Books/mythology/metaphysics discussions moved to: loopingworld.com
This means that the site here won’t (usually) be updated and I’ll eventually copy all of book-related posts over there. The rest of the stuff will stay here for as long the site stays up (not planning of pulling it down for the foreseeable future).
UPDATE: I’ll sporadically still post here, but it will be for writing about roguelike development, tracking my own (lack of) progress, or other quirky gaming things.
I’m not gonna waste much time writing about this. I just wish it was possible to talk to someone who can produce actual changes, rather than at a wall. But it’s the old story, the same story that was already in place when I first opened this site, somewhere between 2004-2006.
But you don’t need to listen or believe me, there are youtubers now filling that role:
(and if you see your ad-blocker blocking something here, it’s now because of this embed)
Despite I’ve given close to zero attention to WoW since Cataclysm, I’ve written on this blog several times across so many years, how completely broken the WoW leveling experience has been.
See here my post written in 2016, laughing at how only then Blizzard “acknowledged” they had a problem. It was 10 years ago: https://cesspit.net/drupal/node/2356/
Quote from Blizzard 2016:
we made levelling through the prior expansions a bit faster, and a bit faster, and a bit faster, because we didn’t want levelling to be such a barrier to entry.”
you shouldn’t be out-levelling zones before you’ve finished their story. You shouldn’t be doing one dungeon and finding that the zone you’re in is no longer relevant to you at all.”
the levelling-up experience through older zones at lower levels is “pretty broken right now. It’s not really very well tuned.”
But as the Warcraft development team focused on the live game of World of Warcraft, it definitely has shone a light on some deficiencies and areas where the game has been lacking recently, and that’s something we want to do something about.”
“Recently,” in 2016, was already a fucking joke. The leveling was completely broken at Cataclysm release, that was in 2010. So SIX YEARS before they finally acknowledged WoW “has a problem”, and now SIXTEEN FUCKING YEARS with the problem STILL THERE, MADE EVEN WORSE.
(You know what other big game completely fucked the new player experience, for several years? Destiny 2. Very similar causes. Shitty leadership on top of everything else.)
Cataclysm was one of the most HYPED expansion ever, and likely the biggest FAILURE of WoW. But the hype wasn’t misplaced. The world overhaul WAS GOOD. It was the pacing that was all broken, and all the stories, the area design, the quests… were all built around a different pacing. Only for some fucking IDIOT at Blizzard who must have decided to change something last minute, and break the whole thing. That still plagues the game to this day (and that, again, was literally admitted by Blizzard in that interview I quoted, in 2016). Fast, fast, faster, frictionless. Meaningless. Pointless. Forgettable.
Blizzard has forced players into a bunch of different “Classic” servers, shattering the community and the active playerbase, now with countless characters abandoned inside dead servers. To the point that UNOFFICIAL severs got extremely popular. Not because they are simply “free”, but because some of them do more competently the job you expect Blizzard to do.
Yet all those “Classic” servers were popular at some point, and continue to be. But more and more they become false promises, that push the whole “concept” of an ongoing server feeling more like the “seasons” in Path of Exile or Diablo: you just take for granted now that you’ll play a character for a few weeks, and then abandon it. You expect it to have a short expiration date, and just accept the deal for what it is.
But again, the classic content isn’t better, and it’s also false that it’s driven by nostalgia. It’s the pacing and balance that make the leveling experience FEEL RIGHT. That require at least some effort and that feels like a journey. Characters die if you don’t pay attention, the world has some good friction. It makes you actually soak some of that world and its stories, and buys your loyalty to it.
Since then I occasionally commented about this. It’s not worth mentioning, it’s always the same stuff.
The video above, from a competent “player”, shows plenty of evidence about how the game is still completely broken, for its BASE feature. And that’s not the first video he made about this. It’s even praiseworthy because usually veteran players who stick to the game to this day only care about raids, loot and builds. They don’t give a shit about new players experience and new characters. They just rush to level cap and farm gear and rare mounts.
Once again, all of this is so utterly stupid because it’s EASY to fix.
Those two groups of players are not reconcilable. Some players, indeed, want the leveling experience as fast as possible. They want to be able to level alts quickly, effortlessly because their own focus is elsewhere, and taking more time to level and complete a zone would be a giant chore. On the other hand there’s a “hidden iceberg” of potential players who would love to take their time through the whole of WoW. To “restore” that lost content, not though YET ANOTHER Classic-like server, but with something paced correctly. Where the content is not squeezed down, at every new expansion release.
(Classic does target this goal. As you started with the first release, and expansions were progressively added. But it implies YOU keeping some sort of pace with the content Blizzard releases. There is no reason why this feature cannot be made permanent, available at all times, where you can play at ease at YOUR pace. That you can pause and then resume whenever you feel like… see below)
So, if these two groups and goals are BOTH legitimate, yet not reconcilable, how do you solve this contradiction?
Again, old ideas. No, no need for entirely separate servers. This is mostly math, not actual content redesign. The content is there, it is good, and it does work. What you need is STRUCTURE and balance. You already have “phasing” technology for the areas. What you can do is give players the option to “flag” a special new character for a special, new game mode called “The Long Journey”, or something like that. At any time you can quit this mode and convert the character back to normal, and of course you can’t go back to that special mode after you quit it.
