@pluralistic @tante My impression was, Tante meant this specific argument and the way it is structured, and the way it functions. I hold the both of you in high esteem, and I don't have the impression that he'd somehow characterize anything beyond that argument he discusses.

@[email protected]

Well, we are not only influenced by our legacy: however strong we are, we can't avoid some fundamental influence from the hegemonic culture we live in.

Yet I see how the ethical misalignment here may not be about libertarian values but about utilitarian ones.

Even more subtly, it might be a misalignment about respective utility functions, while both #pluralistic and @[email protected] adopt an utilitarian framework instead of a normative one.

For example, the Pluralistic use of a local LLM might be explained with a slightly higher evaluation of the benefits that his own writings brings to society and thus (indirectly) the value the LLM brings, despite its issues.
Otoh, Tante might value a lot more the political harm that Cory's words did by blaming a political choice as irrational while it's totally rationale: in a way, by justifying the use of a #LLM, #Doctorow justified (even just a little bit) the industry that built it.

And since Pluralistic's strawman is centered around a normative "purity culture" blamed as irrational, Tante framed his response over rationality.

What if a normative behaviour was in fact totally rational in presence of unreducible complexity and informational asymmetry?

I don't use LLM for so many technical and political reasons that would take hours to list. And you both would almost certainly nod to most of them as a strictly rational arguments.
Yet the choice itself, bound to the society I want to build for my daughters and children, is normative: based on the values of truth, freedom and communion.

None of these could ever come from the LLM we are talking about: they are weapons designed to fool people (Turing test included!), so there's no way to wield them to benefit people.

As for "purity culture", I'm a catholic #christian, not a puritan: we brag about the #Church being a casta meretrix (Latin for something like "a pure bitch" 🤣), and we preach a man who hanged with the worst sinners and sometimes even hacking the law to save their lifes, so... 🤷‍♂️

@pluralistic
Fair enough, but that's not the core of the argument
@tante made. He had the same complaint for starters (your argument was heavily drenched in 'you ppl are purists' ), but he also makes the valid argument that technology isn't neutral in itself. Open weights based on intellectual theft and forced labor is still a problem. Until we have a discussion on how the weights come to fruitition, LLM's are objectively problematic from an ethical view. That has nothing to do with purism.