3.7.25

One brief moment of AI snark

AI advocates often sound like logical positivists from the early 20th century: "All we need is a list of all true statements, which we know must be finite and discoverable, and then we can rationally construct a logical language and science out of it, no problem" except that you will never generate a list of all (and only) true statements, so the claim can never be true. Wittgenstein, who was smarter than you, moved from the Tractatus to a never-finished second work for more or less this reason, and it's not coincidence the second one was never finished.

There's something dispiriting about the wide use of AI, but it's no different than what is dispiriting about people not reading, or watching reality tv, or never paying attention to politics or the world around them. I long ago accepted that people don't read like I do; I suppose it follows that people will not write like I do, either.

Everything seems inevitable until it doesn't. Thank sports for teaching me that: USC was never going to lose at college football, then they did; Alabama wasn't ever going to lose at football, then they did; Georgia, Ohio State, etc etc.


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