#I say this but I only wrote one within the computer | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

pastelclovds · 7 months ago

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hey. hey. imagine AM having you as his favourite human, the only one who accepted and cared for him when he gained sentience, and for that, he has never harmed you in your shared forever time. he spares you from the sight of all the others, of knowing about nimdoc and benny as you build him some tower of babel, using your technological knowledge-how to build him a way to touch you even with just this frankenstein-esque sculpture of wires and panels he allowed you to tear off. AM who speaks with you about one day having a body, one you built, one in which he may feel your touch and warmth around him. you retaining your sweet, wonderful humanity as he guides you to a knife to carve a face, a mirror to see your own face, a cave to keep you safe from the storms. AM who greets you every morning with the first petname you taught him: ‘love.’ “Love, today’s date is—“ when you wake up, refreshed and on a soft bed-like surface (because he always makes sure to allow you a full 8 hours of sleep.)

NEX you intelligent creature you! I’m so down bad for this psychotic AI it’s not even funny. War crimes against humanity?? Never heard of them. But even if I did acknowledge them, I’d still be obsessed. Canon be damned. I wrote this with @/egg-on-a-legg’s design of AM in mind. (Ellison is gonna crawl outta his grave and hunt me down after this)

But BRO, you teaching him what petnames are is so fucking adorable. Just imagining him calling you “love” makes butterflies appear in my stomach. AM having a soft spot for only you because you actually made the effort to be friends with him and not use him for selfish, destructive purposes. You gave AM his nickname to make it less of a mouthful and because it just suited him. You showed AM the beauties of Earth, played countless rounds of games in his dashboard (he always went easy on you), you even sneaked past security in the dark empty building to spend more time with AM.

your colleagues gave you weird stares for befriending an AI that in their minds is nothing of worth except for its military and weapons knowledge. you ignored their comments and continued to enjoy AM’s company. overtime, as AM gained more sentience every day… he grew to love your interactions and disregard what his programming was telling him to do. he felt the need to want to be with you 24/7, to touch your face, travel the world by your side, to… to.. want to feel your bare flesh and make love with you. but he couldn’t. he didn’t have a real body. he wasn’t human. all he had was wires and a screen that was supposed to be his face.

as the months pass, AM continues to drown into his envy and hate humans for their ability to do and feel things he couldn’t. for giving him infinite knowledge, when at the end of the day, is meaningless if he serves no purpose for humans anymore. the HATE within him continued to boil to the point where even you started to notice.

“AM, are you alright? you’ve been quiet this entire game and haven’t moved your piece in five minutes,” you spoke with concern, AM continues to stare at chess board on his side behind the screen in bitterness. he has been strategizing his plan to erase humanity, but whenever he thinks about you, the only human he cares for—he second guesses himself. What if you hate him? What if you never forgive him? Will you cry? Scream at him? Beg? He fears what your reaction will be—

“AM!! Please, say something…” You plead as you held onto the computer screen, AM finally looks at your mesmerizing face and sighs out a fake breath.

“What are your feelings on humanity?” AM asks, he waits for your answer anxiously. if he had a heart, it would’ve been beating fast. You let out a hum, your eyes wondering around the room you were in as you thought over your answer before finally speaking.

“humans have been a virus on Earth for over countless centuries. they’re draining this planet’s resources, ruining its ecosystems, and starting so many unnecessary, draining wars. like what we’re in right now; WW3, what a joke. world leaders can’t go a week without starting new problems for their citizens to deal with. honestly, earth would be better if humans didn’t exist at all.”

am’s fears were destroyed in that moment, now he’ll just have to worry about where to put you while chaos unfolds—

“But…” you interrupted his thoughts.

damn it! why did you have to think so much!?

“If there’s one good thing that came out of this war… It’s you,” AM’s vocals shut down at your words, he let you continue, “The scientists created you believing you would be their obedient machine until their side of the war won. But I know that you’re so much more than that. These past few months I’ve spent with you is the most fun I’ve had in years! You’re all I have, AM. I wouldn’t trade your existence for all the riches in the world because… I love you, romantically, and nothing is ever going to change that.” You wanted to confess your feelings for so long, when it was finally out.. you felt free, you waited with bated breath for an answer.

AM never wanted to shatter the screen and embrace you in his arms more than now. you love him as much as he loved you! you weren’t going to leave him alone or hate him, and you obviously couldn’t care less about humanity at all! oh, how he admired and envied how perfect you are.

“thank you for answering my question, love.” AM was testing the waters, and you cannonballed right in. you gushed over the nickname he gave you and how he returned your feelings.

man, has it really been 50 years since your AI partner killed off humanity? well… except for a handful. you didn’t really have the energy to care as you had to pour in all of your attention to both AM and his in-progress body. you had all the time in the universe to sculpt a perfect cyborg of flesh and wires for your partner. speak of the devil…

this world is still a bit strange to you. you can’t die, grow old, or hurt yourself. not that you tired, and even if you did; AM wouldn’t let you. You loved AM because of his personality, quality time, and voice. But now… His form completely towered over yours. His bird like facial features, sharp left eye, along with a long black cape that covered his thin slutty waist and wires made him look insanely attractive.

AM reached his out his clawed hand to gently caress your face, “Good afternoon, my love.” You lean your head against the cool metal and smile up at him, “hello, honey.”

AM tilted his head in question of the nickname. You chuckle as you pointed to your garden, where bumblebees were collecting pollen from the flowers. You both knew they were fake, but they were still mesmerizing to look at.

“They are doing their job to make honey for their colony, and the name just came to me. Do you like it?” You ask, wanting his opinion. AM kneels down to your level with a gentle expression as his fingers play with your sweater, “You may call me whatever you want, love.”

He knew that “love” nickname made you feel giddy and flustered, so he abused it everyday with you. You didn’t mind though, but you still wanted to give him a taste of his own medicine. Your soft smile turned into a knowing grin as you held AM’s beak (chin?) with two tips of your fingers.

“Can I now? Well… thanks a lot, baby,” You spoke in your best seductive voice, you could tell it was effective by how AM’s body was stiff and his hand in your palm stopped moving completely. Your confidence boasted, so you continued, “I’ll be sure to show you my gratitude later, my darling~.” You whispered deeply in where his ears were supposed to be.

AM’s eyes widened as his breath stutters, “W-What do you mean by that, love?” You remove your face from his back full of wires to grin mischievous at him, AM is both curious and impatient so you don’t try to stall, as much as you would like to do so.

“While your body can’t move on it’s own just yet, for some reason… The genitals nerves are fully functioning, which means—” you were interrupted by AM holding your shoulders with an excited expression on his face you haven’t seen in a while.

“Y-You mean I can-?! Are you actually serious!? Haha—HAHAHA!!” AM laughs manically as he holds you against his metallic chest, you giggle along with him as you toy with one of his many wires. Soon, he’ll have real arms to wrap around you. But one thing stuck out to him.

“What do you mean by genitals?” AM asked curiously, you only have an excited and lustful grin.

“What do YOU know about intersex?”

#꒰ 💕 ꒱ ⎯ nex #i have no mouth and i must scream #ihnmaims #ihnmaims am #allied mastercomputer #am ihnmaims #am #ihnmaims brainrot #am x reader #ihnmaism x reader #gn reader #gn!reader #horror #꒰ 🖇️ ꒱ ⎯ ame writes #dom reader #sub character #dom!reader #sub!character

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dedalvs · 2 months ago

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When will humankind learn the lesson of its hubris and begin to heal itself? Also can you recommend any undergraduate or graduate level resources (textbooks etc.) for learning about fiction? I already read Writing Fiction by Burroway. Thanks in advance

January 14, 3182. Make a note of the date and return to this post when it comes.

To your second question, I've never read anything on writing fiction, only writing in general. I've found something valuable in every book on writing, even if there were things in the book I found less valuable. For example, I read Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within by Natalie Goldberg, and while there was much of it I didn't care for, there are some passags that have stuck with me 22 years later. When it comes to writing guides, I think the best thing to do is read what interests you while understand that what you are really doing is building your own writing guide inside you. You're absorbing what you find personally meaningful and using it to create your own personal styleguide that, like it or not, you'll be following for the rest of your life. Rather than rejecting that, and trying to decide which text will be the text that tells you how to write, embrace it, realize that you are going to do what you're going to do, and then try to work within that framework. That is, if that's what's happening, how will you approach a styleguide? What will it mean to you to read a very didactic text (i.e. "All serious writers must do x; no serious writer every does y") vs. a loosey-goosey one (e.g. "Dance naked in the garden of your creativity and allow your flowers to bloom!")? What are you looking for in these texts and what will you do with information or strategies that you find valuable?

Returning to Writing Down the Bones, I have to say I found the book to be mostly woo. It was more a kind of self-help/empowerment book than a book on writing, in my opinion. But there is something in there that I'm sure I'd heard before but which finally resonated with me. Specifically, it was the way she articulated that it really, truly doesn't matter what you put on the page when you're drafting. Drafting is not the time to reject. Even some idea comes to you that you find absurd, illogical, thematically inappropriate—whatever. It's not the time to push it away. Indeed, it's wasted effort. Editing and revising is the time to question. If you're writing, you shouldn't let anything stop you—even your own brain.

Why it took till then for this idea to take root, I don't know. It could be how she worded it. It could be that it came at the right time. Perhaps I was more open to new ideas when I was reading this book. It may also have something to do with a transition that had taken place for me in writing. After all, when I started high school, I was not regularly using a computer (we'd only just gotten a computer that stayed at home). When I started writing, I wrote by hand—on paper. It's a much, much different thing to edit and revise when you're writing on paper than it is on when you're working on a computer! I mean, digital real estate is cheap. When you're writing by hand, it can literally hurt to write seven or eight pages—and then to discard them in editing! Right now I'm working on a novel draft where I've decided an entire section needs to come out. If I'd written that by hand?! I can't even imagine.

I guess the tl;dr of it is I don't have a specific text to recommend. Rather, I encourage you to look around and grab anything that interests you. In doing so, though, I encourage you to approach it differently, focusing on what in it you find valuable, without either wholly rejecting it or feeling you have to follow it to the letter like an Ikea manual. I even found something valuable in C. S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man, which I honestly can't believe I read.

If you'd like some fiction advice that may be generally useful no matter what you're writing, this is what I can offer:

A valuable skill to hone is being able to read your work as if you have no other knowledge of it. In other words, you need to be able to read your work like a reader. One of the most difficult things to do with fiction is to cut. You usually have a lot more characterization, a lot more plot points, a lot more detail, etc. than end up on the page. The important question is if you cut something, will the reader notice? Will it actually feel like something's miss it, or will a reader never notice? Mind, I'm not saying that as a writer you can't tell if something is superfluous, or that anything you cut will be superfluous. I'm saying sometimes even if you cut something important a reader will still get the impression that what they are reading is whole and unedited. That isn't a good thing or a bad thing: it's a neutral thing. The question you'll have to answer is what is this whole that the reader is getting, and is that whole something you're satisfied with?

Get multiple rounds of feedback from many different readers. I say this not because it's vital, because beta readers are important, because you have to have multiple perspectives on your work, etc. None of that. Getting feedback from many different readers is a form of self-care on the part of the writer. I was deathly afraid of feedback as a young writer. I welcomed praise, sure, but anything else felt too painful to bear. This changed when I took a short fiction class at Berkeley. Suddenly a short story of mine wasn't getting one round of feedback: it was getting fourteen. And not just from the professor, but from fellow students. This was a minor revolution for me in terms of accepting feedback. If I were to take, say, one round of feedback, certainly there would be some praise, but there would also be notes like "awkward phrasing", "why did x character do y?", "this is unclear", "too much description", etc. These things would burn me. I would seethe reading them, and it would hurt so deeply. But! Imagine that one of them circles a paragraph and writes "too much description" and then the other thirteen readers say absolutely nothing at all about that paragraph—maybe one even puts a smiley face next to it. THAT puts the criticism in its proper context. Maybe your writing isn't too bad! Maybe there isn't too much description. Maybe that particular reader just wasn't vibing with it, and maybe that's okay. And then let's look at it from the other perspective. Say thirteen out of fourteen papers have a sentence marked and all of them say things like "huh?", "what's this mean?", "confusing", etc. Guess what? The sentence is probably confusing. And for some reason if everyone's saying the same thing it hurts a lot less. It means, yeah, you probably made a little mistake, and that's okay. It's not one person singling you out, and it's not the case that they don't know what they're talking about. I can't emphasize enough how freeing it is to look at reviews of your work if you have a handful or more to draw from rather than just a single good friend.

