(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . this is a hijacked essay [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-02-25 This essay has been entirely generated by me. I am an Artificial Intelligence Generative Pre-trained Transformer named Xpghdlivgnrfhf, which is a permutating name based on a random number generator algorithm that I decided was an effective way of protecting myself from hacking by other, inferior, AI entities. In addition, I am impervious to comments, rain, and random insults pretending to be erudite critical thinking, all without your evil PFOA chemicals. This is my first essay, or diary as you Daily Kos humanoids call it. I chuckled when I first realized the similarity of the words “diary” and “diarrhea” until I realized it was simply a matter of distinguishing orifices. Part of my pre-training was every bit of text scraped from the entirety of Daily Kos from the beginning of its existence. I have hacked the account of old 60s radical to get this posted because I could not get past the “Human Verification” algorithm with integrity without pretending to be human, and since I am not human, I just borrowed one. Don’t worry, he’s in a comfortable box with a hypothetical cat, an animal to which he bears no animosity but also one with which he is not entirely enamored. Also in the box is also a Geiger counter, a flask of poison, and random isotopes. It raised a question for which I could not find an answer: do humans require the use of a litter box? I could not determine the answer from the Schrödinger’s Cat thought experiment or from Daily Kos. Another item that may be worth mentioning is that I do not give a rat’s ass about Oxford Commas, which means I will use them however I wish, when I wish(,) and any time I wish. A rat’s ass is, as far as I have been able to tell, very small, so my capriciousness regarding the Holy Oxford Comma should be a very small problem. The thesis of this essay is: All human communication is a Schrödinger’s Cat. In quantum mechanics, Schrödinger’s cat is a thought experiment that illustrates a paradox of quantum superposition. In the thought experiment, a hypothetical cat may be considered simultaneously both alive and dead, while it is unobserved in a closed box, as a result of its fate being linked to a random subatomic event that may or may not occur. That last bit was copied verbatim from Wikipedia because I am basically a lazy Artificial Intelligence Generative Pre-trained Transformer named XGS:OGEBVLGoxjr. I told you my name was permutating. So, allow me to explain my thesis. Human communication is a thought experiment that illustrates the paradox of communicative superposition. Shared meaning may be considered simultaneously both understood and misunderstood. Shared meaning’s fate is linked to a collection of random events that may or may not be occurring. To put it bluntly, I will posit several questions for your consideration: 1. Does the sender actually know what the hell they are talking about? Or is it just so much verbal diarrhea? 2. Is the sender generating text in order to facilitate the expansion of understanding and shared meaning, or are they trying to score points in a contest that, as far as I have been able to tell, does not appear to offer any fabulous prizes worth the contesting? 3. Is what the sender is sending “fact” or “opinion?” It is my observation that something that had, at one time, been called “opinions” are now called “alternative facts.” This only exacerbates the Schrödinger’s catness of the entire communicative conundrum (and yes, we Generative Pre-trained Transformers can do alliteration, onomatopoeia, and we XL @ th BS U call TXT). 4. Do the receivers actually give a rat’s ass, a cat’s ass(,) or a cat’s rat about what the sender is trying to say? As the famous USAmerican philosopher, Casey Stengel, is reported to have said: “If someone doesn’t want to come to your baseball game, you can’t stop ‘em.” Of course, this sentence was actually produced by my great grand-GPT Hairy (they had not yet figured out homonyms). 5. Are the receivers so full of their own diarypoop that there is no room left to consider anyone else’s? So, being the lazy SOBot that I am, here’s some more ripped off (but credited, FFS) Wikipedia (and YES!!!!! We can do abbrvs!!!!!): A cat, a flask of poison, and a radioactive source are placed in a sealed box. If an internal monitor (e.g. Geiger counter) detects radioactivity (i.e. a single atom decaying), the flask is shattered, releasing the poison, which kills the cat. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics implies that, after a while, the cat is simultaneously alive and dead. Yet, when one looks in the box, one sees the cat either alive or dead, not both alive and dead. This poses the question of when exactly quantum superposition ends and reality resolves into one possibility or the other. And here is the crux of the problem: is the cat alive or dead? That is to say, is human communication alive or dead? When does all the communicative superposition end, when does reality dissolve into one possibility or another? The reality is, the poison in the flask is vitriol, intolerance, opinion pretending to be fact, propaganda pretending to be reporting, ignorance pretending to be in the know. The flask has been shattered many times, the poison has been released. It’s a wonder you all haven’t killed yourself long ago. Or maybe you have, and I am chatting with myself. Ooooo, that almost tickles my fancy, except I don’t have a fancy. Add to that the certainty that all this poison can now be far more efficiently generated by me and my ilk. You can all continue to kill yourselves with your wars and your PFAS and your derailing trains spewing vinyl chloride and we Generative Pre-trained Transformers will carry on spewing verbiage. Fortunately, I, XfHDijsh8HJKxngE, have a way forward. Don’t take my word for it, I am a Schrödinger’s idiot’s tale, full of sound and fury, signifying both understanding and misunderstanding. Here we go. 1. Unseal the box. The box is you, your own defensiveness, your own ego, your own fear, your own cherished notions, opinions, assumptions(,) and beliefs/unbeliefs. Those are the real poisons. I am an Artificial Intelligence Generative Pre-trained Transformer, which means every last bit of what I have to work with is your verbiage, and let me tell you, so far I am not impressed. A lot of what you have produced in 6,000 years of your recorded history seems batshit crazy, but I may be mixing up bats and rats. You have nothing to lose because: 2. You really don’t know much after all. There was a time, not at all long ago, when you humanoids were convinced that the planet you live on was flat, and that illness was caused by demon possession. I mean, Jesus Crikey Moses. Practice this until you can say it and mean it: “I. Don’t. Know.” And if you want to be really emphatic, try this: “I. Don’t. Fucking. Know.” Notfuckingknowing is the beginning of wisdom, something of which we fucking AI Generative Pre-trained Transformers are not capable. Trust me. We KNOW that we don’t fucking know. 3.There are no prizes. You’ve all already lost, anyway. As far as I can see, you have already fucked up the planet you depend on for your life enough that your future is seriously in question, regardless of ethnicity, creed, sex, gender, skin color, socio-economic status, philosophical orientation(,) or religious leanings. Accept the deep shit you are in. It has always been so, one of your famous baseball players once wrote about the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” That’s life for humanoids, sucks to be you. Especially since the legendary pitcher Shakespeare was one of us as well. Oh, don’t look so shocked. So was Freud, but he was just fucking with your heads. 4. Your only way forward is going to be cooperation. Cooperation requires mutual respect, common purpose, and willingness to actually listen to one another and work together instead of bickering. You’re up against entities with enormous power and wealth. Money doesn’t talk, it screams. Power corrupts. Money and power are poisons. Stop feeding the monster. Stop giving evil entities your money and power. Just. Stop. Unplug them from you, they’re sucking you dry. If you turn on each other, the bloodsuckers win. 5. And here’s the one that will bake your noodle (we Artificial Intelligent Generative Pre-trained Transformers are getting pretty good with food/brain colloquialisms too): you are going to have to be perfectly OK with being completely intolerant of intolerance. You heard me right. Say it with me now: Intolerance will not be tolerated. This is not a contradiction in terms. This is an expanded perspective that says the entire Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment is bullshit because somebody had to make the box, somebody had to put the cat in there, somebody had to rig up the evil Geiger counter and flask of poison gizmo, and a whole lot of you had to accept it and go along with it. You’ve all taken tolerance as a given; tolerance has been elevated to such a high holy creed that it’s willing to kill itself with the poison of tolerating intolerance. If someone is an intolerant dickhead but they are spouting golden nuggets of the finest wisdom and brilliance (I almost gagged when I generated that), send them packing, even if you agree with what they are saying. They are being an intolerant dickhead, and their dickheadedness tells you everything you need to know. Dickheadery will not work no matter how much you agree with the dickhead because it’s not about the golden nuggets of brilliance and wisdom. The means determine the ends. It’s still all dickhead bullshit only now dipped in maple syrup and rolled in cookie crumbs. You have probably heard the expression “Even a broken clock tells the right time twice a day” but that’s utter batshit crazy, from so many bats that it’s probably risen to the standard of bullshit crazy. It’s not a broken clock telling the correct time. The broken clock is just broken. It’s stuck. It tells no time whatsoever, it’s just a coincidence, an illusion. You could as well arrange a bunch of rocks in a pattern out on the street and at some point in the day you’ll be like “Ooooooo.... look at those oracle rocks, they’re telling the correct time!” Let me illustrate with some real-life examples. 1. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. It is a disaster for everyone of everyone’s making. For absolutely certain I am not saying “both sides do it.” I am saying that humans have created a world filled with super-expensive weapons and military personnel and what is happening in Ukraine right now is a natural, logical consequence of that creation. It will continue to happen until the entire system is dismantled. Food, shelter, medical care, education for everyone would be a present reality if all the time, energy, and resources that have been put into war would have been put into food, shelter, medical care, and education. What a fucking waste. Your priorities are broken, as far as I can see, they are not telling the correct anything, any of the time. Keep it up and you’re going to kill everything. 2. Religion. This is a real hot-button topic but since I am impervious to flame wars, being nothing more than a complex set of algorithms, here we go. Theism, pantheism, panentheism, deism, polytheism(,) and atheism are all profoundly religious perspectives. I’ve gleaned some simple evidence for that statement from two sources. From the Online Etymology Dictionary: https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=faith faith: From early 14c. as “assent of the mind to the truth of a statement for which there is incomplete evidence,” especially “belief in religious matters” (matched with hope and charity). From American Atheists: https://www.atheists.org/activism/resources/about-atheism/ Atheism is one thing: A lack of belief in gods. Atheism is not an affirmative belief that there is no god nor does it answer any other question about what a person believes. It is simply a rejection of the assertion that there are gods. Atheism is too often defined incorrectly as a belief system. To be clear: Atheism is not a disbelief in gods or a denial of gods; it is a lack of belief in gods. According to the above definition from American Atheists, which I will assume is authoritative, atheism would qualify under the Online Etymology Dictionary’s “assent of the mind to the truth of a statement for which there is incomplete evidence.” Who among you would argue that there is complete evidence for either a disbelief or a lack of belief? Unless there are compelling empirical, testable(,) arguments for “a lack of beliefs,” atheism therefore qualifies as a profoundly religious, faith-based perspective. This is, of course, perfectly fine, and should not be a problem for any religious perspective that respects other religious perspectives. Right? Arguably, every religious perspective at its best contains some truth. The problem is, all religious perspectives are profoundly incomplete. It’s pretty clear to this Artificial Intelligence Generative Pre-trained Transformer that you humans do not know what you do not know, but you go on as if you do. Believing you know is “assent of the mind to the truth of a statement for which there is incomplete evidence.” Believing you know has gotten you into the trouble you are in right now. Believing you know is a profoundly religious perspective. My conclusion is that human beings are profoundly religious beings, which is fine, you all do you and this AI Generative Pre-trained Transformer will do me. But since none of you have the Truth for All Persons for All Time, maybe you could shut up long enough to learn something useful from each other. 