ep1032's recent activity
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Comment on What have you been eating, drinking, and cooking? in ~food
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Comment on The ethics of buying, playing military, war or games inspired by them? in ~games
ep1032 Link ParentIronically enough, this rationale is why I find I'm pretty turned off by things like the Call of Duty series but am okay with playing the Arma series. CoD to me feels like a disneyification of...Ironically enough, this rationale is why I find I'm pretty turned off by things like the Call of Duty series but am okay with playing the Arma series.
CoD to me feels like a disneyification of American imperialism and violence writ large. I have enjoyed my time playing them, but when I'm done, I feel like I was just exposed to a Hollywood style pro-US action movie.
Contrarily, Arma is so realistic, that while I enjoy playing it, when I'm done, I feel like I have a deeper understanding of just how horrific the things I just saw actually would be (and probably are) if they actually happened in real life.
Put more simply, when a bomb goes off in CoD it feels like an exciting hollywood explosion. Its not real, just normalized. By contrast, every time I see a missile strike in Iran on the news, I recognize the missile, recognize that I've been on the receiving end of that in Arma, and realize how devastating and frigging horrifying that is to actually happen in real life.
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Comment on New York Times quiz: Who’s a better writer: AI or humans? in ~tech
ep1032 Link ParentSame. Went 5 for 5 (though went back and forth on the Carl Sagan one), and thought it was easy. I also think that this A/B test was helped by the fact that the text was so short. This allows the...Same. Went 5 for 5 (though went back and forth on the Carl Sagan one), and thought it was easy.
I also think that this A/B test was helped by the fact that the text was so short. This allows the AI to leverage the fact that the actual prompt was likely doing a lot of the work in imbuing character here.
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Comment on Can coding agents relicense open source through a “clean room” implementation of code? in ~comp
ep1032 Link ParentI wonder if the eff would take your case. It seems like an incredibly important topic, and yours might genuinely vey the most clearcut example they're going to come acrossI wonder if the eff would take your case. It seems like an incredibly important topic, and yours might genuinely vey the most clearcut example they're going to come across
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Comment on Culture is the mass-synchronization of framings in ~life
ep1032 Link ParentHe means framing the way one would frame a question. Implicit in any question asked (about anything) are underlying assumptions that both the asker and and answerer need to accept as true in order...He means framing the way one would frame a question. Implicit in any question asked (about anything) are underlying assumptions that both the asker and and answerer need to accept as true in order for a question and answer dialog to be meaningful.
If you would like to look up the concept of the Overton window in wikipedia, this might be a good way to be introduced to the topic. Side note: investigating concepts like this and their effectiveness is a large part of how Noam Chomsky became famous in political circles.
This author takes this concept, and pushes it one step further. Every time we think about any concept for any abstract entity in this life, we are forming a mental model about what that concept is. This mental model is always incomplete and therefore at least a little wrong, because humans have limited brainpower and knowledge. This means that there are always simplifications, assumptions, and blindspots in every mental model you have about... everything. These, too, can be shared assumptions between two people trying to communicate, and these are what he refers to as framings.
Furthermore, the author delves into it a little bit, but it is understood in psychology that these framings are self-reinforcing. Here is a random picture of a color map I found online (http://itooktheredpill.irgendwo.org/2010/building-a-color-world-map/hsv.png). This is every color that the human eye can perceive. There are very obvious colors here (red, green, blue, etc). But if you were going to draw a circle around light blue, where would you draw it? What about teal? baby blue? Would it surprise you to learn that not all cultures draw their circles in the same places? That different cultures draw the circles in slightly different places? That different cultures have different numbers of words for each color, and subdivide the colors in different ways? Some languages don't even have words for colors 0.o.
It also turns out that if you take one culture that has 30 commonly used words for green, and another culture that has , say, 15, then members of the culture that have 30 will also be better at identifying the differences between different green colors when tested. Which means that even if these cultures are defining their colors in different, arbitrary manners, it ultimately reinforces real world skills and different mental abilities.
So, this is what he is referring to as framing.
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Comment on Elon Musk says SpaceX will prioritize a city on the moon instead of a colony on Mars in ~space
ep1032 LinkThis might be a bit too cavalier for tildes, but reading this title, and given Elon's political activity, did anyone else immediately think of the movie Iron Sky?This might be a bit too cavalier for tildes, but reading this title, and given Elon's political activity, did anyone else immediately think of the movie Iron Sky?
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Comment on Denmark's drive to conscript teenage girls – as the threat from Russia increases, it is no longer only young men who are being called to serve in ~life.women
ep1032 (edited )Link ParentYeah, had the exact same experience. One of those things you learn over the years, is that decreased amounts of clothing raise the possibility of sexuality, but its not inherent. How safe and...Yeah, had the exact same experience.