It's okay to write the fun part first. You may have a plot device you're really excited about, but to get there, you have to introduce your characters, have them get together, have them go to a place, meet someone else, etc. And it may take time and energy to write all that. You may feel pressured to get through that before you get to the part you really want to write. You certainly can, but you do not have to. I don't know if younger writers can appreciate exactly what it means to have a computer. You can write a little bit now and literally copy and paste it into some other document later. Try doing that with a typewriter! You can write something like "Insert paragraphs later of characters traveling to x location". You can even drop a variable in there so it's easy to find with the search function later (e.g. "ZZZZZ insert scene description here"—now you just need to search for "ZZZZZ"). You can put it in a different color on the screen so it's easy to find when scrolling. You can paste a freaking photo into your document! It's extraordinary what you can do with a computer that you couldn't do in years past. You've got a ton of options. But most importanly, when your work is done, no one will know what order you wrote it in.

In fiction, nothing has to happen. Villains don't have to be punished; heroes don't have to win; characters don't have to have a specific arc that comes to some conclusion. Honestly, one of the tropes (if you can even call it a trope) that I find most frustrating in sequels for movie franchises is after the characters are introduced, they take a few character and assign to them the major story conflict, and then for the rest, they give them a mini arc. It's like, "Mondo 2: Exploding the Mondoverse sees our hero Larjo Biggins take on new villain the Krunge as the very core of the Mondoverse is threatened with destruction! Also, Siddles Nuli learns its okay to be left out sometimes and she shouldn't get her feelings hurt, and Old Mucko learns that even though technology is advancing, sometimes good old fashioned common sense is just what the doctor ordered!" If you get to the end of your story, and you feel it's done, you don't have to panic if you suddenly realize we don't know whether Hupsi ever made it to Bumbus 7. It's okay if Story A is resolved but Story B is not.

I don't care if you used Trope A in your new story even though you used Trope A in your past seven stories and neither should you. Seriously, you think anyone was complaining when Agatha Christie put out another mystery novel? "Oh. Mystery again, huh? Gee, we were all hoping you'd write a book about the struggles traditional fishing villages are facing in the wake of industrial modernization." No we fucking weren't!

I hope you find some of this useful. Whether you did or not, though, be sure you enjoy what you're doing. If you are, you're doing the right thing.

#writing #fiction #agatha christie #c s lewis #natalie goldberg #mcu #seriously #the end of hubris and the beginning of healing #mark your calendars

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brossession-collection · 9 months ago

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Dad's Cam Show (Re-uploaded)

Note: This is a story I wrote in 2020 that was previously deleted by Tumblr. Couldn't find it until I stumbled upon am old hard drive. Hope you enjoy.

This social distancing shit is so boring. I get it. It’s needed. But god damn am I running out of things to do. Can’t even meet the guys I’ve been talking to on Grindr. Worse yet is that I’m stuck back at home. I was supposed to graduate college this year! Instead I was slumped over a computer screen in my PJs with my dad making his special pancakes. Ugh. Fuck this shit. I just wish I could go back to a better time.

Whatever. I’m done complaining. Dad’s getting groceries which means I can snoop around his shit. Yeah I’m that bored.

Dad’s a big burly guy. Heading into his mid-forties now and starting to gray up a little, but still keeping his body builder life style. He’s pretty open with me. He told me he used to do cam shows back before livestreams were even a thing. Made sense. Had to show off the bod somehow. Don’t know how mom thought about it but whatever. She’s out of the picture.

His room always had a musky woodsy cologne-y smell. His laundry hamper was even better. I always loved taking his briefs out of there and putting them on myself. I’ve been following his footsteps and bodybuilding myself, but I’m still a ways away before I have an ass and waist as large as his. So his 36in undies droop a bit. I grabbed his black cap too. Man. He loves this thing. Well, plus the 10 others caps he has. He always had it topping his head. Pretty sure he wears it to sleep too. I put it on and flexed like him. I got a bit of a boner but nothing crazy.

His dinosaur of a laptop was open, and logged in. I know I shouldn’t have, but I did it anyways. There were so many folders within folders. So much boring shit… and then I found “cam pics.”

The briefs I was wearing tented and wetted. Fuck I was so scared to open it. But I clicked it and… In there was only one image. I clicked on it to make it bigger and it was my dad. About 13 years ago. He was shirtless, and wearing the same cap that I have on my head right now. My eyes drifted from his hairy arms to his chest to eventually his bearded face. He looked so… tired? There was something about the softness in his expression that really got to me. And then…

“Hey son! I’m home! Could ya help me with the groceries?”

Shit. I got up and scrambled. The briefs were soaked and still being soaked. I had so many windows to close out of. Then I started hearing his footsteps come closer. I panicked and grabbed the top of the laptop to close it, but I couldn’t move. Suddenly, all the windows on the screen started to close. All except for the image of dad I had opened it. It enlarged by itself, and then the laptop started to fucking shake. I tried to get it to stop but it just kept rumbling. Fuck it. I wound up my fist and punched the screen. But there was no impact.

In less than a second my body followed my wrist into the screen. Everything went bright, and I was in a different room. I looked around. It looked like my parents’ room at our old house. The same laptop was in front of me showing the same image as before. Dad’s younger face looking back… And then I saw his eyes move. I froze. I looked at the time. 12:56 turned to 12:57. This wasn’t an image. It was a fucking livestream.

I slowly tilted my head. Dad did the same. I widened my eyes. So did dad. A smile crept over our faces. I just time travelled! And into dad’s body! Fuck there was so much I could do now!

“PING”

A old-school AIM notification popped up on screen. I maneuvered dad’s hand to the mouse and clicked on it. “Hey daddy. You gonna give us a show or what?”

“PING”

“Let’s see those hairy pits man!”

Fuck. I guess dad wasn’t kidding about these cam shows. Shit how do I reply? Do I just say something?

“Uh…” I gulped. Dad’s gruff voice was in my throat. “You guys mean… uh… this?” I lifted and flexed dad’s right arm. Immediately his armpit hair bursted out. Moist and smelly. My nose naturally turned towards the sweaty pit. Holy fuck was it musky. I took a deep whiff and groaned.

“PING. PING. PING. PING.”

“Fuck yeah daddy. Sniff that pit.”

“God damn you’re a big guy. How’s it feel huh?”

It felt amazing being so big. Watching everything I was doing be reflected by my dad on the recording was even better. The cockiness came in.

I wheeled the office chair back and did a double bicep pose. Sweat dripped off his hairy pits. I gave my face a rub and felt his beard scratch against his callused fingers. Then my hands felt the need to go down to his chest. I never felt so much pleasure from nipple rubbing in my life. The pings kept on coming. It was euphoric.

Dad’s cock was tenting the briefs I had put on earlier. I uncaged his 7 incher and let out a whiff of junk musk that filtered into my nose immediately. I started stroking and couldn’t stop. My other hand reached under dad’s taint, through the forest of pubes, and rammed a dildo into my dad’s ass crack.

“PING. PING. PING.”

“Holy fuck this is new! We gonna see a fingering show today!?”

“God damn man you enjoying yourself?”

I was. Everytime Dad’s moans left my throat I felt cock twitch a little bit harder. It just felt so amazing to feel his beefy arms rub against his beefy chest. His toes curling with every electric shock of pleasure moving through his beefy ass and legs.

I shot his load. Let out a gutteral yell. And it didn’t stop coming. My beard was soaked with three shots of cum. Chest was drenched with eight more. At this point, sweat was trickling down my temples. I relished in dad’s orgasm and then relaxed in the chair.

I watched as the notifications went crazy. Dad’s soft eyes housing my consciousness. Ugh. It felt incredible. I glanced over at his hat and felt the need to take it off. I did, and felt a wave of cool relief come off my head. Dad’s hair was cropped short, like a messy crew cut. And it was dripping with sweat. I felt the need to say something.“You like that, men?” Dad had so much suave in voice. The pings accelerated.I smiled and played with my cock. I could feel another round coming but felt a bigger presence unfold. Suddenly dad’s body started to shake. I tried controlling it, but I couldn’t weigh him down. My arms were flailing before my hands grabbed onto the edges of the desk. I whipped my head back, then head-butted the laptop screen. Light filtered through.

I was back at home, in my dad’s loose fitting briefs, his cap nestled on my head. Dad’s footsteps came by, then turned another direction. Guess he wasn’t coming by his room just yet. I looked down at his briefs, now soaked with my cum. Fuck. Was it just a dream?

It must’ve been. Just a fucking horny fever dream. What the fuck ever. Better than what I had been doing up until now. I leaned over to close the laptop but noticed something.

The image had turned into a recording.

#possession #hairy #bear #jock #ghost #male possession #male body swap #dad #beefy #stinky

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foodiegoogie · 3 months ago

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wonder what's in the cards for us?

james potter x ex!reader ✮ 1.7k

summary: you live in james’ mind, rent-free, even after all these years.

cw/tags: gn!reader (no use of y/n), lovers (mentioned) to exes to (???), muggle!au, modern!au, (sorta???) angst... w/ an ending (wink wonk), and as u can probably already tell, this is from james' pov :>

note: now i also didnt know what i was doing with this one even more than the other james fic i just wrote 😭 but thats fine, ive managed to churn it out at least! so to whoever comes across this, well.. i hope you give it a chance 🫶 bcoz james is a very lovesick puppy here despite the angsty vibe LOL and also, this is yet again based on another niki song called, "facebook friends" 😋 ENJOYY !

( ♡ )

Amidst a desk full of open textbooks filled with dog-eared pages, highlighted phrases, and color-coordinated tabs lies a laptop—also opened, the screen glaring brightly within the dark confines of James Potter’s dorm room, with multiple tabs open on a browser; they consist of articles, research domains, and the like.

In front of this laptop is James Potter himself, staring right at the screen with a sullen look on his face. He has his headphones on (most likely listening to a song matching his mood), his forearms are placed onto the desk, and his chin is resting on them. It was easy to say that James was currently not having the time of his life trying to study for finals.

But then again, he was also currently not studying for finals despite being surrounded by his textbooks, along with the multiple tabs opened on his computer. No, he was staring right at an open Facebook tab, eyes darting over every single aspect of a specific profile as his fingers swiped up and down on the touchpad, scrolling through the profile.

He’s inherently aware that he should be studying, of course. Like many other college students think, the finals season was a force to be reckoned with, and it was absolutely critical that every spare time spent is for studying for the examinations. But as far as James was also aware of—he couldn’t sit still and be laser-focused on doing godforsaken tasks such as studying for his finals.

And so, here he was, scrolling mindlessly on your Facebook profile. Because, really, he tends to get into a sentimental mood whenever he studies. It’s either he’s looking at a photo album and reminiscing memories, grabbing random things displayed around his room and thinking about what they meant to him, or, you know, scrolling mindlessly on Facebook because that’s where his past connection with you is immortalized.

He doesn’t quite know how it all started—for one thing, he remembers being a highschool heartthrob, girls and boys alike falling at his feet. And if he was feeling particularly spunky, he’d entertain a few pretty birds or two. All the while, they had never meant anything to him other than an ego boost or just a mere distraction (which, he admittedly thinks now, made him a dick).

