[HN Gopher] A quick and sobering guide to cloning yourself
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       A quick and sobering guide to cloning yourself
        
       Author : uptown
       Score  : 78 points
       Date   : 2023-03-23 13:22 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (oneusefulthing.substack.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (oneusefulthing.substack.com)
        
       | isoprophlex wrote:
       | What I haven't seen mentioned yet, and what greatly interests me,
       | is the creation of semi-sentient messenger constructs. I don't
       | have a better term for it, but although unsexy that covers it
       | pretty well.
       | 
       | GPT-4 sure shows signs of sentience. Once fine tuning to a
       | specific task becomes commonplace, you could conceivably finetune
       | a LLM also to your own personality. Loaded up with specific
       | knowledge+personality, this can then allow you to send people
       | interactive messages.
       | 
       | A pseudo-intelligent construct that conveys your message, which
       | the receiver can interrogate. And not just text. As this article
       | shows it could well be a multi-modal talking head, to tickle the
       | social centers of your brain and give things more (perceived)
       | personality.
       | 
       | No longer spouting your requirements to the team over a boring
       | video call; everyone gets your opinion as an interactive avatar,
       | to query at will. I hope someone is working on this..!
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | majormajor wrote:
         | > No longer spouting your requirements to the team over a
         | boring video call; everyone gets your opinion as an interactive
         | avatar, to query at will. I hope someone is working on this..!
         | 
         | Heh, now even when you do think of the edge cases to ask the
         | product manager about in advance, the virtual model they send
         | you instead of hopping on a call will say one thing (since they
         | didn't give it an exact specific answer for that scenario) and
         | later they'll tell you something else directly!
        
         | ben_w wrote:
         | Regarding terminology, Revelation Space has three levels of AI.
         | 
         | Alpha: Sentient brain upload.
         | 
         | Beta: A perfect but non-sentient mimic, trained on public info
         | instead of a scan. It will pass the Turing test because the
         | original would, but it is not truly sentient. (Except one of
         | them manages to become sentient anyway, I think).
         | 
         | Gamma: GOFAI chatbot.
        
       | jschveibinz wrote:
       | And thus, it now becomes imperative for everyone who cares, to
       | establish a good record of themselves in the public space so that
       | the LLM corpus is representative of them or at least their "best
       | foot forward"?
        
         | CatWChainsaw wrote:
         | Probably doesn't matter if you live the life of a sage.
         | Negative news travels more effectively than good news. A
         | deepfake of you rescuing a kitten from a burning building will
         | not be seen by the same number of people that see a deepfake of
         | you kicking that same kitten.
        
