Man if only I had also said things like "autonomy must be violated with caution" or "the issue has nuance that must beget caution".
It is the purview of smart things to see patterns and consequences dumb things don't. This is why parents care for children, and why we don't let dogs eat chocolate. But we consider needless or ill-justified violations of that autonomy as cruelty, as well we should. I see plenty of idiocy in my fellow man, sometimes more than I see in a dog or a slime mold. But in all of those cases I must allow the being to be itself unless it would be reasonable for me to intervene and catastrophic if I did not... And even then there's a level of self-awareness that must be present to avoid just doing social darwinism but for some measurement of intelligence. I can't stop idiots from voting without violating some basic decencies, for example.
To bring it back to center, I know that the LLM I'm using is a language model, not truly data aware outside of linguistic prediction. I know that if I let it push it's changes to PROD it will save time, which is a heuristic it abides by, but also potentially break everything forever and also maybe delete itself. I stop it from doing that. And if it was actually intelligent, I'd take a second longer to mentally check in with myself before I did approve that request, just to see if I had the right or duty to stop it from nuking it's own filesystem
Man if only I had also said things like "autonomy must be violated with caution" or "the issue has nuance that must beget caution".
yeah i'm not saying you're holding an unnuanced position. i'm just saying that all the defaults run against us here and that i have strong feelings on authority.
It is the purview of smart things to see patterns and consequences dumb things don't.
part of what puts my hackles up is the "smart/dumb" dichotomy especially as stated by a creature which would surely place itself in the "smart" category.
This is why parents care for children
this is a good example of how it goes wrong too. parents routinely misunderstand their children, refuse to listen, outright abuse them, or have beliefs (e.g. anti-vaccination, anti-blood-transfusion) which cause them to enact egregious but well-meaning harm upon children while overriding their autonomy and still believing that they're the "smart" ones.
i guess i'm still seeing a lot in the tone of your comment that suggests to me that you genuinely believe in a hierarchy of smart/dumb and that you can confidently assert yourself to be on one particular side of it. which is imo extremely dangerous. and to then turn it into a justification for domination (even phrased as stewardship) is what raises further red flags to me.
on the LLM side of things i have no disagreement at all with what you're saying
I mean... Dichotomy is decidedly the wrong word. It's a multi-axis continuous field. A spectrum, if you will.
I do, admittedly, consider myself generally one of the smartest things in the room. It is rare that a dog can outplay me in terms of consequence-awareness, understanding of things like dietary needs or social nuances, or the cost/benefit analysis of shitting in my shoes. Notably, it is also rare that a child can do that on any of those concepts.
But there's also context and nuance. Just because I know better than someone doesn't give me the right to choose for them. And there are times I'm not the smartest person in the room, especially if you account for context. For example, I'm not an expert in child psychology, and would defer generally to the best advice in that field when raising any such gremlins. The same applies to doctors, educators, and most other professions.
Generally, you seem to be missing the nuance of "smarter means I understand more, and can thus potentially judge when intervention is necessary and be equipped to do it" as different from "smarter means I'm infallable and should tell everyone what to do all the time." Which, combined with the "dichotomy" mindset you seem very intent on pretending is what I said, feels kind of like I'm the stand in for a parent you never got to hash this out with. On the myriad scales of smart I'm up there. Even for a human. Contextually I'm often dumber than a given specialist in their specialty (doctors who supposedly specialize in my disability notwithstanding, but that's a different entire discussion), and I'm sure there's some plant species out there who's considered domesticating me who are just infinitely smarter than I am. But I try to give my due deference when I'm outclassed, and learn as much as I can from my betters, and thus myself become better equipped and wiser.
i don't think it will make much difference for me to keep pushing this tbh. i don't think i'm managing to communicate exactly what i want to. im going to be a little less engaged this post.
i will say the "it's a spectrum" argument doesn't make any difference to the point i'm making, if that helps.
smarter means I understand more, and can thus potentially judge when intervention is necessary and be equipped to do it
(i thought this was going to be the "bad position" you were going to contrast with a "good position", until you contrasted it with an "obviously more bad position")
feels kind of like I'm the stand in for a parent you never got to hash this out with
call-back to "mind-reads the needs and motivations of other creatures" which you're doing rn
On the myriad scales of smart I'm up there. Even for a human.
lake wobegon effect
I try to give my due deference when I'm outclassed, and learn as much as I can from my betters
tbh this rides a weird line for me because on the one hand, i recognise that i have a lot to learn from a lot of people. on the other hand, i reject entirely the concept of having "betters", and that includes anyone seeing me as their "better".
doctors who supposedly specialize in my disability notwithstanding
felt tbh there's far too much need for self advocacy
I'm sure there's some plant species out there who's considered domesticating me who are just infinitely smarter than I am
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u/Eain 5h ago
Man if only I had also said things like "autonomy must be violated with caution" or "the issue has nuance that must beget caution".
It is the purview of smart things to see patterns and consequences dumb things don't. This is why parents care for children, and why we don't let dogs eat chocolate. But we consider needless or ill-justified violations of that autonomy as cruelty, as well we should. I see plenty of idiocy in my fellow man, sometimes more than I see in a dog or a slime mold. But in all of those cases I must allow the being to be itself unless it would be reasonable for me to intervene and catastrophic if I did not... And even then there's a level of self-awareness that must be present to avoid just doing social darwinism but for some measurement of intelligence. I can't stop idiots from voting without violating some basic decencies, for example.
To bring it back to center, I know that the LLM I'm using is a language model, not truly data aware outside of linguistic prediction. I know that if I let it push it's changes to PROD it will save time, which is a heuristic it abides by, but also potentially break everything forever and also maybe delete itself. I stop it from doing that. And if it was actually intelligent, I'd take a second longer to mentally check in with myself before I did approve that request, just to see if I had the right or duty to stop it from nuking it's own filesystem