Two "mores" so you know I'm being as forcible as I can here. I am tired of seeing the most OBVIOUS traits of the "Generative #AI" fad go without commentary, because they fall into that vast region of taboo and ostracism pertaining to the designed-in stupidity and inefficiency of corporate #business practices and leadership culture. This is the inevitable result of caring only about making numbers go up, especially anything pertaining to the dollars-per-second #tech sector obsession with a particularly stupid definition of "efficiency". The people who get the furthest in this pathological culture are the ones who have nothing in their heads other than making numbers go up. To them, all other considerations are "inefficient."

Intelligence itself is inefficiency, as I've pointed out. It takes time to work out chains of reasoning. Pausing for second and third thoughts, rather than simply acting upon impulse or "gut instinct" or whatever, is very easily construed as a waste of time and damaging to "efficiency", i.e. dollars per second in the John Carmack or DOGE kiddie definition of "efficiency".

They shouldn't call the #LLM "artificial intelligence". If "AI" stands for anything in LLM terms, it's something like applied impulsiveness: the LLM is designed with the needs of terminally impulsive tech execs in mind. They want instant answers they don't want to think about, and thus they think it's natural to get all possible answers from a black box that's simply declared to be a box stuffed to bursting with "AGI superintelligence."

The false claim of supreme intelligence is what supports the impulsiveness: the black box is SO impossibly brainy, think the tech weenies, that it's got all the answers right off the top of its head, able to be served up by the billions from some vast GPU farm or other, an "AI factory" (they don't like "data center" so much any more, too many people hate that phrase now.)

(cont'd)

RE: https://circumstances.run/@davidgerard/117422079159881974

May I point out something that ought to be more obvious to the #tech enthusiasts and grifters who hope that "Generative #AI" will make them fabulously rich without effort and who, as it seems, have a genuinely passionate belief in their own stupidity that they emotionally project outward onto humanity in general?

They're all hot to claim that GenAI sludge-machines have already so far surpassed human beings that it's irrational not to cram all business and all commerce and all creativity and everything else into some GenAI installation or other, and they are able to sound perfectly sincere on this issue for an obvious reason.

Let me put it another way: the elite #programming geeks who cling to GenAI also tend to cling to Charles Murray-esque nonsense about "intelligence" and "IQ", which is a sure hallmark of stupidity. Only stupid people take Charles Murray seriously. Only stupid people think that "intelligence" boils down to one scalar value. Only stupid people NEED computers to do all their thinking for them, so #GenAI is like the triumph of stupidity. The entire tech sector's leadership and management ranks have come to be jam-packed with the least educated, least clever, most intellectually lazy human beings on the planet, and these are the people who are impressed by fakey LLM "AI". The easiest way to believe in miracles is to exclude all intellect from one's life. If you start THINKING about the AI miracle then you start having doubts and doubt, as we know, is a mortal sin in #business (hence "FUD" as a slur.)

I emphasize: this is WILLFUL stupidity. This is stupefaction taken to its utmost: the entire business culture has schooled itself over many decades to value stupidity and elevate stupidity to high social status. To be ignorant and dominated by emotions, making decisions entirely because of "gut feelings" and such, is to be reckoned among the geniuses of business and especially #technology.

THAT is why "Generative AI" is a fad: because it appeals to the dull-witted, the people who already feel like (a) they need computers to handle even the smallest details of their lives, and (b) the people who know the absolute least about computers, except that they're big and powerful and stuffed with information.

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"Western Civilization" is a concept I always put in scare-quotes precisely because the values of "Western Civilization" are in fact inimical to civilization. The collective imagination of "the West" is still dazzled by the collapse of Roman civic authority. Two thousand years later there are still real actual human beings who think that the ultimate lesson of history is that civilization is bunk and everyone ought to just hole up with their "nuclear families" on their farms, waiting for Jesus to come back.

"Western" nations therefore, post-Roman European Christian nations, exhibit a peculiar boom-bust cycle.

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Moral panics are heaven-sent to bullies; I remind my readers that a pogrom, an outburst of chaotic violence aimed at a marginalized section of the community (e.g. the many thousands of pogroms that Christians have launched against Jews and Blacks and so many others) is basically just an extreme moral panic. The Anatevka pogrom which is dramatized in Fiddler on the Roof is a good fictional example: the pogrom is euphemized as a "demonstration", a way for good patriotic Russians to blow off a bit of steam because, you know, they're just full of feelings.

The maintenance of such a pressure-release valve at the expense of minorities is characteristic of "Western Civilization", which has never succeeded in attaining social harmony and steady equilibrium--on the contrary, the fiercest champions of "the West" set themselves against harmony and equilibrium.

(etc.)

Anyone who's had to deal with bullies in ANY domain--abusive parents or guardians or teachers, school bullies, aggressive Christians, techbro bullies, anywhere--knows that the bully has two chief weapons: extreme persistence and the habit of racing for the protection of the authorities at the slightest whiff of genuine trouble.

The bully is counting on something very important: "polite society", the social mores that prevail throughout the United States, says that as long as someone isn't doing a crime, something officially regarded as a misdeed, there's nothing anyone else can do other than swallow their outrage. The bully therefore takes care to be friendly and obsequious to all authorities and their bullying frequently derives its power from the bully's assertion that what they're really doing is upholding social harmony. They're good citizens enforcing the rules and reporting anyone suspicious to the cops.

(cont'd)

RE: https://federate.social/@mattblaze/117083822659685006

I agree, this is necessary work, but it's something I didn't know about the Southern Poverty Law Center and now it's easier to understand just why the GOP hatred for them is so intense. May the heavens protect those still undercover, I can't imagine that's a fun job to have, trying to keep smiling and laughing and joking with the fascist militias.