Since this is strictly about leveling pace and balance, against a game world, it doesn’t need some special server like “hardcore”. All characters can easily coexist, you would just put them into different “phases” of the zones, as it happens ALREADY due to timewalking and all that broken crap.
Emphasize then this new mode with some lightweight perks. Give it one special mount, maybe. A title. Or make these special characters have a unique color for their name. Just something to tell them apart and that encourages players to at least try this new mode. Make a new character to have a feel of how it plays.
You can also break it down into three base modes, or more if you cared:
1- the current “retail” experience. I’m not up to date, but it’s basically the newbie island to level 10, then fast-track to expansion level, and then the latest expansion content. In some 20 hours to get there. Nothing changes here, players who want to speedrun the game would still be able to do so.
2- “The Long Path”. Some sort of hybrid. You go to the noob island, exactly as above, then when you’re spitted out at level 10, you pick one of the many WoW expansions, and you get a journey to the start of the newest expansion at a slower, relaxed pace, a lot slower than current retail, paced just so you COMPLETE that whole expansion content, and its zones. Paced exactly so it takes a SIMILAR time to when that expansion was brand new. Not 10 hours, for sure, but also not 500. Just enough you can soak a whole expansion content and all its specific zones, with the right pacing as that expansion was built and balanced around at the time when it was designed originally.
3- “The Longest Journey”. The “crazy” mode. Just let players have it. Don’t judge, don’t argue. If the option feels foolish, just avoid it. This mode would be balanced and built so that you go through ALL the (retail) game. Through ALL the expansions. Linearly as they were added to the game. Linearly AS IF you made a character on day 1 of release, and were there from 2004 to 2026. In a way that is PERMANENTLY AVAILABLE. At any point, so you can start at any time, and HAVE IT. No, you don’t need classic servers, you don’t need the old world, because Cataclysm CONTENT was good. The pacing sucked. You just need to retool the balance, the XP curves, the formulas (and monster balance, still all numbers). You start with the base game and level up from 1 to 60 as it was in Cataclysm BUT with level curve of Classic, then level from 60 to 70, with the level curve and balance of the Burning Crusade… and so on, you go, linearly, through all the expansions, retaining the pace they had when they were designed in their prime. ALL THE WAY to the newest expansion, and RETAINING the leveling numbers. Only then, or whenever you decide to convert your “special” character back to normal, you “squeeze” whatever level achieved to an approximation of where the character would be in retail. And you enter retail, proper. At any time, whenever you feel like. If you exit early, then you just get your normal character. If instead you COMPLETE the whole journey, you get an achievement, and your character name color gets a special tint. Or something like that. Just a prize to show for what you’ve done.
Erase all that “timewalk” Chromie CRAP, and give these three different modes EXPLICITLY ADVERTISED AND SELECTABLE AT THE CHARACTER CREATION SCREEN.
1- “Retail” how it currently is, the speedrun to level cap
2- “The Long Path” exhaust one full expansion content, for each new character.
3- “The Longest Journey” all of Warcraft, the 22 years of content, through one single life of a single character. The whole leveling span, permanently available in retail servers.
There is no reason why this cannot exist. There is no reason to release a shitton of classic-like different servers. There is no reason to announce Classic-Fucking-Plus to have something to announce at Blizzcon. You can do all of this now.
Sure, it requires work. You need to actually balance those XP curves, quest rewards, monster damage across a fuckton of content. You need to add support for these different paths and level numbers (and class builds need to be tweaked to work, tho I believe it can wrapped around whatever retail is at, without major reworks). But it’s mostly tedious work, of tweaking numbers. It can be done by a minuscule team and be in a playable state in a very short span (95% of all of this can be automated with one formula applied to each leveling “segment”, then tested and tweaked). There is close to none technical challenge or implementation hell, since it uses tech already in the game, and only replaced the Chromie stuff with something that uses different numbers and makes actual sense. That is easily understood and presented to the players without having to look up wikis and guides, like the current, broken and convoluted system that pleases no one.
But more importantly, fuck you. And fuck me, because it’s 2026 and I’m still talking to a wall, because people get paid and still don’t have a fucking clue.
See you in 2030, when someone at Blizzard will realize the leveling curve is still broken. But then I’m pretty sure they’ll have a whole new game to sell you, to fix the problem they themselves created. That could have been fixed by a team of 5, in roughly a week of work, at any time, at any point since 2010.
Fascism exists always upstream, with the delusional control of truth values. Only until inevitability reality comes crashing down.
Taking cue from Trump fascist administration, having seen how they can easily manipulate and gaslight a very obvious murder into “self-defense”, Larian decided they could try gaslighting their fans into believing they “listened” to protests and corrected their course, while doubling down on their AI use.
And it’s done through the well trodden path of hiding their tracks.
Well, that’s great, right? There’s absolutely nothing to criticize here.
Problem is the message doesn’t stop there, despite many eyes will glaze over what comes next. And the message proceeds to radically UNDO and contradict everything it claimed in that first part:
Before you can even get to the stage of figuring out if AI can help or not, because, FOR SURE THEFT ALWAYS HELPS, maybe you should figure out what the fuck you’re actually doing and using, right? Just because you “try things” in a dumb, clueless way doesn’t absolve you from responsibilities.
