azul
douglas adams's story about the civilization that built a giant computer that gave the ultimate answer but nobody knew what the question was so they put all their resources into building an even bigger computer just to figure out the question ... it feels more plausible every day.
Jun 25 at 5:36amWeb
Show threadNo mother, no bride, no king1d ago

RE: https://social.vivaldi.net/@RosaCtrl/114409610291341173

@typeswitch I think we are in Taking care of god, except we are the dying civilisation

Show threadNo mother, no bride, no king1d ago

RE: https://social.vivaldi.net/@RosaCtrl/116806978302796880

@typeswitch oh, and of course, different genre but there’s also this from yesterday

Show threadEric Schutte1d ago
@typeswitch
Yes, I totally agree.
But “DON’T PANIC” seems less plausible every day.
Show threadMensch, Marina1d ago
@typeswitch only the intension is different: Our techgiants don't build increasingly bigger computers to answer questions. They build them to gain more power over other people, nations, economies. There is no quest for answers. Only for profits.
Show threadNazo1d ago
@typeswitch And they were the filthy rich people who did it too...
Show threadPianosaurus 🕴1d ago
@nazokiyoubinbou @typeswitch Maybe we should adopt the leaf as legal tender.
Show threadNazo22h ago
@pianosaurus @typeswitch I don't seem to recall that specific reference, but, regardless, it would just result in those of means stripping the forests bare and then salting the earth so no one could plant behind them...
Show threadPianosaurus 🕴8h ago

@nazokiyoubinbou @typeswitch It's from Douglas Adams's "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe", and stripping them bare is basically what happens:

"Since we decided a few weeks ago to adopt the leaf as legal tender, we have, of course, all become immensely rich."

Followed closely by:

"So in order to obviate this problem," he continued, "and effectively revalue the leaf, we are about to embark on a massive defoliation campaign, and...er, burn down all the forests. I think you'll all agree that's a sensible move under the circumstances."

Show threadNazo2h ago
@pianosaurus @typeswitch Ah, a lot of the details from that one stuck with me less for whatever reason. Mostly I remember the food that enjoys being eaten, lol. Sounds like he got ahead of that one too though.
Show threadErik the short (vi)king1d ago
@typeswitch i was literally just thinking about this very thing yesterday
Show threadD. G. Marshall1d ago

@typeswitch

So much of today's reality has been ripped off from science fiction.

Tech-bros looked at all the dystopian warnings, and saw instruction manuals.

Show threadNoisecolor1d ago

@davidtheeviloverlord
It's not tech-bros. They are just normal people. Normal insecure dumbasses like everyone else.

It's just capitalism. You don't survive if you are not an aggressive lying sob and there is no accountability if you are. That's it.
@typeswitch

Show thread60sRefugee1d ago
@Noisecolor @davidtheeviloverlord @typeswitch As opposed to the dedication to the public welfare of communist commissars.
Show threadNoisecolor1d ago

@60sRefugee
I know your are being cheeky, but I literally don't think it would be worse in any way.

The whole world would need a period of communism. At least until we eat this new paedophile aristocracy.
@davidtheeviloverlord @typeswitch

Show threadTionisla14h ago

@Noisecolor @davidtheeviloverlord @typeswitch

Or you have a tree and make leafs your currency ;-)

Show threadGraceless Hippo1d ago

@typeswitch

As do the industry of philosophers built up around it to jump on the gravy train of the gullible

Show threadcraignicol1d ago
@typeswitch @gombang maybe we should put the mice in charge
Show threadJanet1d ago
@typeswitch He saw so much, but just didn’t know to call it ‘Deep Slop’…
Show threadyak1d ago
@typeswitch best part is, the answer was also wrong
Show threadDud and Forgotten.1d ago
@yakmacker that's because a bug got into the system. @typeswitch
Show threadMaggie Pie 🇦🇺🇺🇸 🚫AI1d ago
@typeswitch just remember who’s the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
Show threadrooftopjaxx 🇮🇷1d ago
@typeswitch All Power To The White Mice.
Show threadStoneface Vimes1d ago
@typeswitch I think the sweetest bit about that is that so little attention was paid at all stages of the project was that the answer (42) ended up being the solution to the ultimate question "what is six times seven?"
Show thread🇳🇱🇪🇺Jeroen🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦1d ago
@capnthommo @typeswitch You mean "six times nine"
Show threadSkibidi Suurone1d ago

@jeroen94704 @capnthommo @typeswitch
Came here to check that this was mentioned in the comments.

