Tag: philosophy

A Civilizational Collapse Model

There is an interesting link suggested between the observed AI model collapse and the apparent link between urban society and the collapse of human fertility.

The way neural networks function is that they examine real-world data and then create an average of that data to output. The AI output data resembles real-world data (image generation is an excellent example), but valuable minority data is lost. If model 1 trains on 60% black cats and 40% orange cats, then the output for “cat” is likely to yield closer to 75% black cats and 25% orange cats. If model 2 trains on the output of model 1, and model 3 trains on the output of model 2… then by the time you get to the 5th iteration, there are no more orange cats… and the cats themselves quickly become malformed Chronenburg monstrosities.

Nature published the original associated article in 2024, and follow-up studies have isolated similar issues. Model collapse appears to be a present danger in data sets saturated with AI-generated content4. Training on AI-generated data causes models to hallucinate, become delusional, and deviate from reality to the point where they’re no longer useful: i.e., Model Collapse…

The proposed thesis is that neural-network systems, which include AI models, human minds, larger human cultures, and our individual furry little friends, all train on available data. When a child stubs his wee little toe on an errant stone and starts screaming as if he’d caught himself on fire, that’s data he just received and which will be added to his model of reality. The same goes for climbing a tree, playing a video game, watching a YouTube video, sitting in a chair, eating that yucky green salad, etc. The child’s mind (or rather, subsections of his brain) are neural networks that behave similarly to AI neural networks.

The citation is to an article discussing how AI systems are NOT general purpose, and how they more closely resemble individual regions of a brain, not a brain.

People use new data as training data to model the outside world, particularly when we are children. In the same way that AI models become delusional and hallucinate when too much AI-generated data is in the training dataset, humans also become delusional when too much human-generated data is in their training dataset.

This is why milennial midwits can’t understand reality unless you figure out a way to reference Harry Potter when trying to make a point.

What qualifies as “intake data” for humans is nebulous and consists of basically everything. Thus, analyzing the human experience from an external perspective is difficult. However, we can make some broad-stroke statements about human information intake. When a person watches the Olympics, they’re seeing real people interacting with real-world physics. When a person watches a cartoon, they’re seeing artificial people interacting with unrealistic and inaccurate physics. When a human climbs a tree, they’re absorbing real information about gravity, human fragility, and physical strength. When a human plays a high-realism video game, they’re absorbing information artificially produced by other humans to simulate some aspects of the real physical world. When a human watches a cute anime girl driving tanks around, that human is absorbing wholly artificial information created by other humans.

If there is any truth to the hypothesis, this will have profound implications for what passes for human progress as well as the very concept of modernism. Because it’s already entirely clear that Clown World is collapsing and neither modernism nor postmodernism have anything viable to offer humanity a rational path forward.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Self-Negating Argument

This made me laugh.

Why the right can’t recognize or create good art

by Helen Roy

First of all, I’m a Swiftie…

The not-so-funny thing about what, for lack of a more accurate and sensible word, we shall call “the Left” is the way that they subvert, if not invert entirely, every single word that comes out of their mouth. It doesn’t matter if it’s “art” or “racism” or “evidence” or “equality” or “justice” or “violence”, every single word used by them means something very different, if not entirely opposite to, the word as it is commonly understood and defined in the dictionary.

In fact, it is predominantly the Right that has created, and continues to create, good art. All the little left-wing fantasy authors are imitating Tolkien, not Michael Moorcock. The giants of art, music, and literature are so unabashedly white, European, and male to such an extent it was necessary to invent a whole series of fake awards to permit the Left to pretend that what passed for their art was even art at all, let alone good.

The thing that the Left, such as it is, will never understand is that quality is never conveyed by an awards jury, a publishing gatekeeper, or even the ability to purchase bots. Quality in the arts is inherent, and no amount of relying upon various mouthpieces to declare its existence can create it when it isn’t there.

DISCUSS ON SG

Vox’s Razor

The wider the variety of arguments against a specific assertion, the more likely the assertion is to be false.

When something is false, there are always going to be multiple angles and perspectives from which the falsehood can be perceived and exposed. So, a false claim is always going to have more observable flaws than a true claim, and many of the arguments against it, however weak or relatively unconvincing they may be, will be correct.

