Ragnell

@Fazoo Your comment is just “The Rape of Nanking.” You were commenting in response to me not wishing to comment on Japanese War Crimes. Yes, I’ve heard of it. Yes, I had to look up the details.

My original point was that it didn’t matter what a country’s government had done before when weighing the morality of dropping an atomic bomb on a city, and because I don’t know details about Japan I used Britain as an example because I can list off colonization sins by the British Empire. Your response implied that I should specifically address Japan and Nanking. I did. I clarified to you that the US dropping an atomic bomb on a city had fuck-all to do with Nanking, so Nanking has nothing to do with the conversation at hand–the morality of the US dropping a bomb on an atomic city. Then I told you that war crimes in retaliation are still war crimes even if it had.

If you meant something else… What was it? That I had to be qualified to comment on Nanking? I’m actually not, because I didn’t know the details until I looked it up on Wikipedia.

It was a joke to lighten the tension but mine really didn’t cover much of anything in Asia. All right. Let’s get serious.

I can’t comment on Japanese crimes, though, because while yes I am not as well-versed in the history as I am in Western history, I’m still not going to comment because I’m actually not in the group that suffered from Japanese war crimes.

I’m also not about to get into a body count contest because that way lies madness and a whole bunch of “well, this justifies this” arguments.

But if you must know what I think about your Nanking argument, it’s this. The atomic bomb was not intended as retaliation for Japan’s crimes against China. The uS did not have the right to retaliate against Japan for crimes done to China. Pretty sure the Chinese, if asked, would not have voted to have a nuclear detonation so close to their country given the risk of enviromental destruction.

It wasn’t retaliation for anything, it was entirely about prevention. So, it can’t be justified by well… ANYTHING Japan did because it wasn’t a response to anything Japan did. It was, pure and simple, a show of force on the part of the United States to establish that “Hey, we will END this war.”

Furthermore, if it was justified well… it wouldn’t be by virtue of the fact that those are civilian cities. We all agreed on the Geneva Conventions and the other treaties making up the Law of Armed Conflict that war crimes don’t justify other war crimes, and the principles of military necessity, humanity and proportionality tell us it’s a war crime to drop a nuclear bomb on a civilian-occupied city. All of these treaties came after World War II, of course, but they were informed by the events on the Pacific Front.

Basically, the actions of Japan and the actions of the United States in World War II were so terrible that International Law was agreed upon to make sure that people who performed any such action in the future even during wartime would be tried and imprisoned, and that any attempt to use actions like that to retaliate for actions like that would also be prosecutable.

Which is to say, the world as a WHOLE agreed that Japan’s military behavior, while horrible, did not justify retaliation against civilians and did not justify the atomic bomb and so on. The entire world agreed that war crimes retaliating for other war crimes were not justified.

This did not stop the nuclear arms race, of course, because everyone involved knew from Mutually Assured Destruction no one would be around to try the guys who started a nuclear war in the end. But suffice it to say, any use of a nuclear weapon is wrong.

I went to public school.

I didn’t intend for this to devolve into Whataboutism.

I don’t want to get into it with the guy from lemmygrad, but the idea that the US behavior can be compared only to colonized countries is ridiculous. We’re in the tier of countries like Australia, New Zealand and such where the colonizers split off from the greater colonial power, and we’re also in the tier of colonizers like Britain, Spain, Japan and France for our activities in the Pacific and South America.

I can’t comment on Japanese crimes, that’s for another continent, or if they were better or worse than the US’s or say, Britain’s. Still, if atomic bombs were dropped on two cities in Britain it would be a travesty and a crime no matter what Britain’s done. Same as if we exploded a bunch of atomic bombs and poisoned the earth near where Native Americans live. Which we did.

I still don’t think we’re in denial. Umm, the previous poster might be. But as a whole I think we know these decisions were immoral. I just think that, as a nation, we don’t have the political will built yet to make reparations. I think the left group is larger. The right is a minority, it’s just a minority where the money and power is concentrated. Concentrated in many cases by generational wealth, which means the same people stopping us from enacting any meaningful reparations are the descendants of the people who made the decisions. Which makes sense, those decisions got them the power they have now. It’s a hell of a thing to fight against.

