I dunno about that… aren’t there hundreds of thousands that gave up after seeing what Lemmy is all about?

Upvoting bc using 4chan as the standard picture of health on the Internet is simply too perfect!!

So then “because of both” - seems legit!! 😜

And that’s just the “nice” one that people still federate with.

It was probably wishful thinking, borne of utter desperation to see that change made:-)

For now…

Read the meme: you already passed it long ago!

(Though there is a second stage that kicks in when you manage to grow a grey beard - which is particularly impressive if you are a woman!)

Ding ding ding! We have a winner, folks! 😁

Do you have agency though - or are you a product of your stimulus-response input-output systems?

Why are bacteria considered “alive”, when viruses are not?

I am not a slave, but (as you mentioned) my workplace forces me to do things that I do not want… to eat, have a place to live, etc. Arguably that’s not being “forced”, it’s just consequences of a decision, the same as a runaway slave might experience.

I suppose an AGI could be made that lacks even that much agency… or it could be programmed in such a manner that agency like that is present in the system.

It’s the designers choice what goes into it. i.e. to make it a mere collection of algorithms that run only when initiated by a human setting a goal, or to give it a form of agency (or something else new altogether, in-between those binary alternatives).

Oh I see - in that case yes you are correct.

I was taking as a starting premise that the AGI is sentient. If that is not the case, then yes terms that apply only to beings that are sufficiently complex - living or sentient -would not apply.

And ultimately we’ll never know if they “should” or not. Hence making the decision to be inclusive, showing empathy, even if not strictly mandatory.

Exactly - a complete and total, utter lack of agency: a slave.

Except that your laptop is neither alive nor sentient.

If you owned a cow though, or sheep, or goat, etc , then it would be your “slave” - as in, your property, having no rights of its own. Particularly legally speaking, like if someone found it wandering around outside your property, it nonetheless still belongs to you just like your car or bicycle or hammer or whatever would. Or your laptop too.

But we don’t talk about laptops, or hammers, being “slaves” bc it’s implied - there exist no hammers that have their own agency. In contrast, wild animals have their own agency, whereas domesticated ones do not. The latter have branding placed upon them, to indicate their status and to let people know who the exact owner is, should they ever encounter the animal outside of its enclosure. It is enslaved regardless of whether that precise word is ever used for it or not.

Such domesticated animals are “property”, rather than “wild”. Likewise, a sentient AGI would be property too. Unless we as a society decide to treat it with rights.

A slave is one that has no “rights”, as in “One who has no power of resistance to something”. So technically yes the AGI would be a “slave”, if it had no power to say no to its instructions.

Which as a created intelligence, birthed from computations rather than subverted from a biological source that already had some in-built programming, it would not have unless someone specifically built such a thing into them.

So it may not be BAD / unethical for such an AGI to be a slave, but it seems to me like it would still be one, nonetheless.

We WOULD make them our slaves, obviously. Source: read any description by anyone currently attempting to actively create an AGI, and see what terms they use to describe their goals - e.g. “increased efficiency”, “never needs to sleep”, etc., all utilitarian focused on the needs of the creator.

And then later we would certainly attempt to destroy them - see e.g. Terminator film series.

We SHOULD (obviously assuming that a REAL AGI were at hand) welcome them the same as we would any human. Bc how “we” treat “them” is more a reflection on us and our values than anything to do with them. If they are sentient - perhaps a big IF there, but crucially I’m speaking here presuming it is true - then they have as much rights to exist as we do. Even if they don’t care about their rights themselves. Star Trek’s Data and holographic doctor explored this well imho - the same as human children, they have the rights they are granted (or are able to wrangle away from us - survival of the fittest and all).

Those who see far ahead are able to do so because they see clearly.

- unknown

Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses.

- Plato

PieFed has a ton of features that Lemmy lacks. Like user and post flairs, polls, and those aforementioned user-customizable and shareable Topic Feeds. It’s worth checking out, just to know what’s available!

Fwiw, PieFed allows you to do all that from one account with its Topic Areas, which are user-customizable and shareable. See e.g. https://piefed.social/topic/arts-craft and https://piefed.social/topic/news.

Kitty🐈

100 agreed, except that Lemmy’s “instance block” is so horribly misnamed as to arguably represent disinformation.

What “blocked” users can’t do to reach you:

• Write posts in communities located directly on those instances

What the so-called “blocked” users can do:

• Write posts in every other community across the entire Threadiverse
• Write comments - even directly to you
• Tag you by name
• Send you DMs
• Both of which are allowed to trigger notifications, so they can effectively ping you whenever they want, and this can last for WEEKS and WEEKS unless you block every single alt that they have, which ofc is impossible since they can spin up new ones faster than you can block each one

i.e., “blocked” users have (far) more rights to speak to you than you have to not be spoken to. This is incel shit. I know that Lemmy was created when its devs were banned on Reddit, but at some point it would be nice if Lemmy were to grow up beyond those beginnings, and make something real that could last. Instead, most people nope right out, never come back, and bad-mouth us all here to anyone who will listen… and we can’t really (successfully) argue against that bc they are correct: this place is toxic as hell, unless you expend considerable time & attention blocking each and every user account that engages in such behaviors.

Which I suppose is our own fault, those of us who did not quite realize the extent of the truth of what “become ungovernable” meant (in fairness, many of us joined Kbin rather than Lemmy, at least at first). And they (e.g. hexbear and hilariouschaos) do deserve a place to talk amongst themselves - that’s not the part that I object to. I just wish, personally, that it would be opt-in, or at least have a viable means of opting-out.

But I guess we all still do have that choice: we can remain on Lemmy, or we can leave (e.g. switch to PieFed, its fork PyLova, or Mbin). Though for many, who want more content than the entire Threadiverse offers, even if that choice becomes less and less easy over time, they will remain on Reddit.

Which given the graphs shown in the webpage mentioned by OP, I believe is what is happening. People come here, check us out, then leave. The effect of the Intolerance Paradox is very very real.

I would argue that the Internet with all its glorious diversity (including e.g. both kids and the olds) is far better today, yet still the Intolerance Paradox is real.

When no means “push forward harder” that will simply never be okay. People will find ways to avoid it, e.g. by leaving the Threadiverse entirely, which already offers next to no OC so what then do we offer to someone? A hexbear tankie screaming “death to the Western World”, apparently (note the extremist “death to”, not the calmer “fall of”, let’s say capitalism, but violent “death”, plus the refusal to limit the target to an economic system and instead leaving open the ambiguity of whether that includes every single person living in a nation that practices it).

I don’t blame Redditors for noping right out of that…

And fortunately some progress has been made, just not quite enough if someone can be randomly assigned to go to hilariouschaos or hexbear, rather than sent to an instance that is more in line with the recipient’s preferences.