If you lived in a world where smoking was returning in full force—through unethical, manipulative, and probably illegal tactics tobacco use was returning to 1960s levels—would you work within the tobacco industry to make it less bad?
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@budududuroiu Pretty much every single person I’ve seen argue this is my age or thereabouts. They’re in their forties and are already basically financially secure
The people who actually are in financial need usually just say that they need to pay the bills and don’t see another way at the moment, which I actually respect. People gotta eat
@baldur that being said, I think tech is becoming like finance, quite rent seeking
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If you lived in a world where smoking was returning in full force—through unethical, manipulative, and probably illegal tactics tobacco use was returning to 1960s levels—would you work within the tobacco industry to make it less bad? "Nicotine is an excellent ADHD drug so it can help accessibility!"
Because this is exactly what people in the tech industry are starting to sound like.
@baldur No, I'd vomit everywhere.
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If you lived in a world where smoking was returning in full force—through unethical, manipulative, and probably illegal tactics tobacco use was returning to 1960s levels—would you work within the tobacco industry to make it less bad? "Nicotine is an excellent ADHD drug so it can help accessibility!"
Because this is exactly what people in the tech industry are starting to sound like.
@baldur I have bad news for you about nicotine.
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If you lived in a world where smoking was returning in full force—through unethical, manipulative, and probably illegal tactics tobacco use was returning to 1960s levels—would you work within the tobacco industry to make it less bad? "Nicotine is an excellent ADHD drug so it can help accessibility!"
Because this is exactly what people in the tech industry are starting to sound like.
@baldur i like that but it’s more like the nazis saying your extermination will actually somehow be good for you
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If I lived in a world where tech oligarchs were deliberately destroying the planet to push their technocracy on everyone... I'd take my inspiration from the French circa 1789
@Anomnomnomaly
Time to service, oil and polish guillotines then...
@baldur -
If you lived in a world where smoking was returning in full force—through unethical, manipulative, and probably illegal tactics tobacco use was returning to 1960s levels—would you work within the tobacco industry to make it less bad? "Nicotine is an excellent ADHD drug so it can help accessibility!"
Because this is exactly what people in the tech industry are starting to sound like.
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If you lived in a world where smoking was returning in full force—through unethical, manipulative, and probably illegal tactics tobacco use was returning to 1960s levels—would you work within the tobacco industry to make it less bad? "Nicotine is an excellent ADHD drug so it can help accessibility!"
Because this is exactly what people in the tech industry are starting to sound like.
@baldur Nervous people have better other things to use instead of smoking .. lived with a mother who smoked way too much and it killed her when she reached pension age and a sister younger than myself both from cancer her body was full of it mother's started in lung then to brain with 14 tumors
Both only lived a few months ... -
If you lived in a world where smoking was returning in full force—through unethical, manipulative, and probably illegal tactics tobacco use was returning to 1960s levels—would you work within the tobacco industry to make it less bad? "Nicotine is an excellent ADHD drug so it can help accessibility!"
Because this is exactly what people in the tech industry are starting to sound like.
Unbelievable indeed…
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@DJGummikuh Yeah, that’s a standard tactic of the pro-LLM crowd these days.
The whole "I'm calling you a hypocrite because every other objection I want to make shows how horrible my morals objectively are." debate tactic has been leaking out of SA/chan/stormfront boards for a while now.
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@baldur i like that but it’s more like the nazis saying your extermination will actually somehow be good for you
@cultdev @baldur you mean like Arbeit Macht Frei? or more like get into this rail car for a ride to fresh air and warm vineyard sun picking grapes? The Nazi invasion and violent occupation of Hungary, with promises of a better life than could be had from liberation, killed nearly 500K in just a couple months.
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@baldur that being said, I think tech is becoming like finance, quite rent seeking
Rent seeking as we know doesn’t provide any real value to the economy. Right?
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If you lived in a world where smoking was returning in full force—through unethical, manipulative, and probably illegal tactics tobacco use was returning to 1960s levels—would you work within the tobacco industry to make it less bad? "Nicotine is an excellent ADHD drug so it can help accessibility!"
