#general bullshit

[missanthropicprinciple]

me, at every minor thing in my life lately: "fuck that."

#to literally everything #I'm done #not doing it anymore #something snapped in me #people's audacity #general bullshit #being pushed around #not taking it anymore

[itshermocrates]

*Fem! Skfs, College Au in which Sukuna studies literature and uses her knowledge to woo the ladies*

Megumi: you're insufferable! Do you really think that I could fall for you just with some Shakespearean bullshit?! That's how you try to seduce women?!

Sukuna *smirking* : I'm not trying to seduce you.

*She leans forward, lips almost brushing Megumi's cheek*

Sukuna: Would you like me to seduce you?

#skfs #sukufushi #fem skfs #college au #skfs college au #yeah its that tiktok audio #i wrote this on twtt before im sorry #sapphic #sukuna loving the classics turns me on #fem sukuna #fem megumi #general bullshit

[aiweirdness]

Original

It had generated a complete reference with title, author, and everything. Completely fabricated.

It’s not a search engine, it’s a crappy imitation of one.

#neural networks #chatgpt #chat search #automated bullshit generator

[firstdatedaisy]

I would like to discus a couple things I realized last night. I went out for a girls night and while talking about all things, I came to the following conclusions:

1. I am going to pause on dating for a little while. It is no longer bringing me joy. I don’t get excited for first dates anymore and I am becoming cynical.

2. I am really accepting bullshit behavior before a relationship even starts. No more. Need to prioritize and check back in with myself. Reset my boundaries.

3. My refrigerator looks like a bachelor’s refrigerator. It has wine, champagne, random beers, cheese, a pack of soyrizo, water, the regular stock condiments, ice, and a frozen burrito. Why go shopping if I am going out on dates (either with potential romantic callers or friends) 3-5 times a week. I have more condoms that items of food…I get it now…

Don’t worry, I will still be posting my journey.

Moving forward: Time to reevaluate and find joy with myself again.

#dating #effort #relationships #refrigerator #bachelor #joy #general bullshit #behavior #boundaries

[pixieliciousnippletassles]

OK, so there's a film which is funny, touching, and though-provoking (also French and somewhat sexy) on Netflix called I Am Not An Easy Man. I recommend it. It's not 10/10 for me, but it's good.

However.

The short film made first which its based on is EXQUISITE.

ENJOY.

Tw for sexual assault peeps. Stay safe.

#Feminism #Gender norms #Gender roles #Gendered expectations #General bullshit #Satire #Youtube

[juha-art]

Suvi & Steel look like such badasses in the new art. but we know what's really going on there

@quiddie

#worlds beyond number #wbn pod #suvirin kedberiket #aabria iyengar #wbn fanart #wbn spoilers #wbn steel #steel wbn #juha-art #IM SOOO EXCITED let's goooo girlies. have fun. princess warcrimes (and her mom- general warcrimes) are done with your spirits bullshit #they're coming to fuck you up wizard style

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How plausible sentence generators are changing the bullshit wars

This Friday (September 8) at 10hPT/17hUK, I'm livestreaming "How To Dismantle the Internet" with Intelligence Squared.

On September 12 at 7pm, I'll be at Toronto's Another Story Bookshop with my new book The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation.

In my latest Locus Magazine column, "Plausible Sentence Generators," I describe how I unwittingly came to use – and even be impressed by – an AI chatbot – and what this means for a specialized, highly salient form of writing, namely, "bullshit":

https://locusmag.com/2023/09/commentary-by-cory-doctorow-plausible-sentence-generators/

Here's what happened: I got stranded at JFK due to heavy weather and an air-traffic control tower fire that locked down every westbound flight on the east coast. The American Airlines agent told me to try going standby the next morning, and advised that if I booked a hotel and saved my taxi receipts, I would get reimbursed when I got home to LA.

But when I got home, the airline's reps told me they would absolutely not reimburse me, that this was their policy, and they didn't care that their representative had promised they'd make me whole. This was so frustrating that I decided to take the airline to small claims court: I'm no lawyer, but I know that a contract takes place when an offer is made and accepted, and so I had a contract, and AA was violating it, and stiffing me for over $400.

The problem was that I didn't know anything about filing a small claim. I've been ripped off by lots of large American businesses, but none had pissed me off enough to sue – until American broke its contract with me.