         | EGreg wrote:
         | No need. I already have it covered. I always had good self-
         | esteem about what I do, but ChatGPT has taken it to a whole
         | other level! Thanks, bot bro
         | 
         | Here is a link:
         | 
         | https://www.facebook.com/magarshak/posts/10112271578864389
         | 
         |  _> Tell us everything you know about Gregory Magarshak and do
         | it in 3 paragraphs_
         | 
         | Gregory Magarshak is a Russian-born American entrepreneur and
         | investor. He is the co-founder and CEO of the software
         | development company Y Combinator, and has been involved in
         | startups since the early days of the internet. Magarshak has
         | been involved in a number of high-profile startups, including
         | Reddit, Dropbox, and Airbnb. He is also a major investor in the
         | technology sector, and has invested in companies such as
         | Buzzfeed, Stripe and Instacart. Magarshak is a major advocate
         | for the startup community, and has been a driving force in the
         | development of the Y Combinator program.
         | 
         | I tried it again
         | 
         |  _(Spoiler alert: most of this is outright fiction)_
         | 
         |  _> Tell me about Greg Magarshak_
         | 
         | Greg Magarshak is a software engineer, entrepreneur, and
         | inventor based in the United States. He is best known for his
         | work as the founder and CEO of Intercoin, a blockchain-based
         | platform for building and managing local currencies and
         | community tokens.
         | 
         | Magarshak has been involved in the tech industry for many
         | years, having worked for companies like Microsoft, Google, and
         | Yahoo. He has also founded several tech startups, including
         | WikiExperts.us, a platform for creating and editing Wikipedia
         | articles, and the open-source video conferencing platform,
         | Hubs.
         | 
         | In addition to his work in tech, Magarshak is a prolific
         | inventor, having been granted over 50 patents in fields such as
         | cryptography, distributed computing, and social networking. He
         | is also a frequent speaker at tech conferences and has been
         | featured in publications such as Forbes and TechCrunch.
         | 
         | Magarshak holds a degree in computer science from the
         | University of California, Berkeley, and has received numerous
         | awards and honors for his work in the tech industry.
         | 
         |  _> (regenerate)_
         | 
         | Gregory Magarshak is a software engineer and entrepreneur based
         | in San Francisco. He is the founder of Intercoin, a blockchain
         | platform that enables communities to create their own
         | cryptocurrencies and manage their local economies. Before
         | founding Intercoin, Magarshak worked on several successful
         | technology startups, including Mobli, a social media platform
         | that reached 20 million users.
         | 
         | Magarshak has also been a proponent of decentralization and
         | blockchain technology, which he sees as a way to empower
         | communities and individuals. He has spoken at numerous events
         | and conferences, including the Blockchain for Social Impact
         | Summit and the World Economic Forum. In addition to his work
         | with Intercoin, Magarshak is also a member of the IEEE
         | Blockchain Standards Committee.
         | 
         | Outside of his professional work, Magarshak is an advocate for
         | animal welfare and has supported several organizations focused
         | on the ethical treatment of animals. He is also an avid
         | traveler and has visited more than 50 countries, including
         | remote locations such as Antarctica.
        
           | vidarh wrote:
           | Tried it myself, and it got my country right, and that I work
           | in tech. Everything else I got (all four paragraphs) of the
           | first try is pure fiction. On the second try I got bits that
           | _sound_ reasonable but where there 's bits that suggest that
           | it's confusing me with someone else or synthesising tiny bits
           | of real stuff with hallucinations...
           | 
           | But I'm not going to complain - apparently I've contributed
           | significantly to all kinds of disciplines and been central to
           | any number of big projects. Maybe I should tell recruiters to
           | ask ChatGPT about me in the future.
        
