If you’re going to be doubting someone’s experience, assuming intentions, and implying that conversations surrounding oppression and disagreements over technological implementations are comparable in this sense, then there is no room for conversation here.

I’m not trying to portray myself as a paragon of civility, nor am I above making bad judgements. I do concede that that comment I made was poorly worded and needlessly antagonistic. I will not try to defend that.

I am not trying to debate or argue. I don’t want any winners or losers or gotchas or whatever people seek from that. My whole aim was to express that there is frustration that is not unwarranted in these topics, and whether it’s deemed to be fair or not, the initial invitation to a conversation is important in setting the ground for the conversations that follow.

You seem insistent to believe that I am attempting to troll, be snarky or engage in sealioning, when I am trying my best to genuinely engage. I did not, and do not claim that you had any bad intentions. If you follow through my comments again, you will see what my motivation was clearly. I simply started commenting to point out that, even if it is unintentional, and I do believe you when you say that it was, that given the context and history of these posts in this instance, this topic should be discussed with more grace. Nothing more, nothing less.

Tone policing is something that is applicable to certain contexts where it is used to suppress criticisms of oppressive systems. I am more than familiar with tone policing, coming from a marginalised community myself. Applying the term to something like the conversation here does nothing but dilute its meaning.

My point is that you should’ve edited the title if you saw that the content of the article is interesting, but its headline is clearly antagonistic. There is no reason to adopt the author’s callousness.

How you believe that starting off a conversation by implying that people who disagree with you are “nuts”, even if it’s the authors words, won’t lead to people taking issue with it, as they should, is odd.

Why not simply acknowledge that there is a better way to have these conversations, that we could all learn and move forward and stop antagonising each other instead of doubling down on defending this?

If that’s your takeaway from everything I wrote, then there’s not much else I could say.

A bunch of people came in to make snide comments and personal attacks. But turns out it’s my fault that the tone of the discussion the way it is.

You set the tone of the discussion through the title of the post, I’m not sure why you won’t even acknowledge that this wasn’t a civil nor respective way to start an honest conversation.

I am not talking about the technology itself or what is to be done regarding it, I’m simply highlighting that the manner in which the conversation around it in this instance is conducted is more often than not antagonistic and unproductive.

Posts that are meant to educate should not be hostile, condescending, or antagonistic. People’s concerns, when they are engaging in good faith, should not be waved away and ignored.

It’s important to understand why we communicate something. What is the goal that we’re trying to achieve? It’s important to be honest about this with ourselves before we choose to speak. Is the goal of a post I’m making to try and seek opinions? Is it to gauge interest in something? Is it to educate the community on a specific topic that I have certain knowledge about? Is it to critique a particular point of view? It could also be to make a joke and share a laugh about something, or it could be to express frustrations and personal grievances. We should answer this question before we communicate something. We could read the post or comment again and ask ourselves “does this post/comment fit with the goal I had in mind?” If I’m making posts that consistently result in unproductive conversations in the comments in a community that is otherwise quite pleasant to interact with, then I may reassess the way that I’m approaching this topic.

I chose to comment on this post not as a knee-jerk reaction to the needlessly provocative title, rather because I saw it as part of a pattern with the discussions surrounding this topic on this instance. The point I am trying to make is that it does not benefit anyone on this instance to keep spreading hostilities. If believe that this is an important topic, one that people here should take seriously and engage with as it’s relevant to their lives and their movements, you should not resort to reducing all their concerns, opinions, and personal preferences to ignorance, primitivism, or paint them as Luddites.

As I said before, I would not afford the same patience to people expressing bigoted views or harmful historic revisionism, this is not that.

