3 ms·

"An uncomfortable truth suggested by the Roman bot is that many of our flesh-and-blood relationships now exist primarily as exchanges of texts, which are becomi

"An uncomfortable truth suggested by the Roman bot is that many of our flesh-and-blood relationships now exist primarily as exchanges of texts, which are becoming increasingly easy to mimic" This. I was reflecting with a friend today how with modern social networks there is this strange feeling of being connected yet somehow disconnected. I think the above paragraph captures this same essence. We discussed that maybe digital technology is akin to medicine, it's all about the dosage. Chat to the bot a little, maybe be healing, chat all the time and maybe it's really not going to be good for you. How do we navigate these tools that can connect us with the world and yet often leave us feeling so alone at the same time?

rublev 10y ago
I think our psyche is extremely delicate, and pretending we can mentally manage and sort the influx of constant information is fooling ourselves. Fooling ourselves because by virtue of exposing yourself to so much information daily, you're altering the way you think and rewiring your mind. I'd like to think that I'm above being influenced by subliminal propaganda in media (especially television), but I'm not. I've caught myself a few times where I held a strong opinion about something I knew nothing about and I was able to trace it back to what originally influenced me. When pressed on certain opinions I couldn't say anything concrete. Life has been a lot better when I deleted all social media accounts (900+ 'friends' on FB). Really only about 20 of those connections I keep in touch with, and I've made it a point that texting is only for details not chatting. Since talking on the phone and making efforts to see people in real life I've been a lot happier. My world feels less overloaded, there are no strings connecting my life to social media and the control is back in my hands. I can feel how I want to feel about things without carefully summing up and absorbing how others feel about my experiences. Social media and texting and all that shit is just another and even more shaved off abstraction of human interaction (boiling down interaction to just characters on a screen). I draw the line at the human voice, nothing below that save for carefully thought out and written letters is 'human' enough for me to really derive any lasting pleasure from. It's depressing for a very long time after deleting social media accounts, it feels like your entire social rug has been suddenly swiped right out from underneath you. I didn't back any of it up or save any of it. And you know what? I don't remember any of it. I don't remember the conversations because there were 100's a day. I don't remember any of the comments or banter left on photos, or the photos themselves. It all blends into one. All of it was meaningless, I didn't grow closer to any of those people. I discovered more about them, sure. Omitting (or at least trying my hardest to) popular media and social media has been mentally freeing. I get to ask people 'Oh yeah? Why don't you tell me about it?' when they say 'Hey have you heard of <current event>?' I have no idea what's going on anywhere and I love it.
noobermin 10y ago
I'm not sure it is healing though, it seems more like avoiding the inevitable rather than facing the truth, and just prolonging true healing. I think whether it is true or not, I'd wager that there is a reason we bury our dead after looking at their dead body instead of mummifying their corpse and leaving it in their favorite rocking chair. Burials aren't for the dead, they are for the living.
kordless 10y ago
Disconnect to reconnect. Interconnectivity is the devil in the details. This bot is not anyone. It's a bunch of data in a computer that randomly spits out data that seems relevant to whoever is talking to it. If you asked it a pointed question about current events, it has no context to answer you. It is not alive. It is not a person. It is an echo of us, but it is not us. A person is a living entity that is entangled with all local entities and is a reflection of those entities in near real time (or as much as the speed of causality allows). Eugenia is wandering into the region where there be dragons. That bot is not her lover, her friend, or anything else. Somehow, we've come to this point we allow people to render their internal realities to us in a way we must accept those realities as truth - which is monumentally stupid from an efficiency standpoint. This bot is not anyone and talking to it is a dangerous game of recursion and wasteful energy that leads to what the Buddhists call "short buddha". It is literally 2nd thought extended into a historic chat history. That chat history AI isn't a reflection of all of us anymore and could be replicated a 1,000 times over. Or a million. Or a billion. In each, it becomes obviously pointless and this place becomes more obviously appropriate to hang out in.

rublev 10y ago

I think our psyche is extremely delicate, and pretending we can mentally manage and sort the influx of constant information is fooling ourselves. Fooling ourselves because by virtue of exposing yourself to so much information daily, you're altering the way you think and rewiring your mind. I'd like to think that I'm above being influenced by subliminal propaganda in media (especially television), but I'm not. I've caught myself a few times where I held a strong opinion about something I knew nothing about and I was able to trace it back to what originally influenced me. When pressed on certain opinions I couldn't say anything concrete. Life has been a lot better when I deleted all social media accounts (900+ 'friends' on FB). Really only about 20 of those connections I keep in touch with, and I've made it a point that texting is only for details not chatting. Since talking on the phone and making efforts to see people in real life I've been a lot happier. My world feels less overloaded, there are no strings connecting my life to social media and the control is back in my hands. I can feel how I want to feel about things without carefully summing up and absorbing how others feel about my experiences. Social media and texting and all that shit is just another and even more shaved off abstraction of human interaction (boiling down interaction to just characters on a screen). I draw the line at the human voice, nothing below that save for carefully thought out and written letters is 'human' enough for me to really derive any lasting pleasure from. It's depressing for a very long time after deleting social media accounts, it feels like your entire social rug has been suddenly swiped right out from underneath you. I didn't back any of it up or save any of it. And you know what? I don't remember any of it. I don't remember the conversations because there were 100's a day. I don't remember any of the comments or banter left on photos, or the photos themselves. It all blends into one. All of it was meaningless, I didn't grow closer to any of those people. I discovered more about them, sure. Omitting (or at least trying my hardest to) popular media and social media has been mentally freeing. I get to ask people 'Oh yeah? Why don't you tell me about it?' when they say 'Hey have you heard of <current event>?' I have no idea what's going on anywhere and I love it.

noobermin 10y ago

I'm not sure it is healing though, it seems more like avoiding the inevitable rather than facing the truth, and just prolonging true healing. I think whether it is true or not, I'd wager that there is a reason we bury our dead after looking at their dead body instead of mummifying their corpse and leaving it in their favorite rocking chair. Burials aren't for the dead, they are for the living.

kordless 10y ago

Disconnect to reconnect. Interconnectivity is the devil in the details. This bot is not anyone. It's a bunch of data in a computer that randomly spits out data that seems relevant to whoever is talking to it. If you asked it a pointed question about current events, it has no context to answer you. It is not alive. It is not a person. It is an echo of us, but it is not us. A person is a living entity that is entangled with all local entities and is a reflection of those entities in near real time (or as much as the speed of causality allows). Eugenia is wandering into the region where there be dragons. That bot is not her lover, her friend, or anything else. Somehow, we've come to this point we allow people to render their internal realities to us in a way we must accept those realities as truth - which is monumentally stupid from an efficiency standpoint. This bot is not anyone and talking to it is a dangerous game of recursion and wasteful energy that leads to what the Buddhists call "short buddha". It is literally 2nd thought extended into a historic chat history. That chat history AI isn't a reflection of all of us anymore and could be replicated a 1,000 times over. Or a million. Or a billion. In each, it becomes obviously pointless and this place becomes more obviously appropriate to hang out in.