JollyG

Word guessing machine.

Before you buy one, look up how much replacement parts cost for whatever new machine you are considering. I had to get a new one a few years back because the filter in my old one kept getting clogged, and could not be replaced. You had to replace a larger part that cost almost 200 dollars.

A long time ago I did some volunteer work for a companion bird sanctuary, and the number of people who got a bird as a pet and were totally unprepared for the care required was astounding. Almost all the birds at that sanctuary had some sort of serious behavioral issue because the people who got them just could not keep them cared for. You should probably talk to someone with experience keeping birds before making a decision because experience can be terrible for the bird if you are not ready.

His presentation of psychology leaves me with the impression that he is someone who is not well educated in the field. And I am saying this as someone with a background in a field that is very close to psychology.

His explanations of human experience and society rely on psychoanalysis and he only seems to cite more recent work when it reinforces his view point. His general approach to understanding human psychology is outdated.

<—-1800’s——psychoanalysis—-1900—behaviorism—-1950s——the cognitive revolution—-present day psychology—->

Petersons view of the mind and society is stuck in he past.

Peterson retreats to a politically convenient solipsism whenever challenged on anything. He is not a serious person.

He also has good presentation skills. Well worth the watch

What does dystopia mean to you?

In this particular case, the things I find dystopian are the tendency of a disconcertingly high number of people to allow a tech company to mediate (and eventually monetize) every aspect of their social lives. The point I was making is that if this tool were to experience widespread adoption, even putting aside the massive surveillance and manipulation issues, what will inevitably happen is that a subset of people will come to rely on the tool to the point where they cannot interact with others outside of it. That is bad. Its bad because, it takes a fundamental human experience and locks it behind a pay wall. It is also bad because the sort of interactions that this tool could facilitate are going to be, by their nature, superficial. You simply cannot have meaningful interactions with someone else if you are relying on a crib sheet to navigate an interaction with them.

This tool would inevitably lead to the atrophy of social skills. In the same way that overusing a calculator causes arithmetic skills to atrophy, and in the same way that overusing a GPS causes spatial reasoning skill to atrophy. But in this case it is worse, because this tool would be contributing to the further isolation of people who, judging by the excuses offered in this thread, are already bad at social interactions. People are already lonely and apparently social media is contributing to that trend allowing it to come between you and personal interactions in the face to face world is not going to help.

This is akin to having sticky notes to remember things, just in a more compact convenient application.

I really disagree with this analogy. It would be more appropriate to say that this is like carrying around a stack of index cards with notes about people in your life and pulling them out every time you interact with someone. If someone in my life needed an index card to interact with me, I would find that insulting, because it is insincere and dehumanizing. It communicates to others "I don't care enough about you to bother to learn even basic information about who you are.

The problem isn’t the technology, it’s the application

I really cannot stand this bromide. We are talking about a company with a track record of using technology to abuse people. They facilitated a genocide (by incompetence, but they clearly did not give a shit). They prey on people when they feel bad. They researched ways to make people feel bad (so they will be easier to manipulate). They design their tools to be addictive and then manipulate and abuse people on their platform. Saying "technology is neutral is the least interesting thing you can say about tech in the context of the current trends of silicon valley. A place whose thought leaders and influencers are becoming ever more obsessed with manipulation, control and fascism. We don't need to speculate about technology, we already know the applications of this technology won't be neutral. They will be used to harm people for profit.

A tool that keeps track of people in your life and gives you small talk cues seems dystopian in its self. Relying on that you would just further isolate yourself from others.

Thinking about it, I am pretty sure I would immediately despise anyone who used this tool on me, even apart from the fact that they would be putting me into a meta database without my consent. I would despise people who use this tool for the same reason I despise people who crudely implement the strategies from “How to win friends and influence people”. Their interactions are insincere and manipulative.

I’ve got a buddy who is a professor and he catches llm cheaters by asking them difficult questions like “what was your essay about?” and “what were the three points you made in your essay?”. I’m sure llm proponents will offer some bromide about “tools aren’t inherently good or bad”, but it seems like the reality in college is llm tools are used for cheating.

The average of all the serious guesses in this thread.

This has largely been my experience as well. I work as a statistician and it seems like the folks who arrived at data science through a CS background are less equipped to think through data analysis. Though I suppose to be fair, their coding skills are better than mine. But if OP wants to do data journalism, of the sort Pro Publica is gearing up for, then a stats background would be better.

Probably statistics. A lot of journalists seem to struggle with stats so that could give you an advantage. You can pick up a lot of programming skills in a stats program. You can even lean into statistical programming if you want. I think you’d have to seek out the more advanced programming side of a statistical degree but it is there and I think stats is harder to learn than the coding skills you need for data science.