regarding co-constructing and LLMs/ML/AI/Chatbots: I'm just now reading
through Harari's Nexus (brief history of information networks) and
still/re-enamored of his regular use of "intersubjective reality" as
what it is we co-create... and in particular all things we identify as
"culture" being such.
We may not co-create our galaxy or solar system (not quite yet, until we
catch up with the likes of Stapledon's Star Makers or Dyson's Dyson
Sphere or Niven's RingWorld, etc) as such but it does seem that our
literature, music, great-texts, architecture, infrastructure,
technosphere (from paperclips to nuclear weapons and quantum computers)
is something we co-create.
Harari, as is his style of offering a multifurcate possible future
(rather than predicting or trying to create) suggests that AI/LLMs/etc
are likely to cause an even stronger multifurcation of culture along the
stigmergy of contemporary technology and infrastructure. We've been
converging on a global *cultural* world order for centuries (even
millenia) since the various "cradles of civilization" erupted or emerged
somewhat simultaneously (indus/ganges/mesopotamia/nile/yucatan/etc) and
then as the age of exploration (predating 1492 even) lead to a
exploration/exploitation/colonization era (not yet played out IMO).
We may have converged on "right hand threads" in machining of such
things early on, but the world is still split into Right-hand/Left-hand
Drive pretty much along British Commonwealth vs All Else lines... with
consequences fairly limited ("look right before stepping off the curb ya
dumb Yank!"). I've driven RHD vehicles on both types of roads and LHD
on "our" roads and my brain pretty quickly rewires to the various
combinations of hand/foot/wheel/eye/turns/roundabouts.
Harari suggests that China (in particular) has, for good cultural and
perhaps political reasons chosen to reject/eschew/replace most of the
digital tools/systems "we" use such as Google and Facebook, etc. with
their own variant and (except for TikTok?) never the twain shall
meet? I would also suggest that the world has been broadly multi
(quad) furcated for millenia by spiritual tradition into
Ibrahamic/Hindu-Vedic-Buddhist/Taoist-Confucianist/Indegenous-Animist
and the deep worldview that comes with it. I think the written language
traditions may also reinforce that (ideo-graphic vs phonographic?). But
I think Harari's point is that where our modern technology
(transportation, communication, energy grids, etc) seem to either be
converging or obviating the differences (all the appliances/devices who
can live on 110/220v, 50/60hz equally happily), this other phenomena may
be supporting a bi(multifurcation) of culture either returning to "old
differences" or perhaps finding an entirely new emergent partitioning,
not driven by technology but facilitated by it?
Agile vs Waterfall anecdote re NukeDeCom and Elno's nonsensery: more
technological partitioning? I lived it in my (semi) productive
productive years, and while I appreciate the myriad differences, I find
them somewhat arbitrary in spite of being naturally
incommensurate/incompatible?
On 9/14/24 11:51 PM, glen wrote:
Both Roger's and Marcus' replies mentioned the co-construction of
*the* world, at least indirectly. Your concept of narrowing sounds to
me like a refining, rather than a narrowing. In order to refine, you
do have to narrow the scope (or decrease the focal length of your
lens), but you're not narrowing the world. I'd argue you're enlarging
the world by adding detail in a "dense" way ... in the interstitial
spaces between coarse constraints.
One possible flaw in both Roger's (or Irene's?) argument that the act
of explanation facilitates understanding is, from a pluralist
perspective, if we really are co-constructing the world, then such
exercises in explaining are simply narrative-reinforcers. The chatbots
are good at telling stories, but less good at teaching the core
curiosity necessary for having experiences from which stories can be
told ... story-generators are different from story-repeaters ... I
guess it's like the old distinction between teaching and doing.
Sabine's admiration of flat earthers is good, if awkward, along these
lines: https://youtu.be/f8DQSM-b2cc?si=xyqpS2FJjH4imOy4
That has consequences to your sense of the chatbot pushing you toward
homogeny and a risk in Marcus' abdicating to the chatbots, as well.
Unnecessary anecdote: I was just discussing the role SpaceX has played
in demonstrating Agile versus Waterfall approaches with a nuclear
decomissioning consultant (yes, at the pub, of course). Given her
role(s), she's naturally more inclined to the latter. Having a good
conception of the end-of-life status for something like nuclear power
requires significant look-ahead. And I'm far from an Elno advocate.