So I googled it. I found a website that gave step-by-step instructions, starting with sending a "final demand" letter to the airline's business office. They offered to help me write the letter, and so I clicked and I typed and I wrote a pretty stern legal letter.

Now, I'm not a lawyer, but I have worked for a campaigning law-firm for over 20 years, and I've spent the same amount of time writing about the sins of the rich and powerful. I've seen a lot of threats, both those received by our clients and sent to me.

I've been threatened by everyone from Gwyneth Paltrow to Ralph Lauren to the Sacklers. I've been threatened by lawyers representing the billionaire who owned NSOG roup, the notoroious cyber arms-dealer. I even got a series of vicious, baseless threats from lawyers representing LAX's private terminal.

So I know a thing or two about writing a legal threat! I gave it a good effort and then submitted the form, and got a message asking me to wait for a minute or two. A couple minutes later, the form returned a new version of my letter, expanded and augmented. Now, my letter was a little scary – but this version was bowel-looseningly terrifying.

I had unwittingly used a chatbot. The website had fed my letter to a Large Language Model, likely ChatGPT, with a prompt like, "Make this into an aggressive, bullying legal threat." The chatbot obliged.

I don't think much of LLMs. After you get past the initial party trick of getting something like, "instructions for removing a grilled-cheese sandwich from a VCR in the style of the King James Bible," the novelty wears thin:

https://www.emergentmind.com/posts/write-a-biblical-verse-in-the-style-of-the-king-james

Yes, science fiction magazines are inundated with LLM-written short stories, but the problem there isn't merely the overwhelming quantity of machine-generated stories – it's also that they suck. They're bad stories:

https://www.npr.org/2023/02/24/1159286436/ai-chatbot-chatgpt-magazine-clarkesworld-artificial-intelligence

LLMs generate naturalistic prose. This is an impressive technical feat, and the details are genuinely fascinating. This series by Ben Levinstein is a must-read peek under the hood:

https://benlevinstein.substack.com/p/how-to-think-about-large-language

But "naturalistic prose" isn't necessarily good prose. A lot of naturalistic language is awful. In particular, legal documents are fucking terrible. Lawyers affect a stilted, stylized language that is both officious and obfuscated.

The LLM I accidentally used to rewrite my legal threat transmuted my own prose into something that reads like it was written by a $600/hour paralegal working for a $1500/hour partner at a white-show law-firm. As such, it sends a signal: "The person who commissioned this letter is so angry at you that they are willing to spend $600 to get you to cough up the $400 you owe them. Moreover, they are so well-resourced that they can afford to pursue this claim beyond any rational economic basis."

Let's be clear here: these kinds of lawyer letters aren't good writing; they're a highly specific form of bad writing. The point of this letter isn't to parse the text, it's to send a signal. If the letter was well-written, it wouldn't send the right signal. For the letter to work, it has to read like it was written by someone whose prose-sense was irreparably damaged by a legal education.

Here's the thing: the fact that an LLM can manufacture this once-expensive signal for free means that the signal's meaning will shortly change, forever. Once companies realize that this kind of letter can be generated on demand, it will cease to mean, "You are dealing with a furious, vindictive rich person." It will come to mean, "You are dealing with someone who knows how to type 'generate legal threat' into a search box."

Legal threat letters are in a class of language formally called "bullshit":

https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691122946/on-bullshit

LLMs may not be good at generating science fiction short stories, but they're excellent at generating bullshit. For example, a university prof friend of mine admits that they and all their colleagues are now writing grad student recommendation letters by feeding a few bullet points to an LLM, which inflates them with bullshit, adding puffery to swell those bullet points into lengthy paragraphs.

Naturally, the next stage is that profs on the receiving end of these recommendation letters will ask another LLM to summarize them by reducing them to a few bullet points. This is next-level bullshit: a few easily-grasped points are turned into a florid sheet of nonsense, which is then reconverted into a few bullet-points again, though these may only be tangentially related to the original.

What comes next? The reference letter becomes a useless signal. It goes from being a thing that a prof has to really believe in you to produce, whose mere existence is thus significant, to a thing that can be produced with the click of a button, and then it signifies nothing.