And with the direction "we" are going, it is more plausible every day that the answer and the question will not match.

Show threadStoneface Vimes1d ago
@VPSuuronen @jeroen94704 @typeswitch Douglas Adams - a man before his time.
Show threadStoneface Vimes1d ago
@jeroen94704 @typeswitch well yes. According to the weird maths practiced by the mice. But when I was at school 42 was arrived at by multiplying 6 & 7.
Show threadlp0 on fire 1d ago
@capnthommo @jeroen94704 @typeswitch, echo -e 'base=13\n6*7' | bc
Show thread🇳🇱🇪🇺Jeroen🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦1d ago
@capnthommo @typeswitch That's because the spaceship carrying the hairdressers and telephone sanitisers of the planet Golgafrincham crashed into prehistoric Earth, corrupting the program.
Show thread@stevewfolds1d ago

@typeswitch
@capnthommo
“The Nine Billion Names of God”,
Short story by Arthur C. Clarke, 1953.

6 pages
https://faculty.winthrop.edu/kosterj/WRIT510/readings/The%20Nine%20Billion%20Names%20of%20God.pdf

Show threadStoneface Vimes1d ago
@stevewfolds @typeswitch remember reading that years ago. Very good isn't it.
Show thread@stevewfolds1d ago
@capnthommo @typeswitch
The scifi writers gave it a pre-Nebula award in 1970-1.
Show threadBastianoso Geratewohl1d ago
@typeswitch We should stop the replies once we hit the number 42.
Show threadDaveybot1d ago

@typeswitch I think Deep Thought's further reflection on the somewhat tedious nature of the whole wretched exercise was also particularly telling:

"...So long as you can keep disagreeing with each other violently enough and slagging each other off in the popular press, you can keep yourself on the gravy train for life."

Show threadluca1d ago
@typeswitch For now we're still at the regular computer level (the advanced computer was planet Earth, to give the ultimate question). And even at this level the LLMs can't compute results to 42.
Show threadMarc1d ago
@typeswitch at least the answer was short and to the point and not an endless flow of gibberish 😩
Show threadNot A Number1d ago
@typeswitch his shoe-shop model of economics was only wrong in terms of the shop type too. It's just cafes now.
Show threadcurtmack1d ago
@typeswitch up there with the Twilight Zone episode about the man who finds a fortune telling machine at a diner that gives generic but seemingly always true answers, and he becomes obsessed and starts asking the machine everything
Show threadWesDym1d ago
@curtmack I didn't find an explanation for this episode, and everyone involved except Shatner is dead now, but Serlng's closing monologue makes it clear the story is about the folly of supersticion. The same point has been made many times by many people. James Randi showed audiences how this works with horoscopes, by having them all read what he said were horoscopes created just for them, which they all agreed seemed apt, and then revealing that they were all identical.
Show threadcurtmack1d ago
@wesdym I agree, but I don't think that undermines the analogy to LLMs.
Show threadWesDym1d ago
@curtmack Indeed. Pretty much the same thing is happening now, only magnified. The answers sound cogent, sensible, informed, and even 'intelligent'. I noticed years ago that people confuse performance with competence, which fact makes it easier to con people, be it pennies or politics. I've often been accused of being AI myself -- as near as I can tell, just because I write well enough to seem like it to some people.
Show threadDarren Hartland1d ago
@typeswitch Adams was a genius and way ahead of his time, and possibly mostly harmless.
Show threadF1001d ago