Because this is exactly what people in the tech industry are starting to sound like.
@baldur Elijah Wood's cameo in I'm a Virgo: https://youtu.be/3uGHXMjImcc
"The death penalty is a horrific thing and I want to do something about it. It'll be a while until it's abolished all over. So, I'm studying to be an executioner. If I can, as an executioner, change things up a little bit, making their deaths a little less painful..."
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If you lived in a world where smoking was returning in full force—through unethical, manipulative, and probably illegal tactics tobacco use was returning to 1960s levels—would you work within the tobacco industry to make it less bad? "Nicotine is an excellent ADHD drug so it can help accessibility!"
Because this is exactly what people in the tech industry are starting to sound like.
@baldur
Um, that's why Vaping was invented, all the nicotine, no tar, no particulates. Less bad (but not really; inhaled ethylene glycol and crushed lithium batteries on every sidewalk aren't good). -
If you lived in a world where smoking was returning in full force—through unethical, manipulative, and probably illegal tactics tobacco use was returning to 1960s levels—would you work within the tobacco industry to make it less bad? "Nicotine is an excellent ADHD drug so it can help accessibility!"
Because this is exactly what people in the tech industry are starting to sound like.
@baldur It seems more like a world where concern about computer tech adoption is back to 1960's levels again.
I don't think you need the smoking analogy, it's just computers.
The computers are the danger and the addiction is often worse than smoking.
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B bogwitch@social.data.coop shared this topic
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@baldur Funny that you ask, couple of days ago someone was basically stating something along the lines of "oh I see you are inept, since you are using LLM" and some people were trying to guilt-trip him because of "ableism", since people with disabilities are dependant on LLMs for some reason. What the fuck?
@DJGummikuh @baldur counter point, I'm very dyslexic... I consider people's use of LLMs to be an anti-accessibility force in my life. They have proven less than useless to me so far as I find reading text cognitively taxing, unless I use the tools I've built up for reading and writing code and documentation more easily. I find LLM text doesn't have enough signal to noise ratio for me to use those tools.
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@DJGummikuh @baldur counter point, I'm very dyslexic... I consider people's use of LLMs to be an anti-accessibility force in my life. They have proven less than useless to me so far as I find reading text cognitively taxing, unless I use the tools I've built up for reading and writing code and documentation more easily. I find LLM text doesn't have enough signal to noise ratio for me to use those tools.
@theeclecticdyslexic @baldur good point. I mean LLM Texts are often written to a specified length, which automatically lowers information density. Also, if you then use LLM to condense it back down, nobody guarantees that it's not hallucinating some shit that never was in the original bloated text.
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Rent seeking as we know doesn’t provide any real value to the economy. Right?
@cyberquixote @baldur right
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It's one trillion dollars ... why aren't we to expect the industry members will do whatever it takes, over whatever laws of land or morals they may still have.
No one expects anything reasonable from the industry. It's the random people doing unpaid shilling who are the problem.
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If you lived in a world where smoking was returning in full force—through unethical, manipulative, and probably illegal tactics tobacco use was returning to 1960s levels—would you work within the tobacco industry to make it less bad? "Nicotine is an excellent ADHD drug so it can help accessibility!"
Because this is exactly what people in the tech industry are starting to sound like.
@baldur I think the analogy is fair to a point. There’s a difference between acknowledging that a technology can have legitimate uses and using those benefits to justify an industry or system whose broader incentives may be harmful. Saying “nicotine can help people with ADHD” doesn’t erase the harm caused by deliberately expanding nicotine addiction. In the same way, pointing out the benefits of tech or AI shouldn’t become an excuse to ignore the ways the industry can manipulate people
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If you lived in a world where smoking was returning in full force—through unethical, manipulative, and probably illegal tactics tobacco use was returning to 1960s levels—would you work within the tobacco industry to make it less bad? "Nicotine is an excellent ADHD drug so it can help accessibility!"
Because this is exactly what people in the tech industry are starting to sound like.
@baldur I don't want to, unfortunately i have a mortgage to pay and in my defence the industry pivoted to cancer sticks after I'd reached a senior position (too senior to easier switch career, not senior enough to change course)