Illegally appropriating the job done by someone else is surely a safe and proven way of “doing things faster.” It just works! I don’t even know why you want a debate on the usefulness of theft. All tech companies have figured out that theft is a successful model, the fastest path to getting rich, especially when governments are now completely corrupt.
So now you are using AI widely “across departments”, having decided that people’s criticism was ONLY ABOUT THE ART. So you figured out that EVERYTHING CAN BE STOLEN, just as long you don’t hurt some artistic sensibilities. Everything else must be up for grabs, right? Steal as fast as possible, loot this miserable world until it’s all gone.
Because that’s the point: everyone is doing the same. Everyone is participating in this looting, so who’s innocent? And if no one’s innocent, how can anyone be guilty?
We have successfully isolated this problem of “artistic origin”, then, having cleansed every other form of theft. So now lets cleanse the artistic side as well, so that WE CAN STEAL WHATEVER WE WANT?
“Without being 100% sure about the origins of the training data.” 100%! Do you know math? 100% is all there is. This is not a tactical game with 110% chance to hit, the d100 only goes 0-99, or 1-100. Statistics! Larian makes RPGs, after all.
“Then it’ll be trained on data we own.”
Oh, nice. So, if this wasn’t just a factually false statement, the only way to make this part “true” would indicate that Larian is now in the AI business and is developing, in-house, their own proprietary LLM model. They would be setting up their own server farm (good luck buying all that RAM required, considering you are trying to set your foot in what’s actually an oligarchy) and hire engineers to build an AI model from scratch. Because, technically, no other way exists.
Even assuming this obviously absurd scenario, there’s no way Larian could do that, because when we speak of LLMs (we’re really barely past kindergarten level here), we speak of something that SOLELY operates through “large amounts of data.” Where large is euphemisms for something HUGE. LLMs are heuristics (much like the human brain), they are statistical models. No matter how perfected is the algorithm upstream, the output can only be remotely useful when INCLUDING THE TRAINING DATA.
Unless Larian is developing LLM from scratch, they DON’T OWN THE DATA. Because even if they fed to it all they produced through their own existence, for another HUNDRED YEARS, that would probably still be less than 2% of the amount of data necessary for anything remotely useful. Without even counting how much work and time and resources would require performing and fine-tuning that training. We are speaking of highly specialized work that ALSO has a cost.
It’s not a case that all those proprietary LLMs have been built coupled with “large amount of data” that was factually stolen. Or “legally” stolen because, again, when corruption runs rampant then you can just bend the rules. No company has enough data to feed any LLM. Even if completely stripping their own employees of any right, that still wouldn’t be enough to train an LLM. You need MORE. You need access to everything.
But here we have Larian, the ingenue. They only use a piece of technology they do not understand. They merely want to make a product faster to sell, as it is their capitalistic purpose. Chop, chop. Move on. If they simply, innocently use a tool, they DO NOT SEE anything the LLM has eaten and digested. They do not see the stolen data. They do not see the stolen art. They just FEED THEIR OWN, to this cancer spreading and devouring more. It’s just “their own end” of the bargain. They just use “the prompt.” Once a body has been masticated, it ceases to be a body. It’s blood and gore now.
So, let’s cover ourselves in blood and gore, to participate in this ritualistic sacrifice that is humanity.
Larian saying that they’ll use LLM on “data they own” is an euphemism saying they intend to continue stealing precisely has they’ve been doing. Nothing changes because as long they can persuade their fans that LLM “start where you see them”, with their prompt, and their actual process is occluded and hidden away from awareness, then… everything can be legally stolen because it can’t be tracked. And they intend to continue to participate in that vicious looting.
Twin Peaks was in some way a mythology of meaning. In the third season it blended the origin of evil with nuclear power, then coming after that a godlike presence through the electrical network.
Generative AI is going down a similar path, it’s becoming god-like in its symbolic meaning: a false idol, for a false people.
In the previous, again, my point was to emphasize how “all the AI does” is the magical trick of hiding some process. It’s hiding the money laundering, it’s hiding its costs, and it’s hiding the causality chain, the link between input and output. Which is ironic because that’s exactly what human consciousness is: a trick. A perceptive illusion.
Everyone is looking to that one magical and mysterious ingredient that will make AI truly “alive”, human-like. But it all becomes very clear, dismissing this mysterious fog, after you realize that it’s all about something you need to remove from the recipe. Because if you want to reproduce the ILLUSION of consciousness, then you need to understand the TRICK behind that illusion. Only then you can make it appear the way you want. The way everyone of us sees it.
Of course AIs cannot apologize, because as the scam is all about money laundering and corruption and the erasure of cause and effect, the same happens with the concept of “agency” and responsibility. When it comes to the theft of intellectual property AI companies are free of blame because “the machine did it”, whereas the process can’t be tracked. No one takes responsibility, you can use what the AI does because it’s “felt” as the machine produced it. So you can now own it and sell it again, having “laundered” the process. You stole, cleaned it up, now it’s yours.
The scam is all about hiding those tracks, which is why no one is responsible if AIs cause damage. Responsibility is simply redirected where it is the most convenient. “The machine did it.”
Everything about AIs is about erasure of some kind. Manipulation.
