Neil Gaiman coined the term “information shaped sentences” for the results from ChatGPT. He is right. Much of what comes back from ChatGPT and other “AI” products looks like information, but isn’t. It is one thing for “AI” to look for patterns in actual physical data (e.g. medical research). It is quite another for “AI” to mine from datasets like the internet that is full of misinformation, disinformation, opinion, fiction and a trillion biases.

I was once told by a left wing activist that existential crises were a luxury for the rich. There was a recent discussion on social media (the askphilosophy subreddit) about whether philosophy is a borgeouise hobby. I thought the most interesting comments came from the “third world” perspective. They distinguished between western academic analytic philosophy and philosophizing done by persons outside that small circle. Some thought the first was becoming a bourgeois hobby, but the second happened every day, every where.

The Open Society Institute attempted to develop a predictor of media literacy in 2019 here. The intent was to develop ideas for resiliency against fake news, post-truth, etc and offset the diminishing public trust and severely polarized politics. It’s an interesting idea but I think it needs more development. This post is a summary of my overthinking of their predicator. CAUTION: Long (About 8,200 words). No, I don’t expect anyone to read it.

I was at a Christmas party a couple of weeks ago. A guy at the party was wearing a shirt clearly intended to trigger liberals. The wording on his shirt read, in part “I am a Christian but I am a born warrior. I will fight for ….xyz things.” The language was clearly written so that if you objected, you would be played as opposing motherhood, apple pie etc, while at the same time demonstrating that he had no intention of following the Sermon on the Mount.

It is a sad commentary on media and the species that so many things are seen only in binary. We are told we are on one side or the other whether we want to be or not - You are with us or you are against us. Either you support X or Y, the A or the B! The innocent noncombatants are conflated with one combatant or the other and then dehumanized and erased from existence.

How often do you read a story in the media in your area of expertise that is misleading or even completely wrong, then turn to the next story in a different subject and assume that its correct. This is called Gell-Mann Amnesia. Michael Crichton coined the term. In his words: Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well.

TRIGGER WARNING: DO NOT READ IF YOU TAKE THE BIBLE LITERALLY.

Now that ChatGpt is claiming the ability to write stories and have conversations, I was talking with someone about whether published authors could have chat rooms where paid subscribers could “talk” to their favorite characters. Requiring a paid subscription would cut down on the internet troll problem and generate additional revenue for the author (and publishing company). On the other hand, just think about a simple user question like “[Protagonist], when you did [X], what were you thinking?

I want to talk briefly about Reddit and social media business models. Like most social media platforms, Reddit’s business model is selling (a) advertising and (b) user data. Social media companies (Reddit, Twitter, Facebook et al) have discovered that enabling outrage increasing engagement and, therefore sales and profit. You can pay for Reddit Premium for $6/month to avoid ads (and get more filtering functionality), but your user data will still be sold and you haven’t reduced the companies' incentive to increase outrage

Somehow I just cannot pass up this series of tweets: Pope Francis: “SocialJustice demands that we fight against the causes of poverty: inequality and the lack of labour, land, and lodging; against those who deny social and labor rights; and against the culture that leads to taking away the dignity of others.” Jordan Peterson (a Psychology Professor at University of Toronto): “There is nothing Christian about SocialJustice. Redemptive salvation is a matter of the individual soul.

A peer-reviewed study found Christians hold more animosity towards atheists than atheists hold toward them. The going in assumption of the researchers was that both groups would be more favorable to their own in-group but it is actually asymmetric. The atheists do not really view Christians any worse than they view other atheists. On the other hand, Christians view atheists as worse than Muslims or convicted criminals. Unlike some other studies, this one took a cross section of the American population rather than just getting samples from atheist organizations and samples from Christian churches.

I’m really only posting this so I can find the word again. Sonder - from the urban dictionary: The realization that there aren’t any main characters in the world and everyone has a complex life, thoughts, crushes, relatives, dreams and mind just as your own. Essentially while you’re the main character in your life, you’re also a background character in someone else’s. Coined in 2012 by John Koenig, whose project, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, aims to come up with new words for emotions that currently lack words.

I occasionally run into people who complain that I am tolerant of X, but I am not tolerant of them, so if I claim to be “tolerant”, I need to be tolerant of everything. NO I DON’T. I am tolerant of people whose actions do not adversely affect others. I do not pretend to be tolerant of people whose actions and beliefs do affect others. Two gay people getting married does not adversely impact anyone else.