Ghexor

It’s like 3d rendering; You can move a vertex cheaply, sure. You then also have to re-render a couple of frames of the video.

I see female sexrobots as a symptom, a manifestation of the male gaze. I've heard personal histories of being courted and finding the guy was out for sexual gratification and didn't much care for her life-perspective. A justified anger there, I think, at a culture that perpetuates and celebrates this form of relating. Insecurity, I suspect, befalls more prominently the indoctrinated women that are catering to male expectations of beauty and ease. The successful feminists don't care if you're only screwing sexbots. If you are, it'll be great to have you off the market anyway. A filter for the men who won’t meaningfully connect.

How convenient for the data collecting companies that so generously sponsor the new & free services, that our democratically controlled communication infrastructure looses in value.

I agree with you in that the stories of religion are pretty dangerous in their 'dogmatic' potential.

I think another big value of religion is the community that comes with it. Its really easy to get along with people who tell the same stories.

And maybe there's something else I'm less aware of, idk. My point is there seems to be something we've not figured out well enough to apply it.

A human teacher can see the problem from the students perspective and understand the error they make and why they make it. No current ai would be able to achieve this. But alas, few human teachers can or will take the time to do this per student. Infinite time and patience really are the ai's superpower here IMO.

I think your impression has merit and labeling people as 'sick' or 'broken' or any of the diagnoses in psychology literature, that imply just about the same, can keep people stuck identifying with their afflictions. And that there's some great value in religion that we've not found a good replacement for.

I also believe that one can go without facing deeply traumatic events for an entire life and seem to many on the outside to be doing much better than one who goes the difficult path of deconstructing oneself and their family history.

And I think our unhappiness and that of our children is well explained by our late-stage-capitalist, individualistic cultures and the rise of technology that profits from (ill-)serving our social needs.

'It's no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.' - Jiddu Krishnamurti

Thats an interesting point about the age of manipulative sales strategies! I didn't consider it. And I agree with your position that emotions change over a rather long timescale.

In fact that's exactly why I'm concerned about the speed of technological development in psychology and data science. I fear that it's no longer salesperson vs consumer. Now it's salesalgorithm and a large chunk of the behavioral science academic efforts vs consumer. The power that the producer wields is increasing at a much faster rate than the emotional awareness of the consumer.

My perpective is influenced by the Center of Humane Tech's positon. The people behind 'The social dillema' documentary and the 'Your undivided attention' podcast. Manipulative capabilities are increasing FAST. And I believe that this speed of change is unprecedented.

I agree that a good salesperson manipulates people too. Instead of trying to compare how much manipulation is done by salespeople vs in ads, I think it's worthwhile to consider how the manipulation is performed.

Both ad and salesperson will probably attempt to make us feel some emotion - best case without our conscious awareness of it. The tools an expensive ad has at its disposal seem to me much more effective in evoking emotion; visual stimuli, carefully crafted music, decades of psychology research, etc. And while we've had a chance to evolve strategies against human to human manipulation (doors, perhaps, and various subtle triggers of distrust), the ad environment is a very recent development.

A popular position perhaps, which is why you can still go gambling while 'weak-minded' children cannot.

Personally, I hope we come to protect the vulnerable regardless of their age.

I agree with you that a pos/neg divide is clearer and more straight forward to construct.

Reading your comment also evoked in me imaginations of political repression. Anger and fear are really important emotions signifying "this situation is not meeting my needs". Social Media can abuse these for profit probably precicely because they play this important role. In this light, a ban on recommending negative content seems really dangerous. Any content that expresses dissatisfaction with the political status quo is likely to contain some 'negative' (I suggest the term 'challenging') emotions.

So while 'addictiveness' is, like you say, really difficuly to measure - I prefer we try.

I think, in order to have the desired effect, the deterrant must be in proportion to the resources of the transgressor as a whole entity. If its not, Apple can afford to behave anticompetitively with their appstore, hold on to an illegal position of power and use that to extract revenue for the other lines of business that they're in.

Morally, if we fine violations to the speed limit in proportion to the context of the transgression only it will not adapt to the income of the transgressor. That makes it practically legal for rich people to drive as fast as they wish.

I both agree and disagree, in that; - the amount of spam on Mastodon will surely increase in amount proportional to the size of it's network. And - Mastodon users won't usually see that new spam by the dynamics of the current system because we're only shown content from sources we explicitly follow.

That's probably because OpenAi can train on the (succesfull) conversations we have with ChatGPT!

At worst the assesment will be dysfunctional often and at best this can empower local governance (ideally, "the people") to decide, as you say, on what businesses they'd like to host.