[FRIAM] Dead Stack?

[Marcus Daniels]

Experimentally, another reason to delete thread context from postings:  Is the response to a prompt naïve or does it demonstrate meaning making?

 

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Wednesday, February 4, 2026 1:31 PM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Dead Stack?

 

 

 

OH AND:  What was Owen's question. 

 

Owen> Moltbook is fascinating, but what is it's purpose? Fear we'll be swarmed? Silly to the max? ...?

 

The fact that Owen responded to my prompt on-list is a sign-of-life I've not had from him in many years on-list.  I had thought he had unsubscribed when WedTech formed?   

This implies he has been a "listener" here all along?   I think we usually call such "lurkers", though if "listeners" are at a premium, we should de-stigmatize "Lurkers"?  

Brunner's Shockwave Rider, "Hearing Aid" or "ten-nines" 999-999-9999 ?

Precipice turns out to be a Utopian community of a few thousand people. The nearest comparison would be an agrarian,  <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottage_industry> cottage industry community designed by  <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Morris> William Morris. Precipice is also the home of Hearing Aid, an anonymous telephone confession service accessible to anyone in the country. Hearing Aid is also known as the "Ten Nines", after the phone number used to call it: 999-999-9999. People call the service, a human operator answers, and they simply talk while the operator listens. Some rant, others seek sympathy, still others commit suicide while on the phone. Hearing Aid's promise is that nobody else, not even the government, will hear the call. The only response Hearing Aid gives to a caller is "Only I heard that, I hope it helped."

-excerpt from Wikipedia article

nod to DaveW

Re: our love-hate with LLMs (and other AI/deep-learning/diffusion) if they are acutely a-semantic, then they are NOT listeners though they appear/pretend (stochastic parrot-like) to be?   If a long string of signifiers falls onto the LLM, but no-one is there to listen, did it make any meaning?

 

 

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