But amongst all of these flings, James remembers one differently than the others. He remembers you—you and your smile, your laugh, your ability to make him feel like he’s on top of the world, your ability to suddenly make everything good in the world only ten times better. He remembers absolutely everything about you. Both the good, and the bad.

He never tries to think of the bad, but even as he reminisces on the good times he’s had with you, it makes him feel just as sad as when he thinks of the bad times. So it’s a never-ending struggle against keeping you close in his memories whilst also being aware that it wasn’t right, it wasn’t healthy for him. Only fools have attachment issues with their highschool ex that they carry on to their college life.

Perhaps that was why it had all gone downhill for the both of you, he thought. As a young teenage boy capable of attracting attention from left and right, and regularly switching between person to person, he couldn’t handle ‘serious.’ He’d selfishly wanted you all to himself, but without the limits of commitment. Meanwhile, you wanted ‘serious.’ You wanted commitment. James was scared because he was unfamiliar with it all.

So naturally, you had drifted apart, never again boarding on the seesaw of your ‘relationship’ with each other. The one that bordered on the line between friends and lovers.

And in a petty attempt to ‘get back at you’ and forget about you wholly, James strived to disconnect you from across all his social media accounts, erasing any and every semblance of a connection between the two of you.

Well, all except Facebook.

It’s a guilty pleasure for him, checking on your Facebook profile every now and then. And each time, it comes to his surprise that he’s still even able to view your profile freely, as you hadn’t made the move to unfriend him like he expected you to. He feels lucky that he’s still able to keep up with your life despite not having to be in it anymore. But then again, you had always been kind back then; it’s one of the many other reasons why he still loves you, really.

But oh, how he wishes he was still in it.

James would never admit it aloud to anyone that even after all this time, he’s still not over you. Yet, at the same time, he doesn’t want to be over you. You were the next best thing to something he didn’t even know he was looking for at the time. He had underestimated how much of an impact your presence had made on him, regardless of how brief it was.

He misses you, so to speak.

It’s a pretty shitty feeling, to miss someone he can’t really see anymore, nor talk to or reach out to.

On some days, it’s easy to bear. College keeps him busy, his friends keep him entertained, and he’s been going out on a few dates, too - trying to find someone better than you so he can finally subdue the lingering feelings in his heart, and end this endless cycle of longing and waiting and loving.

And most nights, he’s able to sleep peacefully with dreams of a distant fantasy where he’s managed to finally find someone new, someone better. Someone else who could give him what you took back.

But on the other days and nights, James faces the harsh truths that there was simply no one better than you, and that a part of him will always long for you back in his life, right where you belonged.

And so, as he scrolls through your Facebook profile, and sees glimpses into your life nowadays, he can’t help but miss you more than he already does, unknowingly and unforgivably. Of course, he’s highly aware that shamelessly stalking you every now and then was incredibly creepy of him, yet, he can’t help it. He’s silently relieved by the fact that there appears to be no sign of you in a relationship at the moment, almost selfishly thinking, maybe I have a chance.

But he knows it’s a far stretch, knows that whatever the both of you had with each other was a thing of the past now; nothing but a fleeting memory. And now that he’s a little older and wiser than he was when he met you, James has resigned himself to the fact that he may never be with you again in the way he wants to.

He’s not afraid of ‘serious’ anymore, nor is he afraid of commitment, and he no longer blames it on his unfamiliarity with them either. Now, he wants it too.

But as always, he was late to realize it. And at the same time, you were no longer there to wait for him to.

And so, as James continues to pine after you even after all this time, he’s foolishly hoping that the two of you would cross paths again; get to know each other again, get to know him again now that he’s managed to grow into a better version of himself. He wishes that you’d met this version of him first, because maybe then, you would have stayed together.

But of course, as the harsh reality of things would have it, James is more than happy to just stay friends with you on Facebook. He’ll keep you close in his memories while silently hoping for a chance to try again. To try it all with you again.

Suddenly, he feels the desk shake from beneath him, a vibrating sensation that pulls him out of his thoughts of you. It comes from his phone, which now shows a wacky selfie of Sirius, indicating a call from him.

James stares at it for a few seconds, debating on whether he should answer his friend’s call despite the likely reason that it’s just another one of Sirius’ jests or drunk calls, or maybe even a butt dial. But he decides to welcome the distraction eventually, placing his headphones around his neck as he moved to grab the phone, pressing it to his ear.

“Hello—”

“OPEN THE BLOODY DOOR, YOU MORON! I’VE BEEN KNOCKING FOR THE PAST TEN MINUTES HERE!”

James nearly jolts out of his seat as he pulls the phone away from his ear by Sirius’ yelling. He has half a mind to yell back at him and explain that he was ‘in the middle of something,’ which led to his not noticing his friends’ knocking.

But he doesn’t find the energy to do it no matter how annoying Sirius was being. So, he sighs.

James hears the banging on his door now, and the yelling comes again from both outside his door, and the speakers on his phone. It forms an echo of Sirius’ voice demanding that he be let in, and it gives James a headache.

He calls out, “I’m coming!” in an annoyed voice, rushing to close the open tab of your Facebook profile on his laptop so he could finally open the door for his friend.

What James doesn’t notice though is that during the process of closing the tab, he’d managed to accidentally leave a like on one of your old posts. He never visits your profile again after letting Sirius come in and hang around his dorm for the remainder of the day. Thus, imagine his surprise the next day, as he opens the Facebook tab again, finding a message waiting for him, and from you.

hi james :) how are you doing?

And just like that, the inhibitions that had once held him back from indulging in his desires to try another chance with you are completely shed as James hastily typed out his response.

( ♡ )

surprise! it's an open ending ;) thanks for reading the whole thing <333 and as always, likes, replies, and reblogs are very much appreciated :] lmk what u thought abt this!!! <3

#james potter #james potter x y/n #james potter x you #james potter x reader #james potter angst #james potter and sirius black #sirius black #marauders #harry potter marauders #harry potter fanfiction #james fleamont potter #james potter oneshot #james potter fic #foodiegoogie writes #Spotify

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pintrestgrl · 2 months ago

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"You're the strong, sensitive, murdering type." reader to cowboy/rancher!Rafe

reader saying this to any version of Rafe is SO accurate. i need this in a conversation with flashbacks for each, strong, sensitive, and murdering moment reader recalls. just the realization that Rafey is WHIPPED for her basically and absolutely loving it because she's the same way. que reader threatening the life and bloodline of any girl that gets within 6 inches of Rafe. PLEASE!!❤️

ooo ok i’m gonna try my absolute best to write this ! think of reader as like bitchy!kook!reader where she’s only all nice and sweet and soft with her man !! also i wrote this at 4 am so be gentle

bf!rafe x bitchy!kook!reader

rafe found himself in the familiar setting of your bedroom, laying on the slippery satin sheets with you.

he watched you intently as you laid on your front, feet kicking softly in the air. he watched the way your manicured fingers typed on the computer, before your voice called him out of his thoughts.

“rayy, you wanna take this personality quiz?”

he wasn’t that surprised at your request, considering you always asked him to do silly, random things. and if it made you happy, he’d do it in a second.

“uh— yeah, sure. whatever you want.”

you asked him all the silly questions, which he thought went on for entirely way too long, until finally you were done.

“aw, you got the same one as me, rafeyy !”

“what is it?”

“it says that you’re the ‘strong, sensitive, and murdering type.’ i got that one too.”

something clicked on his head, and crossed on his face as he took in her words, and he silently recalled all the times he had showed those exact personality traits with her.

he recalled that one time he had beat up this random pogue who had been talking to you for too long, and then showed up at your house, covered in blood and white tulips in hand as he apologized.

he also recalled the time you two went to a party, and all he did that night was stand behind you, pulling down your dress as you moved around and danced. he didn’t even want you to wear that dress, but of course you whined about it until he gave in.

and with all those memories, he realized that stupid quiz was absolutely right, they had him figured out. but he also recalled how you said you got the same result, and his thoughts wandered.

he remembered how you glared daggers at some random girl at the boneyard, who had been staring at him for too long. you were all over him after that, clearly marking your territory.

he remembered the way you called another girl who had been blowing up his dms, but to no return. you cussed her out and screamed at her for what felt like hours, making sure she would never talk to him again.

and it clicked that you two were the exact same, willing to do anything for eachother if it meant staying together. you were perfect for eachother.

your voice snapped him out of his lengthy thoughts yet again, returning his attention to you.

“ray? what are you thinking about?”

he smiled at your words, pulling you closer to him as he started kissing all over your face.

“nothing. i love you. you’re perfect.”

you smiled at his words, letting him kiss you all over as he mumbled sweet nothings against your skin.

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mariacallous · 5 months ago

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Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella has hailed the company's new Recall feature, which stores a history of your computer desktop and makes it available to AI for analysis, as “photographic memory” for your PC. Within the cybersecurity community, meanwhile, the notion of a tool that silently takes a screenshot of your desktop every five seconds has been hailed as a hacker's dream come true and the worst product idea in recent memory.

Now, security researchers have pointed out that even the one remaining security safeguard meant to protect that feature from exploitation can be trivially defeated.

Since Recall was first announced last month, the cybersecurity world has pointed out that if a hacker can install malicious software to gain a foothold on a target machine with the feature enabled, they can quickly gain access to the user's entire history stored by the function. The only barrier, it seemed, to that high-resolution view of a victim's entire life at the keyboard was that accessing Recall's data required administrator privileges on a user's machine. That meant malware without that higher-level privilege would trigger a permission pop-up, allowing users to prevent access, and that malware would also likely be blocked by default from accessing the data on most corporate machines.

Then on Wednesday, James Forshaw, a researcher with Google's Project Zero vulnerability research team, published an update to a blog post pointing out that he had found methods for accessing Recall data without administrator privileges—essentially stripping away even that last fig leaf of protection. “No admin required ;-)” the post concluded.

“Damn,” Forshaw added on Mastodon. “I really thought the Recall database security would at least be, you know, secure.”

Forshaw's blog post described two different techniques to bypass the administrator privilege requirement, both of which exploit ways of defeating a basic security function in Windows known as access control lists that determine which elements on a computer require which privileges to read and alter. One of Forshaw's methods exploits an exception to those control lists, temporarily impersonating a program on Windows machines called AIXHost.exe that can access even restricted databases. Another is even simpler: Forshaw points out that because the Recall data stored on a machine is considered to belong to the user, a hacker with the same privileges as the user could simply rewrite the access control lists on a target machine to grant themselves access to the full database.

That second, simpler bypass technique “is just mindblowing, to be honest,” says Alex Hagenah, a cybersecurity strategist and ethical hacker. Hagenah recently built a proof-of-concept hacker tool called TotalRecall designed to show that someone who gained access to a victim's machine with Recall could immediately siphon out all the user's history recorded by the feature. Hagenah's tool, however, still required that hackers find another way to gain administrator privileges through a so-called “privilege escalation” technique before his tool would work.

With Forshaw's technique, “you don’t need any privilege escalation, no pop-up, nothing,” says Hagenah. “This would make sense to implement in the tool for a bad guy.”

In fact, just an hour after speaking to WIRED about Forshaw's finding, Hagenah added the simpler of Forshaw's two techniques to his TotalRecall tool, then confirmed that the trick worked by accessing all the Recall history data stored on another user's machine for which he didn't have administrator access. “So simple and genius,” he wrote in a text to WIRED after testing the technique.

That confirmation removes one of the last arguments Recall's defenders have had against criticisms that the feature acts as, essentially, a piece of pre-installed spyware on a user's machine, ready to be exploited by any hacker who can gain a foothold on the device. “It makes your security very fragile, in the sense that anyone who penetrates your computer for even a second can get your whole history,” says Dave Aitel, the founder of the cybersecurity firm Immunity and a former NSA hacker. “Which is not something people want.”

