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   Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 04-Apr-2026 00:55:41 JST Rich Felker

   OK, I had some (maybe horrifying?) thoughts about the TESCREAList "upload our brains" bullshit I'd like to share.

   🧵 1/N

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     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 04-Apr-2026 00:57:28 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     I've said on many occasions that the AI bros, the billionaires, the CEOs, all see LLM slop as "intelligence" because it mimicks what they do that they believe to be intelligent.

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     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 04-Apr-2026 00:58:14 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     I've called them wetware LLMs. They see patterns, repeat those patterns from positions of power with no idea of what they mean, and money flows in. Not because any of what they were doing actually worked, but because they started from a position of power and privilege, and convinced other people with control over money that they were smart by mindlessly repeating those patterns.

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     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 04-Apr-2026 00:59:57 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     So now here's the thought experiment. If one of these people died tomorrow, but their circle of sycophants claimed they'd uploaded their brain to a machine before they died, and presented us with an LLM trained on the bullshit they spewed before they died..

     ..how would you falsify that to adequately convince the believers that it wasn't true?

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     fancysandwiches (fancysandwiches@neuromatch.social)'s status on Saturday, 04-Apr-2026 01:21:04 JST fancysandwiches

     in reply to

     @dalias I fully expect that when Trump dies this is exactly what the GOP is going to do. They'll claim to have created an AI based on all of Trump's thoughts and beliefs and then they'll use it as a puppet to manufacture consent with his base.

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     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 04-Apr-2026 01:22:26 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     For these kinds of people, there is literally no difference between the bullshit their wetware LLMs spew and the bullshit an LLM running on GPUs would spew.

     They have no moral principles.

     They do not react to new information or understanding of the laws of physical reality.

     They only operate on what they can convince people to believe to make the money flow.

     5/N

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     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 04-Apr-2026 01:56:50 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     It doesn't matter that the "we're going to upload our brains to AI machines and make ourselves immortal" narrative is utter bullshit because they don't have to do that to perpetuate the rule by billionaires they're trying to build.

     All they need is for people to believe the lie. Just like that's all they need right now to sell AI or any of their other lies.

     6/N

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     muddle 🥣 (muddle@infosec.exchange)'s status on Saturday, 04-Apr-2026 05:15:02 JST muddle 🥣

     in reply to

     @dalias I was reading something recently about how modern fascism relies on gullibility and (iirc) cynicism (or nihilism of some shade). This also applies to all the other hype cycles of the last 20 years or so, I think, and maybe even back beyond that into MLM and the like.
     As I see it, if you want to just lump all these things under the rubric of pyramid schemes, the bottom layers are heavily populated by gullible people and as you go up the layers some of that gullibility gets replaced by cynicism. Those higher-ups know that most claims are bullshit but they just don't give a fuck any more.
     Nice thought experiment, but I don't think that the problem is to convince the believers that they're wrong so much as dealing with the inherent cynicism of those that know that most of it is bullshit but chose to ignore it if it helps them make a buck.

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     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 04-Apr-2026 05:15:02 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     • muddle 🥣

     @muddle Even with your interpretation the same still applies. It's a story for the cynicism layer to go along with that serves maintaining fascist power structures. That was kinda the point - all of this is about convincing people to believe or go along with things that make the money/power flow.

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     i.grok (igrok@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 04-Apr-2026 06:43:17 JST i.grok

     in reply to

     @dalias the real question is: do we really want to? Encourage them to "upload" themselves and off themselves before they die in some uncontrolled fashion. Then redistribute their wealth.

     If we can encourage them to do it all at once, all the better