A long overdue Open Thread for Non-Personal Stuff. (There’s also one for personal stuff.)
As always, no trolls or MRAs. Let me know if any show up.
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Open Thread for Non-Personal Stuff, 5/16 Triumphant Hedgehog Edition
@Falconer
The irony is just…too thick for that to be real.
@Scildfreja
This person seems to be missing the point entirely. The principal value of humans is, basically, being humans: cracking jokes, telling stories, making music, making love, inventing cool stuff, drawing pictures, writing books, dancing in the streets, all that sort of thing, and I’m not seeing robots making us obsolete in those fields in the foreseeable future.
@ Alan Robertshaw
I’ll also note that there’s nothing inherently right-wing about slogans like “it’s the economy stupid” or “there is no alternative”; anybody could use those for any old thing, because they’re totally unspecific.
@ Scildfreja-
I agree with you. I’ve said basically the same thing for years now. I’m an artist, robots won’t take my job any time soon. I don’t think we want them to anyway, people like creating things and seeing things created by other people.
The only intrusion I can see AI making into art is in the music industry, but that won’t stop musicians and the “songs written by a robot!” will lose its novelty value quickly. Creating is a human job.
No one really wants to do meaningless jobs anyway, so I’m not sad to see them go. however, when they are actually starting to disapear, it would upheave the lower class and young people if there is no support for them or socialist restructuring.
@ the general thread:
Milo Yinniepoopoo got interrupted during his shitty tour at a college campus again and he’s being awful about it. I haven’t looked into it further beyond “This is a thing that happened.”
I have a situation that has come up and the professional component to that I want to get some feedback on here while the personal aspect I’ve brought up on the personal thread. So here goes:
I’ve been asked to speak to a group of DV survivors about the abusive relationship I was in and the road to where I am now, and while I want to say yes and do the talk my internal/emotional reaction has me concerned. I also worry about what to say…helping others who are getting out of their own abusive relationships in my professional capacity has never brought up the kinds of feelings that just being asked to speak in front of this group has. An acquaintance in social work is the person who did the asking and we do have a small overlap with the professional circles we move in – if I tell this person no, things might be weird during future interactions, they might not..how does one even assess that?
That’s my concern too. Technology has proven very efficient at eliminating jobs and not at all effective at changing the structure of the economy so that its benefits actually reach everyone, eg, increased food production hasn’t led to an end to hunger. And “your job was crappy anyway” is cold consolation to the unemployed.
@katz
Well, that’s kinda the issue that the ‘oh no, automation’ people are either missing or pointing out (depending on which people we’re talking about). Technology can’t solve economic issues; never has been able to, never will be able to. Only people can do that, and right now nobody with any power is trying to.
Good cartoon by Rebecca Burgess on how perception of “the austistic spectrum” can be a problem:
Understanding the spectrum
Saphira:
Wow. Nobody introduce this guy to Laibach, ok?
@PI: I’ve been watching Jon at Many A True Nerd play Far Harbor, and it’s certainly whetting my appetite. I think I might get it after completing the main quest. If it went on sale, that’d be nice, but it’s not going on sale any time soon.
There are a few elements I want to nick and spring on my friends when/if we play Savage Worlds Rifts. I shall say no more.
Okay, even talking about this story–even the link title, for pity’s sake–means giving a laundry-list of Trigger Warnings, so here goes:
Racism
Ablism
Bullying
Sexual Assault
Unrepentant Evil
Okay, so, that out of the way:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/05/25/white-high-school-football-players-in-idaho-charged-with-raping-black-disabled-teammate-with-a-coat-hanger/
As horrible as the assault itself is, the sustained campaign of brutal bullying–allegedly aided and abetted by the adult coaches–is in some ways even more appalling.
(The page isn’t loading properly for me so I’m sort of going from memory, sorry if I misplace names!)
@authorialAlchemy
err… We, uh, well, we’ve sort of got software to do that right now :s . There are some nifty programs that paint rather creatively, and I know a neural network algorithm that can assemble Shakespearean poetry.
(I know what you’re saying, and I agree actually, but I’ve also learned to never say never when it comes to this stuff. @Daliliama is right, humans are for humaning, and even if robots can do them it doesn’t mean that humans doing them is de-valued.)
Yup. Agreed! Though frankly I think that’s what’s happening with the upswell of support for outsider candidates in the recent US primaries – Bernie and Trump specifically. Both the progressive movement and its counterpart have been long-marginalized by an establishment middle that’s been applying pressure to squeeze as much money and wealth out of everyone, and automation has been a large part of that.
If the pressure continues, political change is going to be forced, either through fascism or progressivism forcing its way into political power and coming to grips with the problems that automation brings. I personally think it’s going to be a progressive change – the fascists are loud but deeply unpopular outside of their circles, whereas progressives enjoy majority support in most places I’ve looked.
Either way, though, political change will arrive to deal with this problem. It’s just an open question as to how difficult that change will be. Here’s hoping it’s quick, and that no one needs to suffer needlessly for it to happen.
