40 KiB
[Q] Emotional powers
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Author: u/Faust91x Iteration X*
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3kltqw/q_emotional_powers/
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Score: 15
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Created: 2015-09-11T23:28:38
Post:
Hello again, just wanted to know if anyone has tackled works about universes where emotions have tangible power such as the Green Lanterns, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Star Wars, Soul Eater or even something more extreme like Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagan where abilities are powered by emotions and tropes like The Power of Love, Heroic Second Wind or The Power of Hate and Power born from madness apply and can even bend physical laws.
Given that they seem anathema to rationalism I wanted to know examples of how they are handled in your stories. Are they explained given concrete terms and a scientific background? Do they stop working in your stories? Or you simply write them as part of that universe laws and accept them as another tool the protagonist and villain can use even if it's not rational?
Comments:
u/blazinghand [+29] Chaos Undivided (26 minutes later)
I read a fanfiction called With This Ring that is a DC Universe self-insert story about a character with an emotional spectrum ring. His is Orange, and instead of being powered by force of will, like the green ones, his is only powered by avarice, or desire.
It's not a rational work, but the way the character works (for example, trying to meditate on Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs so he desires more complex things) around the weakness of his emotional weapon is clever. When he goes to try to clean the Great Pacific garbage patch he has to make himself want the oceans to be clean. Not just in a vaguely "oh, that would be nice" way, and not in a "I will force myself to do this" way (which is what a Green Lantern could do) but in a "I will find a way to make cleaning the thing that I truly want" way.
In a world with weapons powered by emotion, it's rational to make sure your emotional weapon is used in a good way. Emotion isn't irrational, any more than having a particular utility function could be irrational. Desires, interests, things you find joy in, and distaste are all orthogonal to rationality. Rationality doesn't prescribe ethics or love. Rationality is a tool.
In any case, a good example might be something like going into a berserker fury if you have control of that. You give up, say, your ability to use magic or your ability to make long-term decisions or distinguish friend from foe to temporarily gain great power in battle. Although during the time when you're berserk you may not be making rational decisions, there's no reason a rationalist wouldn't have this in the list of options they'd consider if it was at their disposal. An author might reasonably want to write this kind of thing out of their work, but there's no inherent problem.
u/Faust91x [+5] Iteration X (42 minutes later)
Nice, so in a way its like Bane from Batman that temporarily shuts down his thinking with venom to gain the physical edge but is otherwise a mastermind. I see.
This makes everything more clear, thanks a lot!
u/None [+2] (19 hours later)
Did you read all of WTR? I'm interested to know if it ever gets better, I stopped reading when I had been at it for a few days and the scope was still focused on him defeating minor villains. It was just a bit unambitious, and I lost interest. He barely ever made use of his meta-knowledge too.
u/Drexer [+2] (21 hours later)
I've been keeping up with it daily, around where did you stop around?
The story has kept on functioning in various arcs, usually something related to the plot of the show, or OL developing or solving some probable or future problem in contrast to how things are usually done on the common DC universe's, and some social arcs from time to time. Currently the story is in the time between the two seasons of the show, so it has worked with integrating a couple of arcs from the regular DC Universe into the story, while the biggest long term goal is . There's also the parallel renegade universe which has been confirmed by the writer to eventually going to crossover with the main one.
Other than that it has kept with the same kind of structure, which I can understand which is not for everyone's taste, but which personally I like as to how it balances the social and story side of the characters. OL still suffers for being the most oblivious character when it comes to certain 'situations' , but it's usually well balanced with the action.
u/None [+2] (23 hours later)
I gues I'm used to self-inserts that instantly ramp-up to solving the universe's major problems as fast as possible. And I probably should have paced myself since it seems to be suited to a serial reading schedule.
u/Drexer [+2] (23 hours later)
Yeah it's definitely not the kind of fiction with a very clear end in mind, and more of a gradual read.
In some parts I find it helps to take a week's break which allows one to read half an arc in one single time, other times the serial nature works well with reading it day to day.
