[benreesman]

I think it’s important to remember that while the tidal wave of spam just starting to crest courtesy of the less scrupulous LLM vendors is uh, necessary to address, this century’s war on epistemology was well underway already in the grand traditions of periodic wars on the idea that facts are even aspirationally, directionally worthwhile. The phrase “alternative facts” hit the mainstream in 2016 and the idea that resistance is futile on broad-spectrum digital weaponized bytes was muscular then (that was around the time I was starting to feel ill for being a key architect of it).

Now technology is a human artifact and always ends up resembling its creators or financiers or both: I’d have nice fonts on my computer in 2024 most likely either way, but it’s directly because of Jobs they were available in 1984 to a household budget.

If someone other than Altman had or some other insight than “this thing can lie in a newly scalable way” was the escape velocity moment on LLMs then we’d still have test sets and metrics and just science going on in the Commanding Heights of the S&P 500, but these people are a symptom of our apathy around any noble instinct. If we had stuck firm on our values no effective altruism cult leader type would even make the press.

[eli_gottlieb]

>(that was around the time I was starting to feel ill for being a key architect of it).

Now this sounds like a story worth hearing!

[greesil]

The metric is in fact the stock price.

[__loam]

Post-modernism was a mistake.

[benreesman]

Indeed. I used to think that when it hybridized with Objectivism that was the nastiest malware around but god damn if Amodei and co haven’t rootkitted society to a new level.