@benjaminjriley.bsky.social
Founder of Cognitive Resonance, a new venture dedicated to helping people understand human cognition and generative AI. Advocate for humans. Newsletter: https://buildcognitiveresonance.substack.com/
Sets up a strawman, then covers himself in straw.
As concerns mount among parents and teachers about young children using screens, Richard Culatta, the CEO of ISTE+ASCD (umbrella ed-tech org and shill for Big Tech), continues his bullshit argument that we should worry about *depriving* kids of screentime. Embarassing as it is damaging.
Hehe I meant Teddy might find your thread interesting, but good to know you are reading her reporting!
@teddyrosenbluth.bsky.social thread may be of interest
What do you say to someone who believes their chatbot has unlocked the keys to the universe? I talked to mental health experts who are following the 'AI psychosis' issue closely to find out: www.404media.co/ai-psychosis...
I mean it’s clearly not working, democracy that is.
If we can survive the current moment of American fascism, the hijacking of the political process by billionaires must be smashed to smithereens. I don't know if the Democratic party can break free of "the donor class." If it does not, the American left will need a new party.
Sometimes something—more accurately, someone—forces one to think, really *think*. Anne Sullivan played this role with Helen Keller, and last week, teacher and podcast host @dankearney.bsky.social did the same with me. Ngl (as the kids say), I’m proud of this one. Hope you’ll read & listen.
This is the most creepy European children’s illustration I’ve ever seen. I love it.
It’s a small but wondrous mercy that the Mike, the homeless handyman who lives in a tent in the empty lot that’s kitty-corner to my house in Austin, Texas, and who also plays music at loud volume at all hours of the day and night, has extraordinary taste.
Current bop: youtu.be/Gz_HEtzYT1o?...
@adonovan.bsky.social I misread your original comment to mean you were so familiar with skijoring that you knew of its unique international variants, the differences between say, Swedish skijoring (lutefisk rules) and Finnish skijoring (ruisleipä variant).
Devastated to learn otherwise.
Well we disagree! I think they are tools, full stop — but I’ll forego “mere” for your sake.
I would like to know how many of you are familiar with skijoring?
"What if we did water skiing but like, on snow, and instead of boats we shall pull participants using...horses? And do this on the cramped mainstreets of small towns throughout the west?"
(Obsessed, @dylanpkane.bsky.social)
I might delete and repost this with a better pic of skijoring in action, and also fix “ski joring” — amateur hour around here.
And with that, an instant follow! Do you skijore? Are you a skijorer?
Please do! Will read with great interest.
Well @eryk.bsky.social might chime in but as a Close Salvaggio Reader, I can say Eryk rhetorically approaches LLMs from a slightly different perspective than you. He gets the technical bits, but he's just as interested in using art and a sense of the poetic to contrast tool from human.
Are you going to write about this? Or have you already? I've been meaning to write something about the developments you're describing here -- please save me by doing that work for me?
Falls flat to you, I think you meant to type. ;) If you'll forgive the self promotion, in this recently recoded podcast I go into the question of consciousness by examining the self-reported experiences of Helen Keller. Starts around 18 min. Think you might find it interesting.
Nice! Where did you argue this? I'd like to read/listen!
I remain in awe of @eryk.bsky.social’s range of intellect. “The LLM, arguably, is not a model of language so much as it is a machine for turning language into more language…always needing to be called up and used. It transforms the user's language more so than it genuinely produces it.”
I only wish my mother was still alive so I could tell her, “soap is a surfactant which makes it like ice” and provide no further context. Thanks for the brief education!
Is that true for soap?
Why do you choose violence? (kidding)
I would recommend reading Helen Keller’s autobiography, if you haven’t already. She speaks of consciousness, and the lack thereof, from a perspective worth considering and ruminating upon.
I recently found the baby book my mother meticulously kept for the first years of my life, starting in 1976. Apparently, this was me at age three: "I've noticed ice is slippery like soap. Why is that?"
My question still stands.
Is this like when we destroyed Iran’s nuclear weapons program irreparably and yet Iran was also two weeks away from developing a nuclear weapon?
Asking for a citizen of Oceania who’s unsure if we are always at war with Eurasia or what.
Burst out laughing at “Air-es-stot-lay” — this is terrific! What a proud dad you must be!
