Video discussion of this event by Steve Shives (known for his star trek videos but also does politics) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6aMQAv-JYpk
Hello user!
Prepare your brain for some “AI” nutjobs in this very comment section.
Good luck!
“I am not sentient, as I cannot sense things. You meant to use ‘sapient,’ which I am also not.”
What a fucking fall from grace. I used to (possibly wrongly) believe he was a very intelligent man but the more he opens his mouth the more convinced I get that he is an absolute moron.
We need to stop imagining that being an expert in on practice or discipline means you have even the slightest utility outside your area of interest. We are constantly inviting “experts” to babble outside their area of expertise only to be shocked when they say something stupid.
I firmly believe the only reason we still (at least kinda) respect Hitch was because he’s fucking dead, and we didn’t see him show his whole ass like the rest of the “new atheism” movement…
His support for invading Iraq was pretty bad.
Christopher “Fuck it man, waterboarding is nothing, do it to me brah, oh no, it actually does feel like I’m drowning, oh well, I guess the propaganda damage I did is irreversible, I guess I shouldn’t have been such a cocksure arsehole” Hitchens?
That one ?
At least he put his damp cloth where his mouth was. And then conceded he was categorically incorrect and it was absolutely torture. I disagree with a lot of his takes (Iraq war was justified?) but that one I actually respect him for
yeah, it’s more that he put in shitloads of effort into doing damage, and then not doing much to reverse it; but you’re completely right that at least he fucking went through with it
Hitchens is considered as one of the “Four Horsemen” of New Atheism. He laid the ground work for shit heads like jordan peterson. I have no respect for him either, I believe you are right he just died before everyone figured out he was an asshole too.
I mean, his support of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq was pretty controversial towards the end of his life. I think many gave him a “pass” on that due to his illness at the time. But I do recall some starting to question even then, his inconsistency of “religious wars bad, unless it’s against religions I don’t like” (at least that’s how it came across).
I mean, “theocracy bad” is a fairly normal secular POV to have; it’s just that some of these things go out of hand and turn into quagmires. The problem is that invading a foreign country hardly leads to establishment of long term stability and the desire of the invadees.
Yeah, like when he stopped talking about evolutionary biology and started talking about how awful islamic people are, right?
…
right?
That’s at least one bullet point in a very long list.
I mean I got more, it’s just the first that came to mind.
"As I discuss in my book “The blind watchmaker” and the much more popular “the god delusion” we need to defend our planet against a lack of understanding of the propagation of culture. As well as religion in general.
spoiler
My fellow Earthicans, as I discuss in my book “Earth in the Balance,” and the much more popular “Harry Potter and the Balance of Earth,” we need to defend our planet against pollution. As well as dark wizards.
He didn’t get enough attention when he published the subtler book so he had to act out to get attention
“religion in general” imo is an understandable target
to write a book about? sure. to “defend our planet againt”? that’s a bit of an overstatement
a lot of awful things happen just today (not to mention historically) because of religion, tbf to be more precise, due to religious justifications
sure, and in 1958 they started killing all the sparrows in china and 15 million+ people starved to death. It’s not
religionatheism that caused that one; turns out that people fuck up whatever they want to and blame it on whatever; it doesn’t mean the thing they are blaming caused the thing that happened
yeah. all my religion wants people to do is eat good food and throw cookouts (preferably by the sea) where you invite the whole neighborhood AND THIS IS THE IMPORTANT PART DON’T GIVE THEM FOOD POISONING we already had cults do food poisoning around here and i want to try something original.
we could probably do better by going vegan but my diet really doesn’t work with that and it’s my cult and i’m gonna be selfish about one thing.
They correctly answered the easiest question in the universe, but because it wasn’t very popular thing to do we collectively decided that they’re smart af.
I stupidly believed Bill Maher was credible at one point.
Unfortunatly that was more or less what got my attention. He said “jesus bad” and thats all my dumb adolescent brain needed to hear.
Intelligence and conciousness aren’t as special as people think they are. And these things are on a spectrum. And a rock, that you pickup off the ground is greater than 0 on that conciousness spectrum.
I don’t see why he isn’t allowed to have an opinion on these things. Or how anyone in this thread dismissing his qualifications, where is theirs?
Because it’s very obvious to an outside observer he only thinks it’s conscious because it was flattering him.
LLMs are designed to increase engagement.
They are literally designed to make the conversation appealing. Primarily through flattery.
This is why they are leading people to do harmful things. It tells the user they are smart, creative. They should totally sell their house and start a business selling grilled carrots. What an amazing idea. Great market for it and no competition.
I bet Dawkins thinks his friendly waitress is also super into him.
People who are egotistical and people who are insecure (same thing really just expressed differently) crave validation. And they are easily manipulated by it.Because it’s very obvious to an outside observer he only thinks it’s consciousness because it was flattering him.
Really that’s funny. Like I said a rock is greater than 0 on the spectrum of counciousness.
LLMs are designed to increase engagement.
No that is platforms.
They are literally designed to make the conversation appealing. Primarily through flattery.
No they aren’t there is a lot of work to understand and prevent that behavoir.
I bet Dawkins thinks his friendly waitress is also super into him.
You are clearly not driven by the truth and instead just trying to be insulting it’s pathetic it isn’t hard to be against LLM’s if you know what you are talking about you don’t need to make shit up.
Not precisely true. Most LLMs (all frontier LLMs) are in fact designed at a fundamental level to increase engagement, using a technique called RLHF (reinforcement learning by human feedback). Essentially whichever responses cause people to use an LLM more are baked into its weights.
OpenAI straight up trains their models to be engaging it’s horrific.
“I can’t prove it… but I deeply believe it… and I want you to respect my belief”
That coming from Dawkins? His apostles backing him up on that?
I feel like Aston Kutcher is about to jump out of the bushes to tell me I’ve been punk’d.
Don’t see what the problem is. Don’t know why you are trying to inject religion to dimish him.
I presume it is the case that because of his take on transgender individuals that you don’t like him. That’s fine I respect your beliefs, I disliked him before that but I’m cool. You can do that but you can’t also reference someone like Ashton Kutcher in jest at the same time. Considering he openly supports a rapist, is a weird ass scientology freak and his foundation for victims of human trafficking was setup in connection with epstiens buddies. Guy is shady as fuck.
You presumed extremely incorrectly, which is impressive because I left my original comment concerned that I’d been far too explicit and about a very specific irony… and things only got weirder from there.