@msexceptiontotherule, as far as I am concerned (and I am by no means an authority or anyone to listen to!) you have no obligation to talk about it to anyone, and if you tell your colleague that you’re not comfortable with it and they don’t respect that and start being weird around you? That’s their problem.
You don’t need to justify your anxiety or trepidation in the slightest. In your shoes I would find a calm space and then look closely at my anxiety to ask “is this an important part of me, and is this something I want to confront right now?” That’s between the anxiety and you, and no one else.
<3 I hope it works out!
So I saw EJ’s Dwarf Fortress WHTM playthrough and thought it was far too nifty, so I think I’ll give it a try. Anyone want to be a dorf?
Shorter Ben Shapiro:
I find that very offensive.
You are easily offended and need a thicker skin.
S/he is a social justice warrior.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/05/ben-shapiros-messy-breakup-with-breitbart.html
Scildfreja:
Always ready for that!
Right after you mentioned this, I saw a bunch of posts on my tumblr dashboard about it, saying that this is extremely anti-semitic because Cap’s creators were Jewish, and Cap was a way for them to fight back when even in America it wasn’t cool to hate Nazis yet.
Moggie
Thank you so much for this comic. I have autism and I have been saying I have autism spectrum disorder because I thought it’s a more broaden term. Not everyone with autism acts the same. But I’m more comfortable saying I have autism now. I also have ADHD, OCD, anxiety and depression which is very difficult for me to communicate, socialize, cope, act, listen and learn.
It really breaks my heart that there are so many people out there who see me and other autistic people as “lazy” “spoiled” “overly sensitive” “needs to be beaten/locked up” etc and will use our autism against us when they hurt us “I didn’t say/do that, its all in your head.” Etc.
After all, what sort of person would go to a concert where the singer is a computer program?
Apparently me. It’s this Saturday.
@Scildfreja
I’m up for being armorer.
@Scildfreja
Also, the fascists haven’t actually got an answer; in fact, they’ve got a deep split: the basic fascist response to this problem is ‘smash the machines and make everyone do manual labour’, but a) that’s not a real popular position anymore, and b) If you do that, profit margins for the factory owners go down immediately, and they don’t want that. They do still want to grind people’s faces in the dirt, though, so they’re kind of caught coming and going, but in a situation such as exists now, they mostly only appeal to the people who are so devoted to being assholes that they’re willing to undergo significant privations to stick it to ‘those people’. Most of the population would, if forced to choose, rather have healthcare and vacation and fast internet and spending money and all that than put the boot in one more time to the [ethnic/gendered/etc. slurs]. The trouble is that right now, nobody in politics is actually offering that choice.
Scildfreya
I think I spent too much time reading through that since by the time I responded to EJ, the thread was pretty much done.
So, I’ll say her what I said there (and this applies also to EJ still, too.) My nym is available! If you need it for “male” characters, that’s also fine. Doesn’t matter what the character does, really, but It’d be cool if they were a farmer since that’s what my dear, departed dad was; he could grow anything!
Interesting spread of dwarves in this initial game – all seven are women. Five of them are heterosexual, two are asexual. One of the asexual women is, strangely, also frequently lustful! I guess she likes to flirt but doesn’t take it beyond that? Never seen a DF start like this before, strange!
The expedition leader is apparently a humourless, rude, pessimist who values loyalty and sacrifice – yeah, that sounds like a dwarf. The two ace dwarves are a miner and a planter, respectively. Our planter friend is apparently sort of a scatter-brained anxious fun-junkie, and our second miner is incredibly brave, highly focused on her work, and sort of a dour pragmatist who dislikes martial skills and secretly wants some excitement in life.
Looks like a fun start!
See, I’m deeply wary of the attitude of “when things get bad enough, people will eventually do something about it.” Because historically, what people have done about it is put a lot of heads on pikes.
Well, you can’t just stop there – go on?
That’s really cool! I also saw a 3D printing project that created a painting in the style of Rembrandt.
One of my internet friends made a chat bot named sbalkny who shitposts and makes art in MS Paint, so I assumed real roboticists made something more advanced by now.
Do you think there could be robot artists? Like, I would be cool with that. Some advanced AI in a studio, painting it up.
Even with all of this, I don’t feel threatened. It’s just kind of like more people making art and robots won’t necessarily make better art than I can.
guy:
I’m guessing Hatsune Miku?
For some reason this thought took me back to 1977 or 1978, when I bought an album by the now largely forgotten composer of electronica, Tim Souster. One track (Music from Afar) featured a computer (a PDP-8, if I remember correctly) reciting part of the Keats poem Endymion, with a Scottish accent:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfddBviMQvI
Speech synthesis is commonplace today, but not so much back then. As a geeky kid, I was transfixed by this track, and I think it hardened my resolve to work with computers.
I have the sneaking suspicion that I’ve seen sbalkny shitpost on forums; or if not sbalkny then something much like it. The Turing Test will, sadly, probably be passed when AI descends to our level.