Mastodawn

There's a very good reason why I have little patience with the mystification and obfuscation of intelligence by persons such as @troed: intelligence has been turned, via the racist and blinkered intellectual culture of "the West", into a veritable cult idol.

There is a cult of intelligence, an idolatry of IQ, a ritualized way of talking about rationality—in plain sight, pervading all "Western" discourse on topics pertaining to #education and #science and #technology and a myriad other topics.

If it's not possible to discuss the concept of intelligence without throwing a tantrum...well, what does that say about the concept? What's become of it? It's like intelligence is now on the level of a religious mystery, a problem that can NEVER be solved and which shouldn't be studied except by a few pure-hearted souls.

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Mx. Chara Aznable (they/them) of Pnictogen

Respectable adult persons who demand vast sums of money in exchange for their purported brilliance, such as Sam Altman of #OpenAI, utter statements such as "we want to create intelligence too cheap to meter" and a whole goddamn culture of technocrats all nod and smile and agree that this is a worthwhile, worthy, sensible goal for humanity to pursue.

What does that EVEN MEAN?? "Intelligence too cheap to meter"? What is that? It's a mimic of the catchphrase from bygone days of electrification and the curdled promises of #nuclear energy: "power too cheap to meter". So are we to suppose that "intelligence" is like a fuel, or a flow of electrons?

Just what on Earth does the #technology sector mean by the word "intelligence"? Never mind @troed: what does Elon Musk or Sam Altman or Dario Amodei or Jensen Huang or Marc Andreessen or (heaven help us all) J. D. Vance think "intelligence" is? They think it's all important so they'd better have a good idea what they mean by it.

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Mx. Chara Aznable (they/them) of Pnictogen 1d ago

@troed cannot get away from this plain simple fact, even if he's telling the truth about his stock portfolio: the reactionary right-wing culture of #business and #technology and #GOP politics—for these three things have all overlapped and merged into each other, for many decades now—considers the maximization and optimization of "intelligence", however they mean the word when they use it, is now one of the most powerful idols which the technofascist powers have on their side.

It's their most humanitarian-seeming, most marketable goal for the world population. Their gift to Earth, so they say! They offer "intelligence too cheap to meter".

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Mx. Chara Aznable (they/them) of Pnictogen 1d ago

You had better believe, @troed, that I am very curious about why you're unable to discuss the topic of intelligence without pitching a fit. But I do have other concerns on my mind.

The #tech people chatter away about #AI and #intelligence and yet it's not possible, it seems, to get any of that crowd to say what they mean by any of those words. They pounce upon scientific mystification for sheer relief. I suggest that they WANT #science to remain forever chaotic and undefined, an endless shifting morass of possibilities. Every novelty that pops out of the event horizon means a new #startup opportunity!

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Mx. Chara Aznable (they/them) of Pnictogen 1d ago

I am fed up with the snobbery from anyone connected with #technology. Even the purportedly sensible figures such as Doctorow and Anil Dash are still clinging to the mindset that they're frustrated saviors. They wanted to believe that history was over because tech had put an end to it, solved civilization, and they were the few special people who really and truly understood this revolution in human affairs.

Well, most revolutions turn out to be pretty catastrophic, when you actually investigate them closely. Revolutions bring in periods of explosive social change, and we remember such changes fondly (perhaps too fondly) but betrayal and failure and corruption have been the inevitable endpoints of all great Revolutions.

So, who's up for another one? The #Revolution is dead. ¡Viva la Revolución!