TraceFeb 21
tante

"Capable LLMs require a logic of dominance and of disregarding consent of the people producing the artifacts that are the raw material for the system. LLMs are based on extraction, exploitation and subjugation. Their politics is violence. How does one “liberate” that? What’s the case for open source violence?"

(Original title: Acting ethically in an imperfect world)

https://tante.cc/2026/02/20/acting-ethical-in-an-imperfect-world/

Acting ethically in an imperfect world

Life is complicated. Regardless of what your beliefs or politics or ethics are, the way that we set up our society and economy will often force you to act against them: You might not want to fly somewhere but your employer will not accept another mode of transportation, you want to eat vegan but are […]

Smashing Frames
Feb 21 at 12:20pmWeb
Show threadPer AxbomFeb 21
@tante Huge thank you for writing this tante! I sense that it required a lot of rumination and self-reflection before hitting publish. And I really like this change in the title.
Show threadtanteFeb 21
@axbom thank you!
Given my track record the next 10 pieces of writing are gonna be bad then but I did also feel like I hit most points I wanted to in this one
Show threadDr. Christiane GrünlohFeb 21
@tante @axbom haha I doubt that the next ones are bad. Always like your pieces!
It has a new intro now right? Really like it - fits well with the follow up post
Show threadCount HoldemFeb 21
@tante #BoycottAI
Show threadRussellFeb 21

@tante

> politics based on values as “neoliberal ideology” that reduces “all politics to personal consumption choices”.

It's also ironic: Libertarians are the ones that believe everything is a personal consumption choice. "The markets" will decide; who are these markets? Libertarian ideas for regulation depend on "the markets" policing themselves, but if privileged personal politics don't define bad then what's left is scarier; it's a slippery slope toward nihilism.

Show threadRussellFeb 21
@tante A secondary thought I've had swirling in my head lately is the connection between LLMs and a colonizer / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization attitude. As you've mentioned, it's rarely through good will or mutual benefit but instead through force and violence and displacement, something akin to the racist/fascist view of purity. And we see a lot of it from the pro-LLM crowd: Get on board or you'll get left behind, which is more a point of purity (with us or against us) than it is utility.
Colonization - Wikipedia

Show threadCarsten Nielsen 🇺🇦 💚 🇪🇺 🇬🇱Feb 21
@tante Long but very well read. Thank you!
Show threadCiferFeb 21
@tante Thank you for this text, it puts a lot of my vague feelings into concise words.
I particularly dislike the whole search engine comparison because of how it reduces consent to a binary. You allow me to interact with your stuff in any way? Guess that means I'm allowed to interact with it every way! Is there any other part of life where we'd accept that? "You said help yourself, so I dumped your liquor cabinet into my backpack"? "You said I could come visit you once, why are you throwing me out after only five weeks, Charles?"
Show threadslashFeb 22

@tante Good points. It did bring up the thought that LLMs are basically just mechanizing what Bezos and Zuck have been doing for years. And what the robber barons of the Guilded Age (I guess that's now "the _first_ Guilded Age) were doing one hundred years ago.

We will never learn.

Show threadAlper Çuğun-GscheidelFeb 22
@tante Oh, people are discovering that Doctorow is shifty and superficial? What a shocker!
Show threadDaveyFeb 22

@alper @tante I saw someone saying a version of "you say one thing wrong" about this and no, many things, and also, the head on him.

It may be superficial to say, but the absolute head on him.

Show threadAlper Çuğun-GscheidelFeb 22
@davey_cakes @tante He has a function but I stopped reading him after a couple of his books in my youth which were all the same book.