A question for them: Why live anymore?
Okay, a bit more friendly version: where did you gave up living your own life?
this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2026
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Showerthoughts
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Maybe it's not about whether they are or are not NPCs, but the time they spend being as one. I also think spending time scrolling, having all your content delivered to you via an algorithm, also is kind of like spending time being an NPC.
What about opensource self hosted AI?
There are still major ethical issues with how they get training data, but the problem with hijacking the economy and society seems resolved. I feel like I can more easily forgive the copyright theft for someone just fucking around in their homelab, replacing Google assistant.
Maybe I'm just bean-souping.
don't forget that frequent LLM use erodes patience and skills. even with the training ethics and environmental ethics set aside, they make you measurably dumber.
LLM users consistently underperform at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels
People using this study to spread misinformation is what erodes my patience.
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This kinda gets philosophy-of-cognative-science-ey, but it kinda smells like "measuring a fish by its tree climbing ability". Or maybe like goodharts law.
There are many different kinds of smart, is the kind of smart they're measuring the one that will be relevant?
Again, I don't want to carry too much water for AI, but I also don't want to propagate arguments that also apply to other tools I like. Consider: externalizing memory. Without the tool you used to capture that memory, you're completely unable to function. Dependency on it reduces your ability to remember things yourself. By many measures, it makes your dumber and less productive. But I wouldn't personally consider taking notes to be detrimental.
So I want to be very careful when we make claims that externalizing some aspect of our cognition makes us worse somehow.
Books and calculators externalise skills that we see as tedious, like memorisation and calculation. LLMs externalise skills that we value in and of themselves, like decision making, art, and socialisation.
Would you rather live with people who can't memorise dates and perform arithmetic? Or people who can't make a decision or write a beautiful story?
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I think it means people who use AI to talk to people.
Calling people NPCs because they use AI is pretty ironic. Using a tool doesn't make someone less human, any more than using a calculator makes someone incapable of thinking. The real question is whether people are using AI to expand their thinking or outsourcing it entirely. Blindly repeating AI-generated content is one thing; using AI as a tool for creativity, learning, or productivity is another. Judge the thought, not the tool.
Comparing LLMs to simple tools is a bullshit argument. Calculators are deterministic and they don't confidently give incorrect answers, for one.
The IPO bots are out to pump the numbers. This is an established routine lol. The idiots eat it up
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Calling people NPCs because they delegate their thinking to a machine.
Unused, the brain atrophies. The human dies.
There's still a living body, most of the time, but it's merely the slop machine's peripheral.
A husk, a mockery of humanity, a corporation's wet dream, still given the same rights and respect as a real living human being, despite being merely a tool to carry on the corporation's whims.
NPCs is appropriate. Clearer than reverse centaurs.
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i am absolutely judging the tool. no matter how you use it, you're tacitly approving of its existence. by continuing to use chatgpt and claude, you're essentially saying "all the stealing you did, all the power you use, all the underhanded business tactics keeping you afloat, i'm okay with that."
Don't want to wake you, but this is happening with the majority of products in imperialism. The AI it's just a bigger more concentrated tool of theft.
If you are ok with the stealing of lives (kids/adults) in Africa, Asia or wherever, it's a little ironic to have a problem with the AI stealing all the continents.
"and yet you participate in society"
You both have a point, but I've seen people make excuses such as the fact that ethically produced chocolate isn't as cheap as non-ethically produced chocolate, which could be bought everyday. But why buy and eat chocolate everyday?
It is the same thing with factory farming; people now expect to eat more meat than people had, and advertising says to men that you're as masculine as the amount of meat you eat.
The influence of hyperconsumerism is horrible, it justifies luxury at the expense of ethics as a necessity.
The ones at the top have the worst case of luxury addiction.
what is with the high school level takes today? the system is bad, people exist in the system, people need to remain sane, people can indulge in a bit of badness sometimes in order to remain sane without being labeled as bad. that's the baseline. that's where the discussion should start. the response to "there is no ethical consumption under capitalism" should not be to just consume everything.
i have cheap clothes that are likely cheap because of unethical practices. same with my phone, same with my food. the difference between all those and an llm is that i need all of those things to exist in polite society. i do not need an llm.
some people's situation is such that they need a car. that's fine. they do not need an llm. some people have businesses that can only reach enough customers through social media. that's fine. they do not need an llm.
llms are the civet coffee of the digital world. expensive, bad for the environment in more ways than you think, highly unethical, nothing special, and completely unnecessary. nobody needs coffee, but some people "need" coffee. but nobody needs civet coffee. like nobody needs an llm.
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Yes, but I don’t go blindfolded and I don’t have double standards. AI is the pinnacle of the system not a problem (get as much as you can from others without give something).
since when is "i will not contribute to worsening the system i am forced to be a part of" a double standard? people need to eat. they do not need chatbots.
They don’t need a lot. They don’t need 3000cc cars, 2 closet of unused clothes, new iphone/android every year, etc etc. But guess what.
If you are ok with the stealing of lives (kids/adults) in Africa, Asia or wherever, it's a little ironic
What makes you think that anyone on this site is ok with that?
Do you know where you are right now?
It was an answer to a comment not a post.
What makes you think that anyone on this site is ok with that?
You should change the anyone to everyone, because the majority does it, either without knowing or knowing and has no alternative. Its called modern society.
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