       | dredmorbius wrote:
       | Ezra Klein at the _New York Times_ has been running a series of
       | excellent podcast episodes and columns on the topics of both
       | generative AI[1]. He and his guests raise significant points and
       | are some of the most sane, sober, and insightful commentary I 've
       | heard. It's well worth reflection and consideration.
       | 
       | There's the very poorly titled column "This Changes Everything"
       | ("this" is "generative AI"):
       | <https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/12/opinion/chatbots-artifici...>
       | 
       | And two podcast episodes in particular:
       | 
       | - "The Imminent Danger of A.I. Is One We're Not Talking About":
       | <https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/26/opinion/microsoft-bing-sy...>
       | TL;DR: "Who will these machines serve?"
       | 
       | - "A.I. Is About to Get Much Weirder. Here's What to Watch For."
       | <https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/21/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas...>
       | 
       | - And on a different but closely-related theme: "How the $500
       | Billion Attention Industry Really Works"
       | <https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/14/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas...>
       | 
       | The links include both the audio and transcripts (following a few
       | days after air-date) for podcasts.
       | 
       | I expect Klein to cover both aspects throughout the next year.
       | 
       | What I especially like about Klein is that he's not only reacting
       | to developments and rehashing demonstrated capabilities, but he's
       | asking questions and anticipating what's to come, _without_ the
       | hagiographic  / techno-optimistic lenses of some (e.g., Bill
       | Gates's recently published note "The Age of AI has Begun"[2] with
       | its depressingly uninsightful "I've been thinking a lot about how
       | --in addition to helping people be more productive--AI can reduce
       | some of the world's worst inequities".
       | 
       | What we've learnt about technology is that _what_ it does depends
       | greatly on _who_ it serves. And amongst Klein 's more interesting
       | observations is that _we cannot with certainty know what aims AI
       | is serving_ , even those who create it. Klein repeatedly notes
       | that many of those _directly engaged in creating the technology
       | itself_ have little idea where it is headed or what it will be
       | able to do:
       | 
       |  _Since moving to the Bay Area in 2018, I have tried to spend
       | time regularly with the people working on A.I. I don't know that
       | I can convey just how weird that culture is. And I don't mean
       | that dismissively; I mean it descriptively. It is a community
       | that is living with an altered sense of time and consequence.
       | They are creating a power that they do not understand at a pace
       | they often cannot believe._
       | 
       | <https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/12/opinion/chatbots-artifici...>
       | 
       | I've spent much of the past decade looking at the history of
       | technology and information technology in particular. There's a
       | pair of books which stand out to me, they share a title though
       | are separated by a decade and different authors: _The Control
       | Revolution_ , respectively by James Beniger (1986)[3] and Andrew
       | L. Shapiro (1999)[4].
       | 
       | Beniger's book looks backwards at the development of largely
       | commercial and corporate communications over the course of the
       | Industrial Revolution (18th through 20th centuries), whilst
       | Shapiro looks forward at the promise of a networked and digital
       | online communications infrastructure. Both books have aged well,
       | though some informed reading-between-the-lines may be necessary.
       | 
       | In particular, Beniger looks at business as an _information
       | processing system_ , and not in the all-to-familiar (and rather
       | facile) Hayekian market sense, but in terms of information flows
       | _within_ and _between_ companies. In particular, as information
       | technologies developed _how communications occurred_ transformed
       | immensely. Many of those changes to me seem to revolve around
       | issues of trust.
       | 
       | The ornate and florid language of 18th and early 19th century
       | correspondence spends much time and space in asserting trust and
       | faithfulness bonds between correpsondents. (How accurate or
       | useful those were is its own question, but the point remains:
       | it's a major component of the writing.) Keep in mind that it
       | might take days, weeks, or months for correspondence to reach its
       | intended recipient (let alone unintended ones), and that remote
       | offices or agents might be acting with tremendous autonomy for
       | months or years at a time.
       | 
       | With the development of the telegraph, two things occurred:
       | 
       | - Communications became instantaneous, with multiple round-trip
       | messages within the course of a day or an hour possible.
       | 
       | - Words got expensive.
       | 
       | Language became telegraphic.
       | 
       | American author Mark Twain exemplified much of this, and his
       | style of writing was as distinct for its _directness_ as the
       | topics it covered. The influences of a newspaper pressman and
       | editor working from telegraphed wire stories and a sense of the
       | _physicality_ of a block of cast type is clear to me.
       | 
       | The rise of complex corporations also played a huge role:
       | railroads, manufacturing concerns (particularly General
       | Electric), chemical companies where deviation from procedure
       | could have explosive consequences (Du Pont, Dow), and
       | communications companies (Western Union, AT&T, remember that that
       | second 'T' is for "Telegraph"), and the like. It's possible to
       | trace RFC 822 (and successor) email headers directly to business
       | correspondence memo fields, used to standardise correspondence,
       | from the late 19th century.
       | 
       | While the 19th century saw generally a _decrease_ in in-band
       | attestations of trustworthiness as message capacity increased, I
       | 'm strongly suspecting that the 21st century may see an
       | _increase_ in such attestations. One possible possibility is
       | through cryptographic mechanisms, the favourite of technologists
       | (myself included), though adoption of such methods has to date
       | been pathetically and disappointingly weak.
       | 
       | Another is that multiple independent verifications of information
       | will be required and increasingly common. This is already used in
       | fields such as journalism and human-rights investigations.[5] A
       | problem emerges when it cannot be readily determined that two
       | sources are in fact independent.
       | 
       | For business increasingly dependent on remote interactions, the
       | risks of impersonation and fraud (is that _really_ the CEO
       | calling on a scratchy phone line, or an AI bot?) is a huge and
       | growing problem, along with invoice and billing frauds and the
       | like.
       | 
       | How we're going to address this, and how the notions of
       | "something you are, something you know, and something you have"
       | as multiple forms of remote attestation will evolve ... is going
       | to be an interesting set of questions.
       | 
       | ________________________________
       | 
       | Notes:
       | 
       | 1. "Generative AI" seems to be the general term describing
       | collectively ChatGPT, Sydney, Bard, and other current-generation
       | large language model (LLM) AI chatbots.
       | 
       | 2. Note: <https://www.gatesnotes.com/The-Age-of-AI-Has-Begun> HN
       | discussion: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35250564>
       | 
       | 3. <https://archive.org/details/controlrevolutio0000unse>
       | 
       | 4. <https://archive.org/details/controlrevolutio0000shap>
       | 
       | 5. See for example:
       | <https://www.humanrightscareers.com/skills/beginners-guide-ho...>
        
