Comment by andymasley

7 months ago

I say in the post I lose respect for people who specifically claim that a billion people are using an app that adds absolutely nothing to their lives each week, not people who dislike chatbots for other reasons (hallucinations etc.). So I think a lot of people are getting a lot of misinformation from TikTok, and I think it’d be better if TikTok didn’t exist, but I’d consider anyone who said that TikTok is completely useless to its users to be pretty goofy. I feel the same about chatbots.

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andymasley

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jrflowers  7 months ago

> a billion people are using an app that adds absolutely nothing to their lives each week

I like this reasoning. If something is popular it is objectively good. For example 21.7% of adults on earth use tobacco, so it must be good then.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.PRV.SMOK?name_desc=f...

Except for TikTok, which is bad because people share their experiences of chat bots not being very good on there.

As an aside, “dumb” is subjective, though if we had to put a label on it, “consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels” sounds like it could be something?

https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872

  • andymasley  7 months ago

    I think basically everyone using tobacco knows it's bad for them. They're not stupid. This is another example of people being basically aware of their situations.

    • bpt3  7 months ago

      You realize people can be aware of the negative consequences of their actions and still make a "stupid" choice, correct?

      I would say that's true using a strict definition of the term, and is definitely true for common usage of the term.

      In the future, you should just tell people up front when you're going to redefine terms to suit your needs (in your article and in your posts here, you apparently define "useful" as "providing immediate gratification with no consideration of any long term effects" and you seem to be define "stupid" only as "making decisions without full knowledge of the consequences" above) rather than confusing nearly everyone who reads your writing.

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bpt3  7 months ago

How can you both think TikTok shouldn't exist and think that it's useful to its users, without using a pretty unique definition of useful?

  • andymasley  7 months ago

    There's a ton of stuff I think is useful in specific circumstances but can be bad overall.

    -Video games: Provide fun, but probably overall bad for society bc people waste too much time on them.

    -Alcohol: Most drinkers get a lot of value out of drinking, but alcoholism is so bad that on net alcohol's probably bad.

    -Guns & nuclear weapons: Wish both didn't exist, but each provides a lot of use to the specific people who have them.

    -TikTok: Overall causes too many people to believe misinformation, but for a lot of other people is fun or interesting.

    It's possible to think AI chatbots are net bad because people use them to cheat, or they rely on them for information too much and believe false information, without believing that they are always useless in all circumstances. I can use ChatGPT to alphabetize a long list for me. That's useful, even if I think overall chatbots are net bad.