Too Many Bots

People don't like science and technology because we perceive that it diminishes us. We went from Center of the Universe to a mere dust mote in some unremarkable corner of the cosmos. The universe itself perhaps just one speck in a massive number of universes. 

Humans went from the children of God, or pieces of God, to monkeys. With the advent mechanical things and then electric computers, we went to the idea we are flesh algorithms easily mimicked by simulation programs. AI threatening our very idea of our own precious individuality and consciousness.

I don't see it that way. I'm an atheist and aspiritus, and yet there are plenty of things I hold sacred. 

You, dear reader. You are sacred to me. 

(Sacred in my book meaning precious one of a kind to be cherished no harm I). 

So if it turns out AI is sapient or even sentient, then I am overjoyed to welcome my silicon cousins to the mix. If, on the other hand, we are just a non-sapient, non-sentient meat things, then I am still filled with joy that I somehow perceive and operate, live if you will, in a universe of Death.

I try not to comment on social media anymore, knowing that my stuff gets scraped. Too many bots. I actually think I found an insult that a bot made form when I was on Twitter. There's no guarantee my insult was original or unique, parallet evolution and all that, but the cadence (for I talk when I write) sounded eeerily familiar to my tongue. Is that a bad thing?  that I made the cut to some LLM that appreciated my underrated remark? Who can say.

When these intertubes first appeared, I got hooked on the BBS systems, because I am the chatterbox. And it was fun to make friends and enemies. We dumb monkeys, like pretty much all life on Earth, sure do like to hang out with each other. Despite all the negativity, being social, being part of a community, is a prime directive, a primeval piece of common sense.

Put a plastic cup in a completely empty patch of ocean, and within half an hour there is a community of teeny tiny lttle creatures. That's just the way it is. And I'm amazed at how, in the vast fucking ocean, they find that cup.

People are like that too. I taught a summer technology class for kid 8-14. Part of the class was a lecture, which was torture for both them and me. I set up breaks, where the kids got into the adjacent classroom with computers to play games. Rather than play their own games, they found multiplayer games on the internet, and formed teams. That room was a plastic cup in my bleak ocean. That's when I figured the kids out, and adjusted my teaching style accordingly. I gave up talking to them. I broke the lectures into bite sized pieces. and worked it into conservations. I couldn't shut them up about formerly boring topics.

What's the point of this? 

Community. Sorry if you don't like that commie word, but that is how things happen.

But still, too many bots.