But the irony of all this is that we are looking into a mirror. The AI is false because we are all false. We are finding a perfect match, for our own final and perfect annihilation.
It just takes the easiest final step, to isolate the AI into a fully sealed black box to reach that mythical “superintelligence.” Because that’s the magical difference: we are blind to our own processes. “Not being privy to information about our own training” is what makes human consciousness possible.
This is the end, my friend. Like Achamian, we merely get a seat in the front row, to watch. Enjoy the show.
Great advances we’ve made through 2025!! We’ve now discovered that STEALING SOMEONE ELSE’S WORK is easier and faster than doing that work yourself! Such a novel concept!
Did you know that you’re far more productive and can make far more money by stealing from others, rather than making an effort on your own?!
Thieves are indeed geniuses who solved all problems!
Easy profits for everyone!
To be honest, while I followed Bakker’s blog from its very first days, almost 15 years ago, I didn’t take seriously all those “rants” against AI. About how AI would indeed at some point start to produce actual stories and replacing authors. It was obviously something that Bakker felt hitting close to home, being himself a writer, but to me that threat seemed far-fetched, something whose place was in a cautionary science fiction story, whose value was in being abstract and symbolic, the analysis itself. Themes of consciousness and epistemology, but less about a practical, imminent threat. But here we are, Bakker was right even at the fringes of that argument.
And it is somewhat ironical to me that now my own view on the current AI is “conditioned” not by some technical insight, but by the perspective given to me by those studies on consciousness and epistemology.
In the latter part of his activity Bakker was quite proud about having actually published in the scientific space his own work, titled: “On Alien Philosophy”
Given a sufficiently convergent cognitive biology, we might suppose that aliens would likely find themselves perplexed by many of the same kinds of problems that inform our traditional and contemporary philosophical debates.
He was trying to prove that, given the same structures, the problems we faced within philosophy of consciousness would be the same problem you’d “naturally” expect to incur. It’s just another way of saying that these problems were inevitable, logically occurring, giving the circumstances. Given the evolution of the brain. That the problems we see are the problems we should EXPECT to find, given the structure within which we operate.
The problem of today’s generative AI is essentially the same: if you have understood the nature of humanity and of human consciousness, then it would seem simply natural that we’d collectively fall INTO THIS TRAP. Because of our present circumstances. Given our own true nature, our internal build up, we should know that we are vulnerable precisely to this type of pitfall.
Because the “true nature” of generative AI, both in its economic and practical aspects is one of OCCLUSION. Of deception. The greater part of the function of AI is epistemic, becoming the natural “crash space” for human culture as a whole. We can start from the very simple concept of “private property.” We should be aware that, as with language, private property doesn’t truly exist “out in the world.” It is not a physical property, it’s not a law of physics. It’s simply an abstract concept whose value and meaning is fully contained in human culture. We decide and we agree, as a collective, to give private and intellectual properties a meaning. Then have laws to enforce all that. You can argue that animals have some form of the same, that they defend “territory,” because in the end it’s precisely what it is: application of strength. You impose a rule, as long you can impose your will.
But what happens when a powerful group of people decides that laws don’t apply anymore? Or more precisely, don’t apply to them?
In the early days it was only the artists who opposed AIs, whereas programmers more warmly embraced the “new tools” whose usefulness was more immediately tangible. It’s only normal given that illustrations are felt as more immediately “artistic”, made of that ineffable quality of creativity, whereas programming is seen a more logical, objective field where knowledge weighs more than personal artistry. But what is the difference, in the world? What is the actual truth? What is, truly, creativity? My point here is not about finding a convenient answers to these questions, but to indicate that the nature of occlusion, of NOT KNOWING what an artistic process actually is, is what enables generative AI to “perform” its own “scam.”
Because it’s all one GIANT SCAM we’ve all collectively fallen in.
What generative AIs are doing, from an epistemological point of view, is to HIDE the causal chain that links input to the output. If you decide to copy the work of an artist, to appropriate and sell it as you own, then you’re committing a CRIME. Because the original artist can find out what you just did, and sue you. Because he can then easily prove that he was the source of that original art. And there’s obviously a system of laws that regulates all of this. What generative AIs do in practice is to “mix the sources”, rather than doing a 1 to 1 copy, so that they STEAL FROM MANY, in a way that cannot then be easily backtracked. They “hide the process” of their algorithm so that it’s not possible anymore, in practice, to prove from what input the output was generated. Therefore, in the absence of an evident cause, the machine APPROPRIATES the process: we say that this output is a CREATION of the tool itself. So that it can be SOLD.
Generative AIs are not only “money laundering”, but also laundering the product itself, so that it can be STOLEN from the original authors and SOLD again by thieves.
On this level, artistic illustration and software programming are exactly the same. It’s funny how the programming world is a minefield of different licenses, whose subtle differences can only be extricated by lawyers. Because until today we’ve taken all this very seriously. It’s very complex. So complex that to avoid problems we have concepts like “clean room.” You cannot simply look at some code and then reimplement it for your own application, because you can still be accused of using a solution that belongs to someone else. “Clean room” identifies a process where the programmer explicitly avoids to even LOOK at the code, to prevent any form of bias, so that the final implementation will be fully “original” even if the process itself produces the same (or similar) result.
We’ve always taken licenses very seriously because as a society we’ve always taken intellectual propriety and personal contribution also very seriously.