One of those things you learn over the years, is that decreased amounts of clothing raise the possibility of sexuality, but its not inherent. How safe and trusting the environment is, and what the purpose of the nudity is, matters far more.
This, conversely, also informs my opinion that the burqa really shouldn't be necessary or viewed as a good thing, but if it is by those cultures, that that makes me wonder about the possibility of deeper problems about motivation, trust, and equality in those cultures. But I don't know enough about those cultures to comment.
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Comment on OpenAI’s H1 2025: $4.3b in income, $13.5b in loss in ~tech
ep1032 (edited )Link ParentI honestly think that AI is going to make the concept of an advertisement outdated. Like, sure, advertisements will still exist, because why not. But right now, we are living in a world where it...- Exemplary
I honestly think that AI is going to make the concept of an advertisement outdated. Like, sure, advertisements will still exist, because why not.
But right now, we are living in a world where it is technologically too difficult to do subtle product placement. Product placement sits like a sore thumb in most places where it is tried.
Similarly, it is extremely difficult to change, dynamically, the way people communicate. If you want to make a movie script more right or left leaning, or softer on big oil or whatever, you need to pay people to rewrite the script.
And the people producing that product are going to push back on such requests. Partly because each of these requests take time to implement, but more fundamentally because right now we differentiate between advertising and actual products. We do this, because producing a product requires capital, and advertising undermines trust in that product. So there is a built in social force for people to protect the investment they have made in their product and their brand's credibility by ensuring the consumer can differentiate between the product and advertising related to that product.
But AI undermines all three of these things.
And it introduces the ability to manipulate all three of these things on a much higher abstraction level.
For example, right now if CoCa-Cola wants a product placement in a movie, then they could ask a character to buy a coke in a scene where they go to a bar, and characters could potentially do so. This requires some coordination during the filming to set up, and as a result a movie could only realistically do so many requests like this without bogging down production. But in a post-AI era, how much do you think that Coke would be willing to pay, to update a movie pre-release so that every drink in every background shot is carbonated? How much would they pay to ensure that such a filter was run on every movie that comes out this year?
How much would Fox pay to change every TV in the background of every shot to have their color scheme, even if too blurry to see in shot?
Do you think Ford would be willing to pay to increase the percentage of automobiles on every show shown on ABC to be 50% pickup trucks? Would Toyota pay for it to be 50% sedans?
What if you could automatically update every time a radio host or newspaper editor or youtube influencer used a metaphor about cars, to instead automatically say "Ford F-150"?
Do you think a political campaign would be interested in slowing down text messages in key counties only for people who have discussed more liberal or conservative topics with friends in the last 6 months leading into an election? Facebook and twitter are already hiding or promoting user posts based on this metric, how different would it be to do it to interpersonal communication?
If advertisements themselves can be AI generated right before being shown to an individual person, how much could a marketing firm get a hotel company to pay to ensure that whenever a person is shown in an ad, that they are shown standing in a hilton, and not a hayatt?
We can already pay Google to prioritize specific search results, how much would changing the language it uses in its responses be worth?
What if you can change the language, for different socioeconomic groups?
What if you can change the language those socioeconomic groups use themselves? Hell, just start with autocorrect. Would Ford be interested in ensuring that 20% of the time, when you type car for the next 3 months, your phone autocorrects to the word pickup?Net neutrality was never passed in this country, so what if when you sent a message, your message was just updated automatically after you sent it, and you never knew? The person you sent the message to wouldn't find it weird that you said pickup instead of car, how would you ever know? Surely, doing that would be valuable, wouldn't it? What if we only did it 5% of the time? Would anyone notice? Would that change spending habits? Would that flip elections?
What could be a more effective form of advertising than changing the language people use, the language people hear, and the way the world they see around them looks?
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Comment on Gianmarco Soresi: Thief of Joy in ~tv
ep1032 LinkThis was the best special I've watched in months, thank you for the reference!This was the best special I've watched in months, thank you for the reference!
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Comment on The rise of Whatever in ~tech
ep1032 (edited )Link ParentI completely agree with you about crypto, and strongly recommend Folding Idea's video on the same topic if you have two hours to burn. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g Its worth...I completely agree with you about crypto, and strongly recommend Folding Idea's video on the same topic if you have two hours to burn. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g
Its worth pointing out (and is not included in the video) that a completely unregulated financial environment does have value, in finance, which seems to be the one sector that has embraced crypto. Though whether that is a good thing is a separate conversation.
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Comment on Looking for games like wordle in ~games
I've been following W2 kitchen on youtube. (https://www.youtube.com/@w2kitchen)
A lot of his recipes are long entire sunday afternoon style things, but they've been delicious. And some of them have helped me make dishes that appeal to multiple cultures that come to eat with us, as he explains (in some of his videos) how this spice or that technique in one culture maps to this other idea in this other culture, etc. Which is very cool : )