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> I don't know where I got that notion. I know! You assume too much. > you constantly calling some opinions and perspectives offensive They _are_ offensive t

> I don't know where I got that notion. I know! You assume too much. > you constantly calling some opinions and perspectives offensive They _are_ offensive to some people. Your mistake was to assume that I was complaining because I took it personally. It made you go into a spiral about Stargate and all sorts of irrelevant nonsense. I'm trying to help you here. At any time, some argument might be offensive to _your sensitivities_. In fact, my whole line of reasoning is offensive to you. You're whining about it. > LLMs were not created for academia. You saying that is music to my ears. I think that it sucks as a product for research purposes, and I am glad that you agree with me. > If you're imagining OpenAI, et al. are using a huge table of conditionals I never said _conditionals_. Guardrails are a standard practice, and they are patchworky and always-incomplete from my perspective.

ben_w 1y ago
> It made you go into a spiral about Stargate and all sorts of irrelevant nonsense. I'm trying to help you here. Stargate is part of our culture. As part of our culture (ditto ancient aliens etc.), is not at all irrelevant to bring Stargate up in a discussion about culture, especially in a case when someone (you) tries to build their case by getting an AI to discuss aliens and Egyptian deities, and then goes on to claim that because the AI did what they were asked to do that this is somehow being unaware of culture. No, it isn't evidence of any such thing, that's the task you gave it. In fact, by your own statements, you yourself are part of a culture that it happy to be offensive to Egyptian culture — this means that an AI which is also offensive to Egyptian culture is matching your own culture. Only users who are in a culture that is offended by things offensive to Egyptian culture can point to {an AI being offensive to Egyptian culture as a direct result of that user's own prompt}, can accurrately represent that the AI in such a case doesn't get the user's own culture.
- alganet 1y ago
  Pop culture is a narrow subset of culture, not interchangeable with mythology. Stargate is a work of fiction, while ancient aliens presents itself as truth (hiring pseudo-specialists, pretending to be a documentary, etc). You need to seriously step up your game, stop trying to win arguments with cheap rethorical tricks, and actually pay attention and research things before posting.
  - TeMPOraL 1y ago
    Stargate is a specific franchise that riffs off "ancient aliens" idea. "Ancient aliens" by itself is a meme complex (in both senses of the term), not a specific thing. Pseudo-specialists selling books and producing documentaries are just another group of people taking a spin on those ideas, except they're making money by screwing with people's sanity instead of providing entertainment. See also: just about anything - from basic chemistry to UFOs to quantum physics. There's plenty of crackpots selling books on those topics too, but they don't own the conceptual space around these ideas. I can have a heated debate about merits of "GIMBAL" video or the "microtubules" in the brain, without assuming the other party is a crackpot or being offended by the ideas I consider plain wrong. Also, I'd think this through a bit more: > Pop culture is a narrow subset of culture, not interchangeable with mythology. Yes, it's not interchangeable. Pop culture is more important. Culture is a living thing, not a static artifact. Today, Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter are even more influential on the evolution of culture and society than classical literature. Saying this out loud only seems weird and iconoclastic (fancy word for "offensive"? :)) to most, because the works of Tolkien and Rowling are contemporary, and thus mundane. But consider that, back when the foundations of Enlightenment and Western cultures were being established, the classics were contemporary works as well! 200 years from now[0], Rowling will be to people what Shakespeare is to us today. -- [0] - Not really, unless the exponential progress of technology stops ~today.
    - alganet 1y ago
      Stargate fictionalizes Von Daniken. It moves his narrative from pseudoscience to fiction. It works like domestication. Culture is living, myths are the part that already crystallized. I don't care which one is more important, it's not a judgement of value. It's offensive to the egyptian culture to imply that aliens built their monuments. That is an idea those people live by. Culture, has conflict. Academia is on their side (and so many others), and it's authoritative in that sense. Also, _it's not about you_, stop taking it personally. I don't care about how much you know, you need to demonstrate that LLMs can understand this kind of nuance, or did you forget the goal of the discussion?

ben_w 1y ago

> It made you go into a spiral about Stargate and all sorts of irrelevant nonsense. I'm trying to help you here. Stargate is part of our culture. As part of our culture (ditto ancient aliens etc.), is not at all irrelevant to bring Stargate up in a discussion about culture, especially in a case when someone (you) tries to build their case by getting an AI to discuss aliens and Egyptian deities, and then goes on to claim that because the AI did what they were asked to do that this is somehow being unaware of culture. No, it isn't evidence of any such thing, that's the task you gave it. In fact, by your own statements, you yourself are part of a culture that it happy to be offensive to Egyptian culture — this means that an AI which is also offensive to Egyptian culture is matching your own culture. Only users who are in a culture that is offended by things offensive to Egyptian culture can point to {an AI being offensive to Egyptian culture as a direct result of that user's own prompt}, can accurrately represent that the AI in such a case doesn't get the user's own culture.

alganet 1y ago
Pop culture is a narrow subset of culture, not interchangeable with mythology. Stargate is a work of fiction, while ancient aliens presents itself as truth (hiring pseudo-specialists, pretending to be a documentary, etc). You need to seriously step up your game, stop trying to win arguments with cheap rethorical tricks, and actually pay attention and research things before posting.
- TeMPOraL 1y ago
  Stargate is a specific franchise that riffs off "ancient aliens" idea. "Ancient aliens" by itself is a meme complex (in both senses of the term), not a specific thing. Pseudo-specialists selling books and producing documentaries are just another group of people taking a spin on those ideas, except they're making money by screwing with people's sanity instead of providing entertainment. See also: just about anything - from basic chemistry to UFOs to quantum physics. There's plenty of crackpots selling books on those topics too, but they don't own the conceptual space around these ideas. I can have a heated debate about merits of "GIMBAL" video or the "microtubules" in the brain, without assuming the other party is a crackpot or being offended by the ideas I consider plain wrong. Also, I'd think this through a bit more: > Pop culture is a narrow subset of culture, not interchangeable with mythology. Yes, it's not interchangeable. Pop culture is more important. Culture is a living thing, not a static artifact. Today, Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter are even more influential on the evolution of culture and society than classical literature. Saying this out loud only seems weird and iconoclastic (fancy word for "offensive"? :)) to most, because the works of Tolkien and Rowling are contemporary, and thus mundane. But consider that, back when the foundations of Enlightenment and Western cultures were being established, the classics were contemporary works as well! 200 years from now[0], Rowling will be to people what Shakespeare is to us today. -- [0] - Not really, unless the exponential progress of technology stops ~today.
  - alganet 1y ago
    Stargate fictionalizes Von Daniken. It moves his narrative from pseudoscience to fiction. It works like domestication. Culture is living, myths are the part that already crystallized. I don't care which one is more important, it's not a judgement of value. It's offensive to the egyptian culture to imply that aliens built their monuments. That is an idea those people live by. Culture, has conflict. Academia is on their side (and so many others), and it's authoritative in that sense. Also, _it's not about you_, stop taking it personally. I don't care about how much you know, you need to demonstrate that LLMs can understand this kind of nuance, or did you forget the goal of the discussion?