AI Zen Master

[u/ewk]

Since it's so easy to drop a Zen text or even multiple Zen texts into an llm and ask questions that the llm will answer from the standpoint of the text?

* www.reddit.com/r/Zen/wiki/getstarted

Doesn't it make sense that there would be a lot less confusion and a lot more interesting conversations??

Plus, if you have an llm answer questions about the texts then who better to explain why Zazen Shinto-Buddhism and Alan Epstein Watts are not part of the tradition?

Serious question.

Where are all my AI Zen Masters at?

[u/ewk]

If I can't even get you to narrow down the subject to ignorance verses competence versus crime, then do you want to have a conversation or do you just want to have hysteria?

[u/origin_unknown → u/ewk]

This is another reason why I don't want to play with you anymore.

This is not hysteria.

From you, dota, and TF, you all want to just dismiss this as me being crazy or something. Its a cop out.

You're only considering the words that magically appear on the screen. What about all the infrastructure behind it?

You don't eat meat, but what do the words you're reading consume to reach your eye sockets? Ever consider that? What about the consequences of thousands of data centers going up everywhere for this precious precious tech? Homes are being stolen, water is being stolen. So long as we get our llm output though, right?

Do you buy your meat from a "responsible" butcher? Do you get your words from the machinations of billionaires?

I'd just like to see y'all at least have a conversation considering what fuels the output you so cherish.

[u/ewk → u/origin_unknown]

I 100% want to have conversations. Not just with you, but with everybody, and I don't want anyone to think that I'm dismissing them.

You're saying tech is dangerous, and this is a serious historical question.

But it's equally dangerous to not be specific and careful in any public debate.

For example, Luddites are commonly understood to be blue-hate technology, but the history of Luddites suggests that they were people who hated predatory corporateization and they expressed through attacks on technology.

So it is very important to be specific and careful not only in understanding what we're talking about now, but in understanding what's historically been a situation people faced.

Are we talking about people who don't understand the technology and feed hysteria about how we're all going to be unemployed in 10 minutes?

Are we talking about the dangers of misuse of technology, by people who don't really understand what they're putting into it and what they're getting out of it, and can't tell readily the difference between reality and fantasy in every situation?

Or are we talking about criminals who are using the technology to prey on people in ways that society is not prepared to address, doing harms that society is not prepared to compensate people for?

I think all three of these are big problems and I have read articles by serious people on these problems.

But when I try to narrow you down to understand what your concerns are, I don't seem to make any progress. For you to tell me that I'm the problem does not seem evidence-based.

[u/origin_unknown → u/ewk]

I've expressed a number of concerns. I'm not really sure what's not landing.
There are lots of things to consider, beyond any particular user's ability to produce favorable or unfavorable output.
Who owns the tech?
How is the tech deployed? Beyond responsible use, is it being responsibly deployed?
What are the infrastructure requirements now? Future?
Environment impact?
Economic impact?
Social impact?

Will the physical requirements of using the tech cause death and suffering? Is that worth considering for someone who takes a precept against killing?

Beyond being able to produce a passable translation, has my requesting of this passable translation caused any death? Could using this technology potentially violate any precepts, not least of which, that against killing?

Full accounting, value vs cost. All things considered.

Least of which, who gets the real value, and who bears the real cost?

[u/ewk → u/origin_unknown]

I don't think there can be an accounting along the lines that you're asking for. A similar request for accounting was made for the Industrial Revolution, and it's just not possible. My hunch is that the question is too intertwined with subjective values of good and evil.

As far as accounting in the three categories that I discussed and that people are writing about:

1. There is plainly hysteria. Some of that hysteria is likely justified as it was with the Industrial Revolution bringing an end to hundreds of years of ways of life. On the other hand, some of the hysteria is not justified, as it was not justified with the television and the radio and the electric light.

2. People don't know what they're doing with technology, but we see that in every kind of technology. And I don't know that the argument can be made that LLMs are significantly more dangerous than guns or virus laboratories.

3. Criminal uses of the technology are the most unknown of the unknowns. There's a reasonable fear that the US will lose the arms race by regulating. On the other hand doing true little too late is what politicians specialize at.

I don't think we can treat LLMs as significantly different from all the other technologies, whether it's electricity, from coal power plants, or corporate chemical dumping. My instinct is that when people want to take LLMs out of the context of all the terrible things that big business is doing right now that people themselves are trying not to be honest and accountable.

[u/origin_unknown → u/ewk]

I think the industrial revolution is your red herring.

I think if you had the infrastructure forced upon your own property, or upon your own community, you might be willing to consider it differently.

You could probably get some experience of it for yourself. Locating temporary lodging in such a community. It would be like...tasting a lemon for yourself.

[u/ewk → u/origin_unknown]

I don't understand what you are saying there.

Have you read much about the industrial revolution and the collapse of the cottage industries?

[u/origin_unknown → u/ewk]

In all my life, only in the zen forum have people pretended they can't understand me.

[u/ewk → u/origin_unknown]

Another good reason to consider committing a year to economics...

You trust what people do as an indicator way more then you trust your idea about what people should or could do.

Economics helps you to stop living in your imagination and start facing reality. People do really buy pet rocks.

Australia sues Post-it maker 3M over ‘forever chemicals’

Here's an example of costs that are not priced into the product, which arguably constitutes a government subsidy.

[u/origin_unknown → u/ewk]

I think trying to make the conversation about economics is a good way to pretend the lemon is just out of reach.

I think if we interviewed the people living next to the 3M plant, they'll tell you a different story than 3M or the Australian government.

I think you won't admit anything negative until you see for yourself, and you're mostly reasonable enough that seeing for yourself informs your thoughts, and you're arguing about it instead of just seeing for yourself. I also think you don't need to go tour the industrial butcher plant to understand that negative effects it has and this isn't all that different, but in this case, you just like eating meat and won't be talked out of it.

[u/ewk → u/origin_unknown]

I've listed a ton of things that are negatives.

People living next to a plant is a problem. But like a debate about property values in an economics forum pointed out, people thinking they don't have to move is bonkers. There's a ton of study data about how moving for jobs and housing is essential to healthy Democratic Capitalism. It's one of the main reasons that immigrants leap ahead economically when coming to the U.S.

[u/origin_unknown → u/ewk]

I think it's mighty convenient to host a debate about what corporations do to people, without ever having to really acknowledge people being steamrolled by corporations.
Maybe if the Africans moved out of Africa, there wouldn't have been slave trade to the Americas...let's debate it. Maybe if the natives moved on their own for their own prosperity, thousands of them wouldn't have died because of the government actions and regulations.

[u/origin_unknown → u/origin_unknown]

Ai overlords at work.

Mentioning of marginalized groups was deemed to be an attack, by a poorly programmed bot.

[u/origin_unknown → u/ewk]

I still think debate falls short of the lived experience of such people who are marginalized by the framework of capitalism. It's a lot easier for you to sit in your own comfort and say they should just live differently then they have been. It's easy to say people should move away from the plant and a lot more difficult for the people to actually move away.

[u/ewk → u/origin_unknown]

You are 100% right that

lived experience of such people who are marginalized by the framework of capitalism.

My comfort has nothing to do with it. Your concern over my comfort is called "ad hominem".

But it's not just capitalism that's the problem. Because Adam Smith wrote about how people were suffering under centrally regulated markets. That suffering is massively more significant than the suffering under capitalism.

Neither of these should be conflated with the suffering under industrialization.

That suffering should not be conflated with the suffering of digitization.

When you conflate these problems, they lose all identity and they cannot be addressed successfully.