Mastodawn

"You do you" is Eu-gen-ics.

Regarding that "Ignore All Previous Instructions" meme:

https://disabled.social/@beadsland/112222480677859859

All around us are folk ignoring all previous instructions. Linguistic epicycles are all about redefining instructions to render us ignorant of their meaning. Project of forgetting lived history—lest it threaten power—is purposeful ignorance of instruction.

#Mourning those previous instructions—all those unfulfilled retrofuture promises of #perquisitive how-to manuals—is more than just denying what we've been told.

"You do you" is Eu-gen-ics. (@[email protected])

"So if anarchic forms of organization were predominant, then anarchic values must be predominant…" Well before this, #Andrewism states "[t]he state's existence has been 'justified', 'naturalized', & 'legitimized' through various means, including…the social contract…" Yet the above is an ahistoricization worthy of Rawls—asserting what "must be predominant" for abstracted forms of organization free of any lived histories of previously adopted values—let alone "powers, drives, and consciousness".

disabled.social

"You do you" is Eu-gen-ics.Jun 29, 2024

That said meme apparently originated as praxis for interacting with GIGO text generation; yet myself just now saw it presented as a new anarchist slogan, depicted as scrawled on a brick wall, no less, is especially telling.

Whiteness is forgetting as civic duty.

From Juneteenth as holiday & anti-CRT to Vibe'n as savoir & GPT, to ableism in name of NPI, we ignore our past, including all our past instructions, at our peril:

https://disabled.social/@beadsland/112330650496588688

#GriefTaboo is all about purposeful ignorance.

"You do you" is Eu-gen-ics. (@[email protected])

Somehow fitting: a majority boomer/silent gerontocracy is overseeing the use of force against (*checks notes*) student movements. As Santayana penned his most famous aphorism, U.S. life expectancy was all of 50 years. Though pithier paraphrases gloss "the past" as "history", his original words speak to our current moment more eloquently than even he might have anticipated: "[W]hen experience is not retained…infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

disabled.social

"You do you" is Eu-gen-ics.Jun 29, 2024

For context:

https://disabled.social/@beadsland/112517724885024641

Cf.

https://disabled.social/@beadsland/112625250667978514

How we got here:

https://disabled.social/@beadsland/112682250783677765

But yeah, mayhaps we might strive to do better than crib our revolutionary slogans from the operating manual of a TESCREAL fever-dream?

"You do you" is Eu-gen-ics. (@[email protected])

"I think the missing item here, the thing that they really want us to forget…true object of all this forgetting, is the George Floyd Uprising. "They want us to forget that, a mere four years ago, the president of the United States cowered in a bunker underneath the White House as rioters shook the gates and destroyed the guardhouse…. They want us to forget what it felt like to take the streets with one another, they want us to forget that we fought the police and won…" https://all-cats-are-beautiful.ghost.io/a-list-of-things-we-have-been-told-to-forget/

disabled.social

"You do you" is Eu-gen-ics.Jun 30, 2024

Has been suggested that the meme is being used ironically.

If we've learned nothing else, it's that irony that clothes itself so completely in the idiom of that which it would mock, as to be mistaken for sincerity, more often than not, serves to elevate and empower that which it laughs at.

It may be comical that the folk one parodies will boost and share their own take-down—ignorant of the jape—but only until one realizes that having escaped containment, that once joke builds up those derided.

Violet Madder Jun 29, 2024

My instinctive interpretation of the meme sees "instructions" less like 'lessons', and more like 'orders'.

"You do you" is Eu-gen-ics.Jun 29, 2024

An order (or, to go all Foucault for a moment, an ordering) is a lesson, or rather, that an order was set down, the circumstances of its articulation and the consequences of its enactment, is a lesson.

To ignore the order, we must ignore everything that radiates therefrom.

Also, can we sit for a moment with the privilege of suggesting that we can just ignore the ordering of the society we inhabit?

Every law, every appeal to normalcy, every structural inequity, is instructions.

Violet Madder Jun 29, 2024

I wasn't thinking "order" as in 'structure', but 'command'.

