Cyberix Reading Review and Discussion
This thread's purpose is simple. Post your thoughts on the most recent thing you've read, or discuss another user's post. Books, short stories, comics, or anything else written is welcome. I'll provide an example to start:
Recently, I've discovered the writings of Scott Alexander. One story, Sort by Controversial, caught my eye and it gave chills when I finished reading and looked at what's been occurring in the last few years. The summary is that someone who worked in an advertising startup helped create a program later named “Shiri's Scissor” to generate statements intended to drive controversy, and it worked, too well. Soon the startup collapses, and several local and international incidents happen because of the tool's creation and spreading of “scissor statements.” Statements so divisive they fracture groups of similar-minded people over minute, internal issues. The story provides a glimpse of what scissor statements can do and warns us of the harm they can create.
What are such scissor statements? A recent example is “Would You Rather Be Stuck in the Woods with a Man or a Bear?” This question appears innocent, a simple hypothetical, but it enraged countess people online when someone answered. Accusations of sexism were made, people less questioned but rather grilled over their reasoning, among other actions taken. That scissor statement further grew divides between men and women, which helps those who wish to keep people isolated. The man or bear question is a recent, well-known example, but just the beginning. Scissor statements existed long before the term was coined, as they're used in the technique of divide & conquer. Operations such as COINTELPRO, and likely others not yet known, have made use of scissor statements in their toolkit as their divisiveness allows groups to start infighting. For recent examples, think about things relating to DEI, gender, politics, or anything relating to the culture war. What's recent is the idea of Shiri's Scissor, a program specifically designed to create scissor statements. If this was just a fictional story, it would've been a great read warning people against division from those in power. However, I'd argue that the epistemic status listed in the story's beginning can no longer be fiction.
In the past, Shiri's Scissor-like tool did not exist as a program or machine. It was people hired to cause division, mostly by state-actors and likely corpos as well. The narrator also mentions how governments would struggle to hide something this advanced if existing entities were known to be decades ahead in some industries. But now Shiri's Scissor was released to the public as AI, and now anyone can generate scissor statements, an unprecedented development. People can now generate scissor statements anywhere, for their own benefit or for another's. The story's final lines grab attention for the warning it gives “Delete Facebook. Delete Twitter. Throw away your cell phone. Unsubscribe from the newspaper. Tell your friends and relatives not to discuss politics or society. If they slip up, break off all contact. Then, buy canned food. Stockpile water. Learn to shoot a gun. If you can afford a bunker, get a bunker. Because one day, whoever keeps feeding us Scissor statements is going to release one of the bad ones.” Scissor statements are found everywhere, both from entities intentionally causing division and self-inflicted from those unaware how divisive their words are. This is the primary warning that I see in this story. Facebook and Twitter were already cesspits of rage bait designed to grab your attention to distract you, but now AI can drown out humans effortlessly. What trends on these websites are specifically created to divide people over minute issues? Politics and the culture war have dominated the people's consciousness through human crafted scissor statements, but now AI can generate such statements easily. How many people have broken long-standing relations over differing views on a movie? Newspapers, if they aren't shuttering, are bought up and eventually publish more scissor statements to keep the population divided. Now several papers were caught using AI to replace human writers for various purposes. The worst part is that it isn't easy to detect if something was divided by a scissor statement. As the narrator said when conflict in Mozambique occurred after Shiri's Scissor was used on it: ”I still don't know if we had anything to do with that. Africa just has a lot of conflicts, and if you wait long enough, maybe something will happen.” If not even a creator of the tool can determine if something was caused by it, what hope do we have regular people have to? Another Torment Nexus made a reality, at the cost of humanity.
Sort by Controversial, in my view, is a warning of unchecked technological development creating (yet another) man-made horror beyond comprehension. This horror now manifests in AI, trained on years of online rage bait, intentional divisions created by shady entities, and other toxic influences online to make divisive statements to isolate us. We can notice only some of the scissor statements generated. The ones so obvious to flare up rage like throwing gasoline on a fire we can spot, but the ones more subtle we struggle to detect. How many minute details of politics or everyday affairs have been used against us? We may never know. What we need now more than anything is to create ways to detect scissor statements and point them out to try and prevent further divisions.