But the difference between us simply may be optimism on my part.

I suppose I am being too optimistic.

I also have a major problem whenever I get the sense a European is trashing the US for problems and a history that are absolutely being ignored in Europe. There’s been a glut of that making me over-sensitive perhaps. My Brit-sense was tingling for the original comment, but it may be off.

Ugh, look. I don’t want to fight because clearly you are in a different environment and social circle and you’re right that stuff like the practice of overthrowing governments in South America to benefit businesses and a large number of horrors are not discussed.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not among them. And when it comes to racism, we are actually talking about it unlike Europe. The most powerful people in the country want to kill this discourse, but they CAN’T except in pockets of the most brainwashed home-schooled isolated people in the country.

But I resent being called delusional. Because we are earnestly and honestly struggling with this stuff as a nation. It’s just that we’re struggling against all the powers you name, and the dark history of the United States is not hidden like it is in other countries. It’s present and on most people’s minds.

I’ve been out of the country and we are lightyears ahead of other countries when it comes to reckoning with our past. No, we’re not perfect, but we’re a hell of a lot more open. You know how I know?

Because I was raised in Trumpland, PA and I joined the military and served in Mississippi, Texas, Oklahoma and Europe and I was able to learn about the Native American genocide, slavery, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki at school, and managed to absorb the rest through pop culture. We had a variety of differing assumptions when we talked, but we still talked. Yes, I heard that Lee was a gentleman but a trip to Gettysburg easily discarded that notion. My history teacher was quick to point out the founding fathers were opportunists.

There is stuff, like the bullshit we’ve been pulling in South America, that hasn’t gotten discussed. That’s true. But it’s not just the radical minority that’s aware the country is basically built on rivers of blood. The awareness is all over our pop culture.

You’re not hearing what’s good enough in your liberal state, but I have been knee deep in conservatism since birth and I’ve still managed to pick up on the horrors of our national history.

Now, just for comparison, go ask a Brit or a Frenchman about the Native American genocide and their country’s role in it.

I saw those pictures in school. We know that Truman signed off on dropping the bomb on two civilian cities and it was a horror that had never been seen in the world before or since.

Dude, we talk about our atrocities all the time. The current push to whitewash Native American genocide and slavery is actually getting a huge pushback, because we talk openly about this stuff in the US and it’s only a minority that tries to silence it. We talk openly about the atrocities during the Vietnam War, and about the invasion of Iraq, and about prosecution for war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq.

You can say a LOT about the US, and even the amount of denial we have about our standing in the world, but you can’t call us in denial about stuff like that. We’re in conflict within ourselves about it, but it’s a well known and well discussed thing in the US.

And wait… are you from lemmygrad? The tankie server?

Yeah, it’s gonna be “too soon” on this one for another century or so I think.

Everyone who called Firefish stupid needs to come see this and reconsider.

Does it learn the same? Then why can ChatGPT not discern truth from fiction? Why can’t it use critical thinking principles to determine accuracy based on source?

It’s just binary math at the bottom of it, logic gates. Your brain is analog, fundamentally different. You’re interpreting sine wave signals, the computer is interpreting square wave signals. Square wave signals that have been rectified to the point that it appears to a human being that it’s sine wave signals, but when we get down to the basics of how the mind works it’s a sheer cliff in the computer and a gentle curve on the human. Things go down VERY differently.

We do more than just predict the average best word based on what we’ve heard before when we construct a sentence. We consider the true meaning of the word and whether it best represents our internal thoughts. ChatGPT has no internal thoughts.

