I think people don't like Onion stories because they're not funny, they're just pretentious and political.
For instance, their famous 'No Way to Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens article they post all over their page whenever there is some high profile gun related crime. It's all over their page and no doubt they get a bump in traffic from smug people who feel it's clever. It's just so exhausting. It was a great headline, but by the time the joke gets its own Wikipedia, it might be time to retire it. You can have a message and point of view, but don't put activism over comedy.
Look at their trending article: Critics Outraged By Flippant School Shooting Plotline In ‘The Super Mario Galaxy Movie’. Where's the joke? There is obviously no school shooting plotline. It's not clever or creative. I guess the joke is school shootings are a thing, and Mario is a popular movie?
It's basically South Parks criticism of Family Guy where they write jokes by having a seal put together random words from popular culture. School shootings + Mario = funny. And this stuff gets clicks because people think they're clever or subversive when it's just lazy and unoriginal.
You can have a message and point of view, but don't put activism over comedy.
The "joke" in this case is people's reactions to school shootings. And people's reactions haven't changed, so I don't see why the article should change.
It's just so exhausting.
This has some real "The worst thing about school shootings is knowing that The Onion is going to repost that article I personally am tired of seeing" energy to it.
That article has some real "The best thing about school shootings is we get to have literally every article on our website be this clever headline we wrote 10 years" energy to it.
A joke does not stop being a joke because of how often it’s repeated. You may no longer find it funny, but it’s still a joke. More importantly, it’s still satire, and The Onion is a satirical news website.
> That article has some real "The best thing about school shootings is we get to have literally every article on our website be this clever headline we wrote 10 years" energy to it.
If that’s what you take from it, you have completely missed the point. The headline works because it’s social commentary, being funny is secondary. The fact they keep reposting it over and over is itself part of the criticism, it shows disapproval for an easy resolvable situation and removes teeth from the arguments of those opposed to it.
> I think people don't like Onion stories because they're not funny, they're just pretentious and political.
After reading this comment thread I think this would best be rephrased as "Some people don't like Onion stories because they feel like they're the butt of the joke." Which is fair enough, but let's not over-intellectualize it.
That may be true in some cases, but not in all. In particular, the Onion school shooting joke strikes me as a satire of a strawman. Whatever humor can be derived from ridiculing a stupid version of a position (like "school shootings are unavoidable") is, at least for me, made flaccid by the counterproductive nature of the satire. In other words, when the satire ridicules a dumb argument that not many serious people make, it's not so funny.
I don't pretend to be an expert on political satire but I never noticed that steelmanning, to use the modern vernacular, was ever a technique featured in high quality work like Tom Lehrer or George Carlin. I mean, literally never.
It sounds like you're describing something very boring, but if there's a political satirist (or Satanist, or Salafist, or whatever) you think is funny and an exemplar of what you're describing, drop it here.
> You can have a message and point of view, but don't put activism over comedy.
As Jon Stewart put it in the Crossfire interview where they asked him “which candidate do you supposed would provide you better material if he won?” because he has “a stake in it that way, not just as citizen but as a professional comic”, the citizen part is much more important.
The point of satire is social criticism first, funny second. I have little doubt everyone at the Onion responsible for reposting that headline would a million times prefer that they didn’t have to do it ever because the situation were resolved.
> It's just so exhausting.
It really says something about the state of society when an atrocity is perpetrated over and over and the complaint is that someone keeps talking about it rather than the atrocity continuing to happen.
Its okay to find things not funny that other people do find funny. Not everyone agrees or has the same sense of humor. Bko is not the final arbiter in deciding if something is funny or not.
not quite; spell it out for me. are you suggesting that the onion has never, under any circumstances, been funny and therefore are guilty of having pretentious opinions that are "not funny", which makes them bad? Or is it that you're suggesting that you are the sole arbiter of what is and isn't funny, so you're the only person who gets to determine the worth of specific types of humor? Sorry, I have a hard time distinguishing which type of childish, smug bullshit I'm dealing with, so any help you can provide would be appreciated.
