Murtaza Hussain
@mazmhussain
It seems like LLMs will accelerate the phenomenon of post-literacy in the public. It already seems like the sophistication of people’s reading and writing has decreased with the decline in the cultural centrality of books, as well as the short, staccato informality of unedited text that most of us have grown accustomed to via social media. This in itself is not such a big deal and a lot of boring corporate writing deserves to be automated by LLMs. But the psychological impact of moving from a literate to a post-literate society is significant. Democracy presupposed a literate public and literacy has neurological effects that are arguably a necessity for democratic deliberation. If we’ve moved on from mass literacy I expect democracy will become increasingly farcical and managed through technological manipulation. We’re already much of the way there but these new advancements in blurting out passable text seem ready to put the last nail in the coffin of the republic of letters.
5 replies
0 recast
10 reactions
alixkun🎩🍡
@alixkun
Plato theorized that already in The Republic, pointing out Democracy for being a flawed model that tends to turn into a popularity contest rather than a meritocracy. I think we're prisoner of the fact that we want the mean more than the end goal. We prefer imperfect results through democracy rather than perfect result without democracy. Except in China maybe. Ppl seem to accommodate with their lack of democracy as long as their getting positive outcomes. Which might change soon, so we'll see how it plays out for them...
0 reply
0 recast
1 reaction