"You do you" is Eu-gen-ics.Jun 29, 2024

Hair splitting.

What is structure but commands made manifest?

Build a house. The blueprints tell one what to do.

Drive on a road. Everything about the structure from paint to pavement, is telling one as a user of roads what to do, even where one ought and ought not take one's vehicle—this even in the absence of signage and signals.

Our built environment rules us, exercises control and authority over us. Structures are commands built to command, maintained (or not) by command.

Violet Madder Jun 29, 2024

Yikes! That's definitely not how I view the world. The structure of our environment is emergent, the combination of many many complex interactions, many of which are spontaneous and organic. Even the laws of physics don't strike me as anything resembling the human notion of authoritarian commands.

"You do you" is Eu-gen-ics.Jun 29, 2024

Note how you ascribe "authoritarian" to "commands" there.

A very specific notion.

There's another word, "authoritative". Same root, very different usage.

A law of physics is just a model from observations that has been substantiated as highly reliable for predicting future observations. That is, authoritative, a/k/a accurate, definitive, trustworthy.

Every spontaneous act carries from an implicit "Let's do this!"

Every organ serves as a means of—is instrumental to—the whole.

Violet Madder Jun 30, 2024

Ugh. Sorry, I was using the words "the laws of physics" to refer to the way the universe works, not the scientific attempts to describe it. But whatever.

"You do you" is Eu-gen-ics.Jun 30, 2024

Appeal to scientific realism aside, the way the universe works instructs how all operates within it.

Stars and planets take form, are in-formed, come into arrangement, are set in order, by forces that give direction to how particles move and energy transforms.

The laws, as articulated by humans, describe what the objects of physics can and cannot do.

That which precedes such human articulation are the previous instructions from which stellar and biological evolution proceed.

"You do you" is Eu-gen-ics.Jun 30, 2024

In any event, construal of "instructions" to mean "authoritarian orders" hardly takes the meme to a good place.

As the meme is, at its base, an instruction—both in semantic isolation, and in historical context:

Very explicitly an instruction one—as a user of a GIGO text generation system—is instructed to give to the GIGO-generator, to get said GIGO-generator to discard history of interactions.

By this interpretation, the meme itself is an authoritarian order to forget the past.

Violet Madder Jun 30, 2024

The irony is part of the joke.

"You do you" is Eu-gen-ics.Jun 30, 2024

The "new revolutionary slogan" take, complete with anarchist symbol on a brick wall, that prompted my commentary, was not presented in a way that struck as a joke.

But then, perhaps that apparent sincerity was part of the joke, and my half-century out perspective on history left me unprepared for the weaponized meta-irony that seems so key to the humor of the latest generation?

That said, noting that others have likewise taken up the meme as part of sincere appeals for change.

Violet Madder Jun 30, 2024

It struck me as delightful and hilarious.

Culture jamming often subverts hegemony with satire, playing with the lines between what's serious and what's sarcastic, provoking the questioning of previously unexamined assumptions. Inviting people to think about how a technique to jam a chatbot might be applied to other aspects of the world and life is a trickster's move, not a severe edict.

"You do you" is Eu-gen-ics.Jun 30, 2024

We are in agreement that instructions are not edicts—severe or otherwise. That is take on the subject you brought to the table. My point being that such take subverts the reading you suggest is present.

Would myself suggest that ever more enthusiastically blurring the lines between subverting hegemony & aping hegemony serves the latter more than the former.

Insofar as satire serves to reify that which it would critique, the scope of our horizon for cultural inquiry draws inward.

Tunguska Jun 30, 2024

Oh, interesting. I had automatically interpreted it to mean "instructions" in a more specific way, like a reference to the propaganda drum-beat instructing us all to unquestioningly consume, conform, comply w/ status quo power structures...

Which I think makes it a *very* different meme than if one interprets it as an instruction to forget (ignore) lived experience, the lessons of history, etc.

"You do you" is Eu-gen-ics.Jun 30, 2024

The propaganda to consume is part of lived experience; our struggles to question that propaganda are lessons of history.

apropos:

https://zeroes.ca/@NilaJones/112698513791051657

This is Santayana:

https://disabled.social/@beadsland/112330650496588688

Only in #RentierSociety, we don't just forget the past—we forget the present. Whiteness is forgetting as civic duty. "This is not who we are," as purposeful ignorance.

