I think the very design of LLMs makes them not very useful even when used “correctly”. They are basically machines that are very good at sounding plausible. But they have absolutely 0 way of checking if info is correct or not. It’s just whatever is reinforced the most in their model is treated as correct.

I think the underlying technology likely has uses. But the way it is currently being produced into products is something that, even if you tried to use it correctly, would simply end up tricking you with some plausible bullshit. Maybe you tell it to edit a paper and it decides to “fix” one of your opinions to be the most common one. Maybe you tell it to tell you the nuance behind a historical fact and it makes up a very likely sounding story that is entirely bullshit which you then repeat to someone else without realizing.

The ability it has to sound plausible is its biggest flaw. Because an LLM will VERY rarely if ever say the words, “I don’t know.” You’d basically have to have gone in and coded it to respond to that specific question to respond with “I don’t know”. Otherwise it’ll just make something up.

I don’t see it so much as pollution as a smokescreen being put in place on purpose. It is my belief that these companies plan to so heavily flood the internet with AI generated nonsense that they can then begin to charge a premium for access to verified information.

That is why I have made an effort to collect actual physical books all printed before AI became a thing that have lots of info I can use to verify things. I have books on medical info, various crafts, construction, agriculture, copies of works from Lenin, Marx, Mao, Stalin, Marcus Aurelius, Plutarch, Voltaire, Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, etc. Math textbooks, science textbooks. I’ve got around 80 or so right now. A lot of them I got for free and the rest I got for very cheap (anywhere from 1$ to 9$) because I go after used books. Many are from the 70s and 80s.

The idea is that say in like 2035 if I need to know something random I have a bunch of 100% human made and verified information. Even if some is a bit outdated it’s better than AI slop.

Yeah I meant like the end result since yours is the clean white look and mine is very busy lol

I go even further on the minimal UI personally lol. Black box over the date/time is an edit and the theme I have is animated so it has rain partiles falling down. But I like as much of my screen as possible to be the content and want the browser out of the way. I’m hoping they don’t entirely break my current setup. It’s technically Floorp but that’s Firefox based so we’ll see.

Edit: Figured I should clarify. When I say minimal I mean like how MUCH of the UI I have. Like tabs and search bar in the same row. I don’t mean like minimalism. I’m clearly more maximalist in my themeing than you lol.

Ironically American Revolutionary Thomas Paine in his Common Sense said something that explains this quite well, “A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right,[…] Time makes more converts than reason.”

Well it is actually true that an integral part of Christianity itself is the imperative to spread or proselytizing. It is baked into the religion itself. Originally this was an idea to convert all Jews to the new religion, but it was Saul of Tarsus, or the Apostle Paul, who introduced the idea that this should apply to all peoples, not just Jews.

In the words of the Bible itself: Matthew 28:19–20: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them… teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” Mark 16:15: “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.”

So while you may be correct that there is a psychologal aspect to it as well, it is also true that it is simply a part of their religion. They are taught that they should do this. It is generally seen as a holy duty to convert others and save their souls.

I would honestly just create a tiny dual boot of another linux distro with LUKS KVM encryption on the entire thing. It has its own sudo, and is locked behind your encryption password. You just boot into a small 30GB or so private session that only you have access to while leaving the main distro untouched.

How bold of you to claim atheists do not have a national holiday a mere TEN DAYS prior to National Donut Day!

I would push back on the idea that humans inherently want to push their religions on people. In actuality that behavior is an effect of the memetic construction of more modern religions. Memetics being the concept “viral ideas” or contagious ideas. Where an idea becomes a thing of its own and spreads without outside interference. (yes like memes). The polytheistic religions were generally not so inclined to spread their religion to others. They’d show up in a forgein land and see other peoples worshipping gods and either think those were the names for their own gods here or think that these are just the gods of this land. The Greeks for example would make offerings to Isis while in Egypt.

The more recent idea of “An imperative to spread” is an invention of christianity that was picked up by Islam as well. Over time much like our societies evolve the ideas we have evolve too. It’s natural selection. Given enough time any idea that has baked into it the imperative to spread will overtake ideas that do not. Hence the death of paganism in Europe and the dominance of Islam, and Christianity in that region by comparison over the last few centuries.

Eventually (As is already happening to some extent with political ideologies imo) a new memetic construct will come along that outcompetes christianity. Just as the christians before it absorbed paganism (Arch Angels and Demons are literally just pagan gods given new names) this new one will absorb christianity and outcompete it and the other religions into near extinction. This may be a new religion of its own, it may be a political movement, it may be something else. Whatever it is it will better fit the material conditions of the current world than the now quite outdated christianity which was more suited to a medeival time period. Giving it an advantage and leading to inevitable spread.

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