But there's a kind of meta-processing we have to go through in
deciding where Agile is best versus where Waterfall is best. I
sincerely doubt either of us could have had such an argument with a
chatbot, even in the medium-flung future.
On 9/13/24 11:34, steve smith wrote:
Glen -
I appreciate your speaking more directly to these thoughts/ideas than
we have been here. I have been moved by your assertions about vocal
(linguistic?) grooming since you first introduced them. I am
recently finished reading Sopolsky's "Primate's Memoir" which adds
another dimension/parallax-angle (for me) on intertribal behaviour
among primates beyond the more familiar Chimpanzee and of late Bonobo.
I am just now also just finishing (re-reading parts) of Kara
Swisher's "Burn Book" which covers her own experience/perspective
across TechBro culture where a pretty significant amount of
Alpha/Beta pecking order exhibits itself and we see the current
rallying of (too) much of that sub culture to MAGA/Trump fealty.
We've talked about how some of us really enjoy simulated
conversation with chatbots ... "really" is an understatement ... it
looks more like a fetish or a kink to me ... too intense to be
well-described as "enjoyment". Anyway, this article lands in that
space, I think:
I will confess to having an "appreciation" for the "simulated
conversation to which you refer... It might have reached kink or
fetish levels for a little while when I was first exploring the full
range of GPT 3.5 and then 4.0 available to me. I've referred to GPT
as my "new bar friend" or maybe to the point a little like finding a
new watering hole with a number of regulars who I can find a
qualitatively new conversation.
I've mostly moved past that fascination... I'm not as surprised by
these "new friends" as I was for the first few months of dropping in
on them.
It seems to me that some arbitrary thought can play at least a few
roles to a person. It may provide: 1) a kernel of identity to
establish us vs. them, 2) fodder for feigning engagement at cocktail
parties and such, and 3) a foil for world-construction
(collaboratively or individually).
(1) and (2) wouldn't necessarily mechanize refinement of the
thought, including testing, falsification, etc. But (3) would. For
me, (2) does sometimes provide an externalized medium by which I can
change my mind. Hence my affinity for argument, especially with
randos at the pub. But it seems like coping and defense mechanisms
like mansplaining allow others to avoid changing their minds with (2).
Like you (only very differently in detail I am sure) I tend to push
my chatbot "friends" until they begin to contradict me or argue with
me. While some of the discussions involve "worldbuilding" I think of
it more as "world narrowing"? In my case meaning, helping me think
and talk my way through a *subset* of the possibilities I see on
"solving a problem" which might be more appropriately framed as
building a problem-space world and then narrowing (or even bending)
the solution space away from the conventional.
For example discussing (at excruciating length) the design and
construction of a modest addition on my home, starting with fairly
conventional big-box-available industrial solutions but evolving
toward using locally sourced, somewhat more natural materials
(soilcrete, rough-sawn timbers from nearby, scoria/perlite for
in-ground insulation, mycelium (grown in loose cellulose, oat-straw
or hemp-fibers) roof and wall insulation, etc. Most of my DIY
friends are capable of engaging in this but their idiosyncratic (as
opposed to my own) preferences (fetishes and fears) tend to taint the
dialog a little. GPT *does* try to channel me back to the
conventional, offering reasons why I really *should* consider using
the most conventional materials/methods. Nevertheless if I speak in
reasonable and coaxing tones it will usually acknowledge that their
are contexts wherein my ideas might be viable (though there always
remains a skeptical bias) and in fact helps me split hairs on just
what might be the contexts where my ideas *are* viable...
Another concept I've defended on this list is the vocal grooming
hypothesis. If a lonely person engages a chatbot as a simple analogy
to picking lice from others' fur, then their engagement with the bot
probably lands squarely in (1) and (2). But if the person is simply
an introverted hermit who has trouble co-constructing the world with
others (i.e. *not* merely vocal grooming), then the chatbot does
real work, allowing the antisocial misfit to do real work that could
later be expressed in a form harvestable by others. I wonder what
humanity could have harvested if Kaczynski or Grothendieck in his
later years had had access to appropriately tuned chatbots.
I'd like to think the chatbots I hang out with might have helped them
talk themselves *out* of their most acute anti-social activities...
but maybe not.
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