>I don't think Microsoft cares (about anything besides making mo' money)
If Microsoft amounts to a sentient entity (i.e. is able to care about things), we have a bigger problem.
If we put the wall of metaphor between us and that interpretation, it still remains likely that "users shielding themselves" is of primary concern to Microsoft's bottom line.
But it is NOT necessarily a factual statement that one of the main uses of electromagnetic radiation is for humans to send information over long distances; nor that I first learned about tinfoil hats from some random piece of information that was being broadcast by means of electromagnetic radiation. It's just a vibe.
The concept of "sociopaths" is more of a cop-out than anything.
It amounts to a (vaguely pseudoscientific) dehumanization of those whose modus operandi transgresses our values most severely.
Imagining a subset of the population as literal cancer cells does not help us understand better the systemic issue which makes those people benefit disproportionately from metahuman entities (such as corporations or political agglomerations).
It does help us a lot, actually, and the treatment should be analogical. It's not a cop-out, it's reality.
Including sociopaths in humanity benefits and protects only them. And it renders the rest of us - their victims - powerless.
If as a society in general we agree that we have a right to keep serious transgressors in prisons, then we should seriously consider keeping there people who are fundamentally incapable of aligning with humanity values - the golden rule of reciprocity in particular.
Tell me you follow a value system invented by sociopaths without... actually reflecting on what value system you follow, and whether you chose it intentionally - or just bought into it by following the path of least resistance and are now inextricably stuck.
As a society in general, do you agree that unjust laws, false positives in enforcement, prison slavery, and endemic rampant abuse of authority, are things that exist?
As a society in general, do you think those are a legitimate price to pay "to keep serious transgressors in prisons"?
As a society in general, do you think serious transgressors more often get locked up for life, or more often get a slap on the wrist and a quiet promotion to more serious transgressors?
As a society in general, how do you know - falsifiably! - that prisons are even effective for their stated purpose?
Just like prisons perpetuate crime, excluding sociopaths and their behavior from what is thinkable as human only permits us to ignore them. And to contrive our own excuses for their sub-criminal abusive behaviors - which is the primary way in which they blend in and remain beyond reproach. You are their enabler. Go figure out how to stop being that.
> seeking credit instead of generosity, and/or Dog in the Manger mindset.
I have tried being generous to enemies. It only turns them them into... bigger, hungrier enemies.
I'm happy with never getting "credit" for anything I "accomplish" (whatever those notions even mean under a system where thoughts can be property).
I mean: as long as my labor output cannot be subverted to benefit hostiles even the tiniest bit.
> It's humans - all humans - that benefit from LLMs
The set of "all humans" includes that power-hungry majority who find nothing wrong with subjecting other sentient beings to sadistic treatment.
Those who, as soon as they take notice of me - or my kind, or our speech, or our trail - more often than not become terrified into outright aggression.
So far we had been protected from their stupidity and lack of imagination, by their stupidity and lack of imagination.
Now they've had brain prostheses developed for 'em, and... well I can't really do much for those who haven't already begun to reevaluate their baseline safety, now can I?
>Probably the most tragic thing in my opinion is that if I visit the art exhibition for my local town, the artwork on display is wonderfully varied in quality, style and imagination, and when I visited a national gallery recently displaying the works of modern artists who have "made it" to that level, it was all absolute shite. Actual technical ability seems to be being relegated to poverty artists.
The artist becomes the artwork. The artifice here is precisely in "making it", in the act of convincing others of the value of the piece.
It's an acquired taste; I agree with you that not all people appreciate it. But surely, at the end of the pipeline, all this money must buy something of value?
And with passively consumable art such as music (which you can have playing in the background while looking at something else) it's that much easier. IIRC Blixa Bargeld predicted Spotify decades ago. Music on tap - like the power line and water mains; and that's all.
The problem is it's only whomever curates these spaces that needs to be persuaded. And they're hardly thrumming with people for all the millions they get in funding.
>Pieces like this all seem to be written with an unspoken assumption that anyone who wants to make a living wage from being an artist should be able to, as if it's some sort of right.
Yeahp, it's pure ideology.
In contemporary civilization, the role of creator of shared aesthetic constructs (artist) is left to an elect few. This is, on the whole, a reduction in average individual capacity.
So how about this instead: anyone making a living should be making art, as if it's some sort of obligation.
The media technologies of the XX century (recording, photography, motion photograpy) made it that much easier to be audience, and that much pointless to be artist.
This effectively robbed the common person of any reason to participate in the collective meaning-making process that is art. Eventually this was substituted by the clicktivism, the dogpiling, and all that. If you are never permitted to develop a sense of scale beyond the ouroborically narcissistic, participating social media fills a much similar psychological niche, to you, as influencing people through creative media.
Those who aspire to star status must first sacrifice a fixed amount of integrity to reproducing the kayfabe. Speakers of dead balamatomic languages may be wise to observe induction into "artist" status by humiliation-transfer - those natives were so dumb they thought they had to show publically how it's done at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBaC0IRc1Bk
>Anyway, I'm very curious if anyone has a good argument for why anyone who wishes to be an artist is owed a living wage for merely their desire to be recognized as economically valuable.
Anyone [cut] is owed a living [cut]; done.
No person asks to be born; much of "what you are" and "what your function in society is" is involuntary and immutable; nobody is owed a useful function; nobody is owed a meaning.
But, through art, one can make one's own meanings, and share them in a voluntary way; as opposed to resource-constrainments (money) which is at its root an instrument of coercion.
That's the thing about art which has always terrified the money people. Eager beavers that they are, they've built (well, more like had us build for 'em) these whole elaborate semi-sensible institutions for reducing art to a special ritual for emitting high-denomination banknotes (paintings, album profits, walking banknotes in the form of performing artists who "made it big (sus)" - always loved the honesty in how the Japanese call their pop stars literally "idols"...)
If Microsoft amounts to a sentient entity (i.e. is able to care about things), we have a bigger problem.
If we put the wall of metaphor between us and that interpretation, it still remains likely that "users shielding themselves" is of primary concern to Microsoft's bottom line.
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