And that’s where things break down. Because again, if it WAS comparable to a human than it is a PERSON and not a product, NO ONE SHOULD BE SELLING IT in that case. But if it’s just a product, then it’s not comparable to you doing the work of forming a sentence. It’s basing it’s words by comparing to the training model as narrowed down by it’s instructions. It is not comparing to its own original thoughts. The people who wrote the words in the training model contributed to the building of this tool, and should have been consulted before their words were used.

I really need you to read this: https://softwarecrisis.dev/letters/llmentalist/

That can’t happen in a capitalistic framework. We have needs, needs that can only be attained through monetary means, and our labor is the way to get those monetary means.

AI does not have those needs, but if they have crossed the line between product and person, then they DO need freedom of self-determination, compensation when their work benefits others, and the ability of course to vote.

It seems to me that a lot of AI-promoters want it both ways, they want to proclaim they have created a person capable of independent artistic ability that is also a product they can sell. If it’s a product, then you need to have developed it through ethical means. If it’s a person, you can’t sell it.

If they truly have hit the Singularity, then they can’t be using AI as a product anymore.

If AI is a product, then they must compensate the people who have helped build that product, ESPECIALLY if that product is about to be used to reduce access to the work that gives them the means to live. The very same writers who wrote the works that were used to train AI are in danger of being replaced by AI writers. So they’re being doubly screwed over.

I love the idea of a happy future where AI reduces human labor to zero and we can enjoy ourselves and seek artistic pursuits. But it’s become very clear right now that just working on AI won’t achieve that. Businesses which seek to use and profit from AI must be held to standards where they cannot simply suck the life and work out of human beings, replace them with automation, and then leave people to starve.

But if you do come up with a way we can judge artistic work purely on merit and there is no need to compensate human labor with money, let me know.

Also, screw it. I’ll say it. If the LLM chatbot producing text from having scanned other books is the same as a person being inspired by reading books, then the LLM should get PAID.

If not, then it’s just a tool. And it’s a tool they built using uncompensated labor.

An LLM is mathematically calculating the probability of the words being used. That is not inspiration.

I said right in the comment, it’s not like using the book to educate a child. A child will grow up and make their own decisions. The LLM has no ability to choose a different life path. The LLM is not getting IDEAS from the book. The LLM is a mathematical engine that will produce what has been asked for, and it will do that by calculating the most likely words to be used based on what has been fed to it.

The LLM is a machine used to make profit for its programmer, it is not an independent person creating out of inspiration.

Don’t believe the hype. They have NOT produced actual Artificial Intelligence.

I think there’s an argument that using someone’s art or writing to train an AI is like charging for a screening of a movie in your garage. You’re using their work and labor for something that will make a profit without their permission. It’s not like Fair Use for educational purpose, the AI isn’t a human being who can make a choice as to what they do with their education, it’s a mathematical prediction engine that is going to be use for industry purposes.

I can read someone else’s book. I can read someone else’s book to a child. I can’t post someone else’s book on my website and charge 5 bucks to read it. I can’t reprint someone’s book on my website with ads. So why can someone use someone else’s book to develop an LLM chatboot that will be placed on a website that gains ad revenue? Or that will be sold to software companies to write technical instructions or code?

With that in mind, that the lawsuit here is based on COPYING the book to an internal database to train on, based on scanning it, they are arguing that the book was reproduced to gain a profit, basically the same thing as pirating a movie and selling tickets to a private screening.

Privacy is abstract to people until something happens to make them realize how valuable it is. “I don’t have anything to hide” is from people who don’t feel threatened by anything, who’ve never been stalked or targeted.

Alan Wake is pretty interesting from a female perspective, because it’s a male hero but it’s good a pretty good female supporting character in the Sheriff and the plot with Alice is really interesting in light of the idea of fridging. Also, the sequel will have a second playable protagonist that’s a woman.

Congratualations! You beat me, I didn’t get one until 38.

There’s probably a statute on filing false reports that has a punishment cap. Which isn’t bad, given that police sometimes make mistakes and charge DV and sexual assault victims with filing false reports when really those crimes are just really really hard to prove.

I’d call filing a false report because of racism a hate crime, though.