What a great idea! what could possibly go wrong allowing farmers with no expertise in writing firmware for gigantic farm equipment, overseeing code output from an LLM and then uploading it to the aforementioned gigantic farm equipment?
Let's just ignore the part where this wouldn't even address the problem at hand!
"Farmers" aren't a monolithic lump of homogenous yokels with straw sticking out their teeth.
The Ukranian farming community birthed the cracked and reverse engineered John Deere software now being uploaded into US tractors by US farmers to bypass kill switches, for custom addons, data retention, etc.
#NotAllFarmers are SWEs, great welders, advanced diesel mechanics, pilots, ... but all these skillsets are within or closely adjacent to farming communities.
I don't think he was calling them yokels. Software for farm equipment is very specific field. I don't think it would matter if they were software developers because that mostly means front end and back end web development.
> I don't think it would matter if they were software developers because that mostly means front end and back end web development.
Really?
I've been a software developer since 1980 or so, never ever touched web development .. horses for courses I guess.
Interfacing with machines and instruments, no worries.
Circling back, the farmers I know want to be able to maintain everything they can within their local circle (state and federal) without being forced to reach out overseas to foreign companies such as John Deere.
Eg: Our local farmers co-op run their own rail networks and bulk handling facilities.
> Software for farm equipment is very specific field.
Meh - there's a lot of overlap with avionics, GIS data aquisition, mining equipment (autonomous trucks, trains, processing circuit control), general industrial applications, etc.
I'm a farmer, but I've messed about with geophysical data aquisition across entire countries, industrial control, abstract algebra systems (Cayley / Magma), sheep shearing robotics, and other fun stuff.
I disagree. You can escape a disease, even during a global pandemic. And not every person that got COVID was on a ventilator or even felt that bad. Seeing the death toll statistics and even the direct effects through a screen is not visceral for many folks.
Starvation isn't avoidable and you can't ride it out. There isn't any chance that starving to death could be less severe than getting a bad flu. Nobody can avoid not eating for an extended period of time. If there is not enough food, it will affect everyone directly.
>I disagree. You can escape a disease, even during a global pandemic. And not every person that got COVID was on a ventilator or even felt that bad.
Propaganda works.
The knowledge worker class often believes their training will afford them some level of protection against it. Even then, with those warding effects, they're still susceptible. Consider further that most people in society are significantly less educated or trained in epistemological functions than they are - a large portion of society is defenseless against a liar with a megaphone.
Propaganda won't contest that starvation is occurring. It will claim that the reason for the starvation is a specific foe, internal or external e.g. It's China's fault we're starving or the immigrants have caused this food security crisis and once they're gone we'll have enough food for our own people, etc. They'll workshop and see which ones poll well, then run with the talking point that seems to perform best.
Since the government harnessing that discontent has no real desire to fix that problem, all they need to do is maintain the perception that they're the solution, while not addressing the problem itself.
>Propaganda won't contest that starvation is occurring. It will claim that the reason for the starvation is a specific foe, internal or external e.g. It's China's fault we're starving or the immigrants have caused this food security crisis and once they're gone we'll have enough food for our own people, etc. They'll workshop and see which ones poll well, then run with the talking point that seems to perform best.
I don't know if China will work. It's not halfway around the world, but that's the mentality many people have of it. They won't buy that a country on the other side if taking food from their local grocery store.
But it doesn't matter. they blame it on: everyone gets hurt. People fighting on the streets, charital servings overran, private businesses raided, governmental buildings having doors banged on (assuming the soldiers don't simply desert their duties). Then that escalates to riots and perhaps small skirmishes for remaining resources.
When you're truly hungry, nothing is beyond reproach. And I don't think America has a true famine to point to as an example. That's pretty much why it's the one thing all politicians will avoid at all cost. a famine will make a depression seem like a cloudy day.
America had a true famine; the dust bowl resulted in mass displacement, and the government took exceptional steps to create remediation programs to address the plight of those affected to maintain relations. The policies included measures that would be considered exceptional by today's standard, including the creation of a national organization to provide stock for relief organizations, buying out cattle herds above market value, other bailout measures for farmers, a massive work effort to create an erosion barrier and more. Most cultural histories indicate that these bailouts prevented widespread unrest in these communities.
You can take a look at the global hunger index; countries with less food security are certainly less stable than those that aren't, but by no means are countries like India and Pakistan undergoing constant revolution. By contrast, countries with comparatively solid food security like Egypt underwent revolution that toppled the government sparked by changes in the (comparatively affordable) price of food. Hunger itself doesn't tell the story. It's how society perceives it.
The zeitgeist matters more than whether or not everyone in society can eat, and you can change the zeitgeist with propaganda.
>When you're truly hungry, nothing is beyond reproach.
When you're truly hungry, you can't plan a revolution. Anti-government efforts are generally spearheaded by groups that are fed, connected, and have the incentive to incite rebellion. It's more Navalny and less Oliver Twist. This means that both pro and anti-government groups will be engaged in a similar recruitment effort. The two groups will have competing accounts of why the hunger is occurring, complete with different evidence regarding the magnitude of the issue, the source of the issue, etc. Hunger doesn't short circuit that process, and propaganda doesn't lose it's force because it's a more persuasive and simpler motivator than, say, discontent over tax burden shifting or some other policy point.
Slightly off topic, but this strategy of blaming a crisis on some other cause is pervasive. It's especially useful when you are the reason for the crisis.
For example, consider climate change. Climate change causes draughts, which causes food shortages in countries heavily dependent on their agricultural sector. This, in turn, causes famine.