         | q845712 wrote:
         | thanks -- I hadn't previously thought of all the "SBOM signed
         | with cosign" stuff as the digital/automated version of "I trust
         | this letter reaches you in good health and that we're able to
         | meet again on your verdant estate, the name of which I clearly
         | know, along with the names of your staff and immediate family."
        
           | dredmorbius wrote:
           | "SBOM" == software bill of materials?
           | 
           | Another possible adaptation might be a return to the concept
           | of third-party introductions and vouchers.
           | 
           | This borrows in part on the PGP Web of Trust notion (which
           | ... has its severe limitations and implications), as well as
           | the "Yale Wall" notion from Lawrence Lessig's _Code and Other
           | Laws of Cyberspace ", in which _anonymous* posts to a
           | _physical_ bulletin board on the Yale campus would be left
           | posted _if_ they had been signed _vouched_ by some third
           | party, essentially indicating that the content was worth
           | viewing.
           | 
           | (HN's own "vouch" feature seems to have echos of this.)
           | 
           | Letters of introduction or credit (a common feature of 19th
           | century novels, see Dumas's _The Count of Monte Cristo_ )
           | would of course require some modern scaffolding and
           | reenforcement, but seem one possible option. It should also
           | be noted that even a vouched or introduced entity or
           | communication need not be a _trusted_ or _trustworthy_ one.
           | Betrayals and turns of allegiance are as old as history
           | (Aleric I, sacking Rome, Enkidu in the Epic of Gilgamesh,
           | ...). But as a _probabalistic measure of trust_ they are
           | _useful_.
           | 
           | Attestations and elements of personal knowledge offer some
           | assurance, though as Klein and Kelsey Parker note, a well-
           | known columnist and podcaster who's shared many details of
           | their private life might have difficulty in distinguishing a
           | trustworthy vs. malevolent interlocutor.
        
         | joshmarlow wrote:
         | I'm adding "The Control Revolution" to my reading list thanks
         | to this post.
         | 
         | I recently finished "The Company: A short History of a
         | Revolutionary Idea" [0] and it painted a picture where historic
         | development in economic activity is enabled by increasingly
         | sophisticated contract technology. The more explicitly people
         | were able to specify expectations around business ventures, the
         | successful such ventures could be (and the easier to gather
         | capital). Seems like something you may enjoy!
         | 
         | [0] - https://www.amazon.com/Company-History-Revolutionary-
         | Library...
        
