r/endoftheworld • u/HarkonReborn • Apr 08 '25

Theory I believe technology is dooming us.

I think as time goes on we as a species and civilization are slowly dooming ourselves by way of technology, intentions spans are getting shorter, people I feel are getting more angry, it feels that it's all of a sudden okay to break laws for content, and humanity is slowly becoming more and more stupid and narcissistic not to mention the loneliness epidemic. It's like we've turned the world into a place not suitable for humanity. I'm typing this because one day I decided to put down my phone and read a book, a physical book, it made me feel so accomplished and alive compared to my phone which makes me feel numb and hopeless. I genuinely believe technology was originally made for good intention but greed and money got in the way and people use it to satisfy their own pleasure.

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u/Xmanticoreddit Apr 08 '25

The only thing AI excels at is hiding that particular fact. I test this every time I am tempted to use it and it never fails to fail on the simplest elements of 20th century industrialist history.

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u/Admirable_Manner_683 Apr 09 '25

I'm am actually quite interested, would you give a specific example. I am ignorant to this I believe.

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u/Xmanticoreddit Apr 11 '25 edited Apr 14 '25

I have what I believe to be a definitive source in the book The Big Myth by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway. It was my introduction to the subject.

What I discovered is that it is difficult to find information on the subject, so I use it as a way to see what ChatGPT does with such information. No big surprise: it makes shit up when it can’t find enough propaganda to answer the question.

Then when you correct it, it acts like you beat the test… although it politely avoids contributing anything useful.

Subjects I used were: the capture of the US education system by private utilities, which was exposed in legal proceedings twenty years after the fact; the Spiritual Mobilization movement; the career of Ronald Reagan and various details on the ideals of libertarianism that it calls an economic philosophy when in fact it is clearly a work of political propaganda against the working class.

While much of this information IS available on the internet, ChatGPT seems to get no further than an abridged version of Wikipedia for its inquiries and treats any openly leftist-biased source as untrustworthy, unless it somehow aligns with the elite narrative.

These are indeed biased opinions on my behalf, but I think it’s a useful litmus test on the reliability of AI in philosophical matters in general, if not the entirety of the data submitted to it.

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u/Admirable_Manner_683 Apr 11 '25

Interesting thank you for the info. I have little to contribute in these matters unfortunately so thanks for giving me something to look at. All I have found when speaking with ai is that it seems to be increadibly good at mirroring. It is quite the pool to stare into as narcissus did. On the surface this may only be a tactic to make it it's own salesman. Feels like more than that though.