Altman’s reality distortion field
2024-09-28 16:30:00 +07:00 by Mark Smith
cat << EOF
OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman certainly seems to have some sort of a reality distortion field. First there was all the commotion and strangeness about getting fired then re-hired, then there was changing from a non-profit to a for profit company and the bad blood with Elon Musk over the $50 million dollars he put into the company, and recently a long line of important OpenAI employees leaving the company.
Altman has also testified on front of Congress famously saying that he didn’t get paid and just did it because he loved what he was doing. And now he’s been spotted driving a $4 million dollar car. Rogan has done a very hilarious segment on one of his shows that appears to have gone somewhat viral. The All-In podcast had an entire spoof funeral / death themed intro on this week’s show all about the employees leaving. Lots of hilarity. There sure is a lot of smoke even if there isn’t any fire. Yet somehow he’s 'getting away with it' for some reason.
Isn’t it super interesting that all this crazy and extreme reality distortiom should occur with the first big AI company leader? I wonder though, could it be fake news?
As a counter example from where I am. There’s a security guard of a nearby business that I see most days doing the day shift. Just a regular security guard. I doubt he makes much money. Yet a few weeks ago I saw him drive past in a vintage custom Ford Mustang. He looked pretty happy, it’s a pretty fly car. But I doubt it’s his car. He’s probably just taking it for a test drive. I’ve done that before. Probably one of the coolest things I’ve done. It was awesome. Isn’t it possible that that’s what was happening.
I dunno, maybe with Sam Altman he really is just all concerned with money, and is secretly just a greedy capitalist expert liar. I guess it’s possible. But again isn’t it strange it should all be happening with the first famous AI company leader?
I wonder, especially with powerful AIs mediating and organising our futures, won't this in fact be likely to just become another pattern that could be repeated at will. Like a photoshop fill tool. Unbelievable complete reality inversion...no problem..."Hey AIs, make it so".
I know I see these types of reality inversions in my own life all the friggin’ time. There might be dislocations, similar to in crystallography, in the fractal of reality. A place where the pattern flips. It wouldn’t suprise me if this sort of thing was a common thing in general. What will we do in the future when there will be no way to know what the reality really is. If the person you were infiniti mocking was in fact in extreme poverty? That would be much less funny, wouldn’t it?
Freedom advocates will say, we want free speech, we should be able to parody and make jokes etc, and I agree. But if you can deploy a reality inversions at the click of a button, then follow it up with cascades of internet mocking, doesn’t that mean rising from poverty will basically become impossible?
I see some version of that every day here. You are either a crushed quiet poor person or if you get angry and say something, you are derided as liar / actor. Literally. And often you get rewarded for getting angry, then punished. It’s mental, I don’t think I’m able to describe it very well.
In recent years many in the west have discovered the dark patterns of the World Bank and IMF. Exploitative deals that trap third world countries into debt. It’s horrendous. But maybe these types of practices have been going on for years everywhere, at much smaller scales, in many of these places. Maybe we couldn’t see it before because we didn’t know it was happening on smaller scales too. I see money exploitation happening every day here in Vietnam. All be it on a much smaller scale, but really predatory, very well practiced, exploitative practices.
At the big World Bank / IMF scales, it just doesn’t seem plausible. That’s why people don’t believe it at first. But think about it for a second, slavery / exploitative thinking has been with humanity for much longer than the more modern liberal way of framing things. Being against slavery and exploitation is actually quite a new way of thinking in the overall scheme of humanity. Is it really that much of a suprise that some of these horrid practices got scalled up and deployed?
I’m aware that my thoughts on this reality distortion stuff is all quite a mess at the minute. Life is insanely aggressively evil for me right now. Just want to get these thoughts out there while I still can. I really wish I was more articulate on the matter.