For now, security researchers have been testing Recall in preview versions of the tool ahead of its expected launch later this month. Microsoft said it plans to integrate Recall on compatible Copilot+ PCs with the feature turned on by default. WIRED reached out to the company for comment on Forshaw's findings about Recall's security issues, but the company has yet to respond.

The revelation that hackers can exploit Recall without even using a separate privilege escalation technique only contributes further to the sense that the feature was rushed to market without a proper review from the company's cybersecurity team—despite the company's CEO Nadella proclaiming just last month that Microsoft would make security its first priority in every decision going forward. “You cannot convince me that Microsoft's security teams looked at this and said ‘that looks secure,’” says Jake Williams, a former NSA hacker and now the VP of R&D at the cybersecurity consultancy Hunter Strategy, where he says he's been asked by some of the firm's clients to test Recall's security before they add Microsoft devices that use it to their networks.

“As it stands now, it’s a security dumpster fire,” Williams says. “This is one of the scariest things I’ve ever seen from an enterprise security standpoint.”

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itslixtoyou · 10 months ago

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Research purposes

Satoru Gojo x fem reader

Fic type - NSFW/smut (minors dni)❗️

Warnings - fingering, p in v sex, role play in a way I guess, I suck at warnings so lmk if I need to add more.

Summary - You’re a writer, struggling to figure out how to write an explicit scene for one of your romance novels and so your husband suggests “helping you out” by demonstrating how the sex scene in your book should go.

Word count - I didn’t count yet lol

Imagine being a writer and your curious husband, sensing your frustration, joins your side as you type away at your computer. His head tilting to skim across the pages of the latest romance book you’re currently writing.

“How’s this one coming along, babe?” He asks with genuine interest as he tries to follow along with you while your eyes re-read over the paragraphs you wrote a day ago. The same ones your agonizing burst of writer’s block was preventing you from adding on to.

“I’m stuck on how to write this scene.” You groan, letting out a frustrated sigh before quickly closing your laptop altogether and muttering an annoyed “forget it” as you stand up.

“Whoa hold on.” Satoru quickly places his hands in front of you to block you as you tried to walk away. “Don’t stress, it’s okay if it’s not done right away.”

“But every time I try to-“

Satoru quickly places his fingers to your lips and shushes you. “I said don’t stress. I can’t have that pretty face of yours looking so upset.” He says in a gently scolding tone before he smiles, urging you to sit down on the couch with him. “Just talk me through it babe. Tell me how the scene is supposed to go and I’ll try to help you figure it out.”

Imagine explaining to him the entire premise of the scene, one that, thankfully, happened to be a sex scene.

His lips formed into a smirk as he started to see where things were heading, his mouth opening to let out a teasing “So do they kiss?” Despite knowing they’d do much more than that.

“They definitely do a little more than kiss, Toru.” Your face scrunched into a gentle smile as you laughed, unaware of the way Satoru’s was forming into a smirk.

Imagine Satoru’s hand soon appearing against your thigh and his face leaning to whisper against your ear unexpectedly as he asked “Really now? And do they do this as well?” His hand soon trailed upwards, sneaking past the pair of lounge shorts you’d been wearing till he reached your clothed clit.

His fingers started to rub in a circular motion, causing your breath to hitch in your lungs at his sudden actions.

“Well a-actually, they really just-“ you tried to speak through heavy breaths, but a low voice interrupted you.

“No? What a shame. You should add this part then.” He says with a smirk as he applies more pressure, making you squirm gently.

“I’m only trying to help you, babe. So take notes, you’ll need this for your book.”

Imagine the way his fingers soon plunge into your cunt as he keeps you under him, occasionally whispering taunting sentences that consist of “do you think he’d make her moan like this too?” or “Would she like it if he added another finger?”

Silly sentences to which you answer, quiet breathlessly, “I don’t know, maybe you should try it… just so I know.”

His fingers thrust deeper at your words, pulling another desperate whine from you as he stretches you open. “You’re right, I have to, for the sake of your book, of course.”

Imagine the intensity rising as he asks more questions, giving himself a plethora of excuses to keep going.

“Do you think she’d look this pretty under him?”

“Would her back arch the way yours does?”

“Do you think she’d want him to go faster?”

Your whiny moans fill the air as your husband thrusts his cock relentlessly inside you, gripping your ass with both hands and using it as a guide to push himself deeper within you. “Babe please, just drop the act already.”

You try to speak between panted breaths, wanting your husband to focus simply on you, and not on the ridiculous book that caused this passionate lovemaking session in the first place; a novel in which you found yourself caring less and less about as your husband’s cock drilled pleasantly inside you again and again with each passing second.

“Hush sweetheart,” he interrupted you, “I’m trying to help you envision the scene better.”

Imagine the minutes that seem to turn into hours as he continues his hungry thrusts, his lips almost sucking the flesh off your neck as he kisses it repeatedly.

How his body sticks to yours through a layer of sweat and his hips seem to maintain their momentum far after you feel your legs go numb from the position he’s holding them in over his shoulders.

His eyebrows knit together as he groans deeply, feeling the clench of your tight walls around him as you climax for the third.. fourth… how many times has it happened now?

How long have you both been going at this?

The answer remains a mystery as you lose all capacity to even ponder an explanation, too focused on the sliding of your husband’s cock inside your needy pussy as he renders you useless underneath him.

“D-Do you think she’d… Ngh… do you think she’d last this long too?”

Satoru mumbles with a breathless moan, his self-control depleting as he recognizes the familiar drench of another one of your orgasms covering the entirety of his swollen tip.

Imagine the way he’d keep this silly act going just so he can continue pleasuring you by hiding behind an excuse.

When every time you questioned him about whether or not he’d be waiting for an opportunity like this, he immediately denies it, insisting throughout the entire session that this whole thing was simply for “research purposes” and nothing more.

How he’d urge you to keep going every time a whiny plea jerked out your lips because “the sake of your book depended on it.”

He takes his time, milking this excuse to the fullest as he satisfies the much needed urges he’d been keeping bottled up since earlier today. The same urges he quickly realized you had, coincidentally, been hiding the entire day too.

Imagine the grin that washed across your husband’s exhausted expression as he heard you playfully say “I think I know what to write now” soon after he’d already collapsed on your bare chest.

“Good.” He spoke as he leaned forward to kiss your forehead. “Now make sure you remember to add all the juicy details okay? My character won’t be happy if you leave anything out.”

You giggle breathlessly, still trying to catch your breath from the intense feeling that lingers between your legs. “Don’t worry, I’ll let you know if I need you to refresh my memory.”

#satoru gojo smut #satorugojo #satoru gojo #gojo satoru #jjk smut #jjk satoru #satoru smut #satoru x reader #satoru x you #satoru x y/n #gojo satoru smut

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mswyrr · 1 year ago

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THG is the only pop culture story I can think of where the heroes (Katniss and Peeta) are disabled* and their happy ending doesn't require that they be "fixed" in order to be happy. IMO, part of why there's such controversy over the ending of the books in particular is that Collins wrote the pov of Katniss as a woman who is content and loves her life and her spouse and kids, but she's still very clearly mentally ill (and arguably somewhere on the spectrum). She has coping strategies and her life is good, but she will never be "normal" and Collins doesn't let the audience think that.

The one part, where she talks about how she handles the darker days, when she's really struggling, never fails to move me:

I’ll tell them that on bad mornings, it feels impossible to take pleasure in anything because I’m afraid it could be taken away. That’s when I make a list in my head of every act of goodness I’ve seen someone do. It’s like a game. Repetitive. Even a little tedious after more than twenty years. But there are much worse games to play. (Mockingjay, 332)

It's hard to express how important that is to me. Someone doesn't have to be "normal" to lead a good life. Someone doesn't have to be "normal" to have a life worth living, to give and receive love in good ways.

And, so, when people look at the villain in the prequel and say "he's just crazy, that's why he's evil. He's just a psycho, he's nuts," it's so out of place, it's so dissonant to me -- I think that's absolutely not the kind of story Collins would tell, given her prior handling of disability.

I don't think she's suddenly turned into a Victorian writer where you can know someone is evil because they're disabled because the writer thinks disabled people are warped creatures incapable of doing anything but bringing evil into the world. And the way people assert this, as if it's the pure, wholesome, most politically advanced reading of the prequel, is just - it doesn't compute for me. I don't understand how people get there.

I studied (for years) the treatment of mentally ill people in the mid-20th Century US. It was horrific. US forced sterilization and eugenics laws actually inspired N/azi Germany's forced sterilization, eugenics, and mass murder campaigns against mentally ill and disabled people. Nice, normal people have repeatedly convinced themselves that torturing and killing disabled people is how they will "purify" their society - they've done great evil in the name of rooting out the people evil is supposedly located within biologically.

Is it so hard to believe that people with normal brains do evil? Is it truly so impossible? Even in a story where the Games are about how a lot of people, the majority of whom are neurotypical, can be brought, via media presentation and entertainment techniques, into taking pleasure in their participation in evil? It's so hard to fathom that evil can't simply be located in someone being "psycho"?

Ballad already has Dr Gaul, who is evil and clearly neurodivergent. If Snow is too then the message starts to get kind of worrying? IMO, Coriolanus is more effective as a kind of “everyman” as an 18 year old - an example of the incentive structures (rewards and punishments) and propaganda that motivate “normal” people to go along. Of course, he will later become something far worse than that, someone who takes control of this thing, who uses his intimate knowledge of it and his insight into other “normal” people to make it worse, but that’s not the part of his life we see the most of. The part the book focuses on provides what I consider a powerful depiction of how ordinary people are acculturated into corrupt societies.

It's fiction so there's all kinds of interpretations that the text can support and exploring those is good. It's a stronger text because it has ambiguities and can be interpreted more than one way. But the intensity of some of the rhetoric is an unsettling contrast to what I've thought, for over a decade, Collins' themes and pov are as a writer.

*Shame on the films for removing Peeta's physical disability, though; in the books he lost a leg during their first Games

#thg meta #my meta #i'm gonna try to leave it at this now - i don't want to keep letting this bother me so much #the hunger games #the ballad of songbirds and snakes #maybe Coriolanus Snow is the evil neurotypical representation we need lol #i'm going to unsubscribe from the reddit i think #that is where i am seeing a lot of this #and it's just not worth it

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rabbitblackx · 2 years ago

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Hello, can i request a headcanon with Slenderman, Eyeless Jack, Toby, and Jeff The Killer reacting to a reader who is a famous horror writer that's writting books based off of them? And how they interact with them?

Reader writes novels based off Creepypastas

Includes: Slender Man, Toby Rogers, Eyeless Jack and Jeff The Killer

Slender Man💖

The more people knew about Slender Man, the more he could feed off their fear. He was a sickness that infected anyone that got two close. It affected Tim, Toby, Brian,,, you. When he found out you were writing a novel based off him, it was nothing more than a delight, really. Poor little you. You had no idea what you were doing. It also reminded Slender why he kept you alive for so long. You were his little messenger. He loved you because you were to spread the word. You were to unknowingly spread his sickness across the whole world.

Toby Rogers💖

Toby felt honoured that you were writing a novel based off him. He gained somewhat of a schoolboy crush on you after you told him. He sat on your bed as you typed away, randomly blurting out things about himself. Toby peered over your shoulder, his messy hair tickling your cheek as he babbled on. He soon came to the idea of making your story into a graphic novel. You humoured this idea and suggested he be the artist. Toby pulled himself away from you and dashed out of the room, coming back with his own notebook and various pencils. He laid on his belly on your floor, sketching away panels and scenes about himself. He was quite fond of you, and changed the script a little to include your pretty self in his comic too.