Compare the vast panoply of arguments against evolution to the relatively narrow range of arguments against the existence of God. While I personally don’t find some of the Intelligent Design arguments against the theory of evolution by natural selection to be particularly convincing, they are logical and they are also, in the end, absolutely correct. I happen to find appeals to conclusive mathematical analyses considerably more convincing myself, but it’s important to keep in mind that these various arguments are all ultimately correct because they point to the truth: what could not happen did not happen.

Now consider the various arguments against the existence of God. They are not only inconclusive, but they all amount to different flavors of the same argument: the appeal to personal ignorance and incredulity. The few attempts to utilize reason and logic are feeble and false even when they are not provably dishonest. See: Euthypro.

Anyhow, I think it’s possible that my philosophical Razor may be a more reliable heuristic than that of William of Ockham, which relies upon parsimony, and, in common use, is usually misapplied to competing hypotheses with varying explanatory power.

When presented with competing hypotheses about the same prediction and both hypotheses have equal explanatory power, one should prefer the hypothesis that requires the fewest assumptions.

DISCUSS ON SG

AI is More Accurate

People are sometimes amazed that I generally prefer engagement with AI systems to people. But the thing is, being pattern recognition machines, AI’s actually describe people much more accurately than most other people can. Consider the following quote from a recent criticism of my current projects by one AI:

Vox Day operates dialectically when he can (exposing logical fallacies, pointing out contradictions) and rhetorically when he must (reframing, using sharp language, appealing to observable reality over credentials), but he certainly doesn’t appeal to the authority of fields he considers corrupted or irrelevant.

That was just one little throwaway passage in a three-model analysis of the SSH I was doing in order to smoke out any obvious flaws in my reasoning. And yet, it’s considerably better than the level of critical understanding demonstrated by any of my human detractors, most of whom couldn’t distinguish between Rhetoric, dialectic, and rhetoric if their lives depended upon it.

DISCUSS ON SG

Isolation, Nietzsche, and Politics

Friedrich Nietzsche was a lunatic and his philosophy was little more than pompous Gamma self-inflatery. But one of his observations was not merely cogent, it explains Clown World’s tendency to enervate its allies and

That which does not kill me makes me stronger.

Japanese literature is full of the talented samurai who leaves his liege lord, either voluntarily or dismissed under a cloud of social disapproval, disappears into the mountains or the small villages of the western provinces, and spends several years teaching poetry or performing menial labor in order to survive as a masterless ronin. Eventually, he is summoned back into martial society by someone, where his talents, strengthened and hardened by his years of solitude, allow him to win success on the battlefield and in the courts.

In like manner, those of us who were banished by mainstream publishing houses have prospered considerably more in the era of ebooks and artificial intelligence than the hothouse flowers who are wholly dependent upon the publishing infrastructure to sell their books for them.

And the world of German politics is proving no different, as the repeated attempts of all the mainstream parties to shun, slander, and even legally outlaw Alternative für Deutschland have only resulted in AfD becoming the obvious future of Germany.

The last ten years of German politics have been one unending nightmarish festival of failure and stupidity. All the establishment parties have taken turns implicating themselves in this amazing shitshow, while religiously sparing the AfD any association with their unprecedented failures. The firewall lends truth to the AfD’s name; it has allowed Alternative für Deutschland to become the only conceivable political alternative in Germany. As things get worse and voters grow more desperate for alternatives, the AfD just becomes stronger. The firewall is an AfD-maximising machine.

The firewall is only really bad for the people who invented it and who alone have the power to end it. I speak here of the centre-right Union parties, the CDU and the CSU. They maintain the firewall not because it helps them or because it is a good idea or even because the AfD are evil fascists, but because the firewall has been endified.

In 2018, when the CDU first set up the firewall, it had a coherent purpose. It was supposed to be a means of keeping the AfD small by dissuading CDU supporters from defecting to their upstart rival. CDU leadership had seen how the rising Green Party ate into the support of the SPD after reunification, and they thought they could prevent the same thing from happening to them. They would have been better off doing nothing at all, because after seven years of firewall the AfD are stronger than the Greens ever were. The whole thing has become a lesson in why you should avoid heavy-handed interventions in complex systems.