We've been through this before. It used to be that sending a letter to your legislative representative meant a lot. Then, automated internet forms produced by activists like me made it far easier to send those letters and lawmakers stopped taking them so seriously. So we created automatic dialers to let you phone your lawmakers, this being another once-powerful signal. Lowering the cost of making the phone call inevitably made the phone call mean less.

Today, we are in a war over signals. The actors and writers who've trudged through the heat-dome up and down the sidewalks in front of the studios in my neighborhood are sending a very powerful signal. The fact that they're fighting to prevent their industry from being enshittified by plausible sentence generators that can produce bullshit on demand makes their fight especially important.

Chatbots are the nuclear weapons of the bullshit wars. Want to generate 2,000 words of nonsense about "the first time I ate an egg," to run overtop of an omelet recipe you're hoping to make the number one Google result? ChatGPT has you covered. Want to generate fake complaints or fake positive reviews? The Stochastic Parrot will produce 'em all day long.

As I wrote for Locus: "None of this prose is good, none of it is really socially useful, but there’s demand for it. Ironically, the more bullshit there is, the more bullshit filters there are, and this requires still more bullshit to overcome it."

Meanwhile, AA still hasn't answered my letter, and to be honest, I'm so sick of bullshit I can't be bothered to sue them anymore. I suppose that's what they were counting on.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/07/govern-yourself-accordingly/#robolawyers

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

#pluralistic #chatbots #plausible sentence generators #robot lawyers #robolawyers #ai #ml #machine learning #artificial intelligence #stochastic parrots #bullshit #bullshit generators #the bullshit wars #llms #large language models #writing #Ben Levinstein

[plutonicbees]

the tori spring asexual agenda is so real bc at any given moment she's just sipping her diet lemonade while her brother gay panics over a boy she knows likes him back

#i think i captured the tired tori look very well #she's tired of ur bullshit and also just tired in general #just like me fr #heartstopper #solitaire #solitaire alice oseman #alice oseman #osemanverse #heartstopper comics #heartstopper tv #heartstopper netflix #tori spring #tori spring fanart #heartstopper fanart #solitaire fanart #osemanverse fanart #fanart #art #digital art #artists on tumblr #tori heartstopper #my art #asexual #ace #ace awareness week #ace awareness #asexuality #asexual awareness week #aspec #asexual artist

[dragonpyre]

I'm a chronic migraine Jason Todd truther. Except he doesn't know they're migraines. Poor guy will be layed up on his couch for days wondering what wizard he pissed off cuz light hurts, sounds hurt, he thinks he's gonna throw up, his vision doesn't work right, and also there's an invisible rail spike driving itself into his skull. Then his thinks it's a Pit side affect or some other weird thing.

But no. It's just migraines

#they're triggered by his general PTSD and stress #and YES this is me projecting onto my blorbo #shut up #i just think he should have some mundane bullshit that's easily fixable #like just take some excedrin bro #jason todd #dc #red hood #migraines #batman #text post

[rattusn0rvegicus]

Man I feel like a lot of leftist activists would do a lot better to just use common fucking language to talk about things rather than dense academic shit that's only understandable to people with PhDs and people who spend 95% of their waking life on Leftist Twitter lmao

Like, you're talking with other academics? Great, use academic language. You're a social media account trying to interact with the general public? Don't say "decarcerate", say "find alternatives to imprisonment". Don't say "collective liberation", say "freedom for all". By GOD don't say "bodymind autonomy", say "the ability to have control over our own minds and bodies".

Yes it takes a little more effort to explain shit in common language but I promise you people will stop looking at you like you have two heads and dismissing everything you say as Woke Bullshit if you like, actually get on their level, goddamn it. Not everyone has the privilege to have a graduate-school level understanding of this type of language or spend so much time reading leftist theory that they can perfectly understand this stuff.

#being a public health student has made me even more passionate about this too #like. You want to make a change? You have to make sure the general public UNDERSTANDS WTF YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT FIRST #Like for example I think Project LETS is a great concept and is doing great stuff #But my god their public outreach needs some MAJOR work #By using this type of language you are isolating the type of ppl who can benefit from your services to 'college educated Twitter leftists' #Social justice is a MAJOR INTEREST OF MINE and even I struggle with making sense of some of the shit y'all say!! #Like I have to translate it in my head to normal speak #And like. These types of spaces constantly talk about accessibility for disabled people? Bullshit man #What about those with intellectual disabilities or cognitive impairments who struggle with this shit? #What about people who are just learning English? What about people who work full time and don't have the time to learn this terminology? #Goddamn #It's all performative!!!!