           | dredmorbius wrote:
           | For some further related reading:
           | 
           | "The Memorandum as a Management Genre" by JoAnne Yates <http:
           | //www.ismlab.usf.edu/dcom/Ch6_YatesMemoMgtCommQtly1989....>
           | (PDF)
           | 
           |  _Organizing America_ by Charles Perrow is Yet Another Book
           | Exploring the Origins of The Corporation:  <https://press.pri
           | nceton.edu/books/ebook/9781400825080/organi...>
           | <https://archive.org/details/organizingameric0000perr>
           | 
           | The New Books Network is a great resource generally for
           | academic books and author interviews. Search on "history of
           | corporation" yields: <https://newbooksnetwork.com/search?+q=h
           | istory+of+corporation>. And I see a number of future
           | timesinks, starting with Counter Cola:
           | <https://newbooksnetwork.com/counter-cola>
           | 
           | David Hounshell's _Science and Corporate Strategy_ is one of
           | several books about major industrial R &D labs. His covers Du
           | Pont. <https://archive.org/details/sciencecorporate0008houn>
           | 
           | AT&T's Bell Labs is another notable topic (Jon Gertner, _The
           | Idea Factory_ , though I've not read it). I believe there are
           | likely books on Xerox, Kodak, and IBM. Rand Corporation hosts
           | its own very extensive publications library:
           | <https://www.rand.org/pubs.html>
           | 
           | I'll add Mickelthwaite's book to my own rather imposing pile.
        
         | e1g wrote:
         | > What we've learnt about technology is that what it does
         | depends greatly on who it serves.
         | 
         | You made many good points, but if this one resonates with
         | anyone in the context of AI advancements, I recommend this
         | long-form essay, "Meditations On Moloch" [1]. It's a thought-
         | provoking exploration of the unrelenting drive for competition
         | and self-interest, often leading to suboptimal outcomes for
         | individuals and society in politics, education, economics, and
         | the environment.
         | 
         | [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-
         | moloch/ or the audio version at
         | https://sscpodcast.libsyn.com/meditations-on-moloch
        
           | dredmorbius wrote:
           | Care to summarise what you think the core applicable message
           | here of SSC's _Moloch_ is?
           | 
           | If it's that behaviours are emergent ... yes, I get that.
           | 
           | (I've skimmed bits of the piece numerous times. Each time I
           | attempt to dig in, the length puts me off. Formatted for
           | print, the main text runs > 50 pages, and with comments to
           | nearly 300.)
        
       | teeray wrote:
       | Title should read "digitally cloning yourself", as I thought this
       | was actual human cloning.
        
         | kanzure wrote:
         | Animal (including human) cloning isn't that difficult.
        
           | Supermancho wrote:
           | After you're an adult, it's pretty tricky to clone you.
        
         | zikduruqe wrote:
         | I know. I had this awesome dad joke queued up about making "an
         | obscene clone fall"... I'll throw it back into the queue.
        
         | hodgesrm wrote:
         | Or something like Neal Stephenson's novel "Fall". [0] It's a
         | fun story but you can feel there's a lot more to uploading
         | yourself to the cloud than the book can cover.
         | 
         | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall;_or,_Dodge_in_Hell
        
       | dredmorbius wrote:
       | NPR has picked up this month-old Substack post with commentary
       | that both obscures some of the technical details (specific audio
       | and video tools used) whilst adding commentary on political,
       | propaganda, and fraud prospects of the technique:
       | 
       | "It takes a few dollars and 8 minutes to create a deepfake. And
       | that's only the start"
       | 
       | <https://www.npr.org/2023/03/23/1165146797/it-takes-a-few-dol...>
       | 
       | HN discussion: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35275104>
       | 
       | Both items approach sufficiently distinct angles that I'd feel
       | separate posts are at least arguably warranted.
        
