One of my recurring sensibilities over the past year or so is that there is no purity to be had.
And in a culture as impure as ours that’s in the process of falling apart, and remixing chaotically, there will be a lot more effluent floating about.
So one of the things I’m trying not to do is to write people off because of what I perceive to be one bad idea.
With a few notable execrable exceptions who seemingly have nothing but bad ideas https://mastodon.social/@urlyman/115037480518761583
A thoughtful set of reflections, thank you. You urge us (and yourself) to accept that we live in an era of impurity, and to look out for the good strands in the work of those who submit to the evils of genAI.
I will try to learn from your reflections. Not sure whether I can accept those flirtations with the genAI devil. For me the key word is not Purity but Authenticity. Personal authenticity, human agency, personhood --- these are under unprecedented attack and people seem to enjoy it and celebrate it. But you are right, each of us is one big mess of contradictions and I must remain open to those around me.
I have always been a follower of Martin Buber's contradistinction of "I and Thou" vs "It and He". First and second person, not third and third person. Those who understood this distinction have always been in a minority, so perhaps the current moral catastrophy is just part of an ongoing forever-catastrophy!
I agree that we cannot re-embrace personhood via tech that removes us from personhood
Yeah, it helps us making sense of many things, doesn't it. Certainly as regards the current genAI cultural tectonic shift.
I've also used the "I and Thou" idea to make sense of Mastodon! See, eg, here:
https://mastodonapp.uk/@the_roamer/114646867916663363
Or here:
https://mastodonapp.uk/@the_roamer/114439824273622643
Re-reading these old posts of mine I realise how much I love the Fedi, and I remember the absolute liberation I felt when I arrived at these shores in November 2022. It's a wonderful, wonderful thing. Good things can and do happen.
…I say this as a precursor to reporting on my listening to a conversation that I was uneasy about, but which I am finding rewarding (so far).
On the podcasts that I frequently listen to and the people whose writing on the ‘polycrisis’ that I most often read, one of the names that comes up again and again is Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti, usually referencing Hospicing Modernity.
And I’m aware that she has subsequently “co-written a book with ChatGPT”.
Which brings me to…
…I think that, in a manner similar to the bit of the Hippocratic oath that says “do no harm”, and in an era of rampant acceleration, a simple tenet to hold to is
**do not accelerate that which is accelerating harm**.
And so I think that co-writing a book with ChatGPT is a bullshit enterprise infused with category errors. And in the space that I listen to and read, there is still a lot of starry-eyed marvelling at “emerging intelligence”…
…And so it is with trepidation that I entered into this, hosted by @Eceni.
But I am glad that I did. More on *why* I’m glad in a bit
https://overcast.fm/+WYWgqSpX8
…Before I say more, I want to be clear.
Manda does *amazing* work and offers it for free. And Vanessa is a precious, insightful, funny, self-reflective voice.
The bit that I regard as bullshit is expecting a bullshit engine to be something other than a bullshit engine.
And, much more importantly, it is unquestionably an *acceleration engine*
…With that out of the way, the conversation has 4 people in it. That it covers several generations is important to its value to me.
I don’t know the precise ages but I gather that Giovanna is Gen-Z, Tim, at a guess, is a Millennial, and Vanessa probs Gen-X, and maybe Manda is too.
More a bit later
…Was gonna say more here about the above but just emotionally exhausted by today. Maybe tomorrow
I like that.
I was thinking of something more flippant, like paraphrasing a fundie axiom; hate the power, not the powerful (or wealth/ wealthy, or bigotry/ bigot). But the very fact that it fits that axiomatic pattern makes me suspicious of why my brained belched this out ...
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