information wants to be free, and microsoft sells access to raw uncut information by the word.

[hipsterelectron@circumstances.run]

information wants to be free, and microsoft sells access to raw uncut information by the word. no, i am not actively experiencing a brain hemorrhage, the information told me so

[hipsterelectron@circumstances.run]

i heard this assigned to stallman (who gets assigned a lot of credit) but it was noted that software can be losslessly copied and reproduced effortlessly in ways physical products can't be. it took many many years to realize this but that is an analysis not of software but of labor. this mechanic is also visible in any form of creative labor and the basic function of copyright is as a labor protection.

[hipsterelectron@circumstances.run]

if you get past the blathering in public the legal arguments advanced by LLM lawyers (of course they still pay real lawyers) are not that fair use results from the technical method of reproduction (hachette vs IA struck this down twice), but that fair use results from a benefit to the public good far outweighing the enforcement of copyright. this requires that LLMs must be argued to benefit the public good.

[hipsterelectron@circumstances.run]

i wish i could be more flippant here because the judiciary has been full of shit lately but it requires an immense degree of rationalization (which every LLM loser will state without being asked like it's their evil special interest) to argue that LLMs are not the worst possible realization of whatever value they're supposed to add.

[aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@hipsterelectron this is something I've been thinking about a lot lately. I remember explaining Free Software to my parents as a teen and my mom asking with some concern how the "funding" part works, and me not really having an answer. looking back, software losing all inherent value ended up not being much of a problem to the career programmer, because the act of creating it was still expensive and there has continued to be a sustained demand for its perpetual creation.

[aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@hipsterelectron and so knowing what I know now, I'd have answered that the labor itself is valuable. but now it seems regardless of if the labor is actually still valuable (eg whether or not code generating LLMs are fit for purpose), we seem to be at a precipice where the labor is no longer valued. or at least the demand has certainly washed out.

[hipsterelectron@circumstances.run]

when rachel carson wrote silent spring the government formed the EPA to stop corporate pollution of our shared environment instead of accepting literal neurotoxins in the water. perhaps it helped that a poet who wrote about the sea made the decision process employed about plants and animals visible to the general public.

[aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@hipsterelectron so in retrospect, it turns out programming was a form of performance art all along

[hipsterelectron@circumstances.run]

"information wants to be free" is a call to ignorance of liberal democracy.

[aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@hipsterelectron I was content that LLMs were either useless or significantly inferior for all purposes they're sold for, and I still am confident in this assessment, but what I didn't realize until this year is that doesn't matter because the widespread belief that these so-called tools are fit for purpose is enough to destroy everything if it is sustained for long enough.