[insomniac-ships]

I wish more people understood that you can have hard limits and boundaries when it comes to fictional content you enjoy without insinuating that anyone who doesn't share similar opinions is some kind of freak/pervert/monster.

#t.k. talks #proship #late night ramblings #well... late-ish #im just tired of the nonsense #you're allowed to not like things!! thats fine!! i also have certain things i Dislike!! #just don't go around making baseless accusations and harmful generalizations about people you know next to nothing about #like... i Don't Like sexualized lolisho stuff. it makes me really uneasy. #but im not out here harassing strangers on the internet over it or calling people ''p*dophiles'' over fictional bullshit #i just don't interact with content i don't like seeing #it's that easy #antis dni

[aiweirdness]

When questioned, chatgpt doubles down on how it is definitely correct.

But it's not relying on some weird glitchy interpretation of the art itself, a la adversarial turtle-gun. It just reports the drawing as definitely being of the word "lies" because that kind of self-consistency is what would happen in the kind of human-human conversations in its internet training data. I tested this by starting a brand new chat and then asking it what the art from the previous chat said.

Google's bard, on the other hand, interprets it differently

Bard has the same tendency to generate illegible ASCII art and then praise its legibility, except in its case, all its art is cows.

Not to be outdone, bing chat (GPT-4) will also praise its own ASCII art - once you get it to admit it even can generate and rate ASCII art. For the "balanced" and "precise" versions I had to make my request all fancy and quantitative.

With Bing chat I wasn't able to ask it to read its own ASCII art because it strips out all the formatting and is therefore illegible - oh wait, no, even the "precise" version tries to read it anyways.

These language models are so unmoored from the truth that it's astonishing that people are marketing them as search engines.

More at AI Weirdness

#neural networks #chatgpt #bard #bing chat #bing #gpt-4 #it's not always about you chatbot #automated bullshit generator #bard's cow thing might be because of the cowsay linux command

[xitsensunmoon]

I don't remember if I've talked about it but Gregory would be Moon's fav and Sun's worst enemy and Cassie would be Sun's fav and Moon's worst enemy.

And that's actually shown in SB and Ruin-

Sun is very angry with Gregory as he didn't follow the rules and let Moon out. While Moon is actually? Pretty chill about it? I would even say he's kinda ecstatic about being out, even tho his programming/virus does tell him to punish Gregory for breaking the rules. He still doesn't even sound angry, he's giggling and chucking and just kinda vibing.

In ruin we see the opposite. Moon is out, in pain and angry at Cassidy for trying to turn on the lights. He's VERY aggressive and even his laughs sound just forced/painful. Part of his aggression obviously comes from the fact that they're in pain and scared but you get what I'm trying to say. While Sun is happy with Cassie as she's here to help! Not like that brat Gregory lol

#xit shh #pondering my orb #i gotta finally share my thoughts about ruin in general one day but weh not now #also Gregory would be Moon's fav for a reason of them being gremlins #Moon would find Gregory's bullshit hilarious prove me wrong

[dansemacabredarling]

Gale: Ugh, crushes are so dumb.

Astarion: I know. Whenever I’m near the person I like I just start acting stupid.

Gale: But you’re always acting stupid?

Astarion: ...

Astarion: Yeah, don’t think about that too hard.

#shut your mouth gale he has a reputation to keep up #bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #astarion #bg3 astarion #bloodweave #gale x astarion #bg3 gale #gale of waterdeep #gale #bg3 bloodweave #bg3 incorrect quotes #back on my quote generator bullshit

[makenna-made-this]

Marriage and kids? Yeah yeah sure but have you ever experienced the unbridled trust and love of a chicken?

#continuing my Not Being Able to Relate to the General Populace bullshit #nothing can simply compare #chickens #tiny fluffy dinosaurs #the BEST animals #pet bird #pet chicken #birdlr #chickenblr #shut up me #disappointing my relatives one Inability to Connect to People More Than Animals at a time