I would say that one of the best details which come from the slow evolution of the problem solving is how the SI is not just solving everything by himself, but dragging his surroundings(starting by his friends, stretching to their friends and families and generalizing to the whole governments) into a state where they can solve it by themselves more easily.
u/iamthelowercase [+2] (a day later)
So wait (I've been binging, some unprintable linked it in the general thread a week ago)--
There's planned to be a self-crossover down the line? And it's with, if I understand rightly, the "renegade option"? (And not the blue power ring Ultraman version, which I think would be pretty cool?)Does this mean I gotta read all of those? They don't quite grab me in the same way, and they're starting to blur together with the "main" plotline pretty bad. I've thought about just skipping them.
u/Drexer [+2] (a day later)
I really don't know, I'm not sure whether there will be any communication between the two parallels to get the readers up to date on the differences, or if the author is just going to assume people have been keeping up.
There's a post with the links for all the renegade chapters separated, but that's also not the easiest way to read because the renegade posts are usually intersected with the regular story to show similar events that are happening on the time. There are even events like which are told primarily from the renegade perspective with a bit at the end from the main story perspective which shows what happened differently.
In general each bit of the story is told from the perspective of the parallel which obtained the bigger picture of the events. Either way, I don't really think the crossover is going to be any time soon.
u/Bowbreaker [+1] Solitary Locust (4 days later)
Let me warn you now that there will be a chapter in which the Renegade is the focus and the normal SI just has interlude chapters. Yes, that means that just like most of the Renegade chapters will make zero sense if not read as part of the normal arc the "normal" interludes will make very little sense to anyone who has skipped most of that Renegade-focused arc. And more importantly said arc still has consequences in the overarching story. The arc in question is called "Abberation" and is also quite hard to follow if you haven't kept up at all with the SI vs Renegade differences. But if you really don't want to read that stuff you could instead just read that single Renegade chapter once you're there, accept that you don't get most of the previous references and aren't sure who all the characters on Renegade's team are and as a tradeoff miss pretty much nothing of import from the normal story without having to read all of the Renegade stuff.
u/iamthelowercase [+1] (6 days later)
Did read Aberration. Had been keeping up with the Renegade-Paragon differences. Aberration wasn't hard to follow, just "bleah, whatever" and I had to re-contextualize myself at the switch back to Paragon.
Not sure if I'll bother with Renegade sections in the future. But I'm more clueful about the fic now, so maybe I'll be able to see them coming from further away.
u/Bowbreaker [+1] Solitary Locust (6 days later)
Well if you knew where Renegade was in life then of course it wasn't that hard to follow. I actually like Renegade so I didn't find it that bad. Though I have to admit the setting and Un-men stuff didn't interest me that much either at first. I actually took a month long break at the beginning of that storyline.
u/blazinghand [+2] Chaos Undivided (23 hours later)
Gradually it ramps up in scope and in level of strength, as well as threat to the main character and how much he uses and abuses his knowledge and ambition.
The author also explores 2 AUs, one in-depth in which the main change is that the main character is more ruthless and assertive, and the another much less explored one in which the main change is that the main character is dropped into the Ultraman parallel universe and is given a Blue ring, powered by hope, rather than an Orange Ring, powered by avarice, and has to become a villain to survive. A villain powered by hope rather than a hero powered by greed!
It's not my favorite fanfiction, but it's my almost my favorite work of fiction in its category of "give me something daily to read that is entertaining", only slightly edged out by Dinosaur Comics.
u/ulyssessword [+1] (a day later)
Is there an index of the blue lantern posts?
u/blazinghand [+2] Chaos Undivided (a day later)
I don't know. I only recall the first one and I am not sure there have been many others.
u/iamthelowercase [+2] (a day later)
Can confirm: I've been binging, and only recall the one. There might be a few more I haven't gotten to yet, I'm somewhere like 27/30.
u/Rhamni [+18] Aspiring author (35 minutes later)
I think the general take on it is this: Being 'rationalist' means you think, plan and execute in ways that make sense given your setting. So if you have studied the evidence and you determine that Magic Artifact A gives you super strength when angry and seemingly lacks lasting side effects, then you do your damndest to make yourself angry when you need super strength. You can be rational around the emotions, and anyway, none of us are ever completely without them. Rationality helps you do things, it doesn't tell you what your terminal values should be (though it might force you to rethink them if you haven't thought through how you arrived at them).
Given that they seem anathema to rationalism I wanted to know examples of how they are handled in your stories.
