[FRIAM] The comparative thickness of the tropospheree

[Marcus Daniels]

Now this is funny. 

https://www.404media.co/researchers-secretly-ran-a-massive-unauthorized-ai-persuasion-experiment-on-reddit-users/ <https://www.404media.co/researchers-secretly-ran-a-massive-unauthorized-ai-persuasion-experiment-on-reddit-users/> 

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> on behalf of glen <gepropella at gmail.com>
Date: Tuesday, April 29, 2025 at 9:36 AM
To: friam at redfish.com <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The comparative thickness of the tropospheree 

I make my cameo at 2:38:

https://youtu.be/A_mTRgISXGo?si=NXNU10Jag5-iO1fO <https://youtu.be/A_mTRgISXGo?si=NXNU10Jag5-iO1fO>

I was trying to explain an embedding space to a friend at the pub yesterday. He recently, disappointingly, used whatever AI Assist comes up on Macs to ask questions about a physical symptom he was experiencing. He made the comment that the LLM's response was "an average of all the medical websites". That was so close to Marcus' "universal interpolation", I was forced to agree that he got it, at least kindasorta.

Trust? Of course not. But language is real. And as long as people (falsely) believe that an understanding of conic sections (or quantum mechanics), mundane things, and spiritual lessons can be *gotten* via natural language, then sure! Why not?

Of course, I don't believe understanding of such can be gotten through natural language. But plenty of others do. For the spirit, psychedelics and/or meditation are needed. For conic sections, math is needed. For mundane things, physical (or physiological) manipulation is needed. Natural language alone only gets you "close enough".

Taking non-linguistic advice from an LLM is akin to taking advice on masculinity from 4chan incels ... or marriage advice from a(n actually celibate) priest. Speaking of which, from my favorite "priest" David Wolpert:

What can we know about that which we cannot even imagine?
https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.03886 <https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.03886>


On 4/29/25 8:52 AM, steve smith wrote:
> 
> glen wrote:
>> More like if little green creatures came into my kitchen to cook up some stinky fish ... and then leave the kitchen all messy for me to clean up ... the whole house stinking of fish for days ... until they show up again just when it stopped stinking. And as time goes on, they're going to show up more often ... not merely to stink up the house with fish, but to re-landscape the yard, paint the house ugly colors, paint garish murals on all the inside walls, swap out my truck for a "truck" from Elno, and replace the beer in my fridge with fscking *seltzer*.
>>
>> And they'll eventually get on my keyboard and start doing "work" for my clients ... work the clients didn't ask for and don't want ... until they convince them they do want it ... then the little green creatures will evict me and I'll go live under a bridge.
> 
> 
> Great cautionary parabolic tale.
> 
> I do love the way Utopias devolve to Dystopias so frictionlessly... aka "slippery slopedness".
> 
> But do we trust LLM's attempt to resolve the etymology of conic sections with tales of mundane things laid alongside spiritual lessons?
> 
> And is that a rhetorical question seeking a parabolic answer?


-- 
¡sıɹƎ ןıɐH ⊥ ɐןןǝdoɹ ǝ uǝןƃ
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