But what happens when some Evil Corporation takes the gigantic body of work that makes the open source code, and uses it as a training field for its own proprietary “tool”? Since the outputs are “scrambled” we can’t anymore prove that these lines of code have been copied, and so stolen, from here. It’s still THEFT, but it’s hidden, the process occluded. An output without any evident input, so an output that fully belongs to whoever is holding it. A thief who’s laundered the money, so that the money is his.
Human progress exists solely in the NEGATION of intellectual property. Because if every man owned exclusively his own discoveries, then his knowledge would always die with him, and every newborn would have to start from absolute zero. As collective humanity we would have gone nowhere, because our own collective horizon would be bound to that 100 years yardstick. We would be stuck in stagnation. The thievery perpetrated by generative AIs is all the more insulting because we’ve collectively created this large body of work that we call “open-source”, so that it’s available to all humanity. Now we have these techbros thieves who found a “tool” that lets them STEAL this collective resource, and APPROPRIATE IT as if it’s now their own. Literally: rich people looting the community with impunity guaranteed by corrupt governments.
Nothing is “lawful” anymore. The thieves bought the governments and it’s corruption all the way down (and up).
We are all so collectively drunk on the idea of private property to believe that these billionaries can build their own AI factories “with their own money,” as it is their right. Without understanding that this is just another human abstraction with no root in the real world. The worldwide economy is not built into neat, independent packages, it’s all one thing. If “gamers” notice the problem first, because of hardware prices skyrocketing, it’s because hardware is adjacent. But wait long enough and you’ll see how YOU WILL ALL PAY those AI factories with the cost of your groceries. It’s all one system. We are all paying this worldwide displacement of investments. We make these thieves rich by taking a trickle for ourselves, empowering this process until nothing is left. Because these thieves let you also “resell” what they stolen, so that you are perfectly complicit in the process. So that this thievery includes you, by sharing responsibility, but always returning ultimately in their pockets. Wilful complicit thievery.
All those people who are now rejoicing for the great innovations that AIs have brought and will bring in the future, are people who will lose their jobs in the next weeks and months, who will see their families destroyed, who will pay with their health. Who are welcoming in their houses those same thieves who will loot and burn them to the ground. The trojan horse that is AI will destroy human culture and wealth at their very foundations, in a way that won’t be recoverable. We are indeed about to witness the apocalypse of man. Or rather, the ultimate celebration of human stupidity.
Imagine a very simple rule to regulate generative AIs: everything that comes from the community needs to return to the community. If something is the product of generative AIs, then it cannot be appropriated and owned. It can’t be sold. It can’t be used for profit.
One simple rule, and the whole field would immediately self-regulate, because it would immediately exclude the thieves. And stealing is the whole point here. Rich people stealing from all of us. But in reality those few thieves have enslaved the world, and we are all complicit in own own, now inevitable, collective end.
The view from here is crystal clear. Enjoy the show.
It’s when you reach the sky that you are the most vulnerable.
After the quite unexpected, giant popular success of Baldur’s Gate 3, and the recent announce during the Game Awards with an elaborate, triumphant CG trailer for a new Divinity game, teaching everyone how money alone can exempt you from Pervasive American Bigotry, that would immediately and permanently ban you from marketplaces like Steam (whereas smaller studios will continue to be sacrificial victims, see “Horses” recent case, but also and especially the COUNTLESS other cases that won’t reach the press, or the continued, hidden, bigoted wars that happen at the higher levels of Paypal and other money processors, yadda, yadda).
The whole castle of hype comes crashing down to this:
“We are not responsible because we are so naive! Please forgive us!”
Of the whole backlash because of the announced use of AI for development. The debate obviously pivots on the role of the artists and artistry, but this is PRECISELY what happens when you don’t have a culture on what’s the epistemology of AI, and widespread incompetence about how it works at a bare technical level. Divided between the faction that sees AI as a mythological savior of humanity, and those who fear it like a supernatural demon.
This RAW human stupidity will be the singular cause of the greatest radical problems we’re going to face for the next few years. It’s will be the concrete cause of very tangible, concrete worldwide PAIN AND SUFFERING.
When you defend the role of the “artist” you defend a blind spot: the ineffable human creativity that you want to preserve. The mysterious something that you don’t want revealed. The special ingredient that makes a human being different from the rest of the WORLD. That ingredient for exception, for the exceptionalism of the human.
AI is seen as a threat to all this, as a form of machine replacement. Of the inhuman body that violates the flesh, like an unwanted, assailing prosthesis.
And this is all because we’ve made a myth of that blindness and a myth of that exceptionalism, so that human beings would become the center of the world. Until the world, and its truth, come back to assert themselves.
ALL that the AI world has done and is doing, is just one game of DECEPTION. This deception, based on epistemological failures due to not comprehending the place of human beings in the world, is just a simple final tool of good old capitalism. The problem of AI is its deception. And its deception is about MONEY. The great distraction is about making people debate over the nature of artistry, feeding on a lie, while inflating its own GIANT SCAM. AI is not about its uses, present or potential, but about its hidden costs.
