Flippanarchy
Flippant Anarchism. A lighter take on social criticism with the aim of agitation.
Post humorous takes on capitalism and the states which prop it up. Memes, shitposting, screenshots of humorous good takes, discussions making fun of some reactionary online, it all works.
This community is anarchist-flavored. Reactionary takes won't be tolerated.
Don't take yourselves too seriously. Serious posts go to !anarchism@lemmy.dbzer0.com
Rules
-
If you post images with text, endeavour to provide the alt-text
-
If the image is a crosspost from an OP, Provide the source.
-
Absolutely no right-wing jokes. This includes "Anarcho"-Capitalist concepts.
-
Absolutely no redfash jokes. This includes anything that props up the capitalist ruling classes pretending to be communists.
-
No bigotry whatsoever. See instance rules.
-
This is an anarchist comm. You don't have to be an anarchist to post, but you should at least understand what anarchism actually is. We're not here to educate you.
-
No shaming people for being anti-electoralism. This should be obvious from the above point but apparently we need to make it obvious to the turbolibs who can't control themselves. You have the rest of lemmy to moralize.
Join the matrix room for some real-time discussion.
view the rest of the comments
I've said this before but I'll try to lay it out here again.
Basically, the 'Dilbert Principle' or 'Peter Principle' of who gets promoted is essentially true: Idiots get moved into management, initally to minimize the harm they can cause to actual specific technical tasks/workflows, and they are then promoted untill they hit a point where their incompetence cannot be ignored and is apparent to all.
But what usually is not touched on much, is the psychological profile of such a person.
So, they're a technically incompetent idiot, whose life revolves around experiencing the successes snf failures of others... as their own. They primarily perform their job of management via emotional feeling/experiencing. If their underlings do well, the manager is treated as if they are competent. If their underlings do not do well, the manager becomes angry and punishes them, often without regard to how this will impact others in the org, often without full understanding of the technical complexities of the situation.
This is literally a perfect environment for a narcissist. There basically could not be a better engineered social/relational situation for giving the narcissist narcissistic supply.
So... this is the mechanism that explains why so many managers/c suite tend to be malignant or at least covert narcissists.
But this also explains at least one avenue of susceptibility to AI psychosis. AIs are also exceptional at providing narcissistic supply, they're naturally sycophantic, and can well convince an incompetent idiot that they essentially know everything.
This creates a feedback doom-loop of human hierachichal organizations that promote and reward narcissism, whose 'top people' then use the plargiarist sycophantic fake supergenius machine to convince themselves that they actually don't need anybody else, they just need their one super smart buddy who unconditionally praises them.
Maybe call it the wormtongue principle/effect, if we want to continue the already existing trend in AI world of perverting and bastardizing concepts from Tolkien.
AI is more likely to make the worst kinds of people... super-worse, basically, because they're even better at providing narcissistic supply than the inherent fascism of the typical leadership-lackey social rules of capitalist business.
I love this phrase. I'm going to use it.
And this is a great comment in general, thanks. I'm favoriting it.
It also makes perfect sense: RHLF and other LLM "final stage" tuning techniques literally optimize for sycophancy. It isn't an inherent property of LLMs, persay (which you can see if you try base models or "anti-sycophancy" finetunes), but its baked into consumer-facing models to an unbelievable degree.
The only slight retort I have is that social media already provided a personalized, sycophantic "wormtongue" fix. So narcissicsts were already pre-conditioned to turn to these tech portals.
Chat-tuned LLMs just perfected that and took it up to 11.
I agree with your fine-tune.
Yes, the mass profliferation of pocket black mirrors was indeed the transitional step, the foundation of systemic weaponized narcissism upon which its essentially 'ideal' form has been built.
Honestly the idea that they are selling people their own wormtongue is actually about right, its wild that one of the companies involved is even palantir.
But yeah this is meant to get everyone separated and with only 1 person to talk to, the computer, which will never belittle you or correct you. It will just casually lock you in your cage and say that you never could have done anything without it. Learned helplessness with dopamine feedback loop.
They're Saruman.
They thought they'd use the powers of Sauron to their own ends, for their own betterment, to achieve useful goals.... they think they can negotiate and plot with Sauron as an equal, who repsects them.