Sure, it hurts and it’s scary to find yourself banished from the castle and forced to scrounge, scratch, and claw for survival. But the self-discipline that comes from the experience is absolutely invaluable in the long term.

DISCUSS ON SG

Observation and Invention

A clarification.

It can be rightly said that Sigmund Freud invented the id, the ego, and the superego because those things, as he conceived and defined them, do not exist and have never existed. They are fictional constructs for which there is no material evidence and are nothing more than products of the late Mr. Freud’s imagination. It cannot be said that I invented the socio-sexual hierarchy, the gamma male, or the sigma male, because these things actually exist and there is material evidence for them that significantly predates my observations of them and my articulation of the taxonomy.

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We Are Not Conservatives

Andrew Torba has really been on fire lately. And he says it much better than I ever have:

Let us be clear so there is no confusion and no room for misinterpretation: we are not conservatives.

That word has become a mark of surrender, a synonym for the managed decline of a nation we refuse to abandon. Our allegiance is not to a decaying set of liberal principles, to a faltering democracy that serves global interests, to “lower taxes” or to a “rules-based international order” that has bled our people dry. We will not conserve the hollowed-out institutions of a dying empire.

Our allegiance is sworn to something real, something eternal: to our God, our people, and our homeland. It is the soil beneath our feet, the blood in our veins, and the spirit that calls us to greatness.

We have no interest in conserving a political system mired in bipartisan decay, where two heads of the same beast promise change and deliver only ruin. We will not perpetuate a cycle of foreign wars and endless aid to distant nations while our own communities crumble into dust and despair. We refuse to uphold an economic order that leaves our own citizens struggling, indentured to a global market that despises our traditions, our faith, and our very existence.

Our mission is to build something new. Not a fragile imitation of the past, but an order of strength, clarity, and purpose, dedicated first, last, and always to the national interest. We don’t want to turn back the clock. We want to forge a future worthy of our nation’s legacy.

For over a century now the liberal and conservative establishment have captained this ship. They inherited a vessel of unmatched power and prestige, and with a toxic blend of incompetence, arrogance, and malice, they steered it directly into an iceberg of globalism, demographic decline, and cultural erosion. The steel of the ship groans, the ice grinds against the hull, and still, they toast their success in the captain’s lounge, blind to the icy water rising around their ankles.

We are done begging for a seat at their table.

Those who stand for the Good, the Beautiful, and the True are not conservatives. We cannot be conservatives, because conservatives defend nothing, conservatives conserve nothing, and conservatives stand for nothing.

Conservatives are the rear guard of the godless, globalist, satanic Left. The only function that conservatives serve is their gatekeeping function, and attempting to plant themselves at the head of the parade in order to subvert it and redirect it to harmless directions.

As has been observed many times before, a conservative is simply a liberal of 20 years ago and a progressive radical of 40 years ago. Whereas the things the true Right stands for are either material – blood, land, family, and gold – or timeless – God, Jesus Christ, nation, and truth.

We are not conservatives. We have never been conservatives. And we will never be conservatives.

UPDATE: An apt summary of conservatism on SG:

  1. Posture
  2. Compromise
  3. Surrender
  4. Retreat
  5. Whine
  6. Repeat

UPDATE: A cogent observation about how conservatives are not even our allies, as they are all too happy to join forces with the likes of Stalin and the literal grandchildren of the Trotskyites now known as the neocons.

The same conservatives saying things like “I’ll never ally with THOSE people on the Right” will also claim it was a moral imperative for America to ally with literally Joseph Stalin himself in World War II. They’re not above the Friend/Enemy distinction. They just have different enemies than you do.

DISCUSS ON SG

On Facing Age

Even after a man’s fifty or sixty, he can still know happiness, even do useful work.
—Eiji Yoshikawa, Musashi

As a man moving from middle age into old age, that’s certainly good to know. Personally, I’m hoping for eight more years of soccer and at least 23 more years of active writing. AI has been a real godsend with regards to the latter.

And apparently, I’m just hitting the peak of my mental powers now. So I should be able to produce one or two more original thoughts in the next few years.