A certain western power will blame that country's government for mismanaging their agricultural sector instead of pointing out the unusual and dramatic weather changes contributed to the famine. This is, of course, because the western power does not publicly admit climate change is real in order to avoid taking any responsibility for their contribution to this climate change.
This post is propaganda for the idea that whenever you think that immigrants are causing a problem, you're actually incorrect and are being manipulated by some conspiracy.
> Consider further that most people in society are significantly less educated or trained in epistemological functions than [knowledge workers] are - a large portion of society is defenseless against a liar with a megaphone.
The only thing I'd add is polarization adding impetus to never seeing someone on my side as a liar, whatever they claim.
When democracy becomes a team sport, its collective intelligence lessens: perhaps the biggest hole in the US founder's future vision.
But then again, "voter" had a very different definition in their time. And I don't think you can fault them for not enshrining anti-party ranked choice et al.
parents can be held liable for buying their kids cigarettes but, similarly, tobacco companies are (at least nominally) not supposed to target children in their advertising campaigns and in the design of their products.
It's obviously not a 1/1 comparison here, because providing ID to access the internet is not analogous to providing ID to purchase a pack of Cowboy Killers but we can extrapolate to a certain extent.
as personally identifying information becomes more and more central to modern life, the risk of that info being leaked or stolen becomes even greater. And, given the global nature of the internet, having that info on some server that is connected to the rest of the internet increases that risk further still.
Previously, your local dirty movie theater might ask for ID before selling you tickets to Debbie Does Dallas and they might even keep a copy on file for later reference. Assuming that the underpaid usher didn't just glance at the DOB, that copy likely goes into a filing cabinet in the back of the building. That's not necessarily safe, but the opportunity for that being stolen and sold is minuscule compared to today. Even if it were on a computer database somewhere, the internet of 30-40 years ago, inasmuch as it existed, was not the behemoth that it is today.
this is like using an "ethically produced" brick to smash your foot with; The method of manufacturing the brick isn't the problem.
These formats are designed for a specific purpose; maximizing engagement to extract value.
so we've remove the incentive to extract value but we leave the predatory design that maximize engagement? You working in a different milieu but you are bringing the worst parts of the previous milieu along for the ride.
Please, anybody working on this kind of alternative social platform, we need to rethink how we interact online; decentralization leaves the worst parts of modern social media completely unaddressed.
On one hand, it seems impossible to supplant with Tik Tok without the engagement bait. On the other, replacing the additive sites with something just as addictive seems pointless. It is a tricky puzzle.
It's not necessarily the case that Loops is just as addictive as TikTok. Because TikTok is more than just short term videos. It's also a recommendation algorithm that slurps up as much information as it can about you to predict what you'll want to watch next. This recommendation algorithm plays a big role in making TikTok addictive. And as far as I'm aware, Loops does not have this functionality. It will just show you videos based on a much simpler algorithm that takes into account how recent a video is and how many likes/comments it has, or something like that, which will make it less addictive.
I’ve started wondering if I want a smartphone at all lately. The whole paradigm gets creepier by the day and the global corporate expectation you have one makes me not want it.
The unfortunate truth is that TikTok is just a dopamine hit machine. There's no puzzle here, this project is just "we built an open source slot machine that you can install in your own home". Replacing the casino is addressing a pointless problem.
I enjoy watching TikTok, especially local or niche creators who have just a couple hundred followers. This is not going to be a problem as you imagine.
One of the unspoken parts of the open source social media movement is to put the 'social' back in the 'social media'. There has been a fine line between true user-driven content and centrally-controlled (and often authoritarian-lite) algorithms; with major players (advertisers, oligarchs, governments) putting their thumb on the latter half to ensure that everyone stays isolated, divided, and pacified.
Everything you called out is a symptom of that control: engagement baiting, algorithmic manipulation, censorship and suppression. Absent these items, social media can be an incredible force for good and a hopeful longer term future of more peace.
Yep. Anything similar to what was Vine (i.e., TikTok, Youtube Shorts, Instagram Reels; e.g., very short videos with infinite scrolling) is ultimately too consuming literally a drug that robs one of the ability to concentrate and patience.
I think we need to encourage long form videos from 5 minutes to 1-2 hours and organize stuff around metadata (title, keywords/tags, lists, unique identifier) to mesh with a living, standardized ontology in a curated, sensible fashion that disallows proliferation of slop, too low quality stuff, and spam. From there, choose your own recommender and related algorithms/plugins.
The big gotcha of decentralized video platforms is content distribution that doesn't hug a self-hoster's server with barely any traffic.
LLMs are only impervious to "groupthink" and "organized campaigns" and other biases if the people implementing them are also impervious to them, or at least doing their best to address them. This includes all the data being used and the methods they use to process it.
You rightfully point out that the Grok folks are not engaged in that effort to avoid bias but we should hold every one of these projects to a similar standard and not just assume that due diligence was made.
The problem is social, not technical. But we've created a subsection of the populace who can only see things through the technical. They go out with their hammers looking for nails.
Sometimes when people use an expression to convey an idea concisely , the details of the imaginary scenario within the expression are less important than the concept being expressed (just so long as the general shape of that scenario fits the thing being discussed).
To be more particular, the exact time it takes to sharpen an ax and chop down a tree are not important here.
people are so far removed from the ax that they don't realize my point. I'm sure the people Lincoln was talking to had more knowledge and so would get a different picture from the modern reader.
Let's just ignore the part where this wouldn't even address the problem at hand!
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