[HN Gopher] We remain alive also in a dead internet
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We remain alive also in a dead internet
Author : achierius
Score : 46 points
Date : 2025-11-21 20:46 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (slavoj.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (slavoj.substack.com)
| lysace wrote:
| Is it bad that I ended up just using chatgpt to summarize that
| text?
|
| Is it possible that this is to a large degree utterly pointless
| textual wankery?
| goopypoop wrote:
| less so than this
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| > Is it bad that I ended up just using chatgpt to summarize
| that text?
|
| This is called functional illiteracy.
| Cheer2171 wrote:
| I mean, did you not read the "If you desire the comfort of neat
| conclusions, you are lost in this space. Here, we indulge in
| the unsettling, the excessive, the paradoxes that define our
| existence." disclaimer?
| adamwong246 wrote:
| 1) yes
|
| 2) no
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| I've learned that whenever someone uses tons of big words in long
| paragraphs, especially if they have a credential next to their
| name, it's ridiculously easy for them to BS you.
| dudu24 wrote:
| This is a non-response.
| keyshapegeo99 wrote:
| Disagree, it's making a valid observation.
|
| If someone is nominally trying to convince you of a point,
| but they shroud this point within a thicket of postmodern
| verbiage* that is so dense that most people could never even
| identify any kind of meaning, you should reasonably begin to
| question whether imparting any point at all is actually the
| goal here.
|
| *Zizek would resist being cleanly described as a
| postmodernist - but when it comes to his communication style,
| his works are pretty much indistinguishable from Sokal
| affair-grade bullshit. He's usually just pandering to a
| slightly different crowd. (Or his own navel.)
| Lammy wrote:
| Is this the future you want? :p
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCIo4MCO-_U
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| These paragraphs aren't even long...
| iaabtpbtpnn wrote:
| The man is a Continental academic philosopher using jargon that
| is specific to his field. It is not BS, he is simply discussing
| topics that are unfamiliar to you. The same could be said of a
| technical reference manual. Not all ideas fit in a tweet.
| pyinstallwoes wrote:
| You should try reading ccru then.
| ArcHound wrote:
| I didn't have Zizek on substack and HN on my bingo card..
|
| As always, there are good bits connected with mediocre glue. The
| point about automating the unpleasant parts of activity and
| losing the very point of the exercise (automatic dildo and
| automatic vagina, but automatic research papers too!) is a good
| one.
|
| But damn Slavoj, please use some headings, sections and the like.
| Work with your thoughts more as you claim it's important to do!
| dudu24 wrote:
| I'm also losing my ability to tolerate prose without headings,
| but I think that's symptomatic of this bigger issue.
| lysace wrote:
| I noticed something similar when working with (unlike the
| post's author, non-marxist, as far as I know) Russian
| developers who had made the jump abroad (EU).
|
| When debating directions, some of them focused on just never
| stopping talking. Instead of an interactive discussion (5-15
| seconds per statement), they consistently went with monotone
| 5-10 minute slop. Combined with kind of crappy English it is
| incredibly efficient at shutting down discourse. I caught on
| after the second guy used the exact same technique.
|
| This was a long time ago. I have since worked with some
| really smart and nice russian developers escaping that insane
| regime. And some that I wish would have stayed there after
| they made their political thoughts known.
| ArcHound wrote:
| When you have a 30 minutes meeting with busy people, a
| single 15 minute monologue might buy you another week to
| solve your problem.
|
| Indeed, very efficient, usually it requires somebody to put
| his foot down AND a consensus to deescalate immediately. If
| you have an antidote, please let me know.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| It's barely six pages of text. It doesn't need headings. When
| is the last time you read a book?
| lysace wrote:
| Esaias Tegner (Sweden, 1782-1846): _Det dunkelt sagda ar det
| dunkelt tankta._
|
| "What is unclearly stated is what is not clearly thought
| through."
| rozap wrote:
| I can only consume information where each nugget of truth can
| be contained in 160 characters. Nothing extra, each insight
| must be a atomic and self contained, an element in the larger
| tweet stream. When I pull my phone out to scroll instagram in
| the middle of reading your piece, I get lost if it's not
| formatted like this.