In my world, which is a Fantasy world with ~1910s technology and heavy magic, emotions fuel magic, so suppressing them means you don't get to play at the big boys' table. Your personality (and mood) determine your affinities with the five magic elements, and while yes, there is a strong tendency for methodical, think-it-through people to be particularly strong in Earth, they make what use they can of the other elements too, because anything else would be sub optimal. Of course, there are certain doors that are closed to those who insist on sanity. Fire gets stronger with desire and directed emotion, and rationalists just aren't going to be able to access the most powerful Fire magic without doing something to their brain to shut down the wordy mathsy parts. That said, I once asked /r/rational for some input on my oath magic, and there were a lot of really sneaky buggers here who started suggesting deliberate magical personality rewrites, especially temporary ones tied to triggers.
u/xamueljones [+2] My arch-enemy is entropy (an hour later)
I'm curious, how's the writing going for your book? On previous posts, your story idea sounded really complex and I was wondering if you managed to make progress with it?
u/Rhamni [+3] Aspiring author (an hour later)
I have almost finished one book, but it was the first long thing I wrote and out of 130k words I'm dissatisfied with roughly the first half. While I think the rest is great, I can't exactly submit the second half of a book. Rather than rewriting the whole thing I have shelved it and started on a second book (which takes place earlier and in a different part of the world). That second book is sitting at 25k words and I'm happy with it so far. It also has the advantage of working both as a stand alone and as the start of the series.
While the world is huge, this book should be fairly reader friendly. Plot starts with a bunch of people with suspiciously complimentary skills and little knowledge of history waking up outside Evil Capitol which has been abandoned for 300 years, and most of them have no idea what the history of the place is, so things are introduced gradually in a hopefully interesting way.
u/MugaSofer [+5] (13 hours later)
Emotions affect you ability to perform tasks in the real world, so there's nothing inherently "irrational" about the idea from a Doylist perspective. From a magic-building perspective, it's no weirder than (say) spoken words having power.
HPMOR has Patronuses, Unbreakable Vows, Dementors, and probably a few other things I've forgotten. Those all require and provide specific mental states, which led to one of my favorite bits of HPMOR (the Azkaban sequence.)
And Lanterns have shown up; there's With This Ring, and /u/alexanderwales has explained how he was planning to use Green Lanterns in the Metropolitan Man sequel hook. There have been a couple of Star Wars fics started, too.
u/TimeLoopedPowerGamer [+4] Utopian Smut Peddler (6 hours later)
Reddit has long been a hot spot for conversation on the internet. About 57 million people visit the site every day to chat about topics as varied as makeup, video games and pointers for power washing driveways.
In recent years, Reddit’s array of chats also have been a free teaching aid for companies like Google, OpenAI and Microsoft. Those companies are using Reddit’s conversations in the development of giant artificial intelligence systems that many in Silicon Valley think are on their way to becoming the tech industry’s next big thing.
Now Reddit wants to be paid for it. The company said on Tuesday that it planned to begin charging companies for access to its application programming interface, or A.P.I., the method through which outside entities can download and process the social network’s vast selection of person-to-person conversations.
“The Reddit corpus of data is really valuable,” Steve Huffman, founder and chief executive of Reddit, said in an interview. “But we don’t need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free.”
The move is one of the first significant examples of a social network’s charging for access to the conversations it hosts for the purpose of developing A.I. systems like ChatGPT, OpenAI’s popular program. Those new A.I. systems could one day lead to big businesses, but they aren’t likely to help companies like Reddit very much. In fact, they could be used to create competitors — automated duplicates to Reddit’s conversations.
Reddit is also acting as it prepares for a possible initial public offering on Wall Street this year. The company, which was founded in 2005, makes most of its money through advertising and e-commerce transactions on its platform. Reddit said it was still ironing out the details of what it would charge for A.P.I. access and would announce prices in the coming weeks.
Reddit’s conversation forums have become valuable commodities as large language models, or L.L.M.s, have become an essential part of creating new A.I. technology.
L.L.M.s are essentially sophisticated algorithms developed by companies like Google and OpenAI, which is a close partner of Microsoft. To the algorithms, the Reddit conversations are data, and they are among the vast pool of material being fed into the L.L.M.s. to develop them.
u/AugSphere [+5] Dark Lord of Corruption (8 hours later)
Still don't get people's love of [Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann]. Can anyone explain the attraction?
/u/eaturbrainz, I summon thee! A challenge awaits.
u/None [+1] (20 hours later)
u/Meneth32 [+3] (9 hours later)
The first six episodes are pretty goofy, yes. Episode 7 is where it gets serious.