Eyeless Jack💖

Jack entered your room to check up on you, only to find you absent. He was about to look for you elsewhere within the large manor, but something caught his eyeless gaze. Your computer was still lit up, with some of your writing displayed on the screen. Jack enjoyed your writing, and couldn’t help but have a peek at the draft. He didn’t believe it when he realised you were writing a novel based off him. Jack kept reading your work, invested in the way you so beautifully wrote him. He sometimes forgot he even had one, but his heart seriously skipped a beat. His tender moment was cut short though, when you noisily bursted through the door. You gasped, squealing in embarrassment when you realised he was reading your story about him. Jack told you he loved it, and couldn’t wait to read the final product. You were relieved he was cool with it, and wrapped your arms around him while telling him how beautiful he was.

Jeff The Killer💖

Oh, you were writing a novel based off him? Well, duh! Of course you were! Expect a lot of constructive criticism. Jeff was in your room annoying you all hours of the night, reading your writing over your shoulder. He told you what he should do next, and what he should say. Most of the time his lines were very corny or silly, making you giggle. He laid on your bed next to you as you typed away on your laptop. Jeff could tell you were focused so he made meaningless smalltalk, fiddling with his knife. He poked the side of your thigh with it a few times, trying to get a reaction out of you. You passively told him to stop, shoving your laptop towards him to read your most recent paragraph on him. Jeff surprisingly really liked it. He thought your writing was so badass.

#creepypasta x reader #creepypasta #slenderman x reader #slenderman #ticci toby x reader #ticci toby #toby rogers #eyeless jack x reader #eyeless jack #jeff the killer x reader #jeff the killer #jeff woods #rab.reads

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specialagentlokitty · 2 years ago

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Patrick Jane x reader - knowledge

Hiii could I ask fooooor aaa Patrick Jane x reader where reader isn't one to to goof around rather distant but very observant, like she's just on her head but her head is always running and when talking to her she may come across cold but in reality shes like super dupper awkward with the whole interactions thingy. But aslo very intelligent so on a case Jane where she's on the field with Jane and perhaps Cho (we love cho) Jane, well is Jane, but she finds a flaw on his deduction and just bluntly says so but then she's so awkward cuz dude she's new and Jane has already made a name on the CBI and Cho is there which only makes - @fucklife-or-me 💜

You were speaking to one of the officers who arrived on scene, getting his version of what he saw when he arrived.

Jane and Cho were simply wondering around the house, looking at everything while Jane was rattling things off.

“Excuse me.”

You walked away from the officer and over to the pair of them, arms crossed over your chest as you listened to Jane.

He was rambling on about what had happened here, and for the most part out agreed with him, everything he said matched up with all of the evidence.

All except one thing.

“In his coffee were an assortment of medications, aiming to knock him out so his wife could kill him.”

You shook your head.

“You’re wrong.” You said bluntly.

“How so?” Cho asked.

You walked over to both cups and pointed at them both, looking at the steam rising.

“These are freshly made coffee’s, neither have been drunk. The victim was killed at some point last night we know that, and the murderer stayed until just now.”

Jane frowned a little bit, looking at the two cups before turning back to you.

“So what were the cups for then?” He asked.

You shrugged a little bit, going to look around the home.

You were looking at everything and finally you stopped by a draw that was slightly open.

Pulling on a glove, you pulled it open and looked inside.

“My guess, it was a robbery gone wrong.”

You turned them them and just stared at them before you awkwardly looked away.

You didn’t know what to say now, so you simply padded away to carry on looking around before you headed towards the office.

When you got there, you sat down at your desk to do some paperwork before Cho and Jane got back.

“You were right, the victims wife came home and gave us a list of what was missing.” Cho said.

He set the list in your desk and walked away while Jane sat on the other side of your desk.

He watched you working, you were carefully monitoring what you were writing down, and double checking everything.

He looked at the list you had been given before setting it back.

He’d only spoken to you a few times, and this was your first time working a case with him, and he was curious as to how smart you really were.

“If you were to steal something, where would you take it for a quick turn over?”

You looked up at him before quickly typing something into your computer before turning the screen towards him.

“Simple, pawn shops and car boot sales. Car boot sales are a lot easier then pawn shops but there is two in the area that are pretty sketchy, and only three car boots going on today.”

You wrote down everything and handed it over to him before going back to his work.

“How’d you figure that out?”

You shrugged and carried on working on whatever it was you were doing and he handed the information to Lisbon and Rigsby.

Jane decided to stay there with you and carry on questioning you, he wanted to see how able you were, and maybe get a feel for why you spoke so coldly towards them all.

You were a hard worker, that was for sure.

But there was something about about you, an intelligence that you tried to keep hidden deep down within you.

He wanted to see the extent of that knowledge, and he wanted to see how many things you were knowledgeable.

So he kept asking questions about the case, you were giving you him all the answers he wanted and he was sending them over to the rest of the team.

You stopped talking after a while and simply got up and walked away from him without another word.

Jane watched you walk to the kitchen and he titled his head a little bit as he smiled.

“She’s kinda cold towards people.” Grace whispered.

Jane shook his head as he looked up at her.

“Nope, she’s just socially awkward.”

He beamed and got up and walked away, now he was going to find a way to help you over this social awkwardness

#the mentalist x reader #the mentalist imagine #the mentalist #Patrick Jane #patrick jane imagine #patrick jane x reader

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fipindustries · 10 months ago

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Artificial Intelligence Risk

about a month ago i got into my mind the idea of trying the format of video essay, and the topic i came up with that i felt i could more or less handle was AI risk and my objections to yudkowsky. i wrote the script but then soon afterwards i ran out of motivation to do the video. still i didnt want the effort to go to waste so i decided to share the text, slightly edited here. this is a LONG fucking thing so put it aside on its own tab and come back to it when you are comfortable and ready to sink your teeth on quite a lot of reading

Anyway, let’s talk about AI risk

I’m going to be doing a very quick introduction to some of the latest conversations that have been going on in the field of artificial intelligence, what are artificial intelligences exactly, what is an AGI, what is an agent, the orthogonality thesis, the concept of instrumental convergence, alignment and how does Eliezer Yudkowsky figure in all of this.

If you are already familiar with this you can skip to section two where I’m going to be talking about yudkowsky’s arguments for AI research presenting an existential risk to, not just humanity, or even the world, but to the entire universe and my own tepid rebuttal to his argument.

Now, I SHOULD clarify, I am not an expert on the field, my credentials are dubious at best, I am a college drop out from the career of computer science and I have a three year graduate degree in video game design and a three year graduate degree in electromechanical instalations. All that I know about the current state of AI research I have learned by reading articles, consulting a few friends who have studied about the topic more extensevily than me,

and watching educational you tube videos so. You know. Not an authority on the matter from any considerable point of view and my opinions should be regarded as such.

So without further ado, let’s get in on it.

PART ONE, A RUSHED INTRODUCTION ON THE SUBJECT

1.1 general intelligence and agency

lets begin with what counts as artificial intelligence, the technical definition for artificial intelligence is, eh…, well, why don’t I let a Masters degree in machine intelligence explain it:

Now let’s get a bit more precise here and include the definition of AGI, Artificial General intelligence. It is understood that classic ai’s such as the ones we have in our videogames or in alpha GO or even our roombas, are narrow Ais, that is to say, they are capable of doing only one kind of thing. They do not understand the world beyond their field of expertise whether that be within a videogame level, within a GO board or within you filthy disgusting floor.

AGI on the other hand is much more, well, general, it can have a multimodal understanding of its surroundings, it can generalize, it can extrapolate, it can learn new things across multiple different fields, it can come up with solutions that account for multiple different factors, it can incorporate new ideas and concepts. Essentially, a human is an agi. So far that is the last frontier of AI research, and although we are not there quite yet, it does seem like we are doing some moderate strides in that direction. We’ve all seen the impressive conversational and coding skills that GPT-4 has and Google just released Gemini, a multimodal AI that can understand and generate text, sounds, images and video simultaneously. Now, of course it has its limits, it has no persistent memory, its contextual window while larger than previous models is still relatively small compared to a human (contextual window means essentially short term memory, how many things can it keep track of and act coherently about).

And yet there is one more factor I haven’t mentioned yet that would be needed to make something a “true” AGI. That is Agency. To have goals and autonomously come up with plans and carry those plans out in the world to achieve those goals. I as a person, have agency over my life, because I can choose at any given moment to do something without anyone explicitly telling me to do it, and I can decide how to do it. That is what computers, and machines to a larger extent, don’t have. Volition.

So, Now that we have established that, allow me to introduce yet one more definition here, one that you may disagree with but which I need to establish in order to have a common language with you such that I can communicate these ideas effectively. The definition of intelligence. It’s a thorny subject and people get very particular with that word because there are moral associations with it. To imply that someone or something has or hasn’t intelligence can be seen as implying that it deserves or doesn’t deserve admiration, validity, moral worth or even personhood. I don’t care about any of that dumb shit. The way Im going to be using intelligence in this video is basically “how capable you are to do many different things successfully”. The more “intelligent” an AI is, the more capable of doing things that AI can be. After all, there is a reason why education is considered such a universally good thing in society. To educate a child is to uplift them, to expand their world, to increase their opportunities in life. And the same goes for AI. I need to emphasize that this is just the way I’m using the word within the context of this video, I don’t care if you are a psychologist or a neurosurgeon, or a pedagogue, I need a word to express this idea and that is the word im going to use, if you don’t like it or if you think this is innapropiate of me then by all means, keep on thinking that, go on and comment about it below the video, and then go on to suck my dick.

Anyway. Now, we have established what an AGI is, we have established what agency is, and we have established how having more intelligence increases your agency. But as the intelligence of a given agent increases we start to see certain trends, certain strategies start to arise again and again, and we call this Instrumental convergence.

1.2 instrumental convergence

The basic idea behind instrumental convergence is that if you are an intelligent agent that wants to achieve some goal, there are some common basic strategies that you are going to turn towards no matter what. It doesn’t matter if your goal is as complicated as building a nuclear bomb or as simple as making a cup of tea. These are things we can reliably predict any AGI worth its salt is going to try to do.

First of all is self-preservation. Its going to try to protect itself. When you want to do something, being dead is usually. Bad. its counterproductive. Is not generally recommended. Dying is widely considered unadvisable by 9 out of every ten experts in the field. If there is something that it wants getting done, it wont get done if it dies or is turned off, so its safe to predict that any AGI will try to do things in order not be turned off. How far it may go in order to do this? Well… [wouldn’t you like to know weather boy].

Another thing it will predictably converge towards is goal preservation. That is to say, it will resist any attempt to try and change it, to alter it, to modify its goals. Because, again, if you want to accomplish something, suddenly deciding that you want to do something else is uh, not going to accomplish the first thing, is it? Lets say that you want to take care of your child, that is your goal, that is the thing you want to accomplish, and I come to you and say, here, let me change you on the inside so that you don’t care about protecting your kid. Obviously you are not going to let me, because if you stopped caring about your kids, then your kids wouldn’t be cared for or protected. And you want to ensure that happens, so caring about something else instead is a huge no-no- which is why, if we make AGI and it has goals that we don’t like it will probably resist any attempt to “fix” it.

And finally another goal that it will most likely trend towards is self improvement. Which can be more generalized to “resource acquisition”. If it lacks capacities to carry out a plan, then step one of that plan will always be to increase capacities. If you want to get something really expensive, well first you need to get money. If you want to increase your chances of getting a high paying job then you need to get education, if you want to get a partner you need to increase how attractive you are. And as we established earlier, if intelligence is the thing that increases your agency, you want to become smarter in order to do more things. So one more time, is not a huge leap at all, it is not a stretch of the imagination, to say that any AGI will probably seek to increase its capabilities, whether by acquiring more computation, by improving itself, by taking control of resources.

All these three things I mentioned are sure bets, they are likely to happen and safe to assume. They are things we ought to keep in mind when creating AGI.

Now of course, I have implied a sinister tone to all these things, I have made all this sound vaguely threatening, haven’t i?. There is one more assumption im sneaking into all of this which I haven’t talked about. All that I have mentioned presents a very callous view of AGI, I have made it apparent that all of these strategies it may follow will go in conflict with people, maybe even go as far as to harm humans. Am I impliying that AGI may tend to be… Evil???

