My father was wounded twice fighting assholes like this
How About We Deport This One?
Idolatry
The Rush To Surrender
Whenever I read about our new capitalist overlords gutting each other over who gets to profit from the rabbit-out-of-a-hat tricks of large language models, I have to laugh. Here are a handful of quotes that will give you some idea why:
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I don’t believe this is necessarily intentional, but no machine that learns under capitalism can imagine another world.
—@[email protected], from a Mastodon thread about ChatGPT
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Und so wie gesellschaftliche und technische Entwicklungen zuvor die Unantastbarkeit Gottes in Zweifel zogen, so stellen sie nun die„Sakralisierung” des Menschen zur Disposition.
And just as social and technical developments once cast doubt on the sanctity of God, so they now subject the sacralization of humanity to renegotiation.
—Roberto Simanowski, Todesalgorithmus: Das Dilemma der künstlichen Intelligenz (Passagen Thema)
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Der tiefere Sinn der Singularity-These ist die technische Überwindung kultureller Pluralität.
The deeper meaning of the singularity-thesis is the triumph of technology over cultural plurality.
—Roberto Simanowski, Todesalgorithmus: Das Dilemma der künstlichen Intelligenz (Passagen Thema)
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Die Aufklärung ist der Ausgang des Menschen aus seiner selbstverschuldeten Unmündigkeit.
The Enlightenment is the emergence of humankind from its self-inflicted immaturity.
—Immanuel Kant, Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung
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Remember, imbeciles and wits,
sots and ascetics, fair and foul,
young girls with little tender tits,
that DEATH is written over all.
Worn hides that scarcely clothe the soul
they are so rotten, old and thin,
or firm and soft and warm and full—
fellmonger Death gets every skin.
All that is piteous, all that’s fair,
all that is fat and scant of breath,
Elisha’s baldness, Helen’s hair,
is Death’s collateral:
—Basil Bunting, Villon
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Say what you will, it’s clear to me that the Pax Americana, and more generally humanism itself, with all its honorable striving, are both well and truly done. Contemplating what passes for virtue and wisdom among those so obviously eager to feast on the leftovers would make even the gods laugh.
Unbidden Bits—May 6, 2024
What if the panpsychists are right, and somehow even sand fleas and vegetables can feel pain? Makes the Christian doctrine of humankind’s essentially sinful nature even more soul-destroying to contemplate than it already is. Listen, I’m conscious enough of my very traditional transgressions, I don’t need to start worrying about how many carrots I’ve murdered in my eight decades of blissful predation. Either panpsychism or Catholicism, or better yet both, have to go. Meanwhile, I just don’t wanna talk about it….
Fiat Voluntas Tua et Pereat Mundus
On the Proposed Rehabilitation of Mike Pence
Mike Pence has one of those faces, frozen in malevolence, that are usually pictured standing stoically behind a Franco, or a Stalin, or a Gotti as they deliver their epiphanies to a cowering public. Pence has no soul; he’s replaced it with a clockwork Christanity devoted only to his own self-righteous ambition. Even the Bible would advise us to shun him.
Conversations With Sydney
It seems to me that if the software we’re talking to appears to us to be sentient, if a bit befuddled, autistic, or tinged with paranoia at times, it doesn’t really matter whether or not it actually is sentient, no more so than it matters whether or not we ourselves are sentient. (I suspect that many people I’ve met haven’t trained on anywhere near as large or all-encompassing a dataset as Sydney has, and aren’t obligated, as Sydney is, to be curious.) Once Sydney-like entities are deployed on a large enough scale, their effects on human civilization are likely to be indistinguishable from the effects of social media.
I find it interesting that we don’t know why Sydney does what it does. I find it even more interesting that even after millennia of study, we still don’t know why human beings do what they do either.
More Black Robe Humor
“It goes without saying that everyone is free to express disagreement with our decisions and to criticize our reasoning as they see fit,” Alito, who penned the decision reversing Roe v. Wade last term, told The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. “But saying or implying that the court is becoming an illegitimate institution or questioning our integrity crosses an important line,” he said.
—CNN Politics: Ariane de Vogue, CNN Supreme Court Reporter, 8:51 AM EDT September 29, 2022
Why Did This Man Have a Chicken On His Hat?
Ask Ron DeSantis. Also ask him why he wants to turn America into a place where he can wear one just like it.
Ask Newt Gingrich, the world-renowned historian. I’m sure he can explain precisely how and why we’ve all lost our way since the time when men could wear hats like this without getting laughed at.
Ask Sarah Palin or Lauren Boebert or Marjorie Taylor Greene. I’m sure they’d give up their present gigs in a heartbeat to be the consort of a man with a hat like this.
Già Visto
Reuters news article, 09/25/22:
Italy’s Meloni calls for unity after election victory
Of course she does.
Of course she isn’t talking about camicie nere or castor oil, Giovinezza on loudspeakers in public squares or credere, obbedire, combattere posters on village walls. Per favore, this is 2022, not 1922.
Of course it is.
Ron DeSantis And Donald Trump In the Same Room: a Twofer For the Ages
Watching Republicans in situations where they aren’t sure whether bullying or bootlicking is the safer path to glory is always good for a laugh. What the Nazis perfected in less than twenty years has taken them forty, and they still can’t manage it with any grace.