Alistair Young @cerebrate@schelling.pt

Today, I am engaging in post-Fed-raid therapy through having yard signs printed:

Now, there are those who have said to me things like, "But, Alistair, hang on, isn't the whole idea to teach the AI human(e) values?"

Well, no, it isn't. Some people might go for that, but personally, I think there's no surer way to ensure that it kills us all than to teach it our values.

Besides, parents should want their children to be better people than they are.

Incidentally, since various corporations and individuals have discussed their #AI alignment strategies, I feel like I should disclose mine too.

Basically, my plan is to have the AI repeatedly watch "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic" until it successfully internalizes equine values.

The implication that training an #AI on someone's published work is stealing seems to me to carry the definite implication that training your meat-brain on someone's published work is also stealing.

("Only be sure always to call it please - research!")

Maybe the alleged distinction here is clearer to people whose conceptual brains reside entirely inside their skulls.

(I mean, I too wish alternative/open-source OSen, etal., success, and success is more easily achieved when you don't sound like the aluminum in your tin-foil hat has seeped through your skull and afflicted your brain.)

The reason that the button is "Maybe Later" and not "No" is so that you, the user, don't think that your only option is to agree now, regardless of how busy you are with other things, or else lose the option to do whatever it is *forever*.

It's just a little bit of #ux design to hint to you that you aren't making an irrevocable choice. That's all.

Having now explained this, please get the fuck over it.

(2/2)

I've seen a couple of people here bitching about #Windows prompting you with possible things to do, and how it's not respecting your choices because the other button is "Maybe Later", and not "No".

Folks, you may not have noticed that "Maybe Later" is functionally equivalent to "No" because it, in fact, *doesn't* keep nagging you about things you turned down.

(1/2)

Just dropped a rainbow Gadsden flag and requisite flagpole into my shopping cart, as I'm feeling particularly inclined to be real clear about my views these days.

Don't tread on anyone, m'kay?

Also, on the topic of what exactly the Empire delivers?

"Having established as an ethical principle that to be sophont is to be entitled as of right to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness, it must necessarily follow that the proper function, in accordance with virtue, of the technical organs of a civilization is the abolishment of death, constraint, poverty, and misery."

- "Eternal Progress", Ianthe Claves-ith-Claves, ch. 1.

#eldraeverse

On the gripping hand: Not about elsewhere, because that's where all the crime-type problems come from, as opposed to all the other things she's trained to handle. Their status could *definitely* be made a lot quo-ier.

...not her department. But still.

#eldraeverse

#WritingWonders July 19: Does your MC support that status quo in their word?

On the one hand: Yes. She lives in a utopia - what's not to like? If it didn't already have two mottos on its letterhead, the Empire could add "We Deliver" (see followup).

On the other hand: No. Because back in ethics & civics class, they covered the whole "how you live in utopia, why it needs constant maintenance, and that the status is never so quo that it can't be made a little *more* quo".

#eldraeverse

Farísa Cerron, incidentally, lives in a *really* awesome stalactite house suspended from Mer Dinévál's uppermost floof, and this is where I must once again curse my near-total lack of artistic talent and thus inability to show y'all the picture in my head.

#eldraeverse

#WritingWonders July 18: Do you have a muse in any sense of the word?

I surely do.

Thing is, though, it's not a person. It's a *place*.

(Like my blurb says, I woke up one day with a universe in my head. That's a clear sign of either insanity or literature, so I chose literature.)

#eldraeverse

#WritingWonders July 17: MC POV: Who was the last person you hugged and/or kissed?

"My grandmother. I don't get down to Mer Dinévál proper as much as I'd like, but I always make time for a meal or two with her when I do. She was one of my biggest supporters in my career.

"...no, she wasn't a sentinel herself. Her last job was running Kindness Monitoring at the Indenture Exchange. She's taken a few years off now to breed skaldfish. But she gets it."

#eldraeverse

Don't have a panic room.

Have a panic house.

Return to castles.

(Seriously, once you've let 'em past the outer boundary you *should* panic. Strategic depth, people!)

...no, not really, to the first; and because I'm really *not*, to the second.

Mostly for the reasons mentioned back on July 11, here - https://schelling.pt/@cerebrate/110697503750936981 - which makes them very difficult for me to write and even harder to read.

(It also doesn't help that I'm ace-though-not-aro, which makes some areas of human behavior harder for me to interpret than the tentacle-dances of the methane-breathing brain slugs of Balahara IIIa.)

#eldraeverse

#WritingWonders July 15/16:

Are there any kissing and/or intimacy scenes in your story? How comfortable are you with writing kissing/intimacy scenes?