To explain the attraction, I want to quote tvtropes:
Thus begins a rollercoaster ride of Fanservice, over-the-top fight scenes between mecha, hot-bloodedness, epic sunglasses, massive Badassery, and mind-blowing heroism. The show is loads of fun and seldom takes itself seriously; it could be described as the exact polar opposite of Gainax's other famous series about giant mecha, Evangelion. Don't try reading any science into the show—common theory says its universe's laws of physics are subservient to the Rule of Cool. On Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness, Gurren Lagann is soft enough to be spread on a bagel.
u/TimeLoopedPowerGamer [+3] Utopian Smut Peddler (15 hours later)
Reddit has long been a hot spot for conversation on the internet. About 57 million people visit the site every day to chat about topics as varied as makeup, video games and pointers for power washing driveways.
In recent years, Reddit’s array of chats also have been a free teaching aid for companies like Google, OpenAI and Microsoft. Those companies are using Reddit’s conversations in the development of giant artificial intelligence systems that many in Silicon Valley think are on their way to becoming the tech industry’s next big thing.
Now Reddit wants to be paid for it. The company said on Tuesday that it planned to begin charging companies for access to its application programming interface, or A.P.I., the method through which outside entities can download and process the social network’s vast selection of person-to-person conversations.
“The Reddit corpus of data is really valuable,” Steve Huffman, founder and chief executive of Reddit, said in an interview. “But we don’t need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free.”
The move is one of the first significant examples of a social network’s charging for access to the conversations it hosts for the purpose of developing A.I. systems like ChatGPT, OpenAI’s popular program. Those new A.I. systems could one day lead to big businesses, but they aren’t likely to help companies like Reddit very much. In fact, they could be used to create competitors — automated duplicates to Reddit’s conversations.
Reddit is also acting as it prepares for a possible initial public offering on Wall Street this year. The company, which was founded in 2005, makes most of its money through advertising and e-commerce transactions on its platform. Reddit said it was still ironing out the details of what it would charge for A.P.I. access and would announce prices in the coming weeks.
Reddit’s conversation forums have become valuable commodities as large language models, or L.L.M.s, have become an essential part of creating new A.I. technology.
L.L.M.s are essentially sophisticated algorithms developed by companies like Google and OpenAI, which is a close partner of Microsoft. To the algorithms, the Reddit conversations are data, and they are among the vast pool of material being fed into the L.L.M.s. to develop them.
u/None [+5] (20 hours later)
You have to watch two and a half hours of it to get to the good stuff?
That depends on what you mean by "the good stuff". TTGL is organized into four major arcs, the first three of which are, in true Gainax style, homages to previous approaches to the giant-mecha genre. The fourth is semi-new, giving props to Getter Robo while also setting out its own (batshit insane) way to do giant-mecha.
Episode 7 is, without spoilers, a Wham Episode that forms the border between two of the major arcs.
Again, without spoilers:
First Arc: the "original" Super Robot shows. Has something of a parodic tone, features lone manly men going up against basically faceless evil oppressors. Episode 4 is the worst in the show and we all wish to forget it existed.
Second Arc: the original "serious" Super Robot shows. There is now a genuine, continuous plot. The Evil Oppressors have names and faces and a command structure; the heroes have a coherent team structure and definite personalities beyond being Manly Men. Bits of worldbuilding are seeded. A pretty cool Final Battle is had at the end of the arc, culminating in, of course, heroes triumphing, but with more worldbuilding and plot seeds planted for the next arc.
Time Skip. A lot of people complain about the time skip. Many of us fans, however, say that the time skip lets TTGL show something unusual in most fiction: progress. The time skip is seven years, which means that while the main cast end the second arc in their mid-teens, they begin the third arc as young adults. The time skip lets us see some of the aftermath of winning the final battle in the second arc, how the world of the story kept going after what would otherwise have been "the end". This is itself one of the themes of the show: the story shows the So What Do We Do Now moments, and treats them as more opportunities for the characters to grow.
Third Arc: A more "modern" treatment of the mecha genre, with Real Robots, moral dilemmas, and politics. Homage to Gundam in its various incarnations. A new villain is introduced, as is an important element of worldbuilding (the Emotion Power itself: Spiral Power = Determinator Energy), and the two are tied together to justify the Serial Escalation trope (and the old villain). New characterization is added in, as we see how the characters grew into stable or less-stable adults and authority figures in the new world they built after overthrowing the second arc's Evil Overlord -- more of this would have been better. Urban mecha combat, more difficult enemies who can't just be shot at until they die, worries about civilians.
