Comment by self_awareness
4 hours ago
If you think you should not do these things, then you're a part of the problem.
If a company will advertise that they can take your oil and "dispose it legally", and then on their website they will openly write that they've found a loophole allowing them to store oil on the bottom of the ocean, then you say it's morally OK to use their services because it's legal?
If todays legislations are cargo and are being bought and sold based on the number of hired lobbyists, then you say it's OK to base our moral compas on that?
If you're a baker then you need to figure out how LLMs work at least to a level so that you could say that you've tried to figure it out, just as when I'm a software developer and I need to figure out how kidney stones work, because it might be in my own personal interest to know this.
Same thing is when buying stuff from Chinese vendors that ship cheap stuff to every corner of the world. You can buy their cheap products using your blind excuses, but then don't blame your local markets that for some unknown and unpredictable reason they closed operation.
We have brains for a reason, and we need to use this organ to fight our way through the complexity. This is the tax every one of us has to pay for being human and to live in a human world. If you want to have a brain, but decide not to use it, then I think you're just being lazy and entitled.
> then you're a part of the problem.
Sure, enshitification is my fault because I do not read the fine print, or research business models before I buy stuff.
I am not saying that the consumer has no ethical responsibilities, I am saying that is infeasible for the average consumer to do so.
> If you're a baker then you need to figure out how LLMs work
I completely disagree. I should not have to research about which types of grain are destructive to the farming industry before buying bread.
> If you want to have a brain, but decide not to use it, then I think you're just being lazy and entitled.
I have the right to choose where I spend my brain power on, and there are much, much more interesting and gratifying things to me than trying to analyse the behaviours of megacorps in order to have a fully educated decision in everything, in the this hyper complex and hyperconnected world we live in.
We disagree completely, no reason to keep repeating the same arguments. Have a nice day and enjoy reading the fine print in everything you buy, if it makes you feel better.
> Sure, enshitification is my fault because I do not read the fine print, or research business models before I buy stuff.
Kind of yes. You use it, you buy it. You create demand. And if there's demand, there's supply, economics 1-2-3. You vote "YES" with your wallet.
I read the fine print, and this allows me to NOT use Opus x30 only because it's available. I choose to not use AirBnb. I send a signal that this supply is not in demand.
And I guess because people like me read fine prints, you can feel better as well, because if something big will come up, you will hear internet rants about it, because we analyze and resist.