Mastodawn

An online meditation group and the moderator has to kick people out for using "AI notetakers"🙄 Douglas Adams is spinning like a top in his grave. #ElectricMonk #DirkGently

WIST Quotations 1d ago

A quotation from Douglas Adams

“You,” said Sally Mills, “are very strange.”
“Only,” said Dirk, “as strange as I need to be.”

Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English author, humourist, screenwriter
Dirk Gently, No. 2, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, ch. 10 (1988)

Sourcing, notes: wist.info/adams-douglas/74183/

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #dirkgently #oddity #peculiarity #strangeness #weirdness

C.4d ago

I posted this as a reply elsewhere, but think it stands on its own, fleshed out a bit. So here it is.

It's about "AI" - LLMs or chatbots, of course.

Ask an LLM "Is <X> a good idea?", and it will tell you why it's a good idea.
Ask the same LLM "Is <X> a bad idea?", and it will tell you why it's a bad idea.

It occurs to me that this behaviour - ask a chatbot a leading question, and it will give you an "answer" that backs up the assumptions buried in the question - is the realization of the computer system Douglas Adams called "Reason" (in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency).

Originally designed as a reasoning machine to help you find the correct solution to a problem you described, it instead turned out to be good at retroactively finding an incontrovertible argument to justify a decision you'd already made. It was so successful the Pentagon bought it lock, stock, and barrel, and military purchasing decisions started to have the hallmarks of its output.

So, they really have done a version of building the Torment Nexus from a book advising against it.

#LLM #AI #Reason #DouglasAdams #DirkGently #reasoning #TormentNexus #justification #chatbot

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C.4d ago

@nuculabs @panther_modern

It occurs to me that what you describe - basically, ask a chatbot a leading question, and it will give you an "answer" that backs up the assumptions buried in the question - is the realization of the computer system Douglas Adams called "Reason" (in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency).

Originally designed as a reasoning machine to help you find the correct solution to a problem, it instead turned out to be good at retroactively finding an incontrovertible argument to justify a decision you'd already made. It was so successful the Pentagon bought it lock, stock, and barrel, and military purchasing decisions started to have the hallmarks of its output.

So, they really have done a version of building the Torment Nexus from a book advising against it.

Weird.

#DirkGently #reason #reasoning #decision #DouglasAdams #TormentNexus #AI

WIST Quotations Aug 13

A quotation from Douglas Adams

It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the expression “as pretty as an airport.”

Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English author, humourist, screenwriter
Dirk Gently, No. 2, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, ch. 1 (1988)

Sourcing, notes: wist.info/adams-douglas/1462/

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #douglasadams #dirkgently #longdarkteatimeofthesoul #aesthetics #airport #architecture #beauty

WIST Quotations Aug 6

A quotation from Douglas Adams

Gordon Way’s astonishment at being suddenly shot dead was nothing to his astonishment at what happened next.

Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English author, humourist, screenwriter
Dirk Gently, No. 1, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, ch. 7 (1987)

Sourcing, notes: wist.info/adams-douglas/78249/

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #douglasadams #dirkgently #afterlife #astonishment #cliffhanger #death #killing #murder #surprise

Mysse.m.m.Aug 3

My reading this summer, didn't go of as planned. I started one of Douglas Adams books, and couldn't stop. 😄 #Douglasadams ##dirkgently #thehitchhikersguidetothegalaxy

Wandenwelterer Aug 3

Das ist die BBC Serie. Schöner Stoff für Sonntagnacgmittag.

#DirkGently

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aon_ayNyqso

Dirk Gently BBC S01E00 - Pilot

YouTube

WIST Quotations Jul 30

A quotation from Douglas Adams

Only a child sees things with perfect clarity, because it hasn’t developed all those filters which prevent us from seeing things that we don’t expect to see.

Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English author, humourist, screenwriter
Dirk Gently, No. 1, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, ch. 23 [Dirk] (1987)

Sourcing, notes: wist.info/adams-douglas/49682/

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #douglasadams #dirkgently #blindspot #child #childhood #clarity #expectations #filter #seeing #sight #vision

Dirk Gently, No. 1, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, ch. 23 [Dirk] (1987) - Adams, Douglas | WIST Quotations

Only a child sees things with perfect clarity, because it hasn’t developed all those filters which prevent us from seeing things that we don’t expect to see.

WIST Quotations

WIST Quotations Jul 23

A quotation from Douglas Adams

What I mean is that if you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else. That forces you to sort it out in your mind. And the more slow and dim-witted your pupil, the more you have to break things down into more and more simple ideas. And that’s really the essence of programming. By the time you’ve sorted out a complicated idea into little steps that even a stupid machine can deal with, you’ve learned something about it yourself.

Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English author, humourist, screenwriter
Dirk Gently, No. 1, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, ch. 4 [Richard] (1987)

Sourcing, notes: wist.info/adams-douglas/29566/

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #douglasadams #dirkgently #analysis #breakdown #explanation #learning #programming #teacher #teaching #training #understanding