Recently, I've discovered the writings of Scott Alexander. One story, Sort by Controversial, caught my eye and it gave chills when I finished reading and looked at what's been occurring in the last few years. The summary is that someone who worked in an advertising startup helped create a program later named “Shiri's Scissor” to generate statements intended to drive controversy, and it worked, too well. Soon the startup collapses, and several local and international incidents happen because of the tool's creation and spreading of “scissor statements.” Statements so divisive they fracture groups of similar-minded people over minute, internal issues. The story provides a glimpse of what scissor statements can do and warns us of the harm they can create.
What are such scissor statements? A recent example is “Would You Rather Be Stuck in the Woods with a Man or a Bear?” This question appears innocent, a simple hypothetical, but it enraged countess people online when someone answered. Accusations of sexism were made, people less questioned but rather grilled over their reasoning, among other actions taken. That scissor statement further grew divides between men and women, which helps those who wish to keep people isolated. The man or bear question is a recent, well-known example, but just the beginning. Scissor statements existed long before the term was coined, as they're used in the technique of divide & conquer. Operations such as COINTELPRO, and likely others not yet known, have made use of scissor statements in their toolkit as their divisiveness allows groups to start infighting. For recent examples, think about things relating to DEI, gender, politics, or anything relating to the culture war. What's recent is the idea of Shiri's Scissor, a program specifically designed to create scissor statements. If this was just a fictional story, it would've been a great read warning people against division from those in power. However, I'd argue that the epistemic status listed in the story's beginning can no longer be fiction.
In the past, Shiri's Scissor-like tool did not exist as a program or machine. It was people hired to cause division, mostly by state-actors and likely corpos as well. The narrator also mentions how governments would struggle to hide something this advanced if existing entities were known to be decades ahead in some industries. But now Shiri's Scissor was released to the public as AI, and now anyone can generate scissor statements, an unprecedented development. People can now generate scissor statements anywhere, for their own benefit or for another's. The story's final lines grab attention for the warning it gives “Delete Facebook. Delete Twitter. Throw away your cell phone. Unsubscribe from the newspaper. Tell your friends and relatives not to discuss politics or society. If they slip up, break off all contact. Then, buy canned food. Stockpile water. Learn to shoot a gun. If you can afford a bunker, get a bunker. Because one day, whoever keeps feeding us Scissor statements is going to release one of the bad ones.” Scissor statements are found everywhere, both from entities intentionally causing division and self-inflicted from those unaware how divisive their words are. This is the primary warning that I see in this story. Facebook and Twitter were already cesspits of rage bait designed to grab your attention to distract you, but now AI can drown out humans effortlessly. What trends on these websites are specifically created to divide people over minute issues? Politics and the culture war have dominated the people's consciousness through human crafted scissor statements, but now AI can generate such statements easily. How many people have broken long-standing relations over differing views on a movie? Newspapers, if they aren't shuttering, are bought up and eventually publish more scissor statements to keep the population divided. Now several papers were caught using AI to replace human writers for various purposes. The worst part is that it isn't easy to detect if something was divided by a scissor statement. As the narrator said when conflict in Mozambique occurred after Shiri's Scissor was used on it: ”I still don't know if we had anything to do with that. Africa just has a lot of conflicts, and if you wait long enough, maybe something will happen.” If not even a creator of the tool can determine if something was caused by it, what hope do we have regular people have to? Another Torment Nexus made a reality, at the cost of humanity.
Sort by Controversial, in my view, is a warning of unchecked technological development creating (yet another) man-made horror beyond comprehension. This horror now manifests in AI, trained on years of online rage bait, intentional divisions created by shady entities, and other toxic influences online to make divisive statements to isolate us. We can notice only some of the scissor statements generated. The ones so obvious to flare up rage like throwing gasoline on a fire we can spot, but the ones more subtle we struggle to detect. How many minute details of politics or everyday affairs have been used against us? We may never know. What we need now more than anything is to create ways to detect scissor statements and point them out to try and prevent further divisions.