LRexpectation: atlas shrugged
reality: fuck off atlas this LLM can hold the world up just fine... uh oh
in my 20's i loved to do this skit where the empty brained boss gleefully tells his employees "this little box will replace all of you!" only for his scheme to hilariously backfire and damn if this ain't the world we're living in now...
used to be just the doctors who had to deal with the internet-smart. now it's all of us.
strauss & howe predicted millennials to be remembered for their competence, but not like this man. not like this.
i know, atlas shrugged is about architects and industrialists going on general strike because of unions and socialist governments trying to regulate their bs,
but if ayn rand, traumatized by what russian commies did to her family, seeing the power of general strikes and deciding to turn the table, can abstract from this the plot device of people sidelined by society refusing to give their services / withdrawing their love to get their respect back, then so can i.
except here, and that was what i was getting at, love, attention, respect and subsequently income is withdrawn by society at large from experts of all wakes of life, and instead is funnelled into the output of a two-(tera)bit token oracle.
if only it were any good.
but yep we have been temporarily general-striked and thus the roles have been reversed.
this is a highly unusual situation. how to get societies love back?
the first thing that is obvious is that we're going to see idiocratic planes-falling-from-the-sky level failures of expertise in the interim as this is the con man's paradise.
people use shorthand to decide who is trustworthy, and there lies the trap.
so to me it is important to hold on to traditional knowledge structures that have worked for me, even while - and especially because - competent figures of authority are increasingly being replaced by uncanny status leeches.
i do believe in democracy much much more than i believe in totalitarianism, and so i must draw the consequence and say: because i love people, i must be patient with them and refuse the naive dream of a "strong leader" who will "bring back order".
democracy means that the public must be afforded to learn from their mistakes. because when they do, we all get lifted from the shadows.
the alternative is regression, and regression is brutal and boring.
so to me this is a waiting game, much like every winter is a waiting game; and this is the winter of democracy.
in the stormy dark and cold, we do not squander what little energy we have left. instead, we keep our bodies warm and our spirits gentle. we tell each other stories. we feel what we are missing, what we have lost and what we need. we turn inwards. we make plans for the coming year. we dream of spring.