Yesterday Cory Doctorow argued that refusal to use LLMs was mere "neoliberal purity culture".
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@Colman @FediThing @tante That's interesting. I've never wondered that about you.
@pluralistic @Colman @FediThing @tante wow. punching down? I had a higher opinion of you.
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@pluralistic i guess this misses the point: the particular chip in my laptop wasn't made by war criminals (i hope...), but the model you do use was trained under vast amounts of energy and water consumption. I'm not sure this is completely comparable, tbh.
@pluralistic and yes, i'm aware that producing a chip also costs vast amounts of energy and water... but at least my chip is used to solve a multitude of purposes, while a LLM that checks spelling and grammar is built and trained for one single use-case (that, nb, could also be done without an LLM). So yes, I do differenciate. @FediThing @tante
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@pluralistic and yes, i'm aware that producing a chip also costs vast amounts of energy and water... but at least my chip is used to solve a multitude of purposes, while a LLM that checks spelling and grammar is built and trained for one single use-case (that, nb, could also be done without an LLM). So yes, I do differenciate. @FediThing @tante
Llama 2 was not built to check spelling and grammar. That's "not even wrong."
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@pluralistic i guess this misses the point: the particular chip in my laptop wasn't made by war criminals (i hope...), but the model you do use was trained under vast amounts of energy and water consumption. I'm not sure this is completely comparable, tbh.
No, this is just more "fruit of the poisoned tree" and your argument that your fruit of the poisoned tree doesn't count is the normal special pleading that this argument always decays into.
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@tante @pluralistic @simonzerafa But ALSO: using a multi-billion-parameter synthetic text extruding machine to find spelling and syntax errors is a blatant example of "doing everything the least efficient way possible" and that's why we are living on an overheating planet buried under toxic e-waste.
If I think about it harder I could probably come up with a more clever metaphor than killing a mosquito with a flamethrower, but you get the idea.
No. It's like killing a mosquito with a bug zapper whose history includes thousands of years of metallurgy, hundreds of years of electrical engineering, and decades of plastics manufacture.
There is literally no contemporary manufactured good that doesn't sit atop a vast mountain of extraneous (to that purpose) labor, energy expenditure and capital.
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@pluralistic Ok, fair enough, if spell checking is literally the only thing you use LLMs for.
I still think you wouldn't rely on a 1950s dictionary for checking modern language, and language moves faster on the internet, but I'm willing to concede that point.
I still think a deterministic spell checker could have done the job and not put you in this weird position of defending a technology with wide-reaching negative effects. But I guess your post was for just that purpose.
I'm not using it for spell checking.
Did you read the article that is under discussion?
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@FediThing @tante Thank you.
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Yesterday Cory Doctorow argued that refusal to use LLMs was mere "neoliberal purity culture". I think his argument is a strawman, doesn't align with his own actions and delegitimizes important political actions we need to make in order to build a better cyberphysical world.
https://tante.cc/2026/02/20/acting-ethical-in-an-imperfect-world/
@tante spot on.
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@tante thank you.
@tante i think the strawman indeed IS the issue comparing (even it was just through context) an LLM for spell checking/grammar where it is really insignificant if IT performs well or not to a general usability, referring to liberation including critical tasks.
I don't detest AI because of the fascists that created most of IT but because they intentionally design and sell "tools" that are good at fascism and not much else of significance. A screwdriver with a grip that cuts the user.
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@tante i think the strawman indeed IS the issue comparing (even it was just through context) an LLM for spell checking/grammar where it is really insignificant if IT performs well or not to a general usability, referring to liberation including critical tasks.
I don't detest AI because of the fascists that created most of IT but because they intentionally design and sell "tools" that are good at fascism and not much else of significance. A screwdriver with a grip that cuts the user.
@tante a screwdriver that only works on a low percentage of screws it was designed for, thus "Tools".
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I'm not using it for spell checking.
Did you read the article that is under discussion?
@pluralistic I apologize, I did in fact read the relevant section of your post, and I was using spell-checking as shorthand for all typo checking, because deterministic grammar checkers have also existed for some time, although not as long as spell checkers and perhaps they have not been as reliable. I understand that LLMs can catch some typos that deterministic solutions may not.
I just think we should put more effort into improving deterministic tools instead of giving up.
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@pluralistic I apologize, I did in fact read the relevant section of your post, and I was using spell-checking as shorthand for all typo checking, because deterministic grammar checkers have also existed for some time, although not as long as spell checkers and perhaps they have not been as reliable. I understand that LLMs can catch some typos that deterministic solutions may not.
I just think we should put more effort into improving deterministic tools instead of giving up.
@skyfaller @FediThing @tante Thanks.
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@tante It seems to me Doctorow is obviously correct about this. But I don't think it matters too much if you don't agree... the trajectory of LLMs is going to be whatever it is going to be.
If you don't like it and have buddies that don't like it either, that's not a bad thing especially if you are undergoing real negative effects from it.
It's just if you stray from reality (whatever that will be) too far for too long, you will end up with a big shock when forced to rejoin it.
Don't mistake a hugely popular fad or bubble for "reality." And if you don't believe that "[nearly] everybody believes" can be quite detached from punishingly harsh reality, then you need to read about the "Tulip Mania" craze and bubble:
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Yesterday Cory Doctorow argued that refusal to use LLMs was mere "neoliberal purity culture". I think his argument is a strawman, doesn't align with his own actions and delegitimizes important political actions we need to make in order to build a better cyberphysical world.
https://tante.cc/2026/02/20/acting-ethical-in-an-imperfect-world/
I completely agree with your view on us being messy, imperfect beings. And while many take such a realization as a free ticket to shrug themselves into deep cynicism, I deeply appreciate people who tend to try a little harder than most to do the right thing, and own every compromise they decide to make as what it is.
