An enormous machine The couple of years in question here saw one of the largest bureaucracies anywhere undergo a convulsion in which it tried to reconceive itself as a non- or even anti-bureaucracy, which at first might sound like nothing more than an amusing bit of bureaucratic folly. In fact, it was frightening; it was a little like watching an enormous machine come to consciousness and start trying to think and feel like a real human. David Foster Wallace, The Pale King machinesconsciousnessbureaucracy
AI-art isn’t art An Essay by Erik Hoel erikhoel.substack.com AI-generated artwork is the same as a gallery of rock faces. It is pareidolia, an illusion of art, and if culture falls for that illusion we will lose something irreplaceable. We will lose art as an act of communication, and with it, the special place of consciousness in the production of the beautiful. …Just as how something being either an original Da Vinci or a forgery does matter, even if side-by-side you couldn’t tell them apart, so too with two paintings, one made by a human and the other by an AI. Even if no one could tell them apart, one lacks all intentionality. It is a forgery, not of a specific work of art, but of the meaning behind art. artconsciousnessbeautymeaningai
Rationality: From AI to Zombies A Book by Eliezer Yudkowsky www.readthesequences.com The Tao of rationalityEveryone sees themselves as behaving normallyArgue against the bestLet the meaning choose the wordPeople can stand for what is true, for they are already enduring it+11 More Do not propose solutionsOne brickYour intention to cut rationalitythinkingconsciousness
Tiny robots A Quote "Yes, we have a soul. But it’s made of lots of tiny robots.” — Giulio Giorello Rationality: From AI to Zombies soulconsciousness
The Wind-Up Bird and Tuesday's Women A Short Story from The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami Who I was supposed to beQuittingA regular wind-up toy world this is
Who I was supposed to be Probably, the seed of a schism had been there all along, however microscopic. But in time the gap widened, eventually taking me out of sight of who I was supposed to be. In terms of the solar system, if you will, I should by now have reached somewhere between Saturn and Uranus. A little bit farther and I ought to be seeing Pluto. And beyond that—let’s see—was there anything after that?
Quitting But stay on I didn’t. I don’t know exactly why I up and quit. Didn’t even have any clear goals or prospects of what to do after quitting.
A regular wind-up toy world this is A regular wind-up toy world this is, I think. Once a day the wind-up bird has to come and wind the springs of this world. life