#tormentnexus — Public Fediverse posts

Butlerian Jihad!

Plunder Speculative Fiction for your grifts, and we'll do the same for revenge!

Going to make a chair our of Elon for ripping off Iain M Banks!

#SamAltman #ButlerianJihad #TormentNexus #SpeculativeFiction #Hustle #Grift #GenAI #LLMs #TheCulture #Dune

I've been thinking recently about how the current LLM craze (and the cryptocurrency craze before it) is quite like the "Cash for Ash" scandal in Northern Ireland:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_Heat_Incentive_scandal

At its kernel, we've got this terrible idea, but we've also got externalisation of costs so that it's the users of the system that are the ones choosing to ignore the environmental costs presumably out of some sort of economic rationale.

If they are comparable, and I think they are, there needs to be a reckoning, not just for the users, but for the crafters at the centre of the scheme.

#RHI #CashForAsh #TormentNexus #Environment #Externalisation #Economics #RationalActors

"I've passed the Turing Test" announced the mindless machine, a more sophisticated version of Autocorrect and no more.

"You've passed the Turing Test" agreed the Human, projecting themselves onto Fancy Autocorrect because they were lonely

A modern romance.

#TuringTest #AI #AIPsychosis #ChatGPT #TormentNexus

speaking of the Torment Nexus...

...amazing how many people haven't seen the movie "Us" or did and it completely went over their head?

Humanity is failing the Turing Test

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/mar/26/ai-chatbot-users-lives-wrecked-by-delusion

#TormentNexus #AIChatbot #TuringTest

Re-reading the agelesslinux.org website just makes me wonder if 501c3 organizations will move from places stupid enough to implement identity verification...

Big tech is trying so hard to please the oligarchy, by forcing identity into all things. So the #panopticon #tormentnexus can control everything in the name of protecting the children.

@histoftech

From Rousseau to Robespierre and the guillotine.

#TormentNexus #Rousseau #TopDownDoesNotWork

idea: add #llm support to #syslog so when nothing interesting is happening then it generates some exciting log entries, and if something interesting is happening it hides in the noise. just to keep SoC people entertained.

#tormentnexus

The existence of my Torment Nexus has a lot of people asking questions already answered by the existence of my Torment Nexus.

#TormentNexus #torment #nexus #TShirt #TeeShirt #questions #answered

The existence of my Torment Nexus has a lot of people asking questions already answered by the existence of my Torment Nexus.

#TormentNexus #torment #nexus #TShirt #TeeShirt #questions #answered

The existence of my Torment Nexus has a lot of people asking questions already answered by the existence of my Torment Nexus.

#TormentNexus #torment #nexus #TShirt #TeeShirt #questions #answered

The existence of my Torment Nexus has a lot of people asking questions already answered by the existence of my Torment Nexus.

#TormentNexus #torment #nexus #TShirt #TeeShirt #questions #answered

The existence of my Torment Nexus has a lot of people asking questions already answered by the existence of my Torment Nexus.

#TormentNexus #torment #nexus #TShirt #TeeShirt #questions #answered

I posted this as a reply elsewhere, but think it stands on its own, fleshed out a bit. So here it is.

It's about "AI" - LLMs or chatbots, of course.

Ask an LLM "Is <X> a good idea?", and it will tell you why it's a good idea.
Ask the same LLM "Is <X> a bad idea?", and it will tell you why it's a bad idea.

It occurs to me that this behaviour - ask a chatbot a leading question, and it will give you an "answer" that backs up the assumptions buried in the question - is the realization of the computer system Douglas Adams called "Reason" (in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency).

Originally designed as a reasoning machine to help you find the correct solution to a problem you described, it instead turned out to be good at retroactively finding an incontrovertible argument to justify a decision you'd already made. It was so successful the Pentagon bought it lock, stock, and barrel, and military purchasing decisions started to have the hallmarks of its output.

So, they really have done a version of building the Torment Nexus from a book advising against it.

#LLM #AI #Reason #DouglasAdams #DirkGently #reasoning #TormentNexus #justification #chatbot

@nuculabs @panther_modern

It occurs to me that what you describe - basically, ask a chatbot a leading question, and it will give you an "answer" that backs up the assumptions buried in the question - is the realization of the computer system Douglas Adams called "Reason" (in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency).

