"AI Engorgement" Refers To The Phenomenon Where An AI Model Absorbs Too Much Misinformation In Its Training

Okay, here's my criticism of this post I keep seeing -- and no, it's not what you think. I know, my longtime followers who know the kinds of things I post about a lot are probably thinking, "Oh, I know what their objection is going to be. It's going to be that 18-19 year olds are adults who can date older partners if they choose to." But no, that's not it this time! Yes, I do believe it's fine for young adults to date older adults if they choose to (and am accordingly rolling my eyes at all the "This should go up to 25!" comments in the notes), but. That's not my issue here. In fact, precisely because I believe that young adults dating older adults is morally neutral, I'm not at all concerned about the efficacy of the messaging against it. My concern is that underage minors being in sexual/romantic relationships with adults is actually harmful and dangerous, and therefore young people actually should be warned against it, and this is not an effective warning.

Fellow old people, do y'all remember being 14? At all? Would you have found this warning effective and compelling at that age?

I for sure would not! I did not! Quite the opposite!

Put yourself in the young person's position here. You have no rights. You're treated as someone with no agency. Your parents, teachers, government, and society as a whole treats you as some combination of "nuisance," "ticking time bomb," and "unthinking blob." Developmentally, you're at a phase of life when you should be transitioning to a more adult role, but everyone around you demonizes you for that desire. All your thoughts, feelings, and opinions are dismissed as the inconsequential ravings of Just A Dumb Kid Who Doesn't Know Any Better. You meet someone who treats you with basic human politeness, tells you that he likes you and that you're mature, actually treats you like you have two brain cells to rub together. Of course you're going to be drawn to him. And then when other adults warn you that obviously of course he doesn't really like you, that's impossible, of course you're not really mature, no one could possibly see you that way; actually you're naive and incapable of making your own decisions, and the way your parents/teachers/society treat you is completely justified. Are you going to heed those warnings?

Why are adults absolutely constitutionally incapable of giving good, necessary advice to teenagers without fucking insulting them in the process? Of course teenagers don't listen to it! Why would anyone??

"Oh, well, of course teenagers don't listen, because they're stubborn, and immature, and biologically determined to make bad decisions, which is all the more reason they need to be controlled," say adults, completely oblivious to the actual problem.

When I was a teenager, the big moral panic at the time was teen pregnancy, and we were all inundated with the least effective cautionary tales in the world: "If you get pregnant as a teen, you'll have to leave your parents' care and function as an adult!" Which left every girl who'd intentionally gotten pregnant for the explicit purpose of escaping her abusive parents saying "Yeah, that was the goal." And every girl who was looking for a way of escaping her abusive parents to think "What a great idea!" Today the big moral panic is older partners, but if the appeal of an older partner is that he treats you like someone capable of making your own decisions, why would you be persuaded by a counterargument of "Don't listen to him, of course you're not capable of making your own decisions!"?

Again. I'm saying this because I agree that adults dating minors is a bad thing and that minors should be warned against it. EFFECTIVELY.

That said, this is my advice to any 17-or-younger person being pursued by an 18+-year-old partner: Listen. You deserve so much better than the way society treats you. You deserve to be taken seriously. You deserve to make your own decisions in life. You have a mind of your own, and people should recognize that instead of treating your pesky "free will" as a personal affront or an inconvenient glitch. You can and should think for yourself. You deserve, and I hope you have, relationships with older people who validate those truths about you. However. You are still legally and materially powerless. I don't have to tell you that. You live it every day. Someone older than you -- and therefore, inherently, legally, more powerful than you -- should not be trying to extract things from you. Money, sex, unpaid labor, anything of value. Someone more powerful than you who truly values you, values your friendship, values you as a person, will be mindful of your status and not try to extract anything from you. Cross-age friendships are good. Older people can and should genuinely like and appreciate you, and you can and should genuinely like and appreciate them. But if they try to extract anything from you, run away.

AGENT MULDER TIE APPRECIATION POST:

Look at this hideous neckwear. I would wear any of these to work, in fact i have one just like picture #3. Gorgeous!

Cigarette Smoking Man - L to the OG (youtube)

God I hate how normalized not being in control of your own devices has become. My phone updates in the middle of the night without asking me shit or getting my consent for anything and its like "Oh hi I'm your new AI, please enjoy this forced overlay that you can't exit out of until you go through my tutorial"

"Great fuck you, I would like to uninstall you" "Oh I'm sorry you can't uninstall me! I'm a core system application and if you uninstall me your phone won't function correctly despite the fact that I did not exist yesterday and your phone worked fine" "....." "You can disable parts of my functionality but I will always be here and I will pop up notifications asking you to re-enable me unless you figure out how to disable those too! Then I will still show up in a different color at the top of your settings application telling you that you need to 'fix" a 'problem' with your phone, that problem being that I am disabled. Does that help?"

Like, you know what I can do on my desktop? "sudo pacman -Rdd linux" , this will just fucking remove the entire linux kernel. Fundamentally breaking my computer until I boot up a live disk and chroot in and reinstall it or whatever, and the computer will go "Are you sure (y/n)" or whatever and i'm like "y" and it will just go "Ok you got it boss"

But its mine, I get to do what I want with it. I control the computer, the computer does not control me. I refuse to cede control to my phone or anything else. The thing is a lot of people will joke that like "Oh I love just letting the machine tell me what to do, I don't know what I'm doing, it knows best" or whatever but the thing you have to realize is that when you say that you are abstracting away that "the phone" or whatever is not some value neutral logic driven robot like from sci-fi, it is a collection of the the capitalistic and fascistic desires of the tech oligarch fuckwits that are burning the world to the ground right now. You aren't submitting to the phone, you are submitting to Musk, Bezos, Nadella, Pichai, Cook and all those other evil bastards.

Fuck them, fuck their little AI toys, and fuck this.

THE X-FILES | 6.06

just got to the s7 "don't smoke" episode of the x files... hope there is a "don't vape" episode in the reboot.

The X Files S2 E8 - One Breath

Can we talk about how when the doctor is talking to Margaret and Mulder about Scullys living will and how MULDER SIGNED IT AS A WITNESS??!!! Mind you they have only known each other for about a year at this point. Which kinda implies that they’d known each other for a little less than a year when she asked him to sign it. THATS INSANE, THEY’RE LITERALLY INSANE!!

fanfiction truly being the savior for everyones sanity