If we are moved emotionally by slop, does it matter? If AI can produce something to make you think and feel, does it matter? It made you think and feel.
Yes, because I attach value to human life, experience, effort, and expression that I do not attach to the output of an LLMs.
Call it irrational, but you exhibit the same irrationality. I'm sure you dread the idea of your consciousness being extinguished, but you have no problem resetting the context window of an LLM.
>If we are moved emotionally by slop, does it matter?
Yes, because that's not what matters. That kind of sentimentality is deficient because it's as Wilde said wanting to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it. It's like asking, why pursue a real relationship if pornography gets me off
You're supposed to be into the world, not into yourself. If that was what mattered we should stuff you into the matrix pod and turn the VR goggles on. That's exactly what Williams is talking about.
Sure, you can cry or feel exited about reading an adventure or talking to your "AI boyfriend", but you're supposed to go out and have an adventure and risk something instead of living in a simulation on the other end of which is nothing at all.
That’s just an echo of a religious-age idea that one’s life “must” include suffering. Which is merely an attempt to answer a “why” when one feels miserable, a consoling lie from the ancient times.
But what if one isn’t supposed to? A lot of people can slogan about price, and earning and breaking sweat, and so on - but is there really anything to it, except that this is how things currently are?
There’s no “why” in the actual reality. From where we are, it just is. No one is fundamentally supposed to do or be anything. They just do and are what the circumstances dictate. And circumstances can change someday.
>That’s just an echo of a religious-age idea that one’s life “must” include suffering
it's not a religious idea. You find it in Nietzsche as much as in anyone else, maybe the most atheist philosopher to ever live. And the point isn't that you suffer for the sake of suffering, it's that engaging the world rather retreating into your own comfortable feelings always includes the possibility of suffering.
Going out into the world, actually risking something, can mean rejection, danger, suffering and what have you. Talking to ChatGPT doesn't. You don't need to necessarily suffer, but you do need to be brave enough to accept the risk of it instead of hooking yourself into your own brain by talking to a bot or simply retreating into fiction.
I'm not really familiar with Nietzsche (I've tried to read, but can't really break through his language - maybe someday), but I've always felt like he was a very reactionary atheist. His amor fati sentiments seem have pretty strong Christian roots, even if he replants it into a different soil.
Any interaction, with another human, machine, or even self can trigger any emotions. I most certainly was pretty pissed at LLM behavior. So I'm not sure the "talking to ChatGPT doesn't" really holds true. I can totally agree that the risk of mismatched expectation is inseparable from life (unless omniscience is possible, which I doubt), but no interaction is mandatory.
What I'm arguing is that there's no mandate how to live one's life, where to source enjoyment, and what to value. If someone wishes and can actually afford to go full incommunicado - there is no some rule that says they mustn't or even shouldn't.
We aren't messing with non-contact tribes after all - folks wanna live their own way, we leave them be. Do you want to force them into the global world?
Call it irrational, but you exhibit the same irrationality. I'm sure you dread the idea of your consciousness being extinguished, but you have no problem resetting the context window of an LLM.