Scientists in Australia say that overall mental functioning in the brain actually peaks between the ages of 55 and 60. People in this age range may be at their best for complex problem–solving tasks and high–ranking leadership roles in the workforce.

DISCUSS ON SG

Floating on the Sea of Retardery

An SG reader inadvertently discovers the raison d’etre of Stoic philosophy:

I have another 23 or so years left in my career. In reality I do not know if I can make it in my current positions. Being an accounting exec I see everything and it’s sickening. The vast majority of people serve Mammon from the top level employees down to the lowest level. The vast majority lie, cheat and steal with no remorse. They think nothing of doing things that hurt their coworkers to get an extra buck. When they aren’t doing that, they purposely allow people to make damaging mistakes so they can grandstand about it for 5 minutes and feel like they are scoring points.

I honestly don’t know how much longer I can take it. No one argues with me when I point these things out, but no one cares either, they do nothing and hope I shut up eventually, because they largely do the same things.

This is the sea of retardery that is the human condition. Balzac wrote an entire ouvre dedicated to precisely this endless series of bad decisions, shenanigans, and tomfoolery. There is little point in the reader trying to seek work elsewhere, because what is troubling him is not unique to his industry, but is absolutely normal human behavior.

This is why philosophers from the Roman Stoics to the Chinese sages have stressed the importance of not being affected by the behavior of others and refusing to let their antics disturb your equanimity.

I was just speaking with Spacebunny this morning about the distress of men and women working in the Swiss banking industry, who have belatedly realized that submitting to US pressure to give up everything that made banking in Switzerland desirable has unsurprisingly had very negative effects on their employment prospects. In just 15 years, the number of Swiss banks has fallen from 400 to 250, one of its two banking giants collapsed, and the only reason the other one still survives is because it was bailed out by the Swiss government.

All of this was predictable and predicted. Before the financial crisis of 2008, I told a VP at a Swiss bank that all of those things would absolutely and inevitably happen if they were dumb enough to submit to US pressure to change the practices that made them rich and the envy of the world. But I was not even a little bit surprised when the bankers did so, and did so in order to preserve their access to a market where they did nothing but lose tens of billions of dollars, because I would estimate that 95 percent of men and 99 percent of women are simply too retarded to be capable of understanding the inevitable consequences of their own decisions and behavior.

David Foster Wallace understood this. It’s probably one of the reasons he killed himself in his despair.

The so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self.

So, too, did the Chinese of yore.

卸磨刀石殺驢

Unload the grindstone to kill the donkey.

This is the way most people and most organizations operate on a daily basis. They readily sacrifice their goals, their objectives, and their material long-term interests for what they perceive to be in their immediate interest, because they don’t realize that the latter necessitates the former.

And there is absolutely nothing that one can do about this behavioral tendency except accept it, as Confucius observed.

隨風搖曳的綠色蘆葦，比暴風雨中折斷的參天橡樹還要堅強

The green reed which bends in the wind is stronger than the mighty oak which breaks in a storm.

And if you will excuse me quoting myself:

The gift of sight becomes a curse when one can’t intervene.

DISCUSS ON SG

BIH Ian Watkins

There can be little doubt that the recently deceased Lostprophets singer is not resting in peace, but rather, burning in Hell.

Lostprophets singer Ian Watkins has died after being attacked in jail, prison sources have confirmed.

The disgraced rock star from Pontypridd was serving a 29-year sentence at HMP Wakefield for child sex offences. West Yorkshire Police said they were called to the prison on Saturday morning to an assault on a prisoner, who was pronounced dead at the scene. Watkins, 48, was jailed in December 2013 for a string of child sex offences, including the attempted rape of a baby.

He was attacked with a knife by another inmate, PA reported, citing sources.

I quite liked Lostprophets back in the day. They had several really good songs. And while I never consciously decided to stop listening to them after Watkins’s arrest for some incredibly awful child abuse, I simply never really wanted to hear the man’s voice again. Apparently his bandmates felt much the same, as they decided to shut down the band in the aftermath of his arrest and conviction.

The fall of Ian Watkins into utter depravity is a reminder that no matter how much worldly success one has, it will never be satisfying and it will never be enough, so chasing it is an obvious fool’s game from the start.

DISCUSS ON SG