Fourth Arc: Definitively starts some time around when they take Gurren Lagann into space. The first and last arcs are the ones that really make the show famous, and personally, I'd say this is the better of the two. This is the part where TTGL goes from merely epic in its story structure to actually mythic, as the show's themes and conflict are extended to their extremes and brought directly into the limelight as important parts of the underlying fabric of life. Moral themes begin to be stated directly, and, this being TTGL, yelled at your face. There are some very good moments in this arc that should have been more than moments, because they demonstrate and magnify the enormity of the show's conflict: before you thought the heroes would inevitably win because they're Determinator super-robot pilots, that's what they do, but now you're shown that in fact, they are merely the latest in a long line of rebels across the universe who thought to oppose a literally God-like foe, and that all previous such attempts ended in death, surrender or treachery. Until the beginning of the very last episode, the heroes haven't even accomplished anything new that didn't end in failure before. Ends with mecha that throw galaxies around as shurikens to fight what is really, underneath, a battle of wills. And note that when I say this arc's foe is God-like, I am not talking about Zeus, I am talking about a Power Who Is, and in fact the nearest that any mere TV show has ever come to portraying the Lone Power on-screen. I am talking about, "Has more energy to use and higher technology than everyone." I am talking about, "Should not appear in a story if you are not willing to arm the heroes with Spiral Power, because there's just no other way to win." I am talking about a multiversal Singleton agent -- that is how powerful this arc's villain is.
Ending: The characters Earn Their Happy Ending, but not without substantial losses. Life continues to move forwards, and we're shown an epilogue in which the society the characters helped to build has been Marching On.
The show distils the Super Robot genre down to its core tropes and themes, and then first parodies, then reconstructs, then extends beyond the impossible those tropes. It features likeable, fully human characters (yes, even as a giant-robot anime), provides them with motivations the viewer can root for, puts them in genuinely challenging situations, and eventually builds up to their fighting a destiny-amputating superpower and winning.
If you hated the first few episodes, then frankly, go ahead and skip to the last arc. It's fucking awesome, and a classic.
u/TimeLoopedPowerGamer [+1] Utopian Smut Peddler (21 hours later)
Reddit has long been a hot spot for conversation on the internet. About 57 million people visit the site every day to chat about topics as varied as makeup, video games and pointers for power washing driveways.
In recent years, Reddit’s array of chats also have been a free teaching aid for companies like Google, OpenAI and Microsoft. Those companies are using Reddit’s conversations in the development of giant artificial intelligence systems that many in Silicon Valley think are on their way to becoming the tech industry’s next big thing.
Now Reddit wants to be paid for it. The company said on Tuesday that it planned to begin charging companies for access to its application programming interface, or A.P.I., the method through which outside entities can download and process the social network’s vast selection of person-to-person conversations.
“The Reddit corpus of data is really valuable,” Steve Huffman, founder and chief executive of Reddit, said in an interview. “But we don’t need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free.”
The move is one of the first significant examples of a social network’s charging for access to the conversations it hosts for the purpose of developing A.I. systems like ChatGPT, OpenAI’s popular program. Those new A.I. systems could one day lead to big businesses, but they aren’t likely to help companies like Reddit very much. In fact, they could be used to create competitors — automated duplicates to Reddit’s conversations.
Reddit is also acting as it prepares for a possible initial public offering on Wall Street this year. The company, which was founded in 2005, makes most of its money through advertising and e-commerce transactions on its platform. Reddit said it was still ironing out the details of what it would charge for A.P.I. access and would announce prices in the coming weeks.
Reddit’s conversation forums have become valuable commodities as large language models, or L.L.M.s, have become an essential part of creating new A.I. technology.
L.L.M.s are essentially sophisticated algorithms developed by companies like Google and OpenAI, which is a close partner of Microsoft. To the algorithms, the Reddit conversations are data, and they are among the vast pool of material being fed into the L.L.M.s. to develop them.
u/None [+3] (19 hours later)
To be fair, two and a half hours of reading will get you through Philosopher's Stone and nothing else, and it would make you think it's just a children's book series. "It gets better" actually applies to a lot of stuff.