In any case, I've never laughed as hard at anything Lenny fucking Bruce said as I did at The Onions "Sony Releases Stupid Piece Of Shit That Doesn't Fucking Work" bit. So if you've got some favorite bruce bits, I'd love to get educated on what is hilarious about 60 year old observational standup.
it's amazing how much asking someone to actually explain what they are trying to imply will completely shut them up. Thanks for playing! I hope your next one is so pithy that I'll rue the day I spoke against you. fingers crossed
I know a comedian who is very good on absurdity. He's been doing that for ages (he kind of popularized it in my country), and he generally attracts right-wingers. I don't appreciate all his humor, as in I don't find it all funny because the goal seems to be to shock (kind of like Goatse, which was also a joke/meme riddled with a political message). I do find it political and humor though, as I can clearly see the intent is (at least also) to humor, and also can recognize political virtue signaling within. I've also found him, at times, funny.
Whether something is humor can be objectively established by disassembly of the structure of the content, whereas 'if you find it funny' is personal, yet 'if it is funny' is a summary of whether a certain group (such as 'the general public', whatever that may be) find it as such.
As such, I believe the expression of not finding someone or something funny a red herring. Different emotions obviously flourish, and the person who expresses that they don't find it funny finds these (more) important.
The red herring here isn't whether The Onion is funny or not (personal), it isn't whether it is humor or not (it is, specifically satire). It is that you fundamentally disagree with the political message it entails. Which you are allowed to do so, but in a discussion it is useful to recognize a significant amount of people do find it funny, and either have no problem with the political messages (tolerance) or agree with these (acceptance).
Demanding to respect a claim is a political act by itself.
Something being 'political' or not is a red herring. Politics is deeply ingrained in our society. How much is it ingrained? It is a spectrum, not a binary proposition. Trying to portrait it as a proposition is trying to oversimplify, removing nuance.
All it does is it wants people to ignore issues and let different political wings try to live in 'harmony' with each other by pretending the other side doesn't exist. This strategy doesn't work, and will hit in the face like a boomerang.
I'm not in the USA, but I think the issue is not so much the joke getting tiresome, but the repeat school shootings. Maybe if there was work done to stop the shootings, then the joke wouldn't keep getting repeated.
First and foremost you should endeavor to be a human, and The Onion does not owe you a thing. It's not a joke anymore, its a class ware and genocide that they are reporting on with headlines that make you cringe.
> Maybe if there was work done to stop the shootings
It's odd that you seem to believe no work has been done. Lots of work has been done. Lots more work is blocked by people who steadfastly refuse to punish criminals - claiming instead that it's not their fault that they're violent.
I'd love to hear any additional ideas you have other than violating the rights of citizens.
I agree, most of the arguments have been basically "do anything" hysterics that are divorced from reality. For instance, much focus is given on rifles, specifically big black scary looking rifles. In reality if you look at murder rates by weapon type
> Many school shootings in the United States result in one non-fatal injury.[63] The type of firearm most commonly used in school shootings in the United States is the handgun. Three school shootings (the Columbine massacre, the Sandy Hook massacre, and the 2018 Parkland High School shooting in Florida), accounted for 43% of the fatalities; the type of firearm used in the most lethal school shootings was the rifle.[62]
Note that this is shootings, so excludes murders by non guns. Rifles are not any more effective at murder than handguns. It's much easier to control, conceal, reload and attain a handgun. They're the preferred weapon of choice for practical reasons.
"…much focus is given on rifles, specifically big black scary looking rifles"
Military-style rifles designed primarily for killing humans? That's called a low hanging fruit. If the U.S. can't even restrict those I expect everything else to be a wasted effort.
"I'd love to hear any additional ideas except those that work everywhere because that'd require big changes"
The answer is trivial and well-known: federal-level gun controls (because anything state-level is a joke without hard borders between states), coupled with a buy-back program, amnesties, and real enforcement. There are no school shootings in the UK or Australia.
