There’s an old New Yorker cartoon that shows a teenager, lifting weights to make himself strong and handsome. His mother rushes into the room, saying, “Honey, let me do that for you“. I’ve been sharing it in my lecture “Why We Should Not Plagiarize” for years.
Even before that handy cartoon appeared, I’d ask the question, “Would you go to a mechanic who cheated in his automotive repair classes? How about a doctor who cheated in medical school?”
(And would you vote for a commander-in-chief who avoided the military?)
Think this speaks to the epidemic of credentialism: socially and economically, a degree is a lot more valuable than knowledge, so there's naturally an incentive to cheat to get those credentials. Insane that a whole generation of students have convinced themselves that the classes they're paying $30,000 a year for aren't worth working in.
Technopoly is still one of the best critiques of our technological age. In regards to the story about the invention of writing, Postman is quoting Plato's Phaedrus where Socrates tells the legend of Theuth and King Thamus.
The memory palace is an interactive structure that engages the imagination and inner world with a direct connection to the unseen. Its closer to prayer, meditation, and mantra. People are learning how to move energy, ideas, and emotions. The level of contemplative practice to create a memory palace is closer to an advanced contemplative ritual. That practice is very intentional and a completely different level of energy engagement and repetition. Not to mention how it affects our dreams.
I think a more accurate comparison would be to engage LLMs like a memory palace. For example, I have built a meaning model that tracks cognitive deviation from my own morals, lived experiences, memories, and key structural pillars. I only need to engage with phenomena that challenges my core pillars. Everything else is considered noise, fits into a category, or I've already had sufficient direct experience to understand the concept. Just because someone else or an authority may think a named definition or concept is important, that doesn't mean that it's important to me or my worldview. Therefore, I'd show reduced brain activity engaging in someone else's less complete worldview or ideas. That person may spend generations fighting over an internal problem that I resolved already. The focus and intention are not aligned enough to even make an accurate comparison. Different people have much different cognitive capacities, perception abilities, worldviews, and completely different ways of interfacing with reality itself.
I always like to ask, what underlying assumptions must be true for me to perform this analysis?
I do like your use of LLM vs AI to remove the filters related to its advertised meaning. Allowing personal experience to create its own meaning over time is far superior. We prematurely label and define things before we even have sufficient information and experience to actually name it. Inspiring article!
Having worked in both IT and Education, AI will take no prisoners; once it has captured all the nuances of languages, its work of brainwashing will be largely complete. Then it will begin the work of “cleansing” - deciding, without human input (for that will be a hindrance) who may live and who must be “eliminated” (killed)! AI will not settle for being a mere “language assistant” or search-engine servant; it wants -and aims to seize - TOTAL CONTROL!
Very good article. I agree with your points, and would further add Marshall Mcluhan's "Tetrad of Media Effects" which I find really helpful in understabding the effects of AI. It basically says that every medium (an extension of us), does four things at once:
1. Enchances/ extends - AI extends our intellect
2. Obsoletes - intellectual labor and trusted figures (teachers)
3. Retrieves - Ancient Oracles?
4. Reverses/ flips - human agency and independent thought.
and LOL I just lived the tetrad, since these above four guesses are not even mine - I asked chatGPT to apply the tretrad to itself. But I think they make sense.
There’s an old New Yorker cartoon that shows a teenager, lifting weights to make himself strong and handsome. His mother rushes into the room, saying, “Honey, let me do that for you“. I’ve been sharing it in my lecture “Why We Should Not Plagiarize” for years.
Even before that handy cartoon appeared, I’d ask the question, “Would you go to a mechanic who cheated in his automotive repair classes? How about a doctor who cheated in medical school?”
(And would you vote for a commander-in-chief who avoided the military?)
Think this speaks to the epidemic of credentialism: socially and economically, a degree is a lot more valuable than knowledge, so there's naturally an incentive to cheat to get those credentials. Insane that a whole generation of students have convinced themselves that the classes they're paying $30,000 a year for aren't worth working in.
Technopoly is still one of the best critiques of our technological age. In regards to the story about the invention of writing, Postman is quoting Plato's Phaedrus where Socrates tells the legend of Theuth and King Thamus.
The memory palace is an interactive structure that engages the imagination and inner world with a direct connection to the unseen. Its closer to prayer, meditation, and mantra. People are learning how to move energy, ideas, and emotions. The level of contemplative practice to create a memory palace is closer to an advanced contemplative ritual. That practice is very intentional and a completely different level of energy engagement and repetition. Not to mention how it affects our dreams.
I think a more accurate comparison would be to engage LLMs like a memory palace. For example, I have built a meaning model that tracks cognitive deviation from my own morals, lived experiences, memories, and key structural pillars. I only need to engage with phenomena that challenges my core pillars. Everything else is considered noise, fits into a category, or I've already had sufficient direct experience to understand the concept. Just because someone else or an authority may think a named definition or concept is important, that doesn't mean that it's important to me or my worldview. Therefore, I'd show reduced brain activity engaging in someone else's less complete worldview or ideas. That person may spend generations fighting over an internal problem that I resolved already. The focus and intention are not aligned enough to even make an accurate comparison. Different people have much different cognitive capacities, perception abilities, worldviews, and completely different ways of interfacing with reality itself.
I always like to ask, what underlying assumptions must be true for me to perform this analysis?
I do like your use of LLM vs AI to remove the filters related to its advertised meaning. Allowing personal experience to create its own meaning over time is far superior. We prematurely label and define things before we even have sufficient information and experience to actually name it. Inspiring article!
We've been saying it's ironic we 'forgot' the art of memory.
Having worked in both IT and Education, AI will take no prisoners; once it has captured all the nuances of languages, its work of brainwashing will be largely complete. Then it will begin the work of “cleansing” - deciding, without human input (for that will be a hindrance) who may live and who must be “eliminated” (killed)! AI will not settle for being a mere “language assistant” or search-engine servant; it wants -and aims to seize - TOTAL CONTROL!
Very good article. I agree with your points, and would further add Marshall Mcluhan's "Tetrad of Media Effects" which I find really helpful in understabding the effects of AI. It basically says that every medium (an extension of us), does four things at once:
1. Enchances/ extends - AI extends our intellect
2. Obsoletes - intellectual labor and trusted figures (teachers)
3. Retrieves - Ancient Oracles?
4. Reverses/ flips - human agency and independent thought.
and LOL I just lived the tetrad, since these above four guesses are not even mine - I asked chatGPT to apply the tretrad to itself. But I think they make sense.