catching up on the hugo nominated short stories and Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole by Isabel J. Kim is, uhh, brutal and funny and necessary: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kim_02_24/

but uh, if you're paying attention, it probably won't leave your head very easily

"What a lesson for us."

#sf #shortstory #allegory #tormentnexus #oof

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

My wife likes to torment her Sims, or shall I say, 'challenge them with Life' so this would be ideal, whereas I'm striving for a Utopia in my city, and sure as fuck wouldn't allow wankers like them in.

In fact, they can build their own city, by themselves, perhaps the greatest torment for them....each other's company and no money or enablers.

#TechBros #TormentNexus #Sims4 #SimCity4

How to not build the Torment Nexus

When your #job and #healthcare depends on building the #TormentNexus, but you actually learned the lesson from the popular book Don't Build the Torment Nexus, how do you keep your soul intact and try to put less torment into the world?
https://buttondown.com/monteiro/archive/how-to-not-build-the-torment-nexus/

Great piece on modern technology!

"You, as a worker on the Torment Nexus Team have more in common with the people you’re feeding into the Torment Nexus than you do with the Torment Nexus Leadership team, who would have no problem feeding you into the Torment Nexus." 📈

That's the Quote Of The Day right there. Good article!

https://buttondown.com/monteiro/archive/how-to-not-build-the-torment-nexus/

#tormentnexus #qotd #it

“Your soul will not remain intact while you’re building software that keeps track of undocumented workers. Your soul will not remain intact while building surveillance software whose footage companies hand over to ICE. Your soul will not remain intact while you build software that allows disinformation to spark genocides. Your soul will not remain intact while you hoover up artists’ work to train theft-engines that poison the water of communities in need.”

- Mike Monteiro’s slightly sarcastic take on people developing software from hell

https://buttondown.com/monteiro/archive/how-to-not-build-the-torment-nexus/

#TormentNexus #Capitalism #Fascism #Software

Proper Torment Nexus this one, wasn't this a plot point of one of those Nolan Batman movies?

https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/22/whofi_wifi_identifier/

#TormentNexus #Opsec #WiFi