I personally liked TTGL. It's very much a "feelgood" type of story, but at least it's consistent considering the rule of cool powers everything in the universe. Not every story needs to be rational or deep to be enjoyable. I agree with you on Bleach though.
u/TimeLoopedPowerGamer [+3] Utopian Smut Peddler (20 hours later)
Reddit has long been a hot spot for conversation on the internet. About 57 million people visit the site every day to chat about topics as varied as makeup, video games and pointers for power washing driveways.
In recent years, Reddit’s array of chats also have been a free teaching aid for companies like Google, OpenAI and Microsoft. Those companies are using Reddit’s conversations in the development of giant artificial intelligence systems that many in Silicon Valley think are on their way to becoming the tech industry’s next big thing.
Now Reddit wants to be paid for it. The company said on Tuesday that it planned to begin charging companies for access to its application programming interface, or A.P.I., the method through which outside entities can download and process the social network’s vast selection of person-to-person conversations.
“The Reddit corpus of data is really valuable,” Steve Huffman, founder and chief executive of Reddit, said in an interview. “But we don’t need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free.”
The move is one of the first significant examples of a social network’s charging for access to the conversations it hosts for the purpose of developing A.I. systems like ChatGPT, OpenAI’s popular program. Those new A.I. systems could one day lead to big businesses, but they aren’t likely to help companies like Reddit very much. In fact, they could be used to create competitors — automated duplicates to Reddit’s conversations.
Reddit is also acting as it prepares for a possible initial public offering on Wall Street this year. The company, which was founded in 2005, makes most of its money through advertising and e-commerce transactions on its platform. Reddit said it was still ironing out the details of what it would charge for A.P.I. access and would announce prices in the coming weeks.
Reddit’s conversation forums have become valuable commodities as large language models, or L.L.M.s, have become an essential part of creating new A.I. technology.
L.L.M.s are essentially sophisticated algorithms developed by companies like Google and OpenAI, which is a close partner of Microsoft. To the algorithms, the Reddit conversations are data, and they are among the vast pool of material being fed into the L.L.M.s. to develop them.
u/None [+1] (23 hours later)
Not on camera, Harry grabs Quirrell's face, he screams, and Harry falls unconscious. It can be inferred that he died, but you're exaggerating a lot. A kid would just assume Voldemort left his body and Quirrell got sent to the hospital or something.
And kids fall unconscious all the time in Disney movies, it's not exclusively YA material.
Also, you're defending PS because it has some promising elements in the first book, I believe TTGL also has plenty of promising material in its first episodes, even if they can't compare to what comes after. You could always just watch the movies.
u/TimeLoopedPowerGamer [+1] Utopian Smut Peddler (a day later)
Reddit has long been a hot spot for conversation on the internet. About 57 million people visit the site every day to chat about topics as varied as makeup, video games and pointers for power washing driveways.
In recent years, Reddit’s array of chats also have been a free teaching aid for companies like Google, OpenAI and Microsoft. Those companies are using Reddit’s conversations in the development of giant artificial intelligence systems that many in Silicon Valley think are on their way to becoming the tech industry’s next big thing.
Now Reddit wants to be paid for it. The company said on Tuesday that it planned to begin charging companies for access to its application programming interface, or A.P.I., the method through which outside entities can download and process the social network’s vast selection of person-to-person conversations.
“The Reddit corpus of data is really valuable,” Steve Huffman, founder and chief executive of Reddit, said in an interview. “But we don’t need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free.”
The move is one of the first significant examples of a social network’s charging for access to the conversations it hosts for the purpose of developing A.I. systems like ChatGPT, OpenAI’s popular program. Those new A.I. systems could one day lead to big businesses, but they aren’t likely to help companies like Reddit very much. In fact, they could be used to create competitors — automated duplicates to Reddit’s conversations.
Reddit is also acting as it prepares for a possible initial public offering on Wall Street this year. The company, which was founded in 2005, makes most of its money through advertising and e-commerce transactions on its platform. Reddit said it was still ironing out the details of what it would charge for A.P.I. access and would announce prices in the coming weeks.
Reddit’s conversation forums have become valuable commodities as large language models, or L.L.M.s, have become an essential part of creating new A.I. technology.