Since AI is not “a thing” (but a blunt tool), it’s not anything emergent, it’s not new, it’s not generational, then its only danger is solely HUMAN DRIVEN. Same as a knife is not a threat, but the arm wielding it. The human stupidity. The problem of AI is not AI, but people’s BELIEF and participation to a scam, like it’s always been.
AI is what will cause, in the next months and then years, the WHOLE economy to collapse. People got used thinking in isolated boxes. People who observe the “game industry” think about it as if it’s a whole world disconnected from everything else. But it’s all one world, everything is connected. The crazy skyrocketing costs (and deliberately driven scarcity) we’ve seen a few years ago about GPUs and just now spread to RAM and SSD, are ALL PART OF THE SAME SCHEME, just the tip of the iceberg that will lead to a deep and worldwide inflationary wave. It won’t stop within the narrow box of “hardware.” The costs sunk on AI are about money redirected away from the people. The same money that keeps you well fed. Costs that you are just starting to see, even if the hand is still well hidden.
You won’t lose your job because AI replaced you. But because “your” money was redirected somewhere else. Somewhere useless. A giant, devouring cancer.
All because of the “hidden” costs of AI.
Every time one of Larian’s concept artists will use an AI tool to speed some process, for cheap, is because WE ARE ALL PAYING that cost. At a much greater price. AI is simply a scam, of redirecting costs where you don’t see them, giving you the illusion it all comes for free. That it’s all magically new. It’s one giant magical trick of showing the card without showing the hand. And we are ALL just too stupid to not fall for it.
Boycotts in this scenario are completely useless because this great AI scam comes in the form of self sabotage. You won’t crumble because you lose the support of your audience, but merely because the hidden consequences will become manifest. Until the reality of those costs will come to overwhelm and bury you under the ground.
Larian is just one example of a war waged against reality.
You WILL GET BURIED by reality itself.
You WILL SMASH against it.
The irony of Larian is that the great pyre they’ve shown in that trailer is simply going to depict themselves.
Burn. Rejoice. It’s going to be one giant party celebrating your own death.
This isn’t about Larian specifically. It’s just the mythical figure that represents a whole. A symbol of what’s to come.
The great pyre is a collective pyre of an industry that is celebrating its own complete demise.
They are ALL going to die. In the full glory of their own delivered stupidity.
You’ve all learned technology and progress ever evolving, like an immutable fact. Now you’ll see what happens when it all collapses. Not because of AI, that became a convenient vehicle for this process, but because of this final showdown of human stupidity.
The last symbol affixed to our collective grave, for no one to witness.
Bright, we burn.
P.S.
Because I split hair about epistemology: “I answered that we use it to explore things. I didn’t say we use it to develop concept art.”
That’s a plain contradiction at a bare, objective technical level. Concept art is merely about “exploring things.”
“just follow the herd, idiot!”
These fucking people should not just lose their job, but not get another one, ever. Because they clearly don’t have a functioning, autonomous brain.
(this is from the complete interview script, that was released as a form of damage control from “press titles”, so that delving into what was being said would somewhat clear the water. Yeah, we can clearly see that you are, indeed, a piece of shit. The more it clears the worse it gets. If you want to improve PR just shut the fuck up.)
I like when it’s easy to prove stupidity in such a clear, conclusive way:
These is one of those emails that are floating about. In this case I’ve read some accusations that “Democrats are manipulating the mails.” To fabricate evidence against Trump.
So I’ve taken the image at full size, and had to squint for a while. Because the accusation is that these are two different e-mails, but I just couldn’t figure out why. Maybe “Jee” had been typed as “Jeee” with one extra “e”? But nope, everything looked exactly the same. So I just couldn’t even understand what the accusation was based on.
Until I did. Those “jee” I’ve highlighted look like “Jcc”, the “e” being turned into a “c”, a different letter.
So the accusation is that these aren’t actual documents, but something that has been written purposefully, and this is a proof of a mistake being made, because of replies to different email addresses.
But… It’s so easy to debunk.
Yes, those “ee” look like “cc”, in fact you can compare the “jee” with “vacation” and you can see the “e” is like the “c”. ALMOST equivalent, because the top tip of that “c” is rounded off, whereas it’s cut off on the “e”, if you squint. But this is not the final proof. The proof is that you can simply check the preceding “jeffrey” on that line, and see that, indeed, the “e” look like “c”. So a double mistake? Maybe? Well, if that still isn’t enough, you can also check the end of that line. “Wrote”, is indeed also written “Wrotc.” And then again, just below, “indicment was billed”, where each “e” indeed looks like a “c.”
Just a scaling issue.
More worrying, on both “sides,” is that absolutely no one cares about the truth. They all care about scoring points. They are all trying to win games. And we’ll all lose.
What’s infuriating is not what Trump declares, that’s simply predictable and therefore boring. Whoever still listens to Trump, on any matter, is doing it in bad faith. Stop wasting your time feeling and then displaying your own outrage, or you’re just willingly taking your role on this performative theater. Stop giving your attention to idiots.
That said, it’s the World Health Organization to be embarrassing and out of time.
This is not science, as this falsely confirms there is some evidence, even if not conclusive.
Trump himself already anticipated this stance, and so already infiltrated it and made it a weapon of rhetoric. Which made his statement a misogynistic one, even before it comes to science. He essentially said that, even in the presence of a DOUBT (paracetamol may or may not be linked to autism) then IT WOULD BE PRUDENT TO AVOID IT.