@typeswitch Also see Asimov's "The Last Question"

"By the year 2061, two technicians ask Multivac, the supercomputer that powers human civilization, whether entropy can be reversed. The computer responds that it lacks sufficient data to answer. As millennia pass, humanity continues to pose this same question to ever more advanced computers— Each time, the response remains unchanged..."

https://www.unsoft.com/shortstory/lastquestionasimov.pdf

Show threadWesDym1d ago
@F100 You've put this in quotes, but I did not find the quoted text of your comment in your link. I don't believe the word "unchanged" occurs in the story, and in fact, the answer DOES change, every single time the question is asked. That's a very deliberate detail of the story, indicating increasing sophistication. The tale is an allegory of the Scientific Method.
Show threadF1001d ago
@wesdym "THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER."
Show threadF1001d ago

@typeswitch if you ask Maple AI the same question:

**Short answer:**
No — in a truly isolated (closed) system the total entropy cannot be made to decrease; it can only stay the same (in an ideal reversible process) or increase.

**Why the law is so robust**

| Aspect | What the second law says | How it applies to “reversing” entropy |
|--------|--------------------------|----------------------------------------|
| **Thermodynamic definition** | ΔS ≥ 0 for any spontaneous change… #ai #maple

Show threadferricoxide1d ago
@typeswitch

So does the B Ark. Or, at least, one wishes there might be a B Ark. They didn't have "influencers" — on social media or otherwise — back when Adams was still around, but he probably would have included them with the public telephone cleaners.
Show threadWesDym1d ago

@ferricoxide And yet, Adams allowed that the Golgafrinchans could also be wrong, as those who stayed behind were all eventually wiped out by a plague from a dirty phone.

Reduced to a single statement, Adams's oeuvre might say, "Everyone believes they're smarter than they really are."

Show threadferricoxide1d ago
@wesdym I'd be willing to risk extinction to be shut of the likes of Joe Rogan and Andrew Tate.
Show threadJens Finkhäuser1d ago
@typeswitch It was a warning not to build the torment nexus, but techbros misunderstood and in fact built the torment nexus.
Show threadWolfram1d ago
@typeswitch I think the idea behind this is, that if you don't have the right questions, the answers are useless and that finding the right questions is the hard part.
On the other hand the right questions may yield the answer in themself.
Show threadWesDym1d ago

@typeswitch This tale is likely analogue for real-life experiences or observations. In this case, the infernal habit of large companies to pour horrible amounts of treasure into half-baked plans, only to have to come back later and do the same, only much more, to fix those oversights.

My father, when he was a consultant, said the mentality is, there's never time and money to do it right the first time, but there's always time and money to do it over.

Show threadR.L. Dane    🍵 1d ago

@typeswitch

Me watching dystopian B-movies in the early nineties: "This is so hilariously stupid and implausible."

Me in 2026: "FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU—"

😂🤣😭

Show threadDerò 🇨🇦🏴‍☠️1d ago
@typeswitch @skyglowberlin Jeopardy nightmare episode
Show threadUpLateGeek1d ago
@typeswitch the even funnier part was that the question that the computer came up with was the wrong question to begin with!
Show threadlaus1d ago
@typeswitch and that it can’t do proper arithmetic is just spot on
Show threadF10023h ago

@typeswitch also see Robert Sheckley's "Ask a Foolish Question":

https://archive.org/details/askafoolishquest33854gut #scienceFiction #ai #ThatstheWrongQuestion

Ask a Foolish Question : Robert Sheckley : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Book from Project Gutenberg: Ask a Foolish Question

Internet Archive
Show threadTionisla14h ago

@typeswitch ACK, and I still think Arthur Dent trying to tell the nutri-matic food dispenser so it can make "almost but not quite like Tea" is a pretty good prophecy of slop prompting.

Back in the 80ies I found it a hilarious idea, now it scares me how good Douglas Adams predicted our present/future (Grabs towel, gazes uneasily at the sky)