[FRIAM] affinity for chatbots

[steve smith]

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.
>>
>
>