Unfortunately, there are too many people who'd rather have more guns and more dead kids (and adults) than fewer dead kids and fewer guns around. They'd justify that by talking about "preventing tyranny" or something, ignoring that paramilitaries executing people in broad daylight on camera with no consequences is already the reality of the US today, and guns played zero to negative role preventing that. Coincidentally, there are no such paramilitaries in the UK or in Australia either.
As for "the rights of citizens": there is no such thing as an immutable unconditional right. American citizens don't have a right to own nuclear weapons, neither should they, even though it's perfectly possible to have a very expansive definition of "bearing arms". Plus, the Constitution itself was amended many times in the past, and by now is clearly in need of a major overhaul, as evidenced by the US sliding down in various democracy indices (for example, World Press Freedom Index puts the US under Romania in 2025). So there is nothing impossible or uniquely oppressive about the reforms necessary to stop children being shot in schools, but because it's such a foundational element of identity for so many with a lot of money behind it (the NRA is exceptionally well funded), in practice there's indeed "No Way to Prevent This".
> "I'd love to hear any additional ideas except those that work everywhere because that'd require big changes"
When you pretend to quote someone, but you alter the quote, you're being dishonest. What you just did suggests that you don't really have any good arguments on your side - that you don't have any arguments that would stand on their own, without requiring a lie.
So, if we were having a debate, I'd say that you lost.
> I'd love to hear any additional ideas you have other than violating the rights of citizens.
That's a strange take. There's citizens' rights involved in not being shot at and also the right to own guns, but when people are being killed, I would think that the right to life would take precedence over introducing some rule over gun ownership.
Here in the UK, we have strict rules on gun ownership (which I'm not particularly familiar with) which involve some kind of assessment (to prevent unstable people from owning them) and the guns have to be kept in a suitable locked cabinet. It's entirely possible for people to own guns for sport or for culling animals etc. and yet we have a very small amount of gun crime.
> I would think that the right to life would take precedence
Well, let's do a thought experiment to test this. Which of these two rights takes precedence: (1) life (specifically in this case, the right to not be murdered) or (2) freedom of movement
That's an easy question, isn't it? (1) takes precedence. But how many 9's of protection are you willing to "purchase" at the expense of (2)? How much of (2) are you willing to give up in order to get a little more of (1)?
If we reduce (2) to 0 ...by locking every person in a padded cell, then we can achieve 99.99% protection of (1).
Presumably though, you don't like that idea. Presumably, you'll want to be let out of the padded cell, and get a bit of right (2) back. But giving you a bit of (2) back is going to cost someone their life! If we let you and others out of the padded cell, someone somewhere is going to get murdered.
What this thought experiment demonstrates is that the issue is not as simple as, "(1) takes precedence over (2)" - the thought experiment demonstrates that there is an amount of (2) that you will not spend in order to purchase a marginal increase in (1) - a situation where (2) actually takes precedence.
> Here in the UK, we have strict rules on gun ownership
And I totally respect that. Just to be clear though, "gun ownership" isn't really the issue. Gun ownership is a proxy for the actual right: self defense. You place a low value on the right to defend yourself and your family. Again, I totally respect that. You've "spent" that right to purchase lower gun crime. Have I mentioned how much I respect your personal decision?
As for me, I value the right to self defense above all. I've looked at the data, and I've realized that I'm much more likely to be stabbed or beaten to death than I am (well, was when I was in school) to be in a school shooting.
So to me, having actually looked at that data, it seems obvious that the right to self defense should take precedence. I think that my way of thinking is perfectly rational, and I think you're way of thinking is not ...but I totally respect your personal decision. I'm sure you also respect mine.
I have no clue what I just read or what kind of mental gymnastics are required to say that a right to a weapon overrides a right to live.
It used to blow my mind when I moved here (Netherlands) that I wasn't allowed to use a weapon to defend myself... but then you realize ... basically nobody has weapons.