Speaking personally as an example, I do not disagree with your main premise. I do not believe that these technologies should be ignored, rejected, or shunned as a whole. I am not against automation, nor am I against the use of similar technologies in creative pursuits such as art or music in principle. I however do dislike these AI generated memes and comics. I do dislike the use cases people employ LLMs in 90% of the time. I do dislike that every single field is urged to incorporate some of these technologies somehow before a problem is even identified and trying to force-sell a solution. I do dislike the way that it’s currently used by people who are my juniors, who rely on information from corporate LLMs without having a single inkling of how they work. We may agree, disagree, discuss certain points, I could change my perspective on something, that is all great, but you have to understand that in a case where I or other users are frustrated or annoyed by something like AI generated memes or comics on these communities, it does not automatically mean that we’re Luddites.

To recap again the point I’m trying to make: please stop using antagonistic, passive-aggressive, and condescending methods to try and get your points across regarding this topic. It does not help.

Firstly, “whether the development will be done in the open, accessible to everyone, and community driven” is largely not in the question when it comes to the training data itself, which is the most resource intensive aspect of this to begin with.

Secondly, “Rejection of these tools ensures that the former will be the case.”, you’re circling back again for the third time to a point that I haven’t made, and have explicitly clarified that it’s not the point that I’m discussing.

This follows the pattern of the comment threads of the other posts I’ve read on this topic, which is why I was hesitant to comment on this one to begin with. There is no point in having a conversation if you reply without showing the basic decency to read what I wrote.

The point is not judging the content of the article on the headline, it’s the needlessly antagonistic phrasing of it. I am expressing that it is very understandable that people scrolling would be bothered by seeing such posts.

As for the struggle sessions, the topic is quite controversial to begin with, and being honest, as a lurker of these posts for quite some time now, I never liked the manner in which you replied to people disagreeing in the comments. It’s no surprise that these posts often turn hostile and unproductive. It’s also important to realise that each post does not happen on an island, there’s historical context in the community and instance. People being irked by one post and choosing to comment something have probably seen 3-4 other posts in the previous weeks that also annoyed them, and might reply with a tone of frustration as a result.

Of course the topic could and should be discussed, if it’s done in an honest and rational manner. There is no disagreement here. This is however not what I have been seeing over the past months. Even this very post, I know you haven’t written the article’s headline yourself, but you can see that it’s clearly antagonistic for no good reason.

You can imagine this with any other topic. If there are people who you are sympathetic to and are part of your cause but might have an inaccurate or ‘reactionary’ view to something, you would not meet them with antagonism. Especially since we’re not talking about a case of bigotry here or other views or actions that harm others.

We should also not infer from people disliking something that they have ‘reactionary’ views. One could dislike spice grinders and prefer a mortar and pestle, that doesn’t make them a primitivist. I would also understand if they get frustrated if they’re constantly bombarded with “here’s why spice grinders are better and you’re an idiot if you’re not using one” type posts.

That is all well and good, but this is not a conversation about “using LLMs in this specific scenario is advantageous”. I’m talking about the wider conversation mostly happening on this instance.

It’s quite frustrating when people express certain material concerns about the current state of the technology and its implications and are met with bad-faith arguments, hand-waving, and idealism. Especially when it’s not an important conversation to be happening here anyway. It’s mostly surfaced because people here react negatively to the AI-generated memes that Yogthos posts and that of course makes them irrational primitivists.

It’s needless antagonism that is not productive whatsoever over a topic that is largely out of the hands of workers anyway.

That’s completely missing the point I am making. I am not advocating for ‘irrational hate’ of a technology. I am saying that people are not receptive to the current implementations of it, and that trying to combat this through pushing against this sentiment is ultimately a waste of time.

Assess the situation on what is, not on the premise of a utopian ideal.

Yogthos is really relentless with all these AI posts. You’re not fighting for the poor defenseless AI technologies against the tyrannical masses with these posts.

People are clearly pissed off at the current state of these technologies and the products of it. I would have expected that here out of all places that the current material reality would matter more than the idealistic view of what could be done with them.

I don’t mean for this comment to sound antagonistic, I just feel that there’s more worthwhile things to focus on than pushing back against people annoyed by AI-generated memes and comics and calling them luddites.