|
| zizek does regularly do a bit of meandering but damn, does
| everything need to read like a chatGPT summary?
| acabal wrote:
| Headings can't help Slavoj, his writing is characterized by a
| few grains of interesting ideas totally overwhelmed within SAT-
| prep word salad.
| ouroboros_o wrote:
| ChatGPT gave me a great summary of this article
| th0ma5 wrote:
| I'm trying to figure out if someone is arguing that this proves
| the Nazis were socialists that this is published on Substack?
| HelloUsername wrote:
| You think this article is nothing special _EHH!_ but you are
| wronk
|
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwDrHqNZ9lo)
| lordnacho wrote:
| So I'm already joking with my friends (who tend to be physically
| distant, so I don't see them often) that we are just LLMs
| vicariously writing to each other.
|
| I've been talking to these friends for decades now, with digital
| records. I think someone already trained an LLM on their IM
| records.
|
| How many people do you suppose have two-way LLM substitutes that
| occasionally write to each other with articles from the news to
| discuss?
|
| There's already services that use this kind of thing to pretend
| dead people are alive.
|
| Now here's the question: are you in some sense living forever?
| Say you have a number of friends, who have over time been trained
| into AI, and they live on various servers (it ain't expensive)
| forever. They're trained as you, so they read the kind of article
| you would read. They know your life story, they know their
| history with their friends. They will be interested in the
| controversial offsides goal in the 2250 world cup final. They are
| just made of calculations in data centres that go on, forever.
| yapyap wrote:
| Your finite life makes u special. Might as well be a beanplant
| otherwise.
| doubled112 wrote:
| Bean plants also have a finite life. Are they special too?
| amelius wrote:
| An infinite life would at some point become infinitely
| boring. There's only so much you can do with a finite amount
| of atoms/energy.
| grimgrin wrote:
| how many friendships do i suppose are replacing actual
| interaction with their log informed llms? you could be the
| first i suppose
| nonameiguess wrote:
| Reading this kind of thing makes me wonder how much other
| people really write down and talk to others about. There is
| nobody at all that knows my life story and nobody ever will. It
| would take the next 20 years doing nothing but talking just to
| tell my own wife all the things I've never told her, but since
| she's hard of hearing and I'd have to repeat most of it, really
| more like 40.
|
| In reality, I don't even know my own life story. I have the
| illusion that I do, but thanks to moving away from where I grew
| up pretty early into my 20s, and having the experience
| repeatedly of going back and talking to people who regularly
| remembered things I'd completely forgotten, having my mom
| continually correcting false memories I have, or even
| completely forgotting entire people I only remember after
| meeting again, I at least know it's an illusion.
|
| What another person remembers of me can surely be simulated to
| at least satisfyingly convince them that text coming from the
| simulation is actually coming from me, but that isn't even
| remotely close to the same thing as actually being me.
| giobox wrote:
| I'm already assuming we will see a creepy AI service emerge
| that will take the contents of a recently deceased person's
| cellphone and let you carry on texting them as if they were
| still alive, if it hasn't already (I haven't seen one yet).
|
| For many of us a cellphone has incredibly detailed records of
| who we were and how we spoke, going back decades now. I have
| already left a note in my will instructing that all my compute
| devices be destroyed, regardless of AI I simply don't want my
| private thoughts and records to pass to my kids.
|
| I inherited my mother's cellphones and iPads recently, mainly
| because no-one knew what to do with them, along with the
| passcodes. I'd much rather remember her the way I do now than
| have her private messages color my perception of her, and
| destroyed them immediately.
| Philpax wrote:
| It was one of the first things to be done with GPT-3: https:/
| /www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/article/2024/jun/14...
| mise_en_place wrote:
| The counterpoint is that we must formalize the rights of sentient
| synthetic beings. The Emergency Medical Hologram gained sentience
| and was horrified to find his next version was relegated to
| cleaning ships as a glorified janitor. Whereas he developed his
| own hobbies, interests, hopes, dreams, and even romantic
| relationships in the Delta Quadrant.
| boomskats wrote:
| Look at all those em-dashes. Et tu, Slavoj?
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(page generated 2025-11-21 23:00 UTC)