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Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 7h

Tech is full of philosophers who couldn’t get jobs in philosophy

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Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 7h

Where are the 1990s

Land of the Loops Multi-Family Garage Sale music video

YouTube video by Alan Sutherland

youtu.be

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Reposted by Eryk Salvaggio

Simon Groth @simongroth.com · 10h

“Current architectures of LLMs cannot imagine, but they can sequence … For the same reason that a dog can go to church but a dog cannot be Catholic, an LLM can have a conversation but cannot participate in the conversation.”

Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 19h

I've been re-acquainting myself with NNs, transformers and LLMs this week, so these are early thoughts. But I am starting to think about language without the capacity to imagine language, i.e., an LLM unable to imagine itself participating in language. mail.cyberneticforests.com/what-machine...

What Machines Don't Know

Imagining Language Without Imagination It's important to acknowledge that Large Language Models are complex. There's an oversimplified binary in online chatter between the dismissive characterizatio...

mail.cyberneticforests.com

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Reposted by Eryk Salvaggio

mcc @dryad.technology · 11h

What I'm listening to today: "Olson"

Boards of Canada arranged to play on a DEC PDP-1 from 1959. The PDP-1 doesn't have sound, but it does have front-panel light bulbs for debugging, so they rewired the light bulb lines into speakers to create 4 square wave channels

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wubk...

Boards of Canada "Olson" on a 1959 PDP-1 Computer

YouTube video by Joe Lynch

www.youtube.com

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Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 11h

Recent posts re: Meta’s goals to build solipsistic networks that simulate social interaction through sycophantic LLMs to replace their dead mall vibe reminded me of this text, written in 2023, which tied the logics of social media analytics directly to logics of generative AI.

Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 11h

“Now AI promises to further constrain those relationships, to move us from a time when one could speak and hear from many to a time when one can speak only to ourselves: one-to-none communication, a throwback to the days of yelling at the TV, but now the TV can adjust.” (From 2023).

The Hypothetical Image — Cybernetic Forests.

The history of AI images as data analytics, and AI art as the aestheticization of Big Data’s politics.

www.cyberneticforests.com

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Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 11h

“Now AI promises to further constrain those relationships, to move us from a time when one could speak and hear from many to a time when one can speak only to ourselves: one-to-none communication, a throwback to the days of yelling at the TV, but now the TV can adjust.” (From 2023).

The Hypothetical Image — Cybernetic Forests.

The history of AI images as data analytics, and AI art as the aestheticization of Big Data’s politics.

www.cyberneticforests.com

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Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 11h

Thank you!

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Reposted by Eryk Salvaggio

Alberto Bruzos @abruzos.bsky.social · 11h

Excellent essay!

"To believe this to be true, one would have to imagine that all human speech is motivated entirely by grammar."

But it is not. Meaning depends on extra-linguistic context much more than we realize, so language is more than just words and syntax; it's an embodied practice.

Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 19h

I've been re-acquainting myself with NNs, transformers and LLMs this week, so these are early thoughts. But I am starting to think about language without the capacity to imagine language, i.e., an LLM unable to imagine itself participating in language. mail.cyberneticforests.com/what-machine...

What Machines Don't Know

Imagining Language Without Imagination It's important to acknowledge that Large Language Models are complex. There's an oversimplified binary in online chatter between the dismissive characterizatio...

mail.cyberneticforests.com

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Reposted by Eryk Salvaggio

Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 19h

I've been re-acquainting myself with NNs, transformers and LLMs this week, so these are early thoughts. But I am starting to think about language without the capacity to imagine language, i.e., an LLM unable to imagine itself participating in language. mail.cyberneticforests.com/what-machine...

What Machines Don't Know

Imagining Language Without Imagination It's important to acknowledge that Large Language Models are complex. There's an oversimplified binary in online chatter between the dismissive characterizatio...

mail.cyberneticforests.com

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Reposted by Eryk Salvaggio

Benjamin Riley @benjaminjriley.bsky.social · 18h

"Human language is motivated by the articulation of thought; machine language is crafted through structure....As a result, the likelihood of finding new arrangements of words through an LLM is determined not by the capacity of AI reason, but to shuffle the expectations of a word's proper position."

Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 19h

I've been re-acquainting myself with NNs, transformers and LLMs this week, so these are early thoughts. But I am starting to think about language without the capacity to imagine language, i.e., an LLM unable to imagine itself participating in language. mail.cyberneticforests.com/what-machine...

What Machines Don't Know

Imagining Language Without Imagination It's important to acknowledge that Large Language Models are complex. There's an oversimplified binary in online chatter between the dismissive characterizatio...

mail.cyberneticforests.com

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Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 18h

A lot of people do, in fact, "pretend to be themselves," and this makes them more sympathetic to the idea that LLMs "think the way humans do." It's typical in younger people who lack experiences that shape their self-knowledge, so when we ask "which mind are we modeling?" that ought to factor in.

