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I feel like the joke would’ve landed better if it said “first”. I know it’s pronounced the same way, but I’m gonna argue anyway that there’s a subtle difference. I’ve heard 0th used in cs to describe what was at the 0-index, so in that context 1st would be"second", but “first” generally means “nothing before it”. English is weird. I wonder if anyone knows whether the word “first” or “1st” came 1st (lol)?
I’ve heard that that’s similar to why Adobe creative cloud was so easy to pirate for years (maybe it still is, idk, I switched to affinity forever ago). Adobe is the industry standard because everyone uses it -> person wants to learn photo/video editing, digital illustration, etc, but can’t afford it -> pirate Adobe instead of trying cheaper/free alternatives, because it’s the industry standard -> person with Adobe skills gets hired by business that pays for Adobe legitimately because that’s what most people know -> Adobe is the industry because everyone uses it, and the cycle goes on…
You’re right, it’s very much context dependent, and I appreciate your incite on how this clash between psychology and computer science muddies the terms. As a CS guy myself who’s just dipping my toes into NN’s, I lean toward the psychology definition, where intelligence is measured by behavior.
In an artificial neural network, the algorithms that wrangle data and build a model aren’t really what makes the decisions, they just build out the “body” (model, generator functions) and “environment” (data format), so to speak. If anything that code is more comparable to DNA than any state of mind. Training on data is where the knowledge comes from, and by making connections the model can “reason” a good answer with the correlations it found. Those processes are vague enough that I don’t feel comfortable calling them algorithms, though. It’s pretty divorced from cold, hard code.
AI knows nothing and are just dumb correlation engines
Here’s a thought exercise, how do you “know”? How do you know your pet? LLMs like gpt can “know” about a dog in terms of words, because that’s what they “sense”, that’s how they interact with their “environment”. They understand words and how they relate to other words, basically words are their entire environment.
Now, can you describe how you know your dog without your senses, or anything derived from your senses? Remember, chemical receptors are “senses” too.
I remember reading about this awhile back but I don’t have the link on me: Did you know that people who were born blind but have their vision repaired years later don’t immediately know what “pointy” looks like? They never formed that correlation between the feeling of pointy and the visual of pointy the way that they could with the feeling and the word.
My point is, we’re correlation machines too
This is what it comes down to. Until we agree on a testable definition of “intelligence” (or sentience, sapience, consciousness or just about any descriptor of human thought), it’s not really science. Even in nature, what we might consider intelligence manifests in different organisms in different ways.
We could assume that when people say intelligence they mean human-like intelligence. That might be narrow enough to test, but you’d probably still end up failing some humans and passing some trained models
I think my last sentence includes your “missing option”, actually. Take streaming for example, I’m not paying for 6 different streaming services. I can’t, I won’t, and I’m not going to juggle them every couple months either. So I pirate. Even if for some reason I couldn’t pirate their stuff, I just wouldn’t watch it. Either way, they don’t get my money.
then pirating a different thing isn’t stealing the thing they are trying to sell you.
Maybe not that version of the thing specifically, but it’s still stealing if they ultimately created it and you obtained it ignoring their conditions for sale.
Don’t get me wrong, you have a really good point. A lot of times the bootleg version of a good is better than the legal version because of the legal version’s tos and spyware enforcing them. I just don’t see how obtaining the bootleg isn’t piracy/stealing. There’s good justification for stealing it imo (as a pirate myself), but that’s all it is, justification. It’s still stealing.
So I guess I’m just being pedantic when I say I disagree with you, but realize I see where you’re coming from, and that we basically agree in spirit
Oh I agree with the article as I already stated in my previous comment, and I hope people read it, because my only argument really is that it has a poor headline. The headline says that taking media that you wouldn’t have owned isn’t piracy (which is nonsense), the article says that piracy is justified when ownership is as nebulous as it often is with a lot of digital media these days (which I agree with).
I know, I know, I figured someone was going to bring this up, and personally that’s part of the reason I justify my own piracy (cause I’m broke and movie studios aren’t), but two things:
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The cost of creating, copying, and distributing a good isn’t strictly relevant to the transaction of said good. If the original owner doesn’t want me to have access to a good without paying for it, and I take it anyway, that’s stealing. The labor and capital required to create, copy, and distribute that good isn’t relevant to that transaction, only my moral justification for stealing it anyway. Which is fine, imo, just be honest with yourself. You’re stealing, and it’s justified. Stick it to the man
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Assuming that it is relevant, making digital media isn’t free. I can get away with piracy only because there’s enough people paying for the media to make it worth it for the studio. At least one other commenter pointed this out, but if everyone pirated, who would be making movies and video games? So to keep the system going, imo, only pirate if you weren’t going to buy it anyway - piracy or nothin.
Granted, I only skimmed through the article, and overall I agree with, but that headline is a nonsensical statement. This coming from someone who pirates every movie and show that isn’t on Disney+. Whether you own, rent, or lend, you still had to pay for access to it. Piracy circumvents that. I don’t own the rental car. If I drove off with it, is that not stealing?
There are plenty of ways to justify piracy. There’s a few good reasons listed in the article. I do it because switching between a dozen streaming services is too inconvenient. But even putting morality aside, that headline is just plain dumb, it’s illogical.
Edited in case this came on too harsh
I kind of brought this up in another comment, that “first” and “1st” aren’t really the same thing. Which is confusing when you extend that to fourth/4th five/5th. I don’t generally see someone write “zeroith”, but I’ll see “0th”.