Comment by 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?
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?
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.
> I can use ChatGPT to alphabetize a long list for me.
Trying to imagine using enough energy to boil two liters of water(1)(2) to sort a list instead of typing
sort list.txt
which is a command that works pretty much the same on Windows(3), Linux/Bash(4), macOS (5) and does not have any risk of hallucinating at all, and the only reason I could imagine myself doing that was if for some reason, using enough energy to boil two liters of water to sort a list made me feel good. Like I would only do that if I got some sort of rush out of it or if it made people on the internet think that I am smart.
1 https://ai-basics.com/how-much-energy-does-chatgpt-really-us...
2 https://eatwithus.net/how-much-energy-does-it-take-to-boil-1...
3 https://www.windows-commandline.com/sort-command/
4 https://thelinuxcode.com/bash_sort_command/
5 https://ss64.com/mac/sort.html
Sorry the energy comment is ridiculously out of context. I've written a deep dive on how small that number is. Do you complain when YouTube videos or video games use similar amounts of energy? Your laptop uses the same energy every 3 minutes. https://andymasley.substack.com/p/a-cheat-sheet-for-conversa...
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Are you saying you also believe video games, alcohol, and guns shouldn't exist?
If so, that's a pretty radical position, and if not I don't understand how they're relevant.
I think each are net bad and shouldn't exist yes, but I also think each is useful in specific contexts. Not sure why that's not relevant, it's a direct example of stuff that's useful but net bad.
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