Boy buddy do I fucking believe it.

Eh, I prefer people to know where they’re going before clicking without having to hover first.

And as I am not, Clark is not really calling Plato a crank. That’s not the point of using the quote.

Maybe you are not intending it, but your usage of the quote comes across as the same, thought-terminating cliche that is basically summarized in the partial citation of the bible of “there is nothing new under the sun”.

You’re not saying Plato was a crank, but I am. He definitely had some wisdom to impart about things (especially given his time and place in history), but his remarks about writing are ridiculous and crank-like (and made even more ridiculous based upon the fact that we only know what they are because someone wrote them down).

The paper waffles around a bit as to whether or not the result will be overall “good”, and tries to be as adept at fence sitting as Dwight Shrute from the Office (https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/6b3c335d-fd65-4db0-aa70-01c70f312b5a) but the position was made very apparent even from a short skim of the article as well as the way you’re continually referencing it here.

I’d argue that a critical eye toward a specific new technology does not require someone to proceed back through time immemorial and compare it to the naysayers of the invention of the wheel.

Since you seem to have an affinity for Greek philosophers:

“It is the mark of an educated mind not to believe everything you read on the Internet.” - Aristotle

You didn’t say his concerns were valid. You said you thought he was not “wholly wrong”. Regardless, Plato being a crank about writing proves only that cranks existed before writing. It does nothing to help you interrogate nor help set you down the path to interrogate the problems mentioned (which is why I categorized it as a thought terminating cliche).

Your referenced article is basically a long-form version of your post, which has a perceivable bias toward the viewpoint that every newly-introduced technology can or will inevitably result in “progress” for humanity as a whole regardless of the methods of implementation or the incentives in the technology itself.

Far from being an instance of skub (https://pbfcomics.com/comics/skub/) as trumpeting this perspective – perhaps unknowingly – implies that it is (i.e. an agnostic technology / inanimate object that “two sides” are getting emotionally charged about), LLMs (and their “agentic” offspring) are both deliberately and unwittingly programmed to be biased. There are real concerns about this particular set of technologies that posting a quote from an ancient tome does not dismiss.

I see these thought-terminating cliches everywhere, and nowhere do their posters pause a moment to consider the specifics of the actual technology involved. The people forewarning about this stuff were correct about, for instance, social media, but who cares because Plato wasn’t a fan of writing, we rode on horses before in cars, or the term Luddite exists…etc. etc.

That’s part of what Sarah Kendzior has argued for a decade or more. US companies and klepocrats (though I repeat myself) know that the only thing that can match their weight is a powerful federal government. Turning the US into 50 (or more) warring little nations will make it easier to carve up. They have already done this to a large extent with the poorer states under the guise of “state’s rights”. It is also why they run a perennial effort to break up California and it is undoubtedly why the right’s other “big project” is to destabilize the European Union.

That’s what I do. If you get a soft close seat & lid all it requires is a tiny tap on the lid.

I am even to the point now where I no longer believe certain people need religion anymore. They need community and a sense of belonging and religious leaders like to highjack that basic need for their own selfish interests.

I think I agree with basically everything you’ve said here and especially this conclusion. The problem is that for many the only type of these things they can find is couched in religion. As a child-free atheist, I basically have no sense of belonging nor a community.

In addition, some people’s only exposure to even the very concept of morality or ethics comes through religion.

Religion is not the source of our social bounds and morality rather a parasite of control left over from ancient times.

Not the person you’re replying to, but I’m an atheist or an agnostic and even I’m not so sure about that.

When given the idea that there is no retribution or reprocussion for their actions, many people become nihilistic and act terribly.

I agree that it’s weak to need a “sky daddy” to act properly, but many people are weak.

Canned green beans are disgusting. The frozen or fresh versions are like a completely different thing in both taste and texture.

We moved fast and broke things.

Nobody came back later and fixed things. We were too busy breaking other things.

What is your native tongue?

Spanish has a pretty wide array of accents and dialects, but I think for the most part Spanish speakers understand one another.

Fucking shop app

Oh, I didn’t mean it ironically at all.

Sorry about your sisters dog, that’s heartbreaking.

Not my sister’s dog, my dog’s sister / littermate but yeah still not great.

Yes, just like most things you vaccinate against it’s possible to have a breakthrough infection, but the immune system is still more equipped to fight it after vaccination.

This guy just didn’t vaccinate her at all. Vaccination can be the difference between having a breakthrough infection and getting better in a couple of weeks and dying from or being permanently disabled by a disease.

Great thread for adding to your blocklist.

My dog’s sister died at age two or three because the owner didn’t vaccinate her. I think she died of kennel cough.

Nah you’re essentially washing the washcloth every time if you load it up with soap before using it, which is what I do. I usually switch it when I switch towels, which is like every three or four showers.

Edit: oh and the utility is that they scrub better than your fingers…

Wash cloths exist for a reason.

Yep they inadvertently put their whole missionary /crusade / colonist mentality into the “art”.

It’d be funny to have a movie that’s the opposite, where someone is super pro-Christmas at the beginning and then winds up changing religions or something. Similarly, there should be a movie where someone discovers through the magic of Christmas that rural life sucks and moves to the city.