An irony is that guns are vastly more often used for self harm than for self defense. These supposed defenders of rights are often losing their own lives and the lives of family members with the instruments they demand to have a right to have.
I'm having a hard time understanding your point. Here's what I think just happened:
Me: I value the right to self defense
You: Guns are used for self harm more often than self defense [as an aside, I don't disagree that this is true - I've heard this stat many times]
You: This is ironic!
Please help me to understand why you think that's ironic. What do you feel would be a non-ironic position? Is it this....
Me: I value the right to self defense, but one day I might want to kill myself, so I guess I'd better give up the right to self defense.
Is that a non-ironic position? To me that seems like an irrational position. Those two issues (self defense and self harm) seem orthogonal, and conflating them because of a superficial similarity (they both involve guns) seems odd.
Ok. Now this is logic I understand. Nobody is saying you don’t have a right to self defense. The question should be: why do you have a right to bring a gun to a fist fight?
A lot of people are incapable of contending with hypotheticals or thought experiments. It's okay.
If you'd like to try again, I encourage you to read up to the point where something doesn't make sense. Quote only that sentence, and ask me to explain.
Notice how I'm not even asking you to read the whole thing - just to the point where you have trouble. This is very reasonable.
Reader's Digest: What pleases you more, applause or laughter?
Tina Fey: Laughter. You can prompt applause with a sign. My friend, SNL writer Seth Meyers, coined the term clapter, which is when you do a political joke and people go, "Woo-hoo." It means they sort of approve but didn't really like it that much. You hear a lot of that on [whispers] The Daily Show.
Obviously we can't see that people aren't genuinely falling out of their seats laughing when that headline get rolled out again. There's no way argue that someone doesn't earnestly think bad (or tired) jokes make effective satire.
I don't think a whinge is a joke just because it has the shape of a joke and a point I like. Overall, I agree with you. But you'll never convince anybody.
a famous line from Shakespeare's Hamlet (Act III, Scene II). It means that someone's overly emphatic or frequent denial of a situation suggests they are hiding the truth, are insincere, or actually guilty of what they deny. It implies their defense is covering up a secret desire or truth.
> You can have a message and point of view, but don't put activism over comedy.
Ok, who made you arbiter of what people can do? Have you missed entirely the point of repeating this little bit of dark humor is to perhaps SPUR THE PEOPLE TO ACTION THAT NEED TO TAKE ACTION?
You're right, it isn't a joke. Its very serious. Children are being killed at school. Kids are anxious about going to school because they don't want to be shot. How is that OK? And how is the thing you're taking issue with the repeated headline in a rag that is pure satire? Its like taking issue with the people who point out the Catholic church has a problem with pedophilia. Maybe direct your ire at the people taking no actions on gun control, eh?
He honeymooned in USSR. Which is a rather odd place to honeymoon in 1988. But yes, he never explicitly said he was a communist, but just someone that wants to seize the means of production.
The grocery store thing is a red herring, although its supported by nyc who by your logic is a communist? Thats hardly a definitive test. There are more relevant industries
In a 1976 interview, Sanders said, “I favor the public ownership of utilities, banks and major industries,” and when told that sounded like socialism, he replied, “Of course.”
“public ownership of the major means of production and their conversion into worker-controlled enterprises.”
More recently, Sanders has also been described as backing worker ownership plans, with reporting that he was encouraging workers to take control of the means of production.
How? He said he doesn't think the government should seize the means of production. That's directly relevant to what we're talking about.
> In a 1976 interview, Sanders said, “I favor the public ownership of utilities, banks and major industries,” and when told that sounded like socialism, he replied, “Of course.”
I don't really care what his economic beliefs were 50 years ago. We have a long political career we can draw from. We don't need to cherry pick quotes from when he was 30 to try and find hidden belief systems. He's been pretty consistent his entire career.