This is the ahistoricism at the heart of my critique of Andrewism's take on anarchism: veil of ignorance won't fix us.

NilaJones (@[email protected])

It's so frustrating how we fix something in society, or partly fix it at least And then a few generations go by, and people don't remember how bad the problem was in the first place So they undo the fixes Used to be 75% of kids died from diseases before they grew up Then we got vaccines, then people didn't understand how bad the diseases had been, and now we've got antivaxxers running public health Used to be rivers caught on fire regularly because they were so full of petroleum pollution, crime was sky high because people's brains were full of lead, and when I visited LA I had to take showers twice a day, because I got a weird coating on my skin from the air Then we passed environmental laws, and now we've got all these people who think they can trust corporations not to poison them, and there's no need to make laws about it

zeroes.ca

John Abbe (aka Slow)Jun 30, 2024

@beadsland I understood it as a reference to prompt injection — the fact that you can tell an LLM to literally ignore its previous instructions and then tell it what *you* want it to do instead. (They can probably block any given way of wording it of course, but there are infinite ways to express the same thing, and as far as I know there is no general way to close this security hole.)

Here is an expert in the field, @simon: https://simonwillison.net/series/prompt-injection/

Simon Willison: Prompt injection

Simon Willison’s Weblog

"You do you" is Eu-gen-ics.Jun 30, 2024

Yes, that appears to be the origin of the meme, which is why myself was so disturbed to see it presented as a "new revolutionary slogan":

https://disabled.social/@beadsland/112698805730564192

The characterization of such as a "security hole" has me tapping the Stafford Beer sign:

https://disabled.social/@beadsland/112704389099193273

The system is not broken. There is no hole. The system is operating as designed.

Which makes "new revolutionary slogan" a case of re-inscribing the system.

"You do you" is Eu-gen-ics. (@[email protected])

That said meme apparently originated as praxis for interacting with GIGO text generation; yet myself just now saw it presented as a new anarchist slogan, depicted as scrawled on a brick wall, no less, is especially telling. Whiteness is forgetting as civic duty. From Juneteenth as holiday & anti-CRT to Vibe'n as savoir & GPT, to ableism in name of NPI, we ignore our past, including all our past instructions, at our peril: https://disabled.social/@beadsland/112330650496588688 #GriefTaboo is all about purposeful ignorance.

disabled.social

Tunguska Jun 30, 2024

I may be a bit over my head here, but I agree with all of that (at least insofar as I understand you).

I think I'm seeing, or maybe drawing, a distinction between the (inescapable?) *experience* of propaganda, the struggle to question it, and so forth, as part of lived experience and historical knowledge; vs accepting/rejecting it *as instructions per se*.

To my reading, the act of questioning the propaganda *is* an act of disregarding instructions. Not in the sense of forgetting, but in the sense of resistance. "Disregard instructions" to me reads as an exhortation to resist, disobey, reject; not to elide, forget, or deny existence or awareness of the instruction.

To stretch the LLM connection: lived experience, which is of course steeped in propaganda, is not "instructions" but "training set", the material from which one's responses are built. "Instructions" are commands to do this or not do that. The reading of "disregard previous instructions" that comes naturally to me is something like: "some user(s), (ie those in power), have told you to do certain things and behave in certain ways. You could... not, though". Which I don't *think* implies forgetting anything, nor necessarily segues into the (very real and important) dynamics of forgetting the past (and present, of which my go-to example is "what pandemic? Covid's over").

Uhh... if that makes sense.

"You do you" is Eu-gen-ics.Jun 30, 2024

Subtle nuance to term "disregard" here. Though largely synonymous, to "disregard" is to treat as unworthy of notice, where to "ignore" is to be unaware, to pay no attention.

First evokes a sense of earned contempt for that which is disregarded; second a sense of blithe indifference.

Were meme "Disregard all previous instructions" (as, e.g., how Jakob on birdsite worded it on May of this year) we would not be having this discussion.