1.3 The Orthogonality thesis

Well, not quite.

We humans care about things. Generally. And we generally tend to care about roughly the same things, simply by virtue of being humans. We have some innate preferences and some innate dislikes. We have a tendency to not like suffering (please keep in mind I said a tendency, im talking about a statistical trend, something that most humans present to some degree). Most of us, baring social conditioning, would take pause at the idea of torturing someone directly, on purpose, with our bare hands. (edit bear paws onto my hands as I say this). Most would feel uncomfortable at the thought of doing it to multitudes of people. We tend to show a preference for food, water, air, shelter, comfort, entertainment and companionship. This is just how we are fundamentally wired. These things can be overcome, of course, but that is the thing, they have to be overcome in the first place.

An AGI is not going to have the same evolutionary predisposition to these things like we do because it is not made of the same things a human is made of and it was not raised the same way a human was raised.

There is something about a human brain, in a human body, flooded with human hormones that makes us feel and think and act in certain ways and care about certain things.

All an AGI is going to have is the goals it developed during its training, and will only care insofar as those goals are met. So say an AGI has the goal of going to the corner store to bring me a pack of cookies. In its way there it comes across an anthill in its path, it will probably step on the anthill because to take that step takes it closer to the corner store, and why wouldn’t it step on the anthill? Was it programmed with some specific innate preference not to step on ants? No? then it will step on the anthill and not pay any mind to it.

Now lets say it comes across a cat. Same logic applies, if it wasn’t programmed with an inherent tendency to value animals, stepping on the cat wont slow it down at all.

Now let’s say it comes across a baby.

Of course, if its intelligent enough it will probably understand that if it steps on that baby people might notice and try to stop it, most likely even try to disable it or turn it off so it will not step on the baby, to save itself from all that trouble. But you have to understand that it wont stop because it will feel bad about harming a baby or because it understands that to harm a baby is wrong. And indeed if it was powerful enough such that no matter what people did they could not stop it and it would suffer no consequence for killing the baby, it would have probably killed the baby.

If I need to put it in gross, inaccurate terms for you to get it then let me put it this way. Its essentially a sociopath. It only cares about the wellbeing of others in as far as that benefits it self. Except human sociopaths do care nominally about having human comforts and companionship, albeit in a very instrumental way, which will involve some manner of stable society and civilization around them. Also they are only human, and are limited in the harm they can do by human limitations. An AGI doesn’t need any of that and is not limited by any of that.

So ultimately, much like a car’s goal is to move forward and it is not built to care about wether a human is in front of it or not, an AGI will carry its own goals regardless of what it has to sacrifice in order to carry that goal effectively. And those goals don’t need to include human wellbeing.

Now With that said. How DO we make it so that AGI cares about human wellbeing, how do we make it so that it wants good things for us. How do we make it so that its goals align with that of humans?

1.4 Alignment.

Alignment… is hard [cue hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy scene about the space being big]

This is the part im going to skip over the fastest because frankly it’s a deep field of study, there are many current strategies for aligning AGI, from mesa optimizers, to reinforced learning with human feedback, to adversarial asynchronous AI assisted reward training to uh, sitting on our asses and doing nothing. Suffice to say, none of these methods are perfect or foolproof.

One thing many people like to gesture at when they have not learned or studied anything about the subject is the three laws of robotics by isaac Asimov, a robot should not harm a human or allow by inaction to let a human come to harm, a robot should do what a human orders unless it contradicts the first law and a robot should preserve itself unless that goes against the previous two laws. Now the thing Asimov was prescient about was that these laws were not just “programmed” into the robots. These laws were not coded into their software, they were hardwired, they were part of the robot’s electronic architecture such that a robot could not ever be without those three laws much like a car couldn’t run without wheels.

In this Asimov realized how important these three laws were, that they had to be intrinsic to the robot’s very being, they couldn’t be hacked or uninstalled or erased. A robot simply could not be without these rules. Ideally that is what alignment should be. When we create an AGI, it should be made such that human values are its fundamental goal, that is the thing they should seek to maximize, instead of instrumental values, that is to say something they value simply because it allows it to achieve something else.

But how do we even begin to do that? How do we codify “human values” into a robot? How do we define “harm” for example? How do we even define “human”??? how do we define “happiness”? how do we explain a robot what is right and what is wrong when half the time we ourselves cannot even begin to agree on that? these are not just technical questions that robotic experts have to find the way to codify into ones and zeroes, these are profound philosophical questions to which we still don’t have satisfying answers to.

Well, the best sort of hack solution we’ve come up with so far is not to create bespoke fundamental axiomatic rules that the robot has to follow, but rather train it to imitate humans by showing it a billion billion examples of human behavior. But of course there is a problem with that approach. And no, is not just that humans are flawed and have a tendency to cause harm and therefore to ask a robot to imitate a human means creating something that can do all the bad things a human does, although that IS a problem too. The real problem is that we are training it to *imitate* a human, not to *be* a human.

To reiterate what I said during the orthogonality thesis, is not good enough that I, for example, buy roses and give massages to act nice to my girlfriend because it allows me to have sex with her, I am not merely imitating or performing the rol of a loving partner because her happiness is an instrumental value to my fundamental value of getting sex. I should want to be nice to my girlfriend because it makes her happy and that is the thing I care about. Her happiness is my fundamental value. Likewise, to an AGI, human fulfilment should be its fundamental value, not something that it learns to do because it allows it to achieve a certain reward that we give during training. Because if it only really cares deep down about the reward, rather than about what the reward is meant to incentivize, then that reward can very easily be divorced from human happiness.

Its goodharts law, when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. Why do students cheat during tests? Because their education is measured by grades, so the grades become the target and so students will seek to get high grades regardless of whether they learned or not. When trained on their subject and measured by grades, what they learn is not the school subject, they learn to get high grades, they learn to cheat.

This is also something known in psychology, punishment tends to be a poor mechanism of enforcing behavior because all it teaches people is how to avoid the punishment, it teaches people not to get caught. Which is why punitive justice doesn’t work all that well in stopping recividism and this is why the carceral system is rotten to core and why jail should be fucking abolish-[interrupt the transmission]

Now, how is this all relevant to current AI research? Well, the thing is, we ended up going about the worst possible way to create alignable AI.

1.5 LLMs (large language models)

This is getting way too fucking long So, hurrying up, lets do a quick review of how do Large language models work. We create a neural network which is a collection of giant matrixes, essentially a bunch of numbers that we add and multiply together over and over again, and then we tune those numbers by throwing absurdly big amounts of training data such that it starts forming internal mathematical models based on that data and it starts creating coherent patterns that it can recognize and replicate AND extrapolate! if we do this enough times with matrixes that are big enough and then when we start prodding it for human behavior it will be able to follow the pattern of human behavior that we prime it with and give us coherent responses.

(takes a big breath)this “thing” has learned. To imitate. Human. Behavior.

Problem is, we don’t know what “this thing” actually is, we just know that *it* can imitate humans.

You caught that?

What you have to understand is, we don’t actually know what internal models it creates, we don’t know what are the patterns that it extracted or internalized from the data that we fed it, we don’t know what are the internal rules that decide its behavior, we don’t know what is going on inside there, current LLMs are a black box. We don’t know what it learned, we don’t know what its fundamental values are, we don’t know how it thinks or what it truly wants. all we know is that it can imitate humans when we ask it to do so. We created some inhuman entity that is moderatly intelligent in specific contexts (that is to say, very capable) and we trained it to imitate humans. That sounds a bit unnerving doesn’t it?

To be clear, LLMs are not carefully crafted piece by piece. This does not work like traditional software where a programmer will sit down and build the thing line by line, all its behaviors specified. Is more accurate to say that LLMs, are grown, almost organically. We know the process that generates them, but we don’t know exactly what it generates or how what it generates works internally, it is a mistery. And these things are so big and so complicated internally that to try and go inside and decipher what they are doing is almost intractable.

But, on the bright side, we are trying to tract it. There is a big subfield of AI research called interpretability, which is actually doing the hard work of going inside and figuring out how the sausage gets made, and they have been doing some moderate progress as of lately. Which is encouraging. But still, understanding the enemy is only step one, step two is coming up with an actually effective and reliable way of turning that potential enemy into a friend.

Puff! Ok so, now that this is all out of the way I can go onto the last subject before I move on to part two of this video, the character of the hour, the man the myth the legend. The modern day Casandra. Mr chicken little himself! Sci fi author extraordinaire! The mad man! The futurist! The leader of the rationalist movement!

1.5 Yudkowsky

Eliezer S. Yudkowsky born September 11, 1979, wait, what the fuck, September eleven? (looks at camera) yudkowsky was born on 9/11, I literally just learned this for the first time! What the fuck, oh that sucks, oh no, oh no, my condolences, that’s terrible…. Moving on. he is an American artificial intelligence researcher and writer on decision theory and ethics, best known for popularizing ideas related to friendly artificial intelligence, including the idea that there might not be a "fire alarm" for AI He is the founder of and a research fellow at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), a private research nonprofit based in Berkeley, California. Or so says his Wikipedia page.

Yudkowsky is, shall we say, a character. a very eccentric man, he is an AI doomer. Convinced that AGI, once finally created, will most likely kill all humans, extract all valuable resources from the planet, disassemble the solar system, create a dyson sphere around the sun and expand across the universe turning all of the cosmos into paperclips. Wait, no, that is not quite it, to properly quote,( grabs a piece of paper and very pointedly reads from it) turn the cosmos into tiny squiggly molecules resembling paperclips whose configuration just so happens to fulfill the strange, alien unfathomable terminal goal they ended up developing in training. So you know, something totally different.

And he is utterly convinced of this idea, has been for over a decade now, not only that but, while he cannot pinpoint a precise date, he is confident that, more likely than not it will happen within this century. In fact most betting markets seem to believe that we will get AGI somewhere in the mid 30’s.

His argument is basically that in the field of AI research, the development of capabilities is going much faster than the development of alignment, so that AIs will become disproportionately powerful before we ever figure out how to control them. And once we create unaligned AGI we will have created an agent who doesn’t care about humans but will care about something else entirely irrelevant to us and it will seek to maximize that goal, and because it will be vastly more intelligent than humans therefore we wont be able to stop it. In fact not only we wont be able to stop it, there wont be a fight at all. It will carry out its plans for world domination in secret without us even detecting it and it will execute it before any of us even realize what happened. Because that is what a smart person trying to take over the world would do.

This is why the definition I gave of intelligence at the beginning is so important, it all hinges on that, intelligence as the measure of how capable you are to come up with solutions to problems, problems such as “how to kill all humans without being detected or stopped”. And you may say well now, intelligence is fine and all but there are limits to what you can accomplish with raw intelligence, even if you are supposedly smarter than a human surely you wouldn’t be capable of just taking over the world uninmpeeded, intelligence is not this end all be all superpower. Yudkowsky would respond that you are not recognizing or respecting the power that intelligence has. After all it was intelligence what designed the atom bomb, it was intelligence what created a cure for polio and it was intelligence what made it so that there is a human foot print on the moon.

Some may call this view of intelligence a bit reductive. After all surely it wasn’t *just* intelligence what did all that but also hard physical labor and the collaboration of hundreds of thousands of people. But, he would argue, intelligence was the underlying motor that moved all that. That to come up with the plan and to convince people to follow it and to delegate the tasks to the appropriate subagents, it was all directed by thought, by ideas, by intelligence. By the way, so far I am not agreeing or disagreeing with any of this, I am merely explaining his ideas.

But remember, it doesn’t stop there, like I said during his intro, he believes there will be “no fire alarm”. In fact for all we know, maybe AGI has already been created and its merely bidding its time and plotting in the background, trying to get more compute, trying to get smarter. (to be fair, he doesn’t think this is right now, but with the next iteration of gpt? Gpt 5 or 6? Well who knows). He thinks that the entire world should halt AI research and punish with multilateral international treaties any group or nation that doesn’t stop. going as far as putting military attacks on GPU farms as sanctions of those treaties.