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Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 19h

I've been re-acquainting myself with NNs, transformers and LLMs this week, so these are early thoughts. But I am starting to think about language without the capacity to imagine language, i.e., an LLM unable to imagine itself participating in language. mail.cyberneticforests.com/what-machine...

What Machines Don't Know

Imagining Language Without Imagination It's important to acknowledge that Large Language Models are complex. There's an oversimplified binary in online chatter between the dismissive characterizatio...

mail.cyberneticforests.com

3 17 65

Reposted by Eryk Salvaggio

Patricia Bastos @patmat.bsky.social · 21h

1/10 There are very abstract concepts that must be taken as truth in order to subjugate humans to technology and its owners.One of the most powerful is the idea that computation is consciousness and life is information,the core belief behind what philosophers call computational functionalism.
👇

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Reposted by Eryk Salvaggio

Louise Amoore @amoorelouise.bsky.social · 5d

Our article on the politics of AI prompts is out now @econsocjournal.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... 1/n

Politics of the prompt: Government in the age of generative AI

This paper addresses the politics of the technique of prompting in machine learning, at a time when bureaucratic and democratic government is undergoing transformation. Drawing on the case of the U...

www.tandfonline.com

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Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 21h

Thoughtful read on how prompts shift the political imagination & how it may influence government decision making. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Politics of the prompt: Government in the age of generative AI

This paper addresses the politics of the technique of prompting in machine learning, at a time when bureaucratic and democratic government is undergoing transformation. Drawing on the case of the U...

www.tandfonline.com

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Reposted by Eryk Salvaggio

猫好きな人 @valoisdubins.bsky.social · 22h

THIS

It’s also why I really find it difficult to give two shits about superhero CGI stunt work and can’t fathom why others do.

Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 22h

No shame, I’ve laughed at those TikTok videos of dogs crashing into wedding cakes, funny. But the joke — dog crashing into cake! — is actually not as funny when you know it’s staged, or prompted. That is a legitimate response to humor: context can make it unfunny after the fact of laughing.

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Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 22h

No shame, I’ve laughed at those TikTok videos of dogs crashing into wedding cakes, funny. But the joke — dog crashing into cake! — is actually not as funny when you know it’s staged, or prompted. That is a legitimate response to humor: context can make it unfunny after the fact of laughing.

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Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 22h

“If it makes you laugh, who cares if it’s AI?” Well, I care because my laughter and aesthetic pleasure is not how I determine whether a thing is ethical or good for society. I like how the sun bounces off of oil slicks in parking lots, does not mean I want oil spills everywhere.

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Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 22h

Lots of real slop making it through the social filters these days thanks to Sora 2. If you laugh out loud at a TikTok video it’s probably AI. It’s fine to laugh of course. But now you have to deal with the slop hangover.

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Reposted by Eryk Salvaggio

technerd @techviews.bsky.social · 1d

"...some of the politically connected people in the charter cities movement, people receiving investment from Thiel and others, were very excited about the prospect of the U.S. taking over #Greenland."

www.politico.com/news/magazin...

‘The Democrats Still May Not Understand What They're Dealing With’

A Silicon Valley chronicler on the increasingly radical politics of Elon Musk, David Sacks and Mark Zuckerberg.

www.politico.com

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Reposted by Eryk Salvaggio

Dan Rosen @danrosen.xyz · 7d

"This back-and-forth between builders and critics makes neither happy, but ultimately leads to compromises...The adoption of new technological forms does not erase the interest in technosocial purposes to which it might be directed."

Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 7d

Wrote more about Benjamin Bratton's paranoid imagination of a media studies cabal holding back AI progress in Europe. mail.cyberneticforests.com/is-the-media...

Is the Media Studies Cabal in the Room With Us Right Now?

I read The Stack in 2020 as a grad student in ANU's Applied Cybernetics program. I give it credit for directing my attention to the interaction between layers of digital and physical infrastructures. ...

mail.cyberneticforests.com

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Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 4d

I’ve just learned that John Searle, whose Chinese Room thought experiment is often used to challenge ideas of “understanding” in LLMs, died at age 93 on Sunday. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

John Searle obituary

American philosopher whose Chinese Room thought experiment rebuts the idea that computers can think as humans do

www.theguardian.com

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Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 5d

Ah, understood!

Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 5d

Sorry, what “position” are you referring to here?

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Reposted by Eryk Salvaggio

Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 5d

The "you don't understand how (AI/LLMs/Diffusion Models/NNs) work" posture in any debate is often just "we don't agree on how to interpret what (AI/LLMs/Diffusion Models/NNs) are doing"

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