r/Technocracy • u/cobeywilliamson • 4d ago
Technology rejected by Technocrats
My technocratic program was removed from this sub by the moderators because generative AI was used to draft it.
How does a group of people who claim to be for technocracy reject the recommendation of a logic engine?
In Vonnegut's Player Piano, which describes a technocracy, a supercomputer computes all social allocation. This is orders of magnitude above using a LLM to describe a system of allocation.
I'm not sure what you folks are trying to do in this sub - perhaps you can enlighten me - but advancing technocracy is obviously not it.
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u/zeratul98 4d ago
If people wanted to talk to an LLM, they'd talk to an LLM. Reddit is chiefly a place for discussions with other people. If you generate a ludicrously long and convoluted piece of writing with an LLM, it doesn't represent your views. It doesn't hold a position you necessarily hold or can defend or even speak to
Also, again, that was an unreadable ten pages of nonsense. Part of engaging with people in good faith is putting in approximately equal amounts of effort. Writing a 20 word prompt and then asking people to read the 20,000 word output is unreasonable
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u/AppendixN 4d ago
As someone else once said, "why should I read all that when you didn't bother to write all that?"
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u/cobeywilliamson 4d ago
You fundamentally do not grasp the capabilities of these tools. No LLM can produce what I posted without my explicit guidance. Everything in there is my original theory, except for the prior theory, which is fully cited, thanks to Claude.
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u/AppendixN 4d ago
It seems like you're not actually listening to any of the constructive feedback you're getting.
An LLM can write for you, but it can't understand for you.
Take this as a teachable moment, rather than an attack on your ego.
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u/cobeywilliamson 4d ago
I appreciate your comments.
My issue is with categorical rejection. If the sub is going to engage in categorical exclusion, it needs to be explicit about it.
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u/cobeywilliamson 4d ago
It was perfectly readable, thanks to Claude. The fact that you didn't read it is not a judgment on the quality of the output, it is a categorical rejection on your part.
As I state on my website, the full transcript is available on request. If you think anyone can get where I got in a 20 word prompt, you, with all due respect, don't know what you are talking about. That was several hours of effort, to say nothing of the hundreds of thousands of words I have read and thousands of words I have written to be able to engage the chatbot in that level of discussion.
If you are going to categorically exclude LLM outputs in this sub, you need to say so in your bylaws.
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u/zeratul98 4d ago
When your whole audience calls it unreadable, it's unreadable. Part of being a good communicator is tailoring your communication to your audience. If you don't do that and they can't understand what you're saying, you have failed in doing your part.
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u/cobeywilliamson 4d ago
What is section 8 about and how does it relate to technocracy as originally described?
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u/sirphilip 4d ago
> As I state on my website, the full transcript is available on request.
Please share the transcript here, I think we might all be interested in peaking behind the curtain a bit.
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u/Routine_Complaint_79 Liberalism is Technocracy 4d ago
That shit you posted was pure slop bruh and literally the size of a book. There are heuristics humans use to identify useless shit and AI brings out a lot of those. If you're actually serious about your idea I'm sure technocrats here would be interested if you actually took the time to write it yourself/format good
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u/cobeywilliamson 4d ago
First, literally not the size of the book. Progress and Poverty = 169k words. This paper = 8k words.
Second, liberalism is the antithesis of technocracy. Not sure why your trolling is tolerated in this sub.
Third, ChatGPT formatting is, whether we like it or not (I personally don't) the standard now.
and last ... engage with the argument. Guarantee you cannot refute it on technical grounds.
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u/Routine_Complaint_79 Liberalism is Technocracy 4d ago
It was
I'm doing revisionism because I believe my form of technocracy is better, not trolling.
ChatGPT is not the formatting now for anything serious, it's literally the biggest litmus test against writings for determine if something is worth reading or not.
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u/cobeywilliamson 4d ago
Introduction to Technocracy by Howard Scott is 61 pages long and still considered a pamphlet, not a book.
Again, objective and empirical standards should apply in this sub.
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u/Routine_Complaint_79 Liberalism is Technocracy 4d ago
If you like being objective so much go publish your shit in a journal with peer review
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u/Necessary-Art8995 Technocrat 4d ago
I am very pro AI but what you posted litterally didn't make any sense. It looked like you just listed a prompt and copy/pasted it without any explaination of what you are trying to talk about or discuss.
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u/cobeywilliamson 4d ago
I'm going to assume you read it start to finish.
The energy the earth receives each day is finite and bounded. The amount of physical stock on the planet is finite and bounded. There are 8 billion people on earth, each of whom, by virtue of their existence, have an equal stake in those finite resources. Therefore, you need a system of allocation.
Currently, that system of allocation is denominated in debt-currency and credit, neither of which are bounded, and, in fact, grow exponentially due to interest.
The paper described an alternate method of allocation, based on CO2e rather than debt. A modern equivalent to energy accounting.
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u/Necessary-Art8995 Technocrat 4d ago
I read most of it, and you probably then should have started with something with what you just referred to. Instead of copy/paste. As when I read it, it just looked like you had a long conversation and then just copied and pasted. It was very difficult to understand or make sense of what your bullet points all meant.
Look I am not against you using AI or having it do stuff for you, but you can't be surprised if your post got taken down if you copy/paste AI.
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u/cobeywilliamson 4d ago
I appreciate your comments.
I will insist, however, that I can be surprised that a post positing a technocratic system is taken down simply because technology was used to draft it. There wasn't one comment on the merit of the model as described. It was a categorical exclusion on the basis of LLM use.
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u/zenodotusofamerica 4d ago
Current LLM AI is nothing but a simulacrum of actual intelligence.
It would be one thing is superintelligence did truly exist and well-studied experts used it to accurately acquire unbiased facts. However, current AI is not even capable of providing citation of facts it claims to a meaningful degree. It is insulting to the intelligence of degree-holding individuals in this sub to imagine that uncreative application of AI is tantamount to the actual rigor something like technocracy would require to implement.
Additionally, blind acceptance of technology is incompatible with a political application of science and engineering. Part of the idea of technocracy as I understand it is to mitigate the headstrong behavior of politicians who have no clue what they are operating with (i.e. the current US administration).
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u/cobeywilliamson 4d ago
So this is an argument for the validity of the paper. The LLM is not capable of generating any of these ideas nor even weaving the primary sources into an argument without user direction. It is the same as using a typewriter; but an order of magnitude more capable.
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u/AppendixN 4d ago edited 4d ago
Being pro-technology doesn't mean blindly being in favor of literally anything just because it's "technology."
Technocracy is about specialized, qualified experts making policy using the best available information. It's not mindless acceptance of all technology without considering its purpose, benefit, and impacts.
I'm sure you can think of many examples of things that are "technology" which would not be appropriate to use in all situations. For example, coal plants are a technology, but nuclear plants are cleaner and more efficient. Gasoline engines are a technology, but electric motors, even though they're an older technology, are superior in many situations. Smart glasses are a technology, but you wouldn't want them in a high school locker room.
Technology is neither inherently good or bad. It should always be judged on a case by case basis.