[HN Gopher] The Uncanny Mirror: AI, Self-Doubt, and the Limits o...
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The Uncanny Mirror: AI, Self-Doubt, and the Limits of Reflection
Author : 0x6c75636964
Score : 15 points
Date : 2025-05-02 06:36 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.lucidnonsense.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.lucidnonsense.net)
| 0x6c75636964 wrote:
| I wrote this after noticing how generative AI tools seem to
| reflect more than just our queries--they often reveal something
| deeper about how we think, lead, and define ourselves. It's not
| meant to promote a product or service, just to provoke
| reflection. Curious if others have felt a similar eerie alignment
| --or misalignment--with these tools.
| krackers wrote:
| >It's not meant to promote a product or service
|
| Not yet, anyway. But they're a wonderful tool for exploring
| "idea space".
| alganet wrote:
| The issue of self doubt is quite interesting.
|
| Are you trying to copy The Matrix? With some "know thyself"
| thing?
|
| You know that it's a trick, right?
|
| I can just not use AI. I don't have an inferiority complex about
| it. If it's better than me, it's better than me. I'm not
| measuring it though. Are you?
|
| I don't spend time in philosophy to look at a mirror. I spent
| time to look inwards. It's quite different. AI can't do that.
|
| Be cool, Mr. 0x6c7.
| 0x6c75636964 wrote:
| Hey alganet, I appreciate your perspective. I agree that the
| difference between "looking in a mirror" and "gazing inward" is
| stark. My experiment is premised on the idea that AI can serve
| as a new kind of mirror--one that doesn't replace introspection
| (which I do continuously, perhaps too often!) but catalyzes it
| by making implicit patterns--especially those hidden from my
| own introspective analysis--explicit through dialogic exchange.
| I wouldn't claim it substitutes for direct phenomenological
| self-examination, but rather acts as a complementary tool--
| especially for those of us who find solo introspection limited
| by blind spots and cognitive loops.
|
| Regarding measuring: I'm not interested in "measuring" myself
| against AI as an adversary or competitor. Instead, I'm curious
| to see what emerges when AI functions as a partner in self-
| inquiry; one capable of sustaining recursive dialogue beyond
| what I could maintain alone.
| alganet wrote:
| If Sarah Connor doesn't know who's the doppelganger, would
| you hurt by being shot in the foot (where you stand)?
|
| I don't stand on AI. That's easy for me.
| 0x6c75636964 wrote:
| Striking metaphor, alganet. You're spot on--the uncertainty
| of who the "doppelganger" is remains ever-present in these
| dialogues. How much can we (or I) trust the mirrors we hold
| up to ourselves, especially when those mirrors might blur
| or reshape the boundaries between human and machine?
|
| As for being "shot in the foot," I see that as a possible
| cost of inquiry. Sometimes discomfort or missteps are
| necessary steps toward new insight. Don't get me wrong,
| though, I'm not spending all day waxing philosophical with
| language models to "find myself." This was simply something
| interesting that emerged along the way.
|
| I'm curious, though--how do you see this dynamic unfolding?
| alganet wrote:
| I think you actually stand in a "moving enemy" narrative.
|
| Sometimes it's a celebrity, sometimes is a group,
| sometimes a concept. Spies, commies, AI, feminism. You
| like to feel like you're the one giving the cards, that
| you are important. If you fail doing that, you try to
| retcon it.
|
| I also think you're human, and you're out of "invisible
| enemies" to wear. I could list all of them. The fact that
| you're nitpicking small things is not a sign that you are
| close, instead, it's a sign that you are out of ideas.
|
| Did I make a correct profiling? (rethorical)
| krackers wrote:
| I can't tell if this is part of the bit, but is it
| intentional that your comment itself follows the classic
| chatgpt-ese structure of
|
| <praise>
|
| <elaboration>
|
| <follow-up>
|
| Assuming that the comment is truly written by a human,
| have you spent enough time with chatgpt that its cadence
| has been backpropagated into your mind?
| metalman wrote:
| "partner in self~inquiry" eh? That is impossible. The self is
| a solo ride.Any inner voice speaks, unbiden. Introspection by
| definition, rejects all externalialitys. That said, there is
| another practice that may be a better fit for what you are
| describing, and in certain cultures the ultimate expression
| of this is for one person to put there head on anothers
| shoulder, as a litteral expression of the idea of I see what
| you see, which is what friends do for each other, sometimes
| after great effort, to not just understand something
| together, but to understand it in the same way. Or you go the
| hard route, and ride the beast alone, and know, what you
| know. And then there is the test by fire, but even then and
| forever, to see a truth is one thing, to hold it is another,
| but to wake up some other day and have it gone and not know,
| is still possible, so in a way, it is best to know nothing :)
| pton_xd wrote:
| I checked your post history. Posts from 2017 to 2020 have between
| 0 to 3 em-dashes per post, with an average of 2.
|
| This post has 52.
|
| Interesting!
| 0x6c75636964 wrote:
| Sharp eye, pton_xd! I've definitely developed a (probably
| excessive) fondness for em-dashes and lost track of how
| liberally I sprinkled them throughout the post... Hard to have
| fresh eyes after staring at my own words for too long.
| jwilber wrote:
| A stat no doubt brought to us by genai-automated scraping.
|
| FWIW, this post seems longer than most of OPs usual posts.
|
| I'll also add: as a longtime user of em-dashes, the constant
| low-effort dismissal of any writing using an em-dash as "must
| be genai!" is super annoying. So much so that I've made an
| effort to stop using them in my writing.
|
| There's some poetic irony in using genai to dismiss someone
| else's work for perceived use of genai.
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