Olives @olives@qoto.org

For the past few months, I've been trying to track down a conference where someone supposedly said something negative about "AI" and I can't find it. It's as if it doesn't exist.

I get that someone might have a personal gripe with LLMs. Maybe, it consumes a lot of power to train or something to do with copyright. However, if someone's main point is that someone might go off to do something "offensive", then that gets silly.

I'm tired of things becoming "bad" because they're done with a LLM or whatever, when it wouldn't be noteworthy otherwise.

"online or verbal abuse"
Looks like "verbal abuse" is now being used in one estimate of abuse. UNICEF.

I'm not saying it's a good estimate.

Badenoch wasn't all bad. She was against some censorship laws, although she has her issues. Of course, there is probably someone better than her.

It might be this far distant country which someone knows next to nothing about, then they pull out these questionable nuggets of information from who knows where it even comes from. In one case, there were two partially overlapping laws.

Over the years, there has been a particular and rare kind of Internet troll (or moron) who might come up with "ages of sexual consent" for countries on a map or individually, and it would basically be wrong.

Apart from being obnoxious, I'm also concerned that this sort of misinformation might spur racism.

I don't run an unmoderated community (or close enough) for an apparent human rights org so I assume I'd have fewer troubles with trolls than someone who did.

The post debunking porn (and other such things) being spooky takes a more holistic approach rather than just leaning on one particular point / argument.

The points work best when they are taken as a *whole*. They don't work as well when they're taken individually.

"unpopular opinion"

Actually, the theory that porn or dolls or whatever is some sort of outlet which reduces crime is *anything* but an unpopular opinion. I'm not even kidding when I say that I've heard it from a number of people in private. They didn't get it from me either. And yes, from conservatives.

What someone might mean is that there are a few people on social media (with narcissistic traits) who performatively say the opposite.

Intuitively though, this crime reduction theory would make sense to someone, and there are piles of evidence which someone could interpret that way. It's not surprising that it keeps coming up.

The ironic thing about "unpopular opinions" is that they can actually be quite common.

A human rights reputation isn't something which a country can get from getting a seat on a council or spending some money. It takes time and commitment.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/10/saudi-arabia-narrowly-fails-in-bid-to-win-a-seat-on-un-human-rights-council
"Saudi Arabia narrowly failed in its bid to win a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council"

If Saudi Arabia wants to improve their #HumanRights reputation, then they actually have to make human rights an integral part of what they do.

A seat on the Human Rights Council doesn't really improve their human rights reputation.

As if there wasn't enough stupidity in the world, someone decided to create artificial stupidity, lol.

Nico Nico is owned by Kadokawa which we never had a lot of respect for.

While there might be clusters of trolls, I hardly see them come out from under their bridges on the fediverse (sorry, I had to make that joke). That is speaking for myself, of course.

Far right troll with a brand new account shows that he dislikes my take, without seemingly reading it, lol.

A few normal people in the tech field immediately follow me.

If you're wondering what I think about the opinions of trolls, then there you have it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor
"Explanations which require fewer unjustified assumptions are more likely to be correct; avoid unnecessary or improbable assumptions."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

I am aware of the antics of the D66 affiliate, lol, well, from a number of years ago.

For a bunch of people in politics, it's remarkable how they might put something across in the worst way possible, when they could just point to censorship of sexual expression being a violation of fundamental rights or something.

I remember that ORG, a sort of British EFF, had to lay off a bunch of staff, because one of the funders whimsically decided to spend a bit more money on a different type of non-profit.

So, if someone cares about that sort of thing, they have to donate.