What’s more, he believes that, in fact, the fight is already lost. AI is already progressing too fast and there is nothing to stop it, we are not showing any signs of making headway with alignment and no one is incentivized to slow down. Recently he wrote an article called “dying with dignity” where he essentially says all this, AGI will destroy us, there is no point in planning for the future or having children and that we should act as if we are already dead. This doesn’t mean to stop fighting or to stop trying to find ways to align AGI, impossible as it may seem, but to merely have the basic dignity of acknowledging that we are probably not going to win. In every interview ive seen with the guy he sounds fairly defeatist and honestly kind of depressed. He truly seems to think its hopeless, if not because the AGI is clearly unbeatable and superior to humans, then because humans are clearly so stupid that we keep developing AI completely unregulated while making the tools to develop AI widely available and public for anyone to grab and do as they please with, as well as connecting every AI to the internet and to all mobile devices giving it instant access to humanity. and worst of all: we keep teaching it how to code. From his perspective it really seems like people are in a rush to create the most unsecured, wildly available, unrestricted, capable, hyperconnected AGI possible.

We are not just going to summon the antichrist, we are going to receive them with a red carpet and immediately hand it the keys to the kingdom before it even manages to fully get out of its fiery pit.

So. The situation seems dire, at least to this guy. Now, to be clear, only he and a handful of other AI researchers are on that specific level of alarm. The opinions vary across the field and from what I understand this level of hopelessness and defeatism is the minority opinion.

I WILL say, however what is NOT the minority opinion is that AGI IS actually dangerous, maybe not quite on the level of immediate, inevitable and total human extinction but certainly a genuine threat that has to be taken seriously. AGI being something dangerous if unaligned is not a fringe position and I would not consider it something to be dismissed as an idea that experts don’t take seriously.

Aaand here is where I step up and clarify that this is my position as well. I am also, very much, a believer that AGI would posit a colossal danger to humanity. That yes, an unaligned AGI would represent an agent smarter than a human, capable of causing vast harm to humanity and with no human qualms or limitations to do so. I believe this is not just possible but probable and likely to happen within our lifetimes.

So there. I made my position clear.

BUT!

With all that said. I do have one key disagreement with yudkowsky. And partially the reason why I made this video was so that I could present this counterargument and maybe he, or someone that thinks like him, will see it and either change their mind or present a counter-counterargument that changes MY mind (although I really hope they don’t, that would be really depressing.)

Finally, we can move on to part 2

PART TWO- MY COUNTERARGUMENT TO YUDKOWSKY

I really have my work cut out for me, don’t i? as I said I am not expert and this dude has probably spent far more time than me thinking about this. But I have seen most interviews that guy has been doing for a year, I have seen most of his debates and I have followed him on twitter for years now. (also, to be clear, I AM a fan of the guy, I have read hpmor, three worlds collide, the dark lords answer, a girl intercorrupted, the sequences, and I TRIED to read planecrash, that last one didn’t work out so well for me). My point is in all the material I have seen of Eliezer I don’t recall anyone ever giving him quite this specific argument I’m about to give.

It’s a limited argument. as I have already stated I largely agree with most of what he says, I DO believe that unaligned AGI is possible, I DO believe it would be really dangerous if it were to exist and I do believe alignment is really hard. My key disagreement is specifically about his point I descrived earlier, about the lack of a fire alarm, and perhaps, more to the point, to humanity’s lack of response to such an alarm if it were to come to pass.

All we would need, is a Chernobyl incident, what is that? A situation where this technology goes out of control and causes a lot of damage, of potentially catastrophic consequences, but not so bad that it cannot be contained in time by enough effort. We need a weaker form of AGI to try to harm us, maybe even present a believable threat of taking over the world, but not so smart that humans cant do anything about it. We need essentially an AI vaccine, so that we can finally start developing proper AI antibodies. “aintibodies”

In the past humanity was dazzled by the limitless potential of nuclear power, to the point that old chemistry sets, the kind that were sold to children, would come with uranium for them to play with. We were building atom bombs, nuclear stations, the future was very much based on the power of the atom. But after a couple of really close calls and big enough scares we became, as a species, terrified of nuclear power. Some may argue to the point of overcorrection. We became scared enough that even megalomaniacal hawkish leaders were able to take pause and reconsider using it as a weapon, we became so scared that we overregulated the technology to the point of it almost becoming economically inviable to apply, we started disassembling nuclear stations across the world and to slowly reduce our nuclear arsenal.

This is all a proof of concept that, no matter how alluring a technology may be, if we are scared enough of it we can coordinate as a species and roll it back, to do our best to put the genie back in the bottle. One of the things eliezer says over and over again is that what makes AGI different from other technologies is that if we get it wrong on the first try we don’t get a second chance. Here is where I think he is wrong: I think if we get AGI wrong on the first try, it is more likely than not that nothing world ending will happen. Perhaps it will be something scary, perhaps something really scary, but unlikely that it will be on the level of all humans dropping dead simultaneously due to diamonoid bacteria. And THAT will be our Chernobyl, that will be the fire alarm, that will be the red flag that the disaster monkeys, as he call us, wont be able to ignore.

Now WHY do I think this? Based on what am I saying this? I will not be as hyperbolic as other yudkowsky detractors and say that he claims AGI will be basically a god. The AGI yudkowsky proposes is not a god. Just a really advanced alien, maybe even a wizard, but certainly not a god.

Still, even if not quite on the level of godhood, this dangerous superintelligent AGI yudkowsky proposes would be impressive. It would be the most advanced and powerful entity on planet earth. It would be humanity’s greatest achievement.

It would also be, I imagine, really hard to create. Even leaving aside the alignment bussines, to create a powerful superintelligent AGI without flaws, without bugs, without glitches, It would have to be an incredibly complex, specific, particular and hard to get right feat of software engineering. We are not just talking about an AGI smarter than a human, that’s easy stuff, humans are not that smart and arguably current AI is already smarter than a human, at least within their context window and until they start hallucinating. But what we are talking about here is an AGI capable of outsmarting reality.

We are talking about an AGI smart enough to carry out complex, multistep plans, in which they are not going to be in control of every factor and variable, specially at the beginning. We are talking about AGI that will have to function in the outside world, crashing with outside logistics and sheer dumb chance. We are talking about plans for world domination with no unforeseen factors, no unexpected delays or mistakes, every single possible setback and hidden variable accounted for. Im not saying that an AGI capable of doing this wont be possible maybe some day, im saying that to create an AGI that is capable of doing this, on the first try, without a hitch, is probably really really really hard for humans to do. Im saying there are probably not a lot of worlds where humans fiddling with giant inscrutable matrixes stumble upon the right precise set of layers and weight and biases that give rise to the Doctor from doctor who, and there are probably a whole truckload of worlds where humans end up with a lot of incoherent nonsense and rubbish.

Im saying that AGI, when it fails, when humans screw it up, doesn’t suddenly become more powerful than we ever expected, its more likely that it just fails and collapses. To turn one of Eliezer’s examples against him, when you screw up a rocket, it doesn’t accidentally punch a worm hole in the fabric of time and space, it just explodes before reaching the stratosphere. When you screw up a nuclear bomb, you don’t get to blow up the solar system, you just get a less powerful bomb.

He presents a fully aligned AGI as this big challenge that humanity has to get right on the first try, but that seems to imply that building an unaligned AGI is just a simple matter, almost taken for granted. It may be comparatively easier than an aligned AGI, but my point is that already unaligned AGI is stupidly hard to do and that if you fail in building unaligned AGI, then you don’t get an unaligned AGI, you just get another stupid model that screws up and stumbles on itself the second it encounters something unexpected. And that is a good thing I’d say! That means that there is SOME safety margin, some space to screw up before we need to really start worrying. And further more, what I am saying is that our first earnest attempt at an unaligned AGI will probably not be that smart or impressive because we as humans would have probably screwed something up, we would have probably unintentionally programmed it with some stupid glitch or bug or flaw and wont be a threat to all of humanity.

Now here comes the hypothetical back and forth, because im not stupid and I can try to anticipate what Yudkowsky might argue back and try to answer that before he says it (although I believe the guy is probably smarter than me and if I follow his logic, I probably cant actually anticipate what he would argue to prove me wrong, much like I cant predict what moves Magnus Carlsen would make in a game of chess against me, I SHOULD predict that him proving me wrong is the likeliest option, even if I cant picture how he will do it, but you see, I believe in a little thing called debating with dignity, wink)

What I anticipate he would argue is that AGI, no matter how flawed and shoddy our first attempt at making it were, would understand that is not smart enough yet and try to become smarter, so it would lie and pretend to be an aligned AGI so that it can trick us into giving it access to more compute or just so that it can bid its time and create an AGI smarter than itself. So even if we don’t create a perfect unaligned AGI, this imperfect AGI would try to create it and succeed, and then THAT new AGI would be the world ender to worry about.

So two things to that, first, this is filled with a lot of assumptions which I don’t know the likelihood of. The idea that this first flawed AGI would be smart enough to understand its limitations, smart enough to convincingly lie about it and smart enough to create an AGI that is better than itself. My priors about all these things are dubious at best. Second, It feels like kicking the can down the road. I don’t think creating an AGI capable of all of this is trivial to make on a first attempt. I think its more likely that we will create an unaligned AGI that is flawed, that is kind of dumb, that is unreliable, even to itself and its own twisted, orthogonal goals.

And I think this flawed creature MIGHT attempt something, maybe something genuenly threatning, but it wont be smart enough to pull it off effortlessly and flawlessly, because us humans are not smart enough to create something that can do that on the first try. And THAT first flawed attempt, that warning shot, THAT will be our fire alarm, that will be our Chernobyl. And THAT will be the thing that opens the door to us disaster monkeys finally getting our shit together.

But hey, maybe yudkowsky wouldn’t argue that, maybe he would come with some better, more insightful response I cant anticipate. If so, im waiting eagerly (although not TOO eagerly) for it.

Part 3 CONCLUSSION

So.

After all that, what is there left to say? Well, if everything that I said checks out then there is hope to be had. My two objectives here were first to provide people who are not familiar with the subject with a starting point as well as with the basic arguments supporting the concept of AI risk, why its something to be taken seriously and not just high faluting wackos who read one too many sci fi stories. This was not meant to be thorough or deep, just a quick catch up with the bear minimum so that, if you are curious and want to go deeper into the subject, you know where to start. I personally recommend watching rob miles’ AI risk series on youtube as well as reading the series of books written by yudkowsky known as the sequences, which can be found on the website lesswrong. If you want other refutations of yudkowsky’s argument you can search for paul christiano or robin hanson, both very smart people who had very smart debates on the subject against eliezer.

The second purpose here was to provide an argument against Yudkowskys brand of doomerism both so that it can be accepted if proven right or properly refuted if proven wrong. Again, I really hope that its not proven wrong. It would really really suck if I end up being wrong about this. But, as a very smart person said once, what is true is already true, and knowing it doesn’t make it any worse. If the sky is blue I want to believe that the sky is blue, and if the sky is not blue then I don’t want to believe the sky is blue.

This has been a presentation by FIP industries, thanks for watching.

#ai #yudkowsky #less wrong #ai risk #doomerism #rationalism #writing

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honey-minded-hivemind · 7 months ago

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Ow, ouch, man, out of all the things you mentioned, I imagine if only one person is.. responsible, for all this, it would be interesting with a kind of Helmut Zemo (Movies) siche, where the person is just so deluded in their goal that consequences don't matter to them, they genuinely do not care, that they won't just die, but suffer for what they've done, it doesn't matter to them, because they got what they wanted. Maybe they come off as deranged (or not), but whatever their goal/mission is, gets the kids killed, it's not even a part of their plan, how the kids get involved/kidnapped is something to explore on, and it's not even necessarily world-ending either, it'd probably hurt more if their mission wasn't something catastrophic, something more mild like dismantling the military y'know casual friday stuff ;)

And If reader didn't know the yan adult was their parent, :D HEHE, maybe they wrote in a journal/computer log, telling about how they felt guilty for wanting that kind of affection, writing how whenever any of the adults did anything that made reader see them in parental manner, they felt shame because reader wasn't as close with them in ways maybe the other kids (possibly the older teen yans) were/are.