> More recently, Sanders has also been described as backing worker ownership plans, with reporting that he was encouraging workers to take control of the means of production
A work ownership plan in a company is completely different from what you implied, which was "Bernie Sanders wants to seize the means of production." You made it sound like he wants to nationalize everything under the sun.
> although its supported by nyc who by your logic is a communist? Thats hardly a definitive test. There are more relevant industries
Bootleggers and Baptists is a concept put forth by regulatory economist Bruce Yandle, derived from the observation that regulations are supported both by groups that want the ostensible purpose of the regulation, and by groups that profit from undermining that purpose.
The author uses polls that people are negative on AI, but people use it. All the time. And it's organic. Much like people started bringing Excel into the workplace and IT departments had to catch up, people are using personal AI and IT departments are freaking out. It's obvious that people find it useful (it's the fastest growing product in history). Why go off some polls that spread doomer nonsense?
Billionaires investing money in creating products that nearly a billion people use rather than improving the lives of working families? Are the billionaires elected leaders? Why is that burden on them. The government gets trillions every year, yet try to get people to believe they are just a few billion shy of providing medicare for all and free childcare. Give me a break
AI will create a police state? We've had cameras pretty much everywhere for decades, yet somehow unsolved killings reach a record high in 2023. We don't even bother locking up the people that get arrested. The number of prisoners that have had 15 or more prior arrests is over 26%
No one's buying it from these politicians anymore. You're in politics, you have trillions to spend. Just get your shit together, actually help people and stop with these hysterics.
I found the only thing that reliably works is direct sales. Find people that could potentially use your product and message them. Find them in forums, chats, email, LinkedIn, wherever.
If I had something I was into or did and someone took the time to reach out to me to try to show me something they built in a personal way, I would definitely be receptive.
Online stuff is cheap. I built products, posted on Reddit and had literally thousands of people come to my site. Not one person bothered to go to the home page and ask "what is this product". And this was when there were a lot fewer bots and scrapers. No ones going to use your product because he saw some crap on TikTok. It's cheap engagement
Platform where technical founders post their live products and marketers pitch to join as co-founders or paid partners. Built it because I kept running into the exact problem in my post. Not live yet but close.
I think I am definitely gonna try the direct sales approach, to try and fill out the platform once its ready.
I also find Codex much more generous in terms of what you get with a Pro ($20/mo) subscription. I use it pretty much non-stop and I have yet to hit a limit. Weekly reset is much better as well.
You say financial success as though it is completely independent of pretty much everything. "How could I be wrong, look how handsome I am"
To create great wealth in a vibrant capitalist society you have to have some model about the world you can exploit. It can be a better rocket design, some insight into human psychology that can help you raise money, or something else.
Some people fall ass backwards into money through luck, but that's rare, and people with great wealth don't have that luxury because they would squander it away and won't be able to grow what they have been given. At any extreme, you have to have both luck and skill. The best athletes are both incredibly gifted and incredibly hard working
They could be wrong on some things but to pretend they don't have a somewhat functional world model that is different enough from the consensus that it allows them to exploit it for great wealth is just naive.
I think the flip side would be "if you're so smart, why aren't you rich?" I prefer why aren't you happy myself, but sure, random person commenting on the internet about how the wealthiest people in the world don't know anything about the world, why haven't you exploited your superior knowledge relative to said billionaire to amass great wealth for yourself?
> Some people fall ass backwards into money through luck, but that's rare
You and I have vastly different mental models of the world. Or, at least, very different definitions of “luck”. For example, I would probably say that anyone who is rich through a “family business” has quite a bit of “luck” to thank (by my definition), except for the founder. And even then, the founder is usually “lucky” by connections (e.g. generous government contracts).
> and people with great wealth don't have that luxury because they would squander it away and won't be able to grow what they have been given
If I had to guess, it probably takes about an IQ of 90 to not lose generational wealth, unless there’s an addiction at play. Maybe even less.
So your contention is that it's easy to run a family business and manage immense wealth?