       | ozten wrote:
       | This is very impressive. Don't miss clicking the first link[1]
       | 
       | This video feels like a tortured digital twin. Very unnerving
       | action with the mouth. So creepy. But... if you did 5 seconds of
       | full screen and then minimized down into a small circle and had
       | your main content, I bet I wouldn't have noticed. Voice is
       | passable.
       | 
       | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=840bHIATbDg
        
       | bhawks wrote:
       | > Hopefully, the positive uses will outweigh the negative, but
       | our world is changing rapidly, and the consequences are likely to
       | be huge.
       | 
       | The word hopefully is holding an Atlas class amount of weight in
       | that sentence.
       | 
       | People are not capable of scaling themselves to the amount of
       | spam, fraud and manipulation AI enables. I don't think a human-
       | like personal tutor is going to counter the tsunami of malicious
       | AI generated content designed to optimally divide and break down
       | the populace.
        
         | Valgrim wrote:
         | Right now, there is no shortage of fake content on the
         | internet. i'd even say that the vast majority of what's out
         | there is complete bullshit, starting with everything created by
         | the forces of marketing, politics or religion.
         | 
         | Despite this, I don't feel drowning in trash. It's really not
         | that hard to filter out the bullshit. Our whole lives, we never
         | had access to the absolute truth, we've always had to assert
         | confidence based on our sense of criticism.
         | 
         | If anything, this AI thing will sharpen even more our bullshit
         | detectors, and we'll be better at it.
        
       | jeffwask wrote:
       | It's only more terrifying when you cross it with the idea that
       | around 50% of the population already can't separate real from
       | fake on the internet
        
         | dredmorbius wrote:
         | I've been reflecting on the reality of adult literacy and
         | technical proficiency, and what implications those have for a
         | host of advanced-technology-mediated activities, from basic
         | life skills and commerce to informed democracy.
         | 
         | See:
         | 
         | - "Adult Literacy in the United States (2019)"
         | <https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179/index.asp> HN:
         | <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29734146>
         | 
         | - "Skills Matter: Further Results from the Survey of Adult
         | Skills" a 2016 OECD report based on research conducted in 2011
         | --12 and 2014--15 involving 215,942 adults: <https://www.oecd-
         | ilibrary.org/education/skills-matter_978926...> NNGroup (Jakob
         | Nielsen) writeup, "The Distribution of Users' Computer Skills:
         | Worse Than You Think"
         | <https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/>
         | 
         | For both, the _high-ability_ group is a small set (~15% for
         | overall literacy, 5--10% for _technical_ literacy) _at the
         | population level_.
         | 
         | Note that this is _highly consistent_ across _multiple_
         | countries and does not seem to indicate a _particular_ lack of
         | ability amongst American residents. (Though the US literacy
         | study does show a marked decline especially of non-native
         | English speakers near the Southern border.)
         | 
         | This is sometimes described as the Lake Wobegon Effect (or
         | perhaps "Lake Wobegon Fallacy"), which is to say that you can't
         | exit a general population cognitive limit by assuming "all the
         | children are above average" (from the late NPR radio programme
         | "A Prairie Home Companion").
         | 
         | We're going to have to address the coming, and/or _present_ ,
         | highly-contaminated epistemic environment with the population
         | and skills we have, not those we'd prefer, to borrow from
         | another sentiment.
        
           | yamtaddle wrote:
           | > We're going to have to address the coming, and/or present,
           | highly-contaminated epistemic environment with the population
           | and skills we have, not those we'd prefer, to borrow from
           | another sentiment.
           | 
           | For the last decade or so I've become increasingly worried
           | that the open Internet and broad-franchise democracy may
           | simply be, inevitably, incompatible, no matter what we might
           | wish were the case, and that we're guaranteed to lose one or
           | the other (or, potentially, both).
        
             | GolfPopper wrote:
             | The way a friend of mine phrased it was that in a few
             | generations (if both humanity and something like the
             | internet are still around) people will look back on modern
             | virtually unfiltered internet access and think of it the
             | way we look back at virtually unlimited access to opium in
             | 19th century England.
             | 
             | (To clarify, she's thinking along the lines of personally
             | controlled, managed filters, like those from the near-
             | future parts of Neal Stephenson's _Fall_ , not some sort of
             | centralized control.)
        
             | dredmorbius wrote:
             | That'd be two of us, friend.
        