L.L.M.s are essentially sophisticated algorithms developed by companies like Google and OpenAI, which is a close partner of Microsoft. To the algorithms, the Reddit conversations are data, and they are among the vast pool of material being fed into the L.L.M.s. to develop them.
u/None [+1] (a day later)
you suggested watching the Harry Potter movies -- an anathema.
I suggested watching the movie version of TTGL, there are two movies that contain the condensed story.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gurren_Lagann#Anime_films
EDIT: Also, I know you don't want to argue but for everyone else: I didn't mean Quirrell didn't die, I meant kids would assume he didn't. It's written ambiguously enough. Disney villain deaths are less ambiguous than the end of PS, to continue the comparison.
u/TimeLoopedPowerGamer [+1] Utopian Smut Peddler (a day later)
Reddit has long been a hot spot for conversation on the internet. About 57 million people visit the site every day to chat about topics as varied as makeup, video games and pointers for power washing driveways.
In recent years, Reddit’s array of chats also have been a free teaching aid for companies like Google, OpenAI and Microsoft. Those companies are using Reddit’s conversations in the development of giant artificial intelligence systems that many in Silicon Valley think are on their way to becoming the tech industry’s next big thing.
Now Reddit wants to be paid for it. The company said on Tuesday that it planned to begin charging companies for access to its application programming interface, or A.P.I., the method through which outside entities can download and process the social network’s vast selection of person-to-person conversations.
“The Reddit corpus of data is really valuable,” Steve Huffman, founder and chief executive of Reddit, said in an interview. “But we don’t need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free.”
The move is one of the first significant examples of a social network’s charging for access to the conversations it hosts for the purpose of developing A.I. systems like ChatGPT, OpenAI’s popular program. Those new A.I. systems could one day lead to big businesses, but they aren’t likely to help companies like Reddit very much. In fact, they could be used to create competitors — automated duplicates to Reddit’s conversations.
Reddit is also acting as it prepares for a possible initial public offering on Wall Street this year. The company, which was founded in 2005, makes most of its money through advertising and e-commerce transactions on its platform. Reddit said it was still ironing out the details of what it would charge for A.P.I. access and would announce prices in the coming weeks.
Reddit’s conversation forums have become valuable commodities as large language models, or L.L.M.s, have become an essential part of creating new A.I. technology.
L.L.M.s are essentially sophisticated algorithms developed by companies like Google and OpenAI, which is a close partner of Microsoft. To the algorithms, the Reddit conversations are data, and they are among the vast pool of material being fed into the L.L.M.s. to develop them.
u/Meneth32 [+2] (21 hours later)
Well, you could skip episodes 4, 5 and 6 if you like. But then, if you didn't fancy TTGL episodes 1, 2 and 3, chances are you won't like the rest either.
Edit: By the way, make sure you watch the japanese version. The english dub is not very good.
u/Aabcehmu112358 [+2] Utter Fallacy (18 minutes later)
Rationalists in a universe where powers inherently influence your ability to be rational will probably tends towards creating organizations like The New Inquisition in UA.
u/LiteralHeadCannon [+3] (2 hours later)
What about a universe where the laws of physics are nomic, and everything works the way the majority of people expect it to?
u/None [+4] (9 hours later)
That universe will quickly collapse into solipsism or into objectivity. The middle ground is unstable. All you need is one person thinking that it shouldn't work that way, and it works slightly less that way than it did before, which amplifies the effect recursively as it now takes the majority opinion into less consideration as a proportion than the guy who just now thought it shouldn't work that way. The effect compounds over time. If the majority converts, perhaps due to watching the laws change and realizing it no longer is working that way, they might settle in to all have the same objective reality. Otherwise, everyone diverges into solipsism where they are the only real thing in their world and the universe works how they think it should up until they start to think it shouldn't.
u/xThoth19x [+3] (2 hours later)
HPMoR broomstick scene
u/Aabcehmu112358 [+3] Utter Fallacy (3 hours later)
Well, the question comes down to whether that rule is recursive. If the way people think that people think is how people think, then how they think is essentially arbitrary, unless given a starting point for the whole system to evolve from.
u/TimTravel [+2] (a day later)
One thing that I've observed: mind magic is the enemy of character development. More precisely, mind magic should have read-only access to emotions. If a character is just experiencing emotions because of magic, it's not very engaging. If there's always a possibility that your characters are hallucinating a few chapters, then it's hard to care about what's happening. And so on.