Yeah, see, I am on your side but the focus on “destroying books is bad,” is kind of irrelevant to the actual harm being done.

It’s that they’re devouring the contents of people’s brains for the ability to replace them that’s concerning. If they chose to do this in a completely different way that preserved the books, I would not say it changes the moral valence of their actions.

By centering the argument on the destruction of the books, it shifts it away from the actual concern.

Your empathy is in a good place, but the problem isn’t how humans are broken, it’s what is breaking them.

Western society* is built in a really dumb and alienating way. Humans are reduced to a labor commodity, places where people can mingle socially are being commercialized out of existence, the internet has evolved into a machine that actively profits from outrage and alienation, our governmental institutions are primarily driven by forces no regular person has any power over and we can’t even feel pride in our work because it’s profitable to convince us that we are replaceable and disposable.

Where’s the social incentive to connect to other people? The powers that be benefit from a disorganized and isolated population, so they will do nothing to change that. Market incentives mean that media which focused on things that provoke fear, rage and anxiety are more profitable than ones that promote community, happiness or hope.

It’s permeated so deeply into our culture that some older kids movies seem completely insane now. Like, think about ET and consider how wild it would be nowadays for you to just let your children vanish for hours doing whatever and wandering around wherever.

The fear and anxiety determines our actions, and there are multiple incentives on a macro-social level for that to continue.

Hell, I have watched this happen in real time during my 10+ year time on the web, where the communities of excited weirdos sharing their thoughts and feelings have been so thoroughly dominated by this that it is hard to engage with any social media without someone shoving a headline into your face that is intended to upset you.

On Tumblr, for example, the trend was so strong that the idea that you weren’t constantly upset was a sign of being a bad person. You know, on the Superwholock site? Yeah, the one that wanted to fuck the Onceler.

If you want to reverse this trend, it’s going to require changing how our political, economic and media environments act by changing their incentives. Otherwise, any change will be superficial and fail to produce meaningful results.

It’s pretty depressing, but that’s the situation as I see it.

*I’m not qualified to comment on other cultural spheres.

How many times can journalists retread this conversation from 2018? The polls are still out.

This reminds me of when I shadowed a librarian in high school and they talked to me about how people got really upset with them throwing away books that had multiple reprintings and were in awful condition.

Because people as a whole lack the capacity for nuance, I guess.

Bad focus on the news article.

Preach. I’m so bad at selling myself!

I just want a job with a living wage now, and it’s agonizingly, dehumanizingly hard to look online. Especially if you have the extreme rejection sensitivity aspect of ADHD.

I wholeheartedly agree.

…so what about the minorities in those red states who are stuck there because of their financial or familial situations, and who lack the power to influence politics?

Wouldn’t work out. World’s too complicated for simple answers like that.

Leaving, even if it would produce a viable nation, would involve leaving a lot of people in the lurch. There’s people in conservative states who need the counter balance of blue states to slow down their government’s trend to self destruction and fascism.

Even though it’s increasingly frustrating with how feeble that resistance is, it does keep things like banning gay marriage in the “difficult to pass” territory and not the “a few compromises” one.

It’s increasingly hard to find things that are like that for everyone. It’s an unfortunate trend that means I have to very aggressively curate my feeds to keep from being dragged into it.

This situation is really rough. I wish I could offer you financial support, but I can’t right now.

I want you to at least know that I’m thinking about you and I care.

You should check out the policies for your local libraries, if there’s a conveniently placed one you may still be able to get intermittent access?

Yeah, typo on my part 😅 Pasdechance has it right, I meant news company.

Europol’s Deputy Executive Director of Operations Jean-Philippe Lecouffe said in a statement. “By dismantling its infrastructure and arresting its key players, we are sending a clear message: there is no safe haven for those who profit from harm.”

(Looks at the camera)

Just as an aside, the person who owns this new company donated millions to the Trump campaign.

Misogyny in stuff can be really complicated. Sometimes you can only really see it holistically, and sometimes it’s only in specifics. Sometimes a story will give a woman a lot of focus, place her feelings and emotions in the spotlight and give her actions the most agency and power over the plot- while also having her be inexplicably dressed in lingerie the whole time with a really weak excuse, if any.

Like, I love FF12. Ashe is undisputably the actual main character in it, and her story is about being a person with authority in a time of war. It’s about grappling with your own grief and desire for revenge, trying to keep in mind your principles and what you believe in. It somehow manages to be both about the divine right of kings and weapons of mass destruction and maintained it’s emotional thru line almost all the way to the end!

But also, Ashe, that hot pink mini-skirt? Girrrrrl, WTF, you live in a desert. You’re gonna fight things in a skirt made of two pink napkins? There’s no real reason for her to dress like that, and it’s definitely just for fan service!

I still love the game, but I acknowledge that it has that problem. It objectifies women because it treats them as visual treats and has them dress in bizzare ways that don’t flow adequately from their characterization. This is because of structural societal things, and it sucks for a bunch of reasons.

Bayonetta is different primarily because the work’s themes are, as I understand them, incredibly positive about women being active, powerful sexual people who do what they want.

B dresses like that because she likes being hot, and it’s a characterization tool, and it’s never a disempowering thing for her.

Like, Kill la Kill has ridiculous outfits, but I’ve had multiple women tell me they love it because of how it intersects with things they like. I wasn’t going to watch it until one of them insisted and, yeah, it’s pretty good. The sexual elements are intended and used as part of the narrative, and the emotional thru line is very strong.

So, it’s one of those things that needs an exhaustive breakdown to really know about in a work. I don’t know enough about this one to say, and I’m just commented in hopes that it’s useful for you or someone else looking at doing media analysis of this type.

I’m forced to agree. It feels weird to do so, but, I guess yeah- the thing which should be focused on is the how and why of this and not just focus on the puritan disgust angle.

