Ontology talk:9k/RD/Q12,0,48

Main entry

12048. Q12048/Q12,0,48 BadEmpanada's theoretical errors -> this is a bizarrely specific entry, but I have my cumulative reasons for adding it.
       A) B.E.'s videos are easily findable and very 'attested'. not a strict requirement for every new entry but helps a lot in creating a "higher tier" article. B) B.E. is one of the only video creators I can stand to listen to and haven't unsubscribed from. (which says a lot about every Marxist video channel. I exempt Trotskyist groups from that but hardly anyone else.) C) B.E. is always levelheaded about criticisms aimed at him and would never be expected to see them and start "drama" about them per se. I'm not afraid to just drop his name here. D) B.E. speaks quickly and sets down a lot of strange opinions. I wouldn't even say all of his "strange opinions" are wrong, although I strongly suspect a few of them are.

Anti-imperialism

618. You can be an anti-imperialist without being a Marxist -> sort of, but no. on a 5-year time scale yes, on a 30-year time scale no. truth value: misleading.
618. All anti-imperialism which doesn't contain Marxism eventually helps the United States -> my reference point is the Vietnam War. there was quite an explosion of non-Marxist anti-war demonstrations. but then when the campaign donor layer got to it it all culminated in this dude who believed in turning the war into a psychology problem founding the DSA and fueling this really big push everywhere for pro-capitalist replacements for Marxist theory that made universities utterly insufferable.

LLMs

618. AI datacenters taking over towns is an unimportant issue [1] -> the problem with this is. well. see the next proposition. and whenever that happens it builds up chunks of unaccountable people, consolidates United States empire, and empowers it to brutalize other countries. you're supporting anti-Zionism with one hand and undoing it with the other hand.
618. Trinidad water incident / A Texas woman was arrested for "false alarm" when the town's water turned sewage-brown; she was charged with a serious crime but the charges were dropped; she is filing a lawsuit [2] [3] [4] / Trinidad arrested a protestor outside the water clerk's office for disrupting the water clerk's office; when the water clerk and judge did not agree with the charges, they were fired [5] -> to be fair I can't find evidence this happened because of datacenters. but it does show exactly and precisely what would happen if you complained about data centers polluting your water
618. "Ethical" AI is unethical -> so, some people like BadEmpanada really do not understand the structure of the discourse around LLMs. there was a period where it was all about ""stealing content"", until the day where somebody built an "ethically-sourced AI", and the moment that happens, capitalists start exploiting anti-essentialism to try to get everyone to think that the moment a tiny fraction of something is ethical the entire thing is. so the entire discourse had to shift to proving that all LLMs were unethical because they were LLMs and not because of what they were used for, and this is where the data center talking point originated. it was an attempt to unify people around an issue that could easily get divisive by finding a point that was harder to refute.
     but, of course, it still has the inherent problem that basically all theories of ethics rely on eternal truths that don't exist. it is meaningless to argue over whether something is ethical if the people who would be harmed by it aren't strong enough to fight against it and will always be crushed, because once the powerful win they institute their own unbudgeable eternal truths. we've learned that lesson the hard way with oil companies and climate conferences, and all the wars that still happen over oil where still nobody is managing to persuade people to stop them just because of ethics.

Ideologies or fields

618. Q618/Q618 ES (pronounced E-S) / anti-Zionism
92. Q92/Q92 MX (pronounced meta-) / meta-Marxism