Need to make a primal scream without gathering footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh facts of Awful youā€™ll near-instantly regret.

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cutā€™nā€™paste it into its own post ā€” thereā€™s no quota for posting and the bar really isnā€™t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many ā€œesotericā€ right wing freaks, but thereā€™s no appropriate sneer-space for them. Iā€™m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged ā€œculture criticsā€ who write about everything but understand nothing. Iā€™m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. Theyā€™re inescapable at this point, yet I donā€™t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldnā€™t be surgeons because they didnā€™t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I canā€™t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

  • mountainriver@awful.systems
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    8
    Ā·
    4 months ago

    I think the connection isnā€™t with belief in the supernatural, but with the specific belief that there are things around us that look like people but arenā€™t people. I can easily see how the latter at minimum makes one very susceptible for racism.

    If people start believing that androids are a real thing (not the OS, human like robots), itā€™s only a matter of time before people will be accused of being androids.

          • mountainriver@awful.systems
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            7
            Ā·
            4 months ago

            I thought that was Hirvox point, that the NPC meme now goes hand in hand with Chan shittery because the NPC meme allows for an easy format to say that other people are not real people. With the added bonus of a built-in ā€œjust jokingā€ defence.

            • gerikson@awful.systems
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              9
              Ā·
              edit-2
              4 months ago

              I see echoes of it when idiots discuss ChatGPT being AGI - ā€œitā€™s at the level of the average (dumb) human, so itā€™s AGIā€. Implicit is that the average human isnā€™t just not intelligent, but unaware of reality in a way that makes them like NPCs in computer games.

              ā€”-

              Edit hereā€™s an example, no source because I donā€™t want to start a dogpile.

              If you concede that there exist humans that are bullshit in the same way that ChatGPT is, then I donā€™t think that argument against ChatGPTā€™s sentience is gonna be particularly persuasive either.

              If you say ā€œChatGPT doesnā€™t actually thinkā€ and later on, ā€œand some humans donā€™t eitherā€ - that weakens the strength of the first assertion by a lot, imo.

              I mean, if ChatGPT is only sentient to the degree that the least sentient (conscious) human is, then weā€™re still talking about AGI.

              • deborah@awful.systems
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                9
                Ā·
                4 months ago

                If you concede that there exist humans that are bullshit in the same way that ChatGPT is

                If you concede that cats are made of marmalade and always win Texas Hold 'Em games, then I donā€™t think the argument against squaring the circle holds up.

            • Hirvox@mastodon.online
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              8
              Ā·
              4 months ago

              @mountainriver @froztbyte Yes, and if confronted the memelord can retreat into the more palatable-in-polite-company form of ā€œthey just repeat what theyā€™re told _as if_ they were reprogrammable and without any individual thoughtā€. And _clearly_ the confronter is one of them, because they didnā€™t recognize this important nuance, thus proving the point.

              • froztbyte@awful.systems
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                6
                Ā·
                edit-2
                4 months ago

                such people are not much different from movie sharks: you boop ā€˜em on the nose to make them go away