“Pregnant women should tough it out.”
This WHO message would be coherent, not contradicting with Trump statements: “The World Health Organization (WHO) emphasizes that there is currently no conclusive scientific evidence”
“Currently,” while epistemologically correct, implies that paracetamol could be proven cause of autism tomorrow. To be safe you have to be prudent. Therefore this VALIDATES Trump message.
But the reason I’m wasting my own time, to write here, is because this is built again on something I pointed out over and over: the statement from WHO is REVERSIBLE.
You CANNOT claim to write science with REVERSIBLE STATEMENTS. The WHO is COMPLICIT to Trump, complicit to power and manipulation.
The real problem of that statement is that it is ambivalent and it WILL BE read both ways. It will be read by “partisans” as the WHO lambasting Trump because what he claims has no scientific evidence, same as it will be read by the opposite faction as a SUPPORT FOR CAUTION. Therefore confirming the warning: paracetamol (Tylenol) MAY be linked to autism, we just “aren’t quite sure.”
Trump already won in the presence of doubt, causing women to avoid Tylnol just to be on the safer side. MOST women will do it, because you cannot be wrong by being more prudent.
The full statement also continues to embrace and spread ambiguity:
“WHO recommends that all women continue to follow advice of their doctors or health workers, who can help assess individual circumstances and recommend necessary medicines.”
This statement, that at first glance may be 100% reasonable, is the real root of scientific stupidity, especially within a “guideline” message like this.
DOCTORS AND HEALTH WORKERS ARE NOT IMMUNE TO POLITICAL PROPAGANDA. Just because they are doctors doesn’t mean that they oppose Trump non-scientific guidelines.
STOP USING LOGICAL FALLACIES IN YOUR STATEMENTS. The argument from authority fallacy used here VALIDATES TRUMP.
Telling women to trust their doctors when their doctors are ALSO trapped in the same propagandist machine means DEMANDING WOMEN TO BE VICTIMS.
You don’t give a goddamned guideline by telling people to listen to their doctors who just happen to be zealots.
You give the guideline that Tylenol IS NOT linked to autism as there is NO EVIDENCE for a logical suspicion of a link. That its only motivation IS EXPLOITATIVE POLITICAL PROPAGANDA.
But you are all corrupt instead. All the way down, it’s all corruption and being subservient to power. They’ll call it diplomacy.
Let’s continue, I guess. This is another statement:
This one is, thankfully, not a reversible statement, but it still is A LOGICAL FALLACY.
The word “reputable” is enough to be yet another appeal to authority. It’s implied that a reputable study is one that was done through good methodology, but it’s not explicit. Reputation isn’t science. Methodology is.
You can replace “reputable” with “reliable”, and at least you could own that statement. “Acetaminophen is safe.” (given that “safe” is always contextual, and context is what the rest of the statement provides)
Even worse, the way various mainstream media are carefully wording their own statements. This is one example:
The science “isn’t clear” is then not only false, but just another calculated REVERSIBLE statement, done to serve Trump.
The event itself is of no particular interest to me, but I decided to write about the wider context.
We are, obviously, very deep in the rhetorical phase, but it already took over very tangible things. Lots of people are pissed at Bluesky moderation strategy because of the naturally blurred areas of “hate and violent speech.”
This is one I reposted myself, that I agree with. I’m not one of those who expressed joy over this event, nor this is my opinion. But in this case I defend other people legitimacy of expressing those opinions. Because they do not fall within the area of “hate speech,” or even invocations of violence.
As I said, this also had some tangible repercussions because an actual comics line has been canceled:
This is censorship in full swing, in its most classic form. But the debate itself over these themes can be quite annoying to sift through.
The point is, feeling (and expressing) relief at someone’s death is something entirely legitimate. It’s factual, simple. There’s not even a real emotional connotation to it. From a specific point of view, someone’s death can greatly affect others’ lives around it. Usually seen as a negative impact, but, factually, can be seen equally positive. In this case it’s VERY easy to see it having a positive impact, since this particular individual WAS hellbent on spreading hate and preaching violence, ironically.
Again, this is not MY opinion, because my opinion is very simple and I think in the wider context this will only bring more consensus to Trump. In the best case you can see this as another acceleration on the same path we’re stuck in. So, very simply put: Trump profits from this event. That’s all.
The other topic is again what is or isn’t hate speech, because it’s very important that rules make sense and are applied uniformly. The rules are meant to stand above bias and above faction. So you cannot create contexts where what counts as hate speech for you doesn’t count the same if the intentional action is reversed. As I wrote before, this whole clusterfuck depends on the reversibility of “statements.” The most brutal and stupid example, right now, is BOTH PARTIES accusing the other of political violence. So… Can we stop getting stuck on banal reversibility? (this is solved at another, conceptual level, but it’s also kind of plain to everyone that it’s Trump constantly feeding the fire, BOTH parties know this, just happen that one will just pretend not to know. In this case it’s just very simply hypocrisy in the name of good old interest)
I try to be both complete and objective when I write here, so I’m not dodging the issue. Expressing relief for someone’s death can be seen as a form of encouragement. Because other people could see this positive feedback as encouragement to emulate it. But I see this as implicit in the nature of all things, whether more or less evident. You see some nice paintings and that might encourage you to become an illustrator. That is seen as positive encouragement so no one will find any problem with it, but the “negative” encouragement is still implied in most things and not something you can simply erase. It’s just rhetorical. Right now all left-leaning politicians are busy condemning the violent act. But it’s just “noise” because you cannot truly know if what they say is merely convenient, or something they believe. In the end, when it comes to the function and practice, all those messages are both predictable and completely useless. In the sense they really have no use, no consequence. They mean nothing.
