken out of the matrix.

@daphne

Jun 10, 2025

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TELLING THEM YOU CARE

Any degree, any intensity, the world needs to know. If the care is there, u gotta share.

@daphne

Jun 10, 2025