thelsdj

Community Admin for Reimagine the Mind | technology dissident

[thelsdj @thelsdj]

Apologies to my followers, you're no longer the audience for my tweets. I am.

[thelsdj @thelsdj]

@kramerposts Let me introduce you to Little Toot.

[thelsdj @thelsdj]

@Thomasdelvasto_ Dragon age inquisition has an amazing visual thing (plus great music) in the title screen that would be spoilers to explain, but it's what I thought of reading this

[thelsdj @thelsdj]

@Thomasdelvasto_ @funplings there's a lot to say for a feminism built on respect for the crone

[Ryan Moulton @moultano]

The eyespots on a peacock’s train are super cyan, so when the peacock spreads its train feathers it is going super saiyan super cyan.

[thelsdj @thelsdj]

@meekaale @made_in_cosmos I really want to see someone pull some crazy <table> shit out of the weights.

[thelsdj @thelsdj]

@bronzebust @teachrobotslove Making an entry ever day of your thoughts and feelings at the moment of waking whether you "think you dreamed" or not will increase the recall of the dreams.

[SerPatrickSpens @caltropsmith]

@izs Amateur stuff I’ve had ChatGPT in my skull since when I was a child, before it was even invented. I’d think “I’m mad at mom for not buying me that toy at target!” And my brain would say “You’re right to be upset, and here’s why:”

[Smiling Apple.jpg @ellaguro]

for @Aftermath_site i wrote about the phenomenon of the Backrooms and liminal horror, and what it says about our current cultural moment

[thelsdj @thelsdj]

@captain_mrs https://t.co/kNwG5cMcfB she's a badass

[thelsdj @thelsdj]

Can an AI initiate someone into the mysteries of computers? Even as an autodidact I feel like there are people who set my way of thinking in the right direction.

[thelsdj @thelsdj]

The internet can give you access to bits of the minds of great thinkers. How is someone supposed to know where to look and who to read if they aren't initiated? What is capturing the attention of the uninitiated? Is AI becoming the gateway to reading for many today?

[thelsdj @thelsdj]

I'm sure the AI references this stuff when asked about books / authors / stuff like that. Taken out of context but interesting that that may inform new readers if they engage with AI as a reading partner.

[thelsdj @thelsdj]

The internet can give you access to bits of the minds of great thinkers. How is someone supposed to know where to look and who to read if they aren't initiated? What is capturing the attention of the uninitiated? Is AI becoming the gateway to reading for many today?

[thelsdj @thelsdj]

So even though they naturally distrust it they develop a relationship with it that looks like: "I can get something from this even if I don't get exactly what I want and I don't know how it works so I'll settle with what I get and feel a particular way about what I got."

[thelsdj @thelsdj]

There are generations of people who read hundreds if not thousands of books worth of human writing based on conversations with each other on the internet. A lot of those discussions are a big part of AI training data.

[thelsdj @thelsdj]

@QiaochuYuan 🫡

[thelsdj @thelsdj]

So even though they naturally distrust it they develop a relationship with it that looks like: "I can get something from this even if I don't get exactly what I want and I don't know how it works so I'll settle with what I get and feel a particular way about what I got."

[thelsdj @thelsdj]

Expand on my reply to this my task currently seems to be to figure out the minimum viable computer hyper-fixation for a young autist to put computation into whatever their grounded epistemology is that allows them to see clearly beyond the illusions.

[QC @QiaochuYuan]

okay here is my actual theory of autism. your job as an autist is to find a particular aspect of civilization to get obsessed with and defend, repair, and improve this part. this is what having special interests is for

autism is when your whole mind is a kind of stem cell, growing up as an autist means specializing from a stem cell to a specific type of cell. you need to specialize in order to unlock full autism power because full autism power comes from understanding a specific domain so deeply your whole mind changes shape to conform to the shape of the domain itself. when you do this hard enough you can get so good at things it is literal magic. people who do this are responsible for probably a significant fraction of all technological, cultural, artistic, spiritual, etc. progress

don't let it get to your head. stay humble. this isn't about you. the point of all this is tikkun olam. the good news is you probably already know what your obsession is. the bad news is you might currently be using some of your obsessive energy to destroy yourself. stay safe out there

[thelsdj @thelsdj]

There's a naive approach of: "well, one should naturally distrust something that seems too good to be true" but in so many ways modern technology is for young people is access to knowledge they desire that no one else in their environment can provide.

[thelsdj @thelsdj]

@QiaochuYuan Right, and technology isn't his hyperfixation so it makes sense that its not automatically seen as a problem that he CAN solve. That generally requires more wisdom, so in relation to my quote tweet: how does a young mind develop enough knowledge of how the illusion works?

[thelsdj @thelsdj]

@QiaochuYuan He's independently figured out how to mod Victoria 3 but has missed the basic understanding of what a computer can and can't do. This is only one data point but I'm guessing many such cases of young autists sucked into technology without a clear way through.

[thelsdj @thelsdj]

@QiaochuYuan Recently worked with a 17 year old, he hasn't fully grasped that the computer can't understand his desire. So when he typos something in his Victoria 3 mod and it doesn't work as intended he feels like god is punishing him.