Once we start warping our analysis and critical thinking to match our actions instead of trying our best to make our actions fit the former, we'll quickly start losing any ability to act with accountability. -
Don't mistake a hugely popular fad or bubble for "reality." And if you don't believe that "[nearly] everybody believes" can be quite detached from punishingly harsh reality, then you need to read about the "Tulip Mania" craze and bubble:
And likewise, don't mistake "mainstream thinking" or what "most of the industry is doing" with "reality" or even "best practice." Agile, Lean, and Total Quality Management, and practically about every other significant improvement is a break from "the usual way of doing things." Improvement is a change from the mediocre.
"Appeal to Popularity" (as a signal of truth) is literally a well documented Logical Fallacy:
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Yesterday Cory Doctorow argued that refusal to use LLMs was mere "neoliberal purity culture". I think his argument is a strawman, doesn't align with his own actions and delegitimizes important political actions we need to make in order to build a better cyberphysical world.
https://tante.cc/2026/02/20/acting-ethical-in-an-imperfect-world/
Hmmmm... How about this perspective?
LLM is just a programming technique. The ethicality of using LLMs relates to the type of use and the source of the data it was trained on.
Using LLMs to search the universe for dark matter using survey telescopic data or to identify drug efficacy using anonymized public health records is simply using the latest technology for good purpose. Cory's use seems like this.
LLMs trained on stolen data creating derivative work. That's just theft.
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@tante Dunno where you got the idea that I have a "libertarian" background. I was raised by Trotskyists, am a member of the DSA, am advising and have endorsed Avi Lewis, and joined the UK Greens to back Polanski.
@pluralistic@mamot.fr
Well, we are not only influenced by our legacy: however strong we are, we can't avoid some fundamental influence from the hegemonic culture we live in.
Yet I see how the ethical misalignment here may not be about libertarian values but about utilitarian ones.
Even more subtly, it might be a misalignment about respective utility functions, while both #pluralistic and @tante@tldr.nettime.org adopt an utilitarian framework instead of a normative one.
For example, the Pluralistic use of a local LLM might be explained with a slightly higher evaluation of the benefits that his own writings brings to society and thus (indirectly) the value the LLM brings, despite its issues.
Otoh, Tante might value a lot more the political harm that Cory's words did by blaming a political choice as irrational while it's totally rationale: in a way, by justifying the use of a #LLM, #Doctorow justified (even just a little bit) the industry that built it.
And since Pluralistic's strawman is centered around a normative "purity culture" blamed as irrational, Tante framed his response over rationality.
What if a normative behaviour was in fact totally rational in presence of unreducible complexity and informational asymmetry?
I don't use LLM for so many technical and political reasons that would take hours to list. And you both would almost certainly nod to most of them as a strictly rational arguments.
Yet the choice itself, bound to the society I want to build for my daughters and children, is normative: based on the values of truth, freedom and communion.
None of these could ever come from the LLM we are talking about: they are weapons designed to fool people (Turing test included!), so there's no way to wield them to benefit people.
As for "purity culture", I'm a catholic #christian, not a puritan: we brag about the #Church being a casta meretrix (Latin for something like "a pure bitch"
), and we preach a man who hanged with the worst sinners and sometimes even hacking the law to save their lifes, so... 
️
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Yesterday Cory Doctorow argued that refusal to use LLMs was mere "neoliberal purity culture". I think his argument is a strawman, doesn't align with his own actions and delegitimizes important political actions we need to make in order to build a better cyberphysical world.
https://tante.cc/2026/02/20/acting-ethical-in-an-imperfect-world/
@tante Since I assume all the #Epstein documents have been scraped into all the LLM models by now, I'd love to see an example of LLM tech being used for good.
Show me the list of Epstein co-conspirators.
Show me names of who helped them escape accountability, and how they did it.
Show me who raped children. Their names, addresses, passport photos.
Then I will believe LLMs and "AI" have delivered a benefit. -
No, this is just more "fruit of the poisoned tree" and your argument that your fruit of the poisoned tree doesn't count is the normal special pleading that this argument always decays into.
@pluralistic sorry, i'm just not good at making a point. To me, not "LLM" is the "forbidden fruit", but "using an LLM for certain purposes" is. I think there are actually use-cases for stochastic inference machines (like folding proteins or structuring references), but, as @tante wrote (better: as I understand him), there are use-cases that one very much can reject in its entirety. And that should be okay.
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@FediThing I think the problem in discourse is the overwhelming amount of people experience anti-AI rage.
In the topic of LLMs, the two loudest groups by a wide margin are:
1. People who refuse to see any nuance or detail in the topic, who can not be appeased by anything other than the complete and total end of all machine learning technologies
2. AI tech bros who think they're only moments away from awakening their own personal machine godI like to think I'm in the same camp as @pluralistic , that there's plenty of valid use for the technology and the problems aren't intrinsic to the technology but purely in how it's abused.
But when those two groups dominate the discussions, it means that people can't even conceive that we might be talking about something slightly different than what they're thinking.
Cory in the beginning explicitly said they were using a local offline LLM to check their punctuation... and all of this hate you see right here erupted. If you read through the other comment threads, people are barely even reading his responses before lumping more hate on him.
And if someone as great with language as Cory can't put it in a way that won't get this response... I think that says alot.