Originally designed as a reasoning machine to help you find the correct solution to a problem, it instead turned out to be good at retroactively finding an incontrovertible argument to justify a decision you'd already made. It was so successful the Pentagon bought it lock, stock, and barrel, and military purchasing decisions started to have the hallmarks of its output.

So, they really have done a version of building the Torment Nexus from a book advising against it.

Weird.

#DirkGently #reason #reasoning #decision #DouglasAdams #TormentNexus #AI

Sci-fi writer Charles Stross' dark take on Silicon Valley 'religion'

I teach that scripture and sci-fi share the lesson: playing God leads to trouble. Tech worship a Torment Nexus, a cautionary fiction made real by people who miss the point.

@books @bookstodon @religion #ChristianSciFi #ProfessorK #sciencefiction #AI #amwritingsf #secretscifinetwork #TormentNexus #SiliconValley

https://apple.news/Aly3QAaYuS8Oyylo2vLXlvQ

Isn’t that oneness implacable?
Aren’t the boundaries integral?
It’s not wrong – just not that practical – cos resistance is central
and down here in the pit
besplattered infinite potential
doesn’t really give me peace
to quell the chat just stills my pencil
much as it mulch me I must move multiplicitly
mouth make moist
spray voice
full to brim
It seems even if it’s a choice
veil of woe is me
I can’t buy sterility cultishly
Plenty problem with uncertainty certainly
Many of them probably due to me personally
All my concerns could be cured with a cursory
Self ain’t real and it’s all just the surface tea
You know
Naam Myoho Renge Kyo
But yo
My yard still ramshackle
Man still poor
Hand still sore
Mind still delicate
Head can’t get up cos the shit comes break a neck
Wreck a reckoning
No help is coming
So I can retreat to the space stay shut in
Release the ceaseless things that try butt in
prana and humming and I’ve still done nothing
how you meant to manage if you don’t detangle
if dissipation is the only angle
no indication what’s best to handle
just vibes based random notions of demand
that bear no explicable relation to the famble
there’s nowt grand for mans who don’t plan, understand?
How you have detachment with a kid? You dig?
You might release your image of yourself – you think she did?
You can make your peace with what is – and that’s big
but you can’t ujai away the dishstacked sink
presence ain’t birthday presents or events
flow don’t slow just grows incessant
I can count my blessings but she count evidence
living in the now sets an awful precedent
for torpor and more to the point my wife
deserves names and things and plans in her life

#bars #poetry #songs #lyrics #nonduality #advaita #zen #buddhism #tantra #consciousness #family #Life #tormentnexus

Good overview of Torment Nexus concept. In the end, sci-fi doesn’t teach people to be evil. It simply amplifies today’s evil with tomorrow’s technology.

@books @bookstodon @religion #ChristianSciFi #ProfessorK #tormentnexus #sciencefiction #AI #space #amwritingsf #secretscifinetwork #neilstephenson #isaacasimov #matrix #robertheinlein #williamgibson #philipkdick #cyberpunk #bladerunner #dystopian #musk #thiel

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/apr/14/the-big-idea-will-sci-fi-end-up-destroying-the-world?CMP=oth_b-aplnews_d-1

Don’t immanentize the Eschaton!

It’s a bad idea.

Creepy Weirdos™ don’t listen to good advice.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/dont-fail-imagine-eschaton-sam-panini

#ImmanentizeTheEschaton #TormentNexus #Eudaimonia

We all knew this day was coming....

#TormentNexus #Ukraine #Warbots

@bruces

"You appear to be trying to create the Torment Nexus. Would you like help with that?"

#TormentNexus #torment #nexus

The scene in _Snow Crash_ where Hiro Protagonist, having temporarily become a gargoyle, socially engineers a motorcycle salesman and scams the fuck out of him... is now possible in this reality.

Something something Torment Nexus something...

h/t @samuteki

https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/2/24260262/ray-ban-meta-smart-glasses-doxxing-privacy

#surveillance #scifi #doxxing #SnowCrash #privacy #wearable #WearableComputing #WearableElectronics #TormentNexus

#OpenRecall: #Microsoft awakened a craving for a new kind of surveillance. The only issue was that people didn't like Microsoft and wanted to inflict the surveillance on themselves.

#MicrosoftRecall #Recall #microsoft_recall #OpenNexus #OpenTorment #TormentNexus