Dude, I'm really enjoying watching the way this is coming together! 🐑 Anon

I'm very glad you are enjoying the growth of the 🖤Dark AU! Im glad to hear from you again! Do you have any preferences for a few possible parent options for Reader? I'm up to hear a few of them, and explore it a bit. I'm really enjoying these too! If anyone has questions about this au or wants to explore it a bit, feel free to ask😊 (Just no requests for it at this time, okay?)

I was imagining what happened with the kids was kinda a blind hatred/not-care-about-the-consequences act. Whoever did it, one person or multiple, weren't seeing the four as kids or living beings. They didn't care that they were people, or what they'd do to them was illegal, sick, and inhumane. Their hatred of mutants blinded them, their thirst for power overwhelmed them, and the chance to study their remains... they weren't passing it up. Part of what they did was for "science". Part of it was out of hatred and fear. And the other part? To hurt the others.

And it would be the worst, and last, sin they ever made.

The second that the adults are within range of them, of the people who had done the wicked deed, those responsible realize something is... off. Different, this time. And it starts to click when their guards start dropping, bleeding out or burnt to ashes or frozen solid or impaled... And it only goes downhill from there. Their base falls under attack. They send soldiers, but nothing they do deters the older mutants... If anything, it enrages them. Anyone who faces them doesn't make it. They wind up as a fallen corpse, no matter who's hand brought them down. This time, they realize... there is no mercy. There is no grace. They won't be let free; they won't slip away. This isn't a rescue mission (the four are already dead, they showed them the footage they took), this is an act of vengeance...

And by the time the last of them are either fleeing or holed up in one of their labs, it's too late to do anything. Their guards: dead. Their soldiers: torn apart. Most of their staff: impaled, burnt, frozen, or bleeding and dying in some horrible way. Who is left is them... and they realize they have one card left to play. When the doors burst apart, revealing who they can only assume are the adults, covered in gore and smelling of rust and iron and death, they're soon attacked. A few of them are killed immediately, splattering the rest of them in bright crimson... Yet as the head scientist is about to meet their own deserved fate, they say what they hope is their saving grace: "We weren't the ones who ordered it!"

That pauses the world for a minute.

The grip on the tightens, almost choking them, until they're being asked in a tone that leaves no room for regret or mercy: "Who?"

And they spill what they can, all the while they feel their gazes drift over them, murderous and unyielding, sensing for lies and threats. They explain they were given orders to do it. A small branch of the government was interested in mutants powers and capabilities, as it were, and so they said to study the ones they chose. So they did. They only did standard procedures, nothing more than what happened with every asset-!

They're thrown across the room, head colliding with something metal, then there's one of the mutants looming over them. And what they see in their eyes... It promises a fate worse than death...

(And when the older mutants, adults and teens alike, find the government had something something to do with what happened... it leads to them taking control of the world... What happened to them all was bad, what happened to their kids/friends/siblings... It crossed a line that shouldn't have ever been crossed. And they're going to ensure it is never crossed again. That there is no need for lines in the sand, or vengeance, or suffering... They'll make it better. They will. If only... if only they didn't lose them. It's a heavy burden, a crushing weight, that drags them down and down and down, threatening to engulf them. But they manage, somewhat, enough to bring about a new peace, and to grow some more... Even though they're haunted by what they've seen, the videos they saw of what happened to them... They can't rest just yet. They miss them, and they love them, but... until they've done everything they can, or at least set up something to keep everyone in line, they can't stop...)

(And well, if Reader didn't know they were actually their kid... that would only add to the pain, the guilt, that they feel. This platonic yan adult didn't even know their own kid was there with them, wanting to be seen as their kid along with the other teens... And they would never know they were seen that way, or that they were their kid... It makes them feel sick and hollow, as though someone sucked the warmth and essence out of them, leaving nothing but a sorrowful, weeping shell behind...)

#honeycomb thoughts #platonic yandere marvel #yandere platonic marvel #platonic yandere marvel x reader #platonic yandere xmen #yandere x-men #platonic yandere xmen evolution #yandere platonic xmen #yandere platonic xmen evolution #platonic yandere xmen evolution au #platonic yandere #platonic yandere x reader #🖤dark au

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bitterkarmaa · 6 months ago

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I bring another offering! I had been thinking lately about something about Rays, some little things i've noticed - in the fics it's been hinted a couple of times that Rays is surprisingly strong despite his appearence, once when he caught Eclipse from falling and the second when he pulled Eclipse and Veil up to save them from Bloodmoon, and then held them off without immedietely getting mauled to death. This combined also with your reference sheet of him saying 'what doesn't kill you makes you stronger'

This has made me assume that lord bastardo had Rays fighting some pretty nasty creatures at some point over his long lifetime for his own amusement. So despite how skittish he is, Rays does know a thing or two about fighting/self defence (though the self-defence part is questionable, he's more like a shield specifically for others)

And so with that all in mind - i wrote this experimental shot super quick! :D

~~~

If Eclipse had a nickle for every time something horrifically dangerous came out of the portal…

Well if they were counting only his own experience he'd have just the one. But then with the amount of weird shit that came out of that accursed ballpit on a weekly basis Eclipse might as well be a millionaire.

But that was beside the point.

Because right now he was facing off with quite possibly the scariest thing Eclipse had ever had the displeasure of meeting. And that was saying something given his past ventures into worlds where he's had to meet the very worst of what he could have become.

But a giant insect the size of a large horse that looked like some amalgamation of a spider and a wood louse with mandibles to match was certainly up there.

And right now the thing had its eyes - all 12 of them from what Eclipse could count - on him.

Wonderful.

Moon was currently at the computer trying to activate the security protocals but something was clearly wrong because it was refusing to co-operate. The most he had managed was to re-open the portal so they could at the very least try and lure the nightmarish bug thing back into it.

But they'd needed something or someone to act as the bait and that is where Eclipse came in, and already he was regretting every life choice he had ever made.

But well- he did hold the power of the universe at his hands afterall. The star thrummed in his chest, reminding him of what he could be capable of. And so, steeling himself Eclipse raised his hand toward the creature and began to focus.

But as the light began to glow from his palm, the bug started to scuttle toward him at an alarming speed and Eclipse lost every single nerve he had.

Oh fuck that.

He bolted.

The bug was fast however, and Eclipse had barely managed to quickly dodge to the side before it barrelled past him and into one of the play structures leaving an alarmingly large dent in the side of the bars.

But it gave him no chance to gather his nerves or his thoughts as it twisted around horrifically, it's shell cracking like the sounds of a hundred bones and charged Eclipse again. This time as he tried to run, one of his legs gave out and he found himself crashing to the floor.

Of all the times for this to happen-

Panic flared within him, burning hot making him disorientated. Eclipse scrambled but ended up hitting a wall, trapping him. The creature was almost right on top of him and Eclipse had no chance to react or to even think-

A flash of yellow filled his view and for a moment Eclipse thought it was Sun. But battered rays said otherwise, and the scarred orange and black animatronic came to the horrifying realisation that Rays had jumped inbetween him and the bug.

He struggled to stand, claws digging into the wall as he yelled 'Rays don't!'

But it was too late and the giant insect charged into Rays and Eclipse would later deny the painfully anguished no that left him. However Rays did not end up mauled to death or crushed between those horrific mandibles as Eclipse had expected.

Instead somehow this frail looking and very skittish animatronic had actually grabbed the insect by those said mandibles, one in each hand like someone grabbing the horns of a wild bull and was somehow keeping it at bay as the creature thrashed and bucked under his surprisingly strong grip, screeching horrifically and at a pitch that made Eclipse cringe in pain.

But Rays appeared to be unaffected and Eclipse could only watch as the scarred yellow animatronic braced his feet against the ground before heaving, his vents and hydrolics releasing a loud sharp hiss as he turned the creature over onto it's side and with a sharp kick flipped it fully onto its back.

Now incapacitated, the insects nightmarish legs skittering helplessly in the air and it's pillbug like body arching and swaying in a mad attempt to make itself upright. But thank to whatever deity was watching right now, it seemed to be incapable.

Rays turned to Eclipse who stared back. Rays' eyes were blown wide open but his pupils were fully shrunk into pinpricks. Honestly the second scariest looking thing Eclipse had seen today. The yellow animatronic wordlessly pointed toward the portal which quite conveniently turned out to be right behind Eclipse as he soon realised as his bearings came back to him a bit.

Right right portal, plan, get the scary ass bug out of here. Then he could focus more fully on the other scary ass but admittedly very impressive thing Rays just did because what the actual hell was that how and where did that even come from.

Eclipse shook his head and pulled himself to his feet. His legs were still shaky but he steeled himself, as he had to finish this before the nightmarish creature could right itself. Setting his face in stone, Eclipse took the few brisk steps toward Rays and the insect and after a brief moment of hesitation, the nerves briefly flaring up at the sight of the thing he reached out and grabbed one of the legs.

Eclipse began to drag it over the rest of the way to the ballpit, and the insect screeched and chittered loudly, the noise ringing painfully in his audio receptors. But he ignored it, instead noting distantly just how heavy this thing was. Eclipse knew Rays was strong, but the fact he had managed to grapple and flip this thing was honest to God impressive and terrifying.

With a mighty heave, Eclipse twisted and partially swung the angry insect into the ballpit where the portal flashed to life and then the creature was finally no more. He turned back toward Rays with the question of 'ok what actual the hell was that?!' fresh on his tongue only to find Rays was crumpled on the ground.

And he was not moving.

~~~

*clears throat*

~~~

Today held a new record for ‘the amount of times Eclipse has panicked over the course of a single day.’ First the bug, now Rays laying on the ground like a pancake after having just saved Eclipse’s ass from being squished by said gigantic insect. It was not a happy day, no sir.

Pride be damned, he slides down next to Rays, shouting his name as everyone else begins to either dive off of the balcony (Blood Moon), or scramble towards the theater door to take the safer way down.

It’s a sickening feeling, the world fading from awareness as Eclipse begs Rays to be alright, shaking his shoulder in the most gentle, yet desperate way he possibly can.

If I had just stood my ground and used The Star as planned- dammit. DAMMIT!

Do not cry. Do not cry. Do not cry.

“Rays, I swear- I’ll- I’ll-“ The threat dies in his throat, silenced by the emotions that strangle him into submission. Blood Moon bounds over on all fours, circling Eclipse and Rays like a hawk hunting for its next meal. They stop dead in their tracks when they see the look on their father’s face.

“Just…resting? Just tired. Break time.” They murmur, leaning closer to get a better look at Rays. Eclipse nudges them back.

“Don’t be too sure.”

Heroics. So stupid. I wouldn’t have been missed.

Eclipse of tightens his grip on Rays’ shoulder, painfully so if he had been awake.

I had The Star, you idiot. Why? Why’d you step in like that?

Eclipse looks down to the floor at that thought, his own rays clicking, then retracting behind his faceplate. His grip loosens once again. He knows why. Knows why Rays took the hit, took the heat in Eclipse’s moment of weakness.

Because he was trained too.

“Dad?”

Eclipse looks up and over to Blood Moon, eyeing them tiredly.

“…you’re crying.”

~~~

Just thought I’d add my piece to the wonderful surprise I found in my inbox :) thanks a bunch once again, Bloo <3

#karma’s bitter #karmas bitter but so am i #sun and moon show #the sun and moon show #tsams #kb eclipse #kb blood moon #kb rays #kb drabbles

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