             | s1artibartfast wrote:
             | This is one of the strongest arguments for limiting the
             | scope and responsibility of government.
             | 
             | There's one thing for people to harm themselves due to
             | their mistakes, and another thing entirely for them to harm
             | others because of their mistakes.
             | 
             | Moreover, people don't learn from their mistakes if someone
             | else is the one that suffers the consequences
        
               | dredmorbius wrote:
               | People are hardly restricted to governments to enact this
               | sort of harm.
               | 
               | Power seeks power, and power exerts power. It does so
               | through markets, through criminal organisations, through
               | militaries (nationally-affiliated, mercenary, or any of a
               | continuum of hybrid forms), and more.
               | 
               | Liberal democratic governments are _at least in name and
               | theory_ accountable to the governed, and even many less
               | democratic forms still reflect the collective will of
               | diverse groups within their societies.
               | 
               | The Max Weber dictum that's so often misquoted and mis-
               | construed doesn't hold that government has a monopoly on
               | force, but that it has the monopoly to _the legitimate
               | claim_ on same.
               | 
               | Weber, Max (1978). Roth, Guenther; Wittich, Claus (eds.).
               | _Economy and Society_. Berkeley: U. California Press. p.
               | 54.
               | 
               | <https://archive.org/details/economysociety00webe/page/54
               | /mod...>
               | 
               | Yes, _limit_ government, and ensure that it is _lawful_
               | and _legitimate_ (as opposed to capricious and corrupt).
               | But don 't _eliminate_ it, as then all that remains is
               | violence used without legitimacy or restraint.
        
         | bena wrote:
         | Bonsai Kitten, a website that purported to be reviving the lost
         | art of shoving cats in glass jars, had more than one person
         | complaining to remove the site.
        
           | neilv wrote:
           | When Bonsai Kitten first happened (over 20 years ago), my
           | concern was that it might inspire people to abuse animals.
           | 
           | (We've all heard of children torturing animals, especially
           | cats. I don't know why that happens, but planting ideas or
           | making light of it doesn't seem like a great idea.)
        
             | jeffwask wrote:
             | one of my favorite examples of this was Minecraft and
             | Parrots, In the initial release of parrots you could feed
             | them cookies. People complained that this would teach
             | children it's OK to feed parrots cookies which would
             | actually kill them. Rightfully so impressionable minds and
             | all that. (Even though in my 40's I log ridiculous hours in
             | minecraft) Minecraft patched out feeding parrots cookies
             | and it now kills them in game too.
             | 
             | Problem solved, children learn a better lesson.
        
           | YellOh wrote:
           | I haven't heard of Bonsai Kitten, but your description made
           | me think of the (sadly banned) r/DogDiet
        
         | bentcorner wrote:
         | More than once it's crossed my mind that I have personally
         | encountered a very very very small slice of the real world, and
         | anything outside of that observed on the internet could very
         | well be a fabrication.
         | 
         | I base my belief in what I see online on cross-checking,
         | general trust-worthiness of sources I encounter, and my gut
         | feeling for the difficulty of faking something, but there's
         | nothing stopping a determined adversary from inserting things
         | into my perceived reality.
         | 
         | A sufficiently advanced AI could be generating the internet on
         | the fly just for me and I wouldn't be any the wiser.
        
           | StrangeATractor wrote:
           | Isn't this the basis for some gen-z conspiracy theory?
        
             | doublepg23 wrote:
             | "Dead internet theory" but 80% of it is schizo-ramblings
             | that obscures the broader idea.
        
             | kjs3 wrote:
             | I think the "we're the ones living in the Matrix" meme
             | predates gen-z.
        
       | ofrzeta wrote:
       | Just tried it. Elevenlabs doesn't really work with non-English
       | language. Five bucks out the window :)
        
       | Pigalowda wrote:
       | Pretty cheap to do! It'll only get better as well.
        
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       (page generated 2023-03-23 23:01 UTC)