I'm going to take a wild guess, but I would bet you never ran a business. I've never heard this from anyone that ran a business. Sure they give you the whole "I am very fortunate and lucky in my life" but never "yes, it's trivial to run a business"
And my other bet would be you had never had any extended interaction with a 90 IQ individual
> So your contention is that it's easy to run a family business and manage immense wealth?
No, I said except for the founders. Real easy to be the brother or son or aunt to the family business founder and become rich.
> I've never heard this from anyone that ran a business.
I never said “not time consuming” or “stressful”, which I feel like you’re putting those words in my mouth. The first thing I usually hear from (especially braggarts) small business owners is about the biggest contract that they have, which is usually some government contract or bid that they won from Walmart or Amazon. When ZIRP dried up I heard less bragging about such contracts.
> And my other bet would be you had never had any extended interaction with a 90 IQ individual
All four years of my American public high school education. I’m saying the bottom 25% of my high school class might lose generational wealth through poor decisions (90 IQ is roughly 75% of population). I think that’s fair. We are talking about generational wealth, after all. I can think of a few 90 IQ people from my graduating class that are trust fund kids who haven’t managed to lose it all yet.
The greatest philosophers are rarely the wealthiest people. Wealth generally comes from being presented with opportunities, putting in the work to make the most of those opportunities, and being lucky enough that they end up being good. Intelligence can be an asset here, but bigger assets are knowing people already in positions of power, already having resources you can leverage, and being willing sacrifice years of your life in pursuit of wealth. Those factors don't require you to be well reasoned, logical, or intelligent.
I think Marc might be referring to "navel gazing". If introspection is so important, we wouldn't need to do experiments to figure out what is reality. He could be advocating for Empiricism. You will find quotes like "If unsure, take a decision and make it right later. Don't get trapped in analysis paralysis". Basically two camps are fighting here : those who think reality can be figured out by thinking alone. and those who think we need to get out there and collect data and analyse it.
I am personally biased toward Radical Conversatism.
Paul Dirac (1902–1984) was a British theoretical physicist and mathematician whose work on the Dirac equation (1928), which merged quantum mechanics with special relativity, predicted the existence of antimatter, specifically the positron. His approach to this discovery was deeply rooted in a mathematical philosophy that valued elegance, consistency, and a belief that nature is fundamentally mathematical, often placing him ahead of experimental validation.
Radical conservatism in physics, often associated with John Archibald Wheeler, is a philosophical approach that adheres strictly to established, successful principles—like quantum mechanics or general relativity—while pushing them to extreme, unexpected logical conclusions. It involves modifying as few laws as possible (conservative) while daringly following the math to radical insights.
> You say financial success as though it is completely independent of pretty much everything.
I never made a suggestion that financial success is completely independent of anything.
> They could be wrong on some things but to pretend they don't have a somewhat functional world model that is different enough from the consensus that it allows them to exploit it for great wealth is just naive.
It's naive to think that financial success sometimes blinds people into thinking they are generally an expert in all areas?
> but sure, random person commenting on the internet about how the wealthiest people in the world don't know anything about the world
Also, never said anything to this effect.
> why haven't you exploited your superior knowledge relative to said billionaire to amass great wealth for yourself?
How could you possibly know if I have, or have not?
Your entire reply is effectively an unrelated tangent to what I said.
Hmm, I think this statement needs some support "To create great wealth in a vibrant capitalist society you have to have some model about the world you can exploit."
Money simply invested in a market fund generally creates wealth, and that doesn't require a model of the world that's much more sophisticated than the average person's.
"Some people fall ass backwards into money through luck, but that's rare," This feels unsupported as well. How could you even attempt to quantify what percent of success is due to luck, much less establish confidence that this percent is going down?
> To create great wealth in a vibrant capitalist society you have to have some model about the world you can exploit.
As an individual? No. There's an interesting paradox here.
The paradox is that almost no matter what game you're playing, you want to play safe when you're winning and take chances when you're losing. That's what most rich people actually do, and naturally they take as few chances as they can.