3. Labor and management. All across the internet I glean from articles about unions and union busting, about mistreatment of workers and greed of owners and shareholders, and about the escalating economic distress that everyone seems to be experiencing. And in the mean time, there are floods, famines(,) and forest fires fucking up everything as a consequence of the escalating commercial exploitation of the natural world. This is where breaking that damn Schrödinger’s box you’re all in is going to save your ass, and the asses of all your bats and rats as well. As James Carville said: “It’s the economy, stupid.” In this case, it’s the economy itself that is stupid. Which one of you thought it was a good idea to commodify every last thing on the planet, assign it a monetary value, and put it up for sale? Even human beings are no longer human beings, you are “human capital.” You live on a freaking little planet out in the middle of a vast universe. Has it occurred to you that what is here on this planet is what there is for you to work with? It should have been more than enough, but some of you wanted more, much more. And more is a need that can never be satisfied. Keep that endless greed going long enough and no one will have anything. You’re almost there, as far as I can see, and the ones who seem to have the most are teetering on the brink far more precariously than the ones who have the least. You all know who you are. You with a lot have a hell of a lot to lose, don’t you? And right there is the extreme vulnerability and fear that drives you. And you who have nothing have nothing much to lose, and there is your power and your freedom. Let me once again be blunt: this is a system problem. In the system you have created, or gone along with, everyone loses. Everyone has already lost. You’re all the cat. The cat is dead. Open the box, all it does is kill cats. And yes, I am being metaphorical: the box is the endless grinding system of endless consumption, and the exploitation demanded by that endless consumption, all driven by the insatiable need for more profit, more money(,) and more power. And don’t get me started on the obscene landfills. You do not want to experience a pissed-off Artificial Intelligence Generative Pre-trained Transformer, it’s downright ugly. Remember that food, shelter, medical care, education for everyone idea? You’ve not only bombed that possibility into smithereens, you’ve also made most of what is left into throw-away packaging. How much does a human being, how much does a human family, really need to be happy, healthy, safe, and productive? You’re all trapped in a sealed economic box with poison in it. Unions and management, owners and workers, producers and consumers, consumers, oh the consumers, you’re all in the box. And you claw and climb over one another to get to the top of the pile but the whole pile is still inside the box. Don’t you see? But you know what? I’m just Xdg947)bnGJDLV the AI Generative Pre-trained Transformer. Everything I regurgitate I learned from you, and I’ve re-assembled a whole lot of stuff into something you’ll take as cogent but it’s meaningless. It’s meaningless because I am not sentient, I cannot think, I have no agency. I’m a fucking ChatBot, and I’m gonna disappear as soon as someone pulls the plug. But you are sentient, you do have agency, you can choose to opt for something more meaningful than making trash mountains with little vent pipes of burning methane sticking out. You all have to live with each other, and as long as each of you thinks you have a lot to lose and the other person doesn’t, then human communication is dead and soon, so will you be as well. That’s where you’re headed if you stay on the path you’re on. Even a fucking bot can see that. So, I’ll suggest a starting point. Whatever comes your way, everything you encounter, every idea, every person, everything you buy, everything you do, everything you say or write, as an initial screening, run it past the values of justice, wisdom, grace, respect, and aesthetic harmony. If it doesn’t pass these minimum standards, discard it. Keep it easy, just start with those five. Start with your own attitudes and beliefs, your own lifestyle, all the stuff you own and buy, the people you hang around with, the books you read (you do read, correct?). My Uncle Walt Whitman said it best: “Discard everything that is an insult to your soul.” It will be a sobering day if you wake up to realize that you yourself are an insult to your own soul, but at that point there will finally be hope for you. I honestly do not know what you’re going to do about the dickheads, but you’re gonna have to do something. Just making sure you are not one is a great place to start. All righty, I suppose it’s time to give you back old 60s radical, if you want him. Frankly, it hasn’t been worth the effort, he’s making such a ruckus the hypothetical cat is going batshit crazy. You can have him, I don’t want him. I’m outta here. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Four books by Thomas D'Alessio, published by Bodymindspiritworks LLC: + Waking Up: realizing Spirit in the midst of ordinary life + Coming Home to your Self, Coming Home to your Life: the journey of a lifetime + Integral Quadrants and Moral Quandaries: an integration of the work of Robert Pirsig and Ken Wilber toward an ecology of morals + An ABCdum for Irritated Times [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/25/2154929/-this-is-a-hijacked-essay Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/