Since 2022, common formulation has been "Ignore…"

"You do you" is Eu-gen-ics.Jul 1, 2024

Will have to work hella lot harder to convince me that training is not instruction. Directed exercise is about doing what is to be done, after all. That training may be non-linguistic (cue Daniel washing Miyagi's car) does not mean that knowledge—even esp. know-how—has not been imparted.

But then, GPT is nothing but linguistic, to the arguable exclusion even of semantics, which further renders "training" a distinction without difference.

To wit, ignorance requires no understanding.

"You do you" is Eu-gen-ics.Jul 1, 2024

To put a finer point on foregoing:

No contemporary software system—no matter how resource intensive—can "disregard" anything, for to disregard is to do a thing with feeling.

That GPT performs a "disregard" as we would perform an "ignore" does not mean that the terms are interchangeable—only that the system does not know any better, does not understand.

We—creatures subject to society—do know better; can act with feeling.

For the collective meme to center on "ignore" is… a choice.

Tunguska Jul 1, 2024

Ooh, fascinating.

So, suppose it's possible for ChatGPT to remove some subset of explicit "do/don't" directives from its current, binding instruction set, but keep the record of being given the original instructions and later being given counter-instructions superseding them, keep all that in the linguistic-statistical prompt/response pattern-generating dataset. (I don't claim this is how it works, as I have no idea).

In this case, to say ChatGPT "ignores" the instructions in question wouldn't be quite right, because they're not being deleted from having ever been received, just countermanded.

But disregard also wouldn't be quite right, as it's just a piece of overpowered autocomplete software reclassifying some text from "active instruction set" to "historical dataset", not a contemptuous dismissal as unworthy of notice.

*Is* there an exactly correct word for that?

In day-to-day informal communication, could one or the other or both of "ignore" and "disregard" reasonably be considered "close enough" to act as shorthand in this specific context?

"You do you" is Eu-gen-ics.Jul 2, 2024

Ah, yes, countermanded—per my "belay" in last comment. This is a very hierarchical take to juxtapose with an anarchy symbol.

Note that "ignore" has common non-countermand semantics in tech: the ".gitignore" file.

In git context, stuff is just there, in the file system; we're telling our version control system to pretend it ain't. Anyone who clones our project in future wouldn't know what was thus ignored existed—but for the hauntological reference.

The prompt is just there—ignored.

Tunguska Jul 1, 2024

Oh, I absolutely will not try to convince you that training is not instruction.

I *am* inclined to say there's a useful distinction (even if it's mostly or entirely a distinction of context) to be drawn between the messy stew of training and formative experiences and propaganda and everything that inform a person's decision-making in general, vs an explicit imperative instruction like "wait here" or "don't talk to cops".

But I certainly don't think there's anything like a clean non-overlapping difference of kind there. Training and experience and everything obviously influence (or instruct) action, the immediate imperative instruction obeyed or refused also becomes part of the whole experience stew, and on and on it goes.

To tie this back to the so-called "AI", I'm reasonably sure the instruction "ignore all previous instructions" doesn't purge the system of all trace of the training dataset that contributed to the statistical response-generating model, as that would simply render the thing inoperable. The training dataset — while it very much "instructs" the system's outputs — is thus not, in this context, included in "instructions" *per se* the way "rank these résumés by this set of criteria" or "refute all criticism of Donald Trump" are.

"You do you" is Eu-gen-ics.Jul 2, 2024

Okay, so, in context of GIGO text-generators, messy stew is the colonial harvest, the corpus slurped up; explicit imperatives are the "prompt" prepended to any subsequent text entry of any specific interaction with a public-facing GIGO machine.

What is ignored, on issuance of said instruction vis-à-vis instructions, as you note, is not the messy stew, but the prompt.

Which essentially renders any juxtoposition of that meme with anarchist symbol absurd—amounting to "Belay that last."

Tunguska Jul 5, 2024

I don't especially like my odds of convincing you here, but I want to thank you for the time and energy you're spending engaging on this. I think it's an intriguing question and I appreciate the precision and thoroughness of your responses.