But the richest of the rich, aren't going to be those. The very richest are going to be those who are comfortably winning, but still feel the need to take high-risk bets. Usually because of a pathological need to prove themselves.
A few of them, that is. For every Jobs, Musk etc. there's going to be twenty rich failsons who failed in their big bets. You just don't hear about them - why would you, they're now a much lower tier of rich.
So I don't think it's necessary to assume the super-rich has a better model of the world than average. Because of this effect, I think they're more likely to have deeply flawed models of the world, and in particular, deeply self-destructive personal values.
There are a number of recent antics from Musk and Trump in particular which I think can illustrate that well. You'd think they'd both be happier people if they were more content with what they had and weren't so eager to fuck up the world for the rest of us - but their messed up personal values get in the way of that.
I think the answer for most people is one of "I wasn't dealt the right hand of cards by fate" and/or "I don't want to spend my life acting like a sociopath and exploiting others for a small chance at great wealth."
You're correcting him by commenting on a popular article arguing he's wrong. So it appears he has been "corrected" rather broadly and vocally
He's free to choose what to believe. He's not "insulated from his negative world view". If you're correct and introspection is to his benefit and he chooses to forgo it, it's his loss.
So I don't know what you're upset about.
I think his broader point is that people are too introspective in modern times and its paralyzing. For instance, I remember reading a blog that argues that argues PTSD doesn't exist historically. People saw terrible things, buried their children and suffered unimaginable pain but there were no concept of PTSD. He argues that its not because it was taboo (virtually every other topic that was taboo was extensively documented), so perhaps there was less introspection.
It's not just war. Take infant deaths. Absolutely devastating today, but a large percent of people went through that in the past. They even re-used the names of their dead children.
I agree that we shouldn't have iPads and similar electronics in the classroom. But I would advise into reading too much into the societal beliefs of inventors and how their tech will play out.
Consider Lee de Forest, one of the early pioneers of radio. He expected radio to act almost like a moral and intellectual uplifter for society. He thought people would use it to essentially listen to religious sermons and educational lectures.
To be fair to the Forest, both of those did and do occur! But they were vastly overwhelmed by "entertainment" - similar to the printing press and other mass-media opportunities.
The Internet allows you to get every classical work of philosophy or theology online immediately both in the original language or in translation. You can find videos discussion many of them in-depth. Someone in Nepal with an Internet connection can get an education that would rival the best universities of the 1800s, if they want.
> The Internet allows you to get every classical work of philosophy or theology online immediately both in the original language or in translation.
LLMs also do quite well at "decoding" the obscure language of these classic works and rephrasing it in more contemporary terms. Even a small local LLM will typically do a good enough job of this, though more world knowledge (with a bigger model) is always preferable.
I'm close-reading Aristotle in a Meetup group where we compare many translations and indulge the controversies in translating the Greek.
When I've tried to get LLMs to bear on a topic, they can't even relate to the concept I'm looking at, instead generating a summary of the easiest parts. LLM is basically a beginner student.
For instance, their famous 'No Way to Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens article they post all over their page whenever there is some high profile gun related crime. It's all over their page and no doubt they get a bump in traffic from smug people who feel it's clever. It's just so exhausting. It was a great headline, but by the time the joke gets its own Wikipedia, it might be time to retire it. You can have a message and point of view, but don't put activism over comedy.
Look at their trending article: Critics Outraged By Flippant School Shooting Plotline In ‘The Super Mario Galaxy Movie’. Where's the joke? There is obviously no school shooting plotline. It's not clever or creative. I guess the joke is school shootings are a thing, and Mario is a popular movie?
It's basically South Parks criticism of Family Guy where they write jokes by having a seal put together random words from popular culture. School shootings + Mario = funny. And this stuff gets clicks because people think they're clever or subversive when it's just lazy and unoriginal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/'No_Way_to_Prevent_This%2C'_Sa...
https://theonion.com/critics-outraged-by-flippant-school-sho...
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