I’ve seen the Shaun video (linked in these replies somewhere) so I’m familiar with what’s going on socially around this video game. Being upset because of misogynistic objectification is appropriate, but sex isn’t inherently bad.

The pressure applied by the need for video games to act as investments is not aligned with artistic expressiveness, innovation or quality.

This is why games from smaller Companies or indie developers continue to be the huge, genre-changing breakout hits. They’re still being made with the intention of making a game that’s fun, weird, or interesting as a primary concern, rather than just being a vehicle for profit.

This trend will continue.

Hi!

So most people build their value system upwards from foundational axioms that they accept a priori. You know, someone might begin with a moral principle like, “Happiness is good,” or “I should act with compassion.”

Then, they construct outwards from there, using their foundational moral touchstones to judge if an action, philosophy or moral principle is worth following, or what compromises must be made with it in order for it to be worth following.

Like, I wouldn’t expect someone who believes “Happiness is good,” to follow a moral law that causes suffering, because they think happiness is a good thing and should be aspired to.

If there’s a conflict between two foundational axioms on something, then you have to create a compromise on an area or subject, or create a system of priority for yourself.

In my case, I think the highest virtue is compassion for other people. Because of this, I think society should be structured to benefit people.

That’s why I support the idea of public information sources. The spread of accumulated human knowledge, culture and wisdom can benefit everyone by allowing ideas to mix, spread and be worked on by many people. It allows for an incredible richness to people’s lives and I think that it’s a wonderful example of why society should exist.

Now, there’s a compromise I have to make here, because I don’t place “Publicly available information should be universally and uniformly available to all potential patrons,” as my highest virtue. I support it because of an expression of my values, but not for its own sake.

Companies are not people. They’re build out of people, but they are not. They’re organizations that are not build with human life as a core value.

You may leap to saying that I’m calling them murderers or something, if you’re willing to not absorb or consider my words there, because I’m being very precise here- companies have an incentive to make money. Companies which fail to make money cease to exist. Therefore, the companies that are most successful and most likely to exist are those which place profit above all other values in their decision making architecture.

This is an emergent property of how they are structured, and not a product of any individual person’s desire. The system is built in a way that rewards a behavior, and so it will be organized to optimize that behavior.

Human life and happiness does not directly lead to companies being successful. It is a secondary concern- companies will pursue it if, and only if, it does not conflict with profit motives. If the cost of ignoring human suffering is below the cost of caring, they will not care. It becomes a public relations issue.

Because of this, I oppose the existence of for-profit companies because they violate my fundamental philosophical values by driving towards the creation of human suffering. It’s an inevitability of their construction, and rectifying it would require completely reworking how our economic system is built.

Now, you could say that this is a minor example of this issue, and that I am acting out of proportion. This isn’t hurting anyone in any legally actionable way, and ultimately is a transitory concern. A small restructuring of how things are organized would smooth things over and produce a satisfactory base state of affairs.

That’s, however, not the point. The point is that a corporation will push as far as they can into consuming public resources, even if this does cause real harm. Allowing them to act in this way, even on a minor issue, would be a break from my moral values. I must oppose them because they do not have the right to cause any amount of harm for the abstract notion of economic progress, especially when they are using it to feed a wrong-headed venture that is consuming other, vitally important resources which humans need to survive in direct and unquestionable ways.

Massive server farms require electricity, which we have not implemented a widespread way to acquire without causing ecological damage. They require water, which humans need to live.

LLMs have uses as tools, but they are far outstripped by the way in which corporations wish to use them, which is to reduce the amount of economic support they have to give to other humans because it doesn’t matter to them if you die. It doesn’t even matter to them if it works to replace people, so long as it allows them to increase their profits for even a infinitesimal amount of time.

They are killing people, and I do not wish to extend any benefit to them. I do not want them to have any additional power, no matter how small or insignificant.

Of course, with regards to you, there’s only two options I see.

Either you knew all of this already, and were intentionally playing the fool for, I don’t know, your amusement?

Or, you somehow entered this discussion with an awe-inspiring lack of awareness of how values and moral systems work and your only method of not being deeply embarrassed by your conduct is to cling to the notion that the simplistic binary you present is somehow relevant.

Dude, my problem is that capitalism is going to ruin everything. It is a rotting sickness that cuts through every layer of society and creates systemic, ugly problems.

Do you know how excited I was when LLM tech was announced? Do you know how much it sucked to realize, so soon, that companies were going to do their best to use it to optimize profits?

The free access of information problem is just a manifestation of this dark specter on society.

You are acting as if we can approach this problem in the abstract, where you have to abide by simplistic, binary philosophical rules and not that we live in a world of constant moral compromise and complexity.

It’s not as simple as, “Oh, you say that you believe in freedom of information, but curious how you don’t want private companies to use it to make money at your expense! Guess you’re a hypocrite.”

Tell me what you actually believe, or stop cycling back to this like it’s a damning rebuttal.

Wow, you’re beginning to understand the actual arguments and debates going on. :3

Why are you taking their side buddy?

Bandwidth can’t, though.

Is it okay to hire a bunch of people to check out half a library’s books, then rent them to people for money? Is that fine, or an obvious abuse?

Rendering this service inaccessible to actual human people in order to feed your for-profit software is only different in medium from that.

There’s a difference between making information accessible to humans for the purposes of advancing our shared knowledge vs saying that public institutions should subsidize the needs of private for-profit organizations.

It’s like, you can say, “Oh yeah, people should have access to freshwater for free,” and also say, “Companies shouldn’t be allowed to pump infinite freshwater from those sources to bottle it for profit.”

Those aren’t contradictory if your actual goal is the benefit of humankind and not, like, pendantic genie logic.