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I keep seeing this take, and it makes me mad. "The house is on fire, didn't you expect people to start burning to death? People will inevitably die, why discuss
by gryfft 1y ago
I keep seeing this take, and it makes me mad. "The house is on fire, didn't you expect people to start burning to death? People will inevitably die, why discuss when it happens?"
Engineering is fundamentally about exercising the power of intelligence to change something in the physical world. Posts to the effect of "<bad thing> is inevitable and unstoppable, so it isn't worth talking about" strike me as the opposite of the hacker ethos!
- drjasonharrison 1y agoI think the other thing to keep discussing is that doing research, or otherwise using an LLM, to manipulate people's emotions without disclosure, is unethical. By the way, people die in house fires from toxic smoke inhalation and a lack of oxygen. Engineers created smoke detectors and other devices to lower the risk of fire due to electrical shorts, gas leaks, etc., and to create fire suppression systems. People still die because they didn't replace batteries, didn't follow electrical cord/device warnings, or left candles or other heat sources unattended. We discuss these events as warnings and reminders that accidents kill when warnings are not followed, when inattentiveness allows failure to propagate, and as a reminder that rarely occurring events still kill innocent people. Maybe this will motivate people to meet in person, until that is also corrupted with cyber brain augmentation and in-person propaganda actors, rather than relying on only online anecdotes.
- BobbyTables2 1y agoWith online media, meetings in person are still corrupted by their skewed view from online sources. Such physical meetings would likely end up reinforcing the corruption!