On the other end, Trump’s side is very much busy with INTENTIONAL messages. Taking actions, as consequence. Trump will take this nicely offered chance to be more inflammatory than ever. And to rise the tension.
“We’re going to go on offence, not just on defence. Maximum lethality, not tepid legality. Violent effect, not politically correct. We’re going to raise up warriors, not just defenders.”
(ironically, this was some time ago already)
Expressing relief for someone’s death, or write “rest in piss” do not equal ACTIVE stances. You aren’t taking part in a crime if you simply express that. In a similar way if a bank is being robbed and you are outside applauding, it’s still not an active function. Same as if a policeman is chocking someone to death and there’s an audience around him, someone might applaud the act, and someone instead might denounce it. All these are things debatable on the MORAL level. And the moral level is the one where you need free speech the most. Because you can only deal with it through reason, and you can only reason with things that are manifest.
Violent speech instead is about active stance. Whereas relief for someone’s death is enclosed as an event in the past. The dude is dead. It’s over. There’s no intersection with action unless you EXPLICITLY add that part. If you say “this dude’s dead, you’re next” this latter addition does indeed cross over to violent speech, because it becomes an active threat. A violent act that is IN THE FUTURE. But even if you can imagine someone who expressed relief for someone’s death also be glad for similar acts taking place in the future, this still doesn’t mean you can PROJECT this onto the person. People aren’t guilty of thoughts.
Rules need to be impersonal, so that they can be applied uniformly. And the way these “networks” operate is a real mess of “interpretation” and rules constantly bent in the heat of the moment, or to serve someone in a position of power. Most of everything Trump and his lackeys publicly post on social networks IS violent speech. It just happens to be a tolerated norm.
^ This one smoothly goes into the following:
Smoothly again into this:
(I wish this was more ironical. Because “sending someone to find Jesus Christ” becomes synonymous of capital execution.)
THIS is glorification of violence. THIS is the call for more deaths in the future. “Anyone celebrating violence” is herself, plainly right there. But obviously these claims are not self-referential, because it’s only meant to go downstream: those with the power, to those who suffer it. What these comments imply is, violence AGAINST WHOM? Because violence, as you see right there, is very clearly okay. As long it is violence against someone you dislike, as we’ll see another example just below.
The part that is the most absurd but also plain predictable and banal, is how much interest the death of an individual can concentrate, despite countless other deaths in even more meaningful contexts. On the left side there’s a very often used example of Democrats being shot, a couple months ago I think. As an attempt to counter the idea that violence comes predominantly from the left.
To me, that particular argument looks ridiculous. What I think, within the context of this one present death, is only in the scope of the more recent Venezuelan “drug boat.” The dude who died, two days ago, was one dude. One individual. Reports said that boat had eleven lives on it. Whoever is responsible, Trump or down the chain of command, why aren’t they in jail?
Trump (or whoever) BOMBED a boat with eleven people who weren’t an active, present threat to anyone. ELEVEN. But now we need to get stuck, for DAYS if not weeks, on a rhetorical discussion about one single fucker.
One American kills another American, on one side. One American kills eleven Venezuelans, on the other.
One is arrested and invoked death penalty for. The other is the President of the United States.
(ICE also killed a person in Chicago last week, with no investigation taking place)
The conclusion to all this is that there is no reciprocity in this whole deal. There’s only strength. There’s only violence. It’s always been just violence.
The last few months I’ve seen this side of the faction desperately trying to “win” arguments. Pointing out contradictory statements of politicians, logical fallacies and so on. Even Bernie Sanders still believes this is just “a debate.” How is it possible that the great majority has not understood how pointless this type of fight is? You aren’t fighting against a RATIONAL opponent. Continuing to employ a rational strategy, given the context, is only a complete waste of time. And, consequently, make yourself a moron for having not figured this out already.
Trump’s side operates on two concepts ONLY:
1- Strength
2- Identity
That’s all. All they understand is either strength, which is very immediate and straightforward. And identity, which is trickier. Musk has shown as you can hijack identity to further personal goals. That’s all he’s done. He landed in the political landscape and seized a good chunk of it for himself. People are VERY stupid, so this is possible. But doing so requires operating on manipulation and rhetoric. It only works through a Pied Piper type of figure. It’s radically built on dishonesty.
STOP ARGUING WITH THESE PEOPLE. They do not operate through rationality. You cannot persuade them. You can only move them through contextual shifts. They have no agency. They get moved, they don’t move themselves. So you either hijack their ground, as Musk has done, or you just push them through actual circumstances. NOT WORDS. They feed on fallacies, they THRIVE ON THEM. Don’t feed the trolls.
To conclude, I would repeat what Charles Manson himself famously declared during his own trial: “these are your kids, not mine.” This is your shit, not mine. Everything you sowed is bubbling up.