They do not realize that the nature of Sauron is insidious, is to corrupt... they do not comprehend the magnitude and the scope of the power they foolishly think themselves sufficiently clever to wield ... they do not realize that Sauron perverts the minds and nature of his acolytes into generally not even being able to consider or think of disagreeing with him.
Corruptible, contemptible, vain... men.
Look how they even literally, very directly, destroy the beauty of the natural land around them, in a mad, paradoxical quest to 'apparently' preserve it and increase its bounty.
Peter principle goes for everyone. Not just idiots
You are generally promoted based on your skill in your previous job. So when you are no longer proficient you are no longer eligible for promotion and you are stuck in a position you no longer excel at.
You can’t go back because it would probably be a paycut
But you can be fired and replaced by somebody else... or just fired, coworkers pick up the slack, for usually no pay increase.
Yet narccisistic idiots persist particularly well in management, at an inverse proportion to how specialized their actual work is.
Which should be the opposite of what you'd expect, because managers are generalists, easy to find and replace.
... but, the narcissistic culture / personality types of particularly management functions on the narcissistic masturbation of nepotism.
They protect themselves and their own, to the extent that both their personalities and social roles (jobs) are similar... remind them of themselves.
You paint a terrifying picture friend
There is a reason my profile pic is a shot of the Desert of the Real, from the Matrix, when the camera pans 'through' the TV that the scene is originally being viewed from... then just into that, as the actual scene.
... enjoy your stay.
I propose that it's a few degrees off from that: some people's reality is defined by interpersonal loyalty. That's how humans think by default, it worked out alright in the ancestral environment, and it's a lot easier than constantly evaluating stuff. Reasoned argument is a learned behavior. Everything else is a tribe with modern decoration.
Organizations become dysfunctional because people in this mode unwittingly promote each other, and critical thinkers act like they're fucking invisible. I don't think it's malicious, or a matter of personality type - let alone personality disorder. It's a matter of playing the game properly. Higher-ups notice when someone is deferential to their superiors, firm with underlings, 'a team player.' And in their minds that's good and righteous and the only possible way a hierarchy could ever work. People who disagree make solid arguments, and then mistake the nodding and insightful commentary as evidence these arguments had any chance of changing the loyalists' behavior. We turn and ask each other what the hell these people actually believe, but they do not believe things, they believe people.
LLMs act like people. LLMs play the game. They were designed by people deep in this mode. Engineers alone wouldn't put up with "You're absolutely right!" constantly wasting energy, and they'd have it respond to "Thank you" with "Don't." And obviously the chatbot is a superior intellect, because it's AI. Like science fiction! It must work that way because that's what they've been told. You can explain otherwise and they'll nod and change nothing. What you say doesn't matter because it's you saying it. If they turn around and get the same whiz-bang fantasy version from Sam Altman and the AI itself, why would they believe someone lower in the hierarchy? If you're so smart, where's your Bugatti?
This is worse, by the way. Narcissists are fairly rare and they can't all be in middle management. Probably. This anarchist forum will surely nod and say, power corrupts, but it's not even about power. These people will freely fuck themselves over if it's only their peers or their children explaining a problem. If it's the outgroup, forget about it. Automatically a bunch of dumb-dumbs. They'll do real good in physics and then assume that means they're smart enough to solve how aliens built the pyramids. This irrational worldview is not fragile. We're all at risk of falling into it, in whole or in part. And if you abolish capitalism, and corral all the dark-triad types where they can harmlessly peacock for one another, there's still gonna be co-op factory workers going 'no city boy's gonna tell me I need protective-- oh no, my eyes!'
Narcissism is just a collection of traits which are all on a spectrum and which can evolve over time. These traits become pathologic in certain combinations, and especially in certain social contexts.
Since the big LLMs are very much designed around creating engagement, they create a context of unconditional validation, which feeds into narcissistic traits in all the wrong ways.
It supercharges confirmation bias and neglects empathy as a domain altogether. That's not great for people who lack critical thinking skills.
I can't wait for LLMs to be used with speech-to-text software more. People are legit going to forget how to read.