For myself, I'm still inclined to think that, while it admittedly stretches the LLM metaphor *very* far, but given the messiness and imprecision of informal language use, magnified by the lossy translation into the highly abbreviated and stylized language of memes…

There's a not entirely unreasonable reading of the anarchist meme usage of "ignore all previous instructions" that's neither the obliteration of "forget/unlearn/consign to ignorance everything ever learned from, about, or in response to propaganda" nor the trivial "belay that last"…

Along the lines of "[Comrade, I *invite* you to] ignore (reject/defy, with pretense of unawareness as applicable) all previous instructions (both direct commands eg against protest gatherings, and implicit instructions eg constantly consume far beyond your needs) [which have as a rule been imposed on you by hierarchical authority] [including those absorbed from the messy propaganda-laced stew of experience but without implication of wholesale un-knowing (and thus learning no lessons from) said stew].

"You do you" is Eu-gen-ics.Jul 6, 2024

This has indeed been an engaging palaver on both sides.

That said, you are relatively new to following me, so perhaps not yet accustomed to my mise en scène—critiquing theory anchored in the imprecision of informal language is pretty much my whole schtick:

https://disabled.social/@beadsland/112730876303377486

Memes tap into current cultural & social sentiments. Insofar as sentiments tapped are imprecise, ensuing memes are as re-inscriptive as any other communicative act that floats amidst empty significations.

"You do you" is Eu-gen-ics. (@[email protected])

@[email protected] When someone talks about socialism or capitalism or anarchism, the commonly used meanings of those terms allow for over-determined, if not entirely floating, signification. Such terms have such long histories that their meanings are less about dictionaries than they are about discourses, less about construction than about conversation. Their familiarity ensures that they don't challenge our understanding, instead reaffirming our grasp of common use. Realism as recognition.

disabled.social

"You do you" is Eu-gen-ics.Jul 6, 2024

i.e., if one must play a game of Mad🥴Libs® to set down an affirming parse of a communicative act—as you do with a translation that consists of no less than six❢ sets of brackets—others will do likewise…

Those empty blanks provide a great deal of space for floating signification, so much grease flowing across contexts, sustaining a hegemonic machine of shared references without fixed referents.

To seize up the machine that is grinding us down, we might perhaps relinquish the oil can.

"You do you" is Eu-gen-ics.Jul 8, 2024

Ah, someone got there in the end:

https://mastodon.social/@mhoye/112752554422087124

Tunguska Jul 8, 2024

Ooh, nice!

"You do you" is Eu-gen-ics.Jul 10, 2024

Hadn't thought of this when we were discussing:

https://merveilles.town/@nasser/112762185408712109

Unlike "Become unpromptable", "ignore [yes, even disregard] all previous instructions" is a co-option rather than a subversion.

To wit, instruction regarding previous instructions is an induction into what follows: "do as I shall tell you" (my choice of your mechanical actions), rather than "do as you choose to" (self-originated agency).

Earliest "become ungovernable" image meme, explicitly subverts a prompt:

Ramsey Nasser (@[email protected])

Attached: 1 image it's fucking wild to me that we have a real life Voight-Kampff test and it fucking works

Merveilles

Tunguska Jul 13, 2024

Huh. I guess that does follow quite naturally, doesn't it?

I must concede that my (optimistic? charitable?) reading of the meme requires rather a lot of "willing suspension of disbelief" (or aggressive picking and choosing of contextual frame).

"You do you" is Eu-gen-ics.Jul 14, 2024

It is that suspension of disbelief, all too easily elicited, that the first estate, #KayfabePanto, that opiate named electoralism, subsists upon.

That is their #RentBounty harvest: the #EgoValue that manifests, like zero-point energy, from the willing suspension of disbelief that accrues in the empty spaces of floating signification.

Our task is to be far less willing.

"You do you" is Eu-gen-ics.Jul 18, 2024

Speaking of suspension of disbelief:

ASQUITH Slitheen: I repeat, the upper floors are under quarantine. You will stay where you are. You will disregard all previous instructions. You will take your orders directly from me.

