@tante

I really like and admire @pluralistic and have utmost respect for him, and that's why I'm totally baffled about why he is claiming "fruit of the poisoned tree" arguments as cause of LLM scepticism.

The objections to LLMs aren't about origins but about what they they are doing right now: destroying the planet, stealing labour, giving power over knowledge to LLM owners etc.

The objections are nothing to do with LLMs' origins, they're entirely about LLMs' effects in the here and now.

@FediThing @tante

Which parts of running a model on your own laptop are implicated in "destroying the planet?" How is checking punctuation "stealing labor?" Or, for that matter "giving power over knowledge to LLM owners?"

@pluralistic I think you can answer these questions yourself.

Suppose you wore a coat made out of mink fur. The minks are already dead, simply wearing the coat won't kill more minks. What does wearing mink fur have to do with cruelty to minks?

Suppose you live in the time of the Luddites. Legislation prohibits trade unions and collective bargaining. Mill owners introduce machines, reducing wages. But you build your own machine. Problem solved? You helping labor or capital?

@FediThing @tante

@skyfaller @FediThing @tante

This is a "fruit of the poisoned tree" argument.

Suppose you use a computer to post to Mastodon, despite the fact that silicon transistors were invented by the eugenicist William Shockley, who spent his Nobel money offering bribes to women of color to be sterlized?

Suppose you sent that Mastodon post on a packet-switched network, despite the fact that this technology was invented by the war criminals at the RAND corporation?

@skyfaller @FediThing @tante

Also, you're wrong about the Luddites, just as a factual matter. The guilds the Luddites sprang from weren't prohibited by law, they were *protected* by law, and the Luddites' cause wasn't about gaining new protections under statute, but rather, enforcing existing statutory protections.

(Also: the Luddites didn't oppose steam looms or stocking frames; their demands were for fair deployment of these)

@pluralistic Thank you for the fact check. I was paraphrasing that text from the popular Nib comic: https://thenib.com/im-a-luddite/

If this contains factual inaccuracies I will need to do more research and perhaps stop sharing that comic.

@FediThing @tante