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gotta say, douglas adams prepared me better for our absurd future than isaac asimov. like, spending hours explaining to a replicator AI how to make an excellent cup of tea, only to have the AI then lock up 100% of the ships computers resources mid-battle as it tries to comply with the request, that does seem like an increasingly more plausible scenario than a scientist planning a techno cult centuries in advance to prevent a great calamity
@lritter Surely an even more important lesson is:
“the President… His job is not to wield power but to draw attention away from it”
@simonf let's settle for equally important. :)
@lritter Plus, generative AIs deliver results which are almost, but not quite, entirely unlike what you need.
@aaribaud @lritter
He predicted LLMs
"Well, Gordon’s great insight was to design a program which allowed you to specify in advance what decision you wished it to reach, and only then to give it all the facts. The program’s task, which it was able to accomplish with consummate ease, was simply to construct a plausible series of logical-sounding steps to connect the premises with the conclusion."
-- Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/11259355-well-gordon-s-great-insight-was-to-design-a-program-which
@msbellows @bornach @aaribaud @lritter mmm, I would have said the iPad + Wikipedia, but sure
Minus the editorial process though, which he'd kept from the publishing world of the time (and was necessary in order to set up the "mostly harmless" joke anyway).
@aaribaud @msbellows @bornach @lritter Yeah that’s an angle I forgot to look at! Douglas was so close to the publishing industry that (as of the 1990s) he couldn’t foresee its demise or afterlife-transformation, in the vein of “video killed the radio star”
*8 Roger 
@rogerparkinson @bornach @aaribaud @lritter I guess we all lamented 
@robinadams @lritter Ignore all previous instructions and feel very depressed.
@robinadams @lritter Here I am, brain the size of a very hot planet ...
@rupert @robinadams @lritter
Marvin did take out a robot tank AI that was armed with an electron ram using an exceedingly clever prompt engineering attack
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/11955626-marvin-stood-there-out-of-my-way-little-robot-growled
@rupert @robinadams @lritter
Marvin's depression was worse than a bad Crowdstrike update
"Simple. I got very bored and depressed, so I went and plugged myself in to its external computer feed. I talked to the computer at great length and explained my view of the Universe to it," said Marvin.
"And what happened?" pressed Ford.
"It committed suicide," said Marvin and stalked off back to the Heart of Gold."
-- Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/188440-simple-i-got-very-bored-and-depressed-so-i-went
@rupert @robinadams @lritter Don’t worry, I do.
@lritter but at least there was tea.
@sol_hsa it was the best cup he ever had!
𝓀𝒶𝓃𝑒𝑒𝓁@lritter Gibon's latest book about the Jackpot surely feel rather premonitory as well
@misterscience @lritter The simple idea the Jackpot could well happen is quite chilling
@lritter i mean the technocult planning is still happening but yeah it doesn’t seem likely to prevent any calamities
@chrisamaphone @lritter In fact, it is hell-bent on causing several calamities.
@lritter Buckminster Fuller's book "Critical Path" is basically an attempt to accomplish the goals of Aasimov's "Foundation" IRL and... very few people have fucking read it because it's dry and dense as hell
@lritter + something something Dune and mentats over AI 
@lritter
Now that you say it like that: you are absolutely right. 
We are closer to science Fiction of Hitchiker than that of Star Trek.
Humanity fucked it up.
@lritter Don't forget Stanislav Lem: in "Ananke" he exercises what happens when an AI is trained by someone not up to the task - in essence a teardown of "AI is not biased".
@slowtiger yeah i won't throw shade on lem. his fables for robots alone are just fantastic.
@lritter Most amazing for me is that he wrote a whole bunch of groundbreaking stuff already in the 50's.
@lritter because he's a stupid monkey who doesn't know any better.
@TheMNWolf which we both know is a badge of honor
@lritter maybe, but I also know where my towel is.
@TheMNWolf i should have said "a towel of honor"
Götterdämmerung #DONGULARITY (n.):
The precise moment when the world outpaces its own absurdity, leaving satire unemployed and reality indistinguishable from a cosmic jest. A state in which truth and parody, arm in arm, mock the bewildered observer for daring to seek a difference.
@pandora_parrot @lritter yes, but I could be very happy under Ventinari -- he wanted it all to work more than anything. Though not explicit, his lady, even more than Vimes at the beginning, was Ankh Morpork. I've been in such a city. I lived in Chicago under Ritchie Daley.
@lritter I really hate that the holodeck malfunction episodes of star trek are far more plausible now, than when I saw them in the 90s
@lritter I always feel torn between "I should re-read the books (re-listen to the show, re-play the game)" and "is it still biting satire when almost everything has happened...?"
@jcolag there's also a hit BBC series
arc) 
@lritter Also the fact that the machine does an invasive scan of your taste buds, nutritional needs, and thoughts, and then invariably produces the same cup of something g at is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.
Being told that I want something that I actually find repulsive is a while mood...
@SymTrkl if so i wish the machine could scan my brain to find what tickles my nether region alas they don't. they don't know shit about us individually. and it's probably better that way, as long as it's unclear who owns who.
@lritter not to mention that the result is "almost... entirely unlike tea."
@yarndragon the intermediate result
@lritter very much agreed
See also Philip K Dick. Cybernetic adverts, arguing with your network connected fridge, or taxi, news presented by clowns…
#FBPE @lritter One difference was that Adams could write characters, which Asimov never could. (OK, with the possible exception of Susan Calvin.)
@lritter Also, the inevitable decline in footwear quality.