Comment by simianwords

Comment by simianwords 2 days ago

800 million weekly active users for ChatGPT. My position on things like this is that if enough people use a service, I must defer to their judgement that they benefit from it. To do the contrary would be highly egoistic and suggest that I am somehow more intelligent than all those people and I know more about what they want for themselves.

I could obviously give you examples where LLMs have concrete usecases but that's besides the larger point.

manuelmoreale 2 days ago

> 1B people in the world smoke. The fact something is wildly popular doesn’t make it good or valuable. Human brains are very easily manipulated, that should be obvious at this point.

Reply View 15 replies

simianwords 2 days ago

Almost all smokers agree that it is harmful for them.
Can you explain why I should not be equally suspicious of gaming, social media, movies, carnivals, travel?

Reply View | 14 replies
- manuelmoreale 2 days ago
  
  You should be. You should be equally suspicious of everything. That's the whole point. You wrote:
  > My position on things like this is that if enough people use a service, I must defer to their judgement that they benefit from it.
  Enough people doing something doesn't make that something good or desirable from a societal standpoint. You can find examples of things that go in both directions. You mentioned gaming, social media, movies, carnivals, travel, but you can just as easily ask the same question for gambling or heavy drugs use.
  Just saying "I defer to their judgment" is a cop-out.
  
  Reply View | 13 replies
  
  dripdry45 2 days ago
  
  But “good or desirable from a societal standpoint” isn’t what they said, correct me if I’m wrong. They said that people find a benefit.
  People find a benefit in smoking: a little kick, they feel cool, it’s a break from work, it’s socializing, maybe they feel rebellious.
  The point is that people FEEL they benefit. THAT’S the market for many things. Not everything obv, but plenty of things.
  
  Reply View | 3 replies
  
  stavros 2 days ago
  
  Ok, I'll bite: What's the harm of LLMs?
  
  Reply View | 8 replies

techpression 2 days ago

I don’t do zero sum games, you can normalize every bad thing that ever happened with that rhetoric. Also, someone benefiting from something doesn’t make it good. Weapons smuggling is also extremely beneficial to the people involved.

Reply View 2 replies

simianwords 2 days ago

Yes but if I go with your priors then all of these are similarly to be suspect
- gaming
- netflix
- television
- social media
- hacker news
- music in general
- carnivals
A priori, all of these are equally suspicious as to whether they provide value or not.
My point is that unless you have reason to suspect, people engaging in consumption through their own agency is in general preferable. You can of course bring counter examples but they are more of caveats against my larger truer point.

Reply View | 1 reply
- techpression 2 days ago
  
  Social media for sure and television and Netflix in general absolutely. But again, providing value is not the same as something being good. A lot of people think inaccuracies by LLMs to be of high value because it’s provided with nice wrappings and the idea that you’re always right.
  
  Reply View | 0 replies

wartywhoa23 2 days ago

This line of thinking made many Germans who thought they're on the right side of history simply by the virtue of joining the crowd, to learn the hard way in 1945.

And today's adapt or die doesn't sound less fascist than in 1930.

Reply View 0 replies