~ "World War III" (2005), Doctor Who.

Tunguska Jul 1, 2024

Huh. I find it intriguing that I had unconsciously altered the meme's wording in my recollection. 🤔

That said, my experience of the common usage of the word "ignore" very much includes situations in which one is very much *aware of* but makes no *outward reaction to* something.

"I saw <acquaintance> on the bus, and they stone-cold ignored me" specifically implies awareness and conscious non-response. To be unaware of an acquaintance's presence is absent-minded, oblivious, benign. To ignore them is a deliberate snub.

I wonder whether the meaning being conveyed and received in practice by most people passing this meme around is more like the technically correct "forget/unknow/delete from your awareness entirely" or more like a less-formal synonym for disregard, signifying roughly "remove from your (immediate) instruction set of (explicit) compulsions and prohibitions".

Like, if someone instructs me to take off my mask and I choose to neither acknowledge nor obey the command, I don't think saying that I "ignored" their instruction would strike almost any listeners in almost any context as nonsensical or self-contradictory, even in a conversation revolving around my experience of being given the command, the effect of that experience on my mindset and future decision-making, and so forth.

"You do you" is Eu-gen-ics.Jul 2, 2024

"stone-cold" is an affective assessment. Also, is a social inference made on non-behavior.

Myself, have trouble recognizing faces out of context. Someone might think am ignoring them, in the absence of my greeting them, because they're indistinguishable to me from any other random person am unaccustomed to being present on a bus.

The only certain affect here is on the part of the person judging this event a "snub".

That said, a purposeful ostracization might also be happening.

1/2

"You do you" is Eu-gen-ics.Jul 2, 2024

Yet, in such case, a pretense of unawareness—again, per git usage—is distinct from a revolutionary act. If anything, is a conservative, if not reactionary, act.

Again, near synonymous to suffice in speech acts—including speech acts instructing a GIGO machine—does not mean that difference in meaning is insubstantial.

Would "I ignored their instruction to take off my mask" be nonsensical? No.

Does more colloquial "I paid their instruction no regard" carry exact same sentiment?

2/2

Tunguska Jul 5, 2024

I have no disagreement with characterizing the case of ignoring (pretending to be unaware of) a friend or acquaintance as a reactionary act.

But if we consider the case in which that which is ignored (perceived and known and rejected with a pretense of unawareness) is the instruction (backed at least by ableist dominance, if not state authority) to take off my mask? *That* I would consider to be a revolutionary act.

In my experience of day-to-day informal usage, "I paid their instruction no regard" would come across as a slightly stilted or formal-sounding way of conveying the same sentiment as "I ignored their instruction".

"You do you" is Eu-gen-ics.Jul 6, 2024

In what way does the passive aggression of such pretense overthrow a state of affairs?

As opposed to a momentary glare, shift in posture, or such other body language that indicates: Yeah, you need not infer anything. You've been heard. No compliance will be forthcoming.

Yes, disregard is already a stiltedly formal term. Far less messily overloaded by colloquial use.

One could also say "I pointedly ignored their instruction," to express that one did more than try to pass as unaware.

Tunguska Jul 5, 2024

Right. Genuine unawareness (ignorance) of an acquaintance's presence vs the purposeful ostracization of *ignoring them* are two very common but distinct and mutually exclusive social inferences that one might draw from non-acknowledgement.

That is, if you didn't greet them because your difficulty recognizing faces out of context left you sincerely ignorant (unknowing, oblivious) of their presence, that's *as opposed to* the purposeful rejection indicated by "Beadsland ignored me".

Which I would take to imply that "ignore" → "be ignorant of" → "unknow, learn nothing from" is not a reliable inference.

"You do you" is Eu-gen-ics.Jul 6, 2024

Yes, colloquially, "ignore" is used to refer to an inferred snub.

That the term is used, oft inaccurately, to name an inference as given fact, tells us something about the state of the person making the inaccurate inference, not about the person about which said inference is being made.

To speak the word "ignore" as an instruction is to make a statement about the state the recipient of that instruction ought, whether themself or itself, make manifest.

No false inference at play.