Default To Truth

A story to begin - a true story.

When email was first around, mid-1990s, there was a class of seniors at Yale. Engineering. A tough course of study. Their final exam was worth 60% of their grade.

Some students, doing what students do best, went out and got wasted the night before, the day before, the final exam. They weren’t ready for the exam. Plus, seriously hungover. So being students, they did what students do second best, they found a workaround, a way to beat the man and the system.

The students simply sent all those in the course, scheduled for the final exam, an email saying the exam was postponed and would be held the following week. Sent anonymously of course.

It worked. Only about 1/3 of students showed up. The exam had to be rescheduled.

Now, let’s think this through. Why did so many students believe an email in their inbox? Not even try to verify its veracity, authenticity? If they’d woken up and seen a note pushed under their door - would they have believed that note? Or if a friend had said he/she’d heard the exam had been cancelled, would they have, hard stopped, believed them.

No. Of course not. But when it comes to technology especially, we default to truth. It’s an authority. We just don’t use our shyte detectors (thank you for the term - Norman Mailer, you feisty one), at all. We blindly believe. It’s a big problem in society, also with media and media literacy online. If it looks like a news report and reads like one, it must be one - we say cheerily. Meanwhile in the backrooms, they are counting the money and laughing at us “believers”. Little known fact - a lot of the journalism you’ve read in the last 2-3 years was written by ChatGPT!

We so easily defer to authority. It’s inside us, we are all cowards and wimps by default. Not critical thinkers at all. Yes men. I don’t need to remind you of the Milgram experiments, do I?

Why do we default to trust and give in to deception so easily? Especially with technology? Where’s our critical acumen? Malcolm Gladwell in the video excerpt above (view it on my Youtube channel also), describes the process and the work of Tim Levine and his “Default To Truth” theory. We are hard-wired to just trust authority blindly - it makes life so much easier. Why rock the boat? Why bother checking, just go with it and trust.

Gladwell points out how poor we are at detecting deception. It’s also a problem when it comes with artificial intelligence and especially generative AI like ChatGPT. I’ve been balled over by so many well-educated teachers, thinking ChatGPT “knows” and is so stellar and brilliant! Why? Because they trust ChatGPT, they default to truth even though much of what ChatGPT outputs is gooblygook, hallucinations and madeupisms.

For example, I put in a detailed prompt about my life etc … and asked ChatGPT to write my obituary. It did. But it is just full of inaccuracies, lies, deceptions. However, it is all clean copy! Presentation before content, is the new mantra, I guess.

What’s going on, is we don’t see the junk, the deception through which this kind of big data, large language model, predictive technology operates. We just default to its authority and say, ok, must be good - it came from a machine. Machine’s don’t make mistakes, do they?

And we are totally wrong to do this. Yet, everyone is running with it. Like chickens with their heads off! Same thing though with the recent pandemic. Fauci and the CDC said it - must be true. Why even bother thinking for myself, much easier to just believe them and even defend them - so much I want my comfort of soft, deception to keep going …

It’s crazy how we default to authority and tech has become the ultimate authority in this age of “scientism”. Thank god for the rebels, the crazy ones, the ones with the shyte detectors still working. The poets, the true poets mostly …

When it comes to ChatGPT and education I applaud calls for caution, like these authors write. It’s a good, intelligent read. Best piece I’ve read yet in regards to education and AI.

Let’s not go with our built in biology and just “trust” them, because we all know where it is headed and why billions are being invested. NOT for the goodwill of humanity, that’s the front. It’s to profitize every last god-damn inch of the planet, including our heads. Oh yeah, you’ll think it is all “free” but like my old business manager in Brazil, Mauricio used to say - “free is too expensive”. Beware.

THEY

They’d make love and that’d be it.
A cup of coffee
and on to the next piece of tit.

They’d round off bills and borrowing
into but money.
Words into something only to call your honey
(oops! I forgot — this shouldn’t be funny!).

They’d make grown men, slaves.
Government ad-ministered.
The rest well-behaved, ready to wave,
the mental patients off
(Heil happiness! Without a sputter or cough!).

They’d make wars but
interventions.
Strikes and protests but
conventions.
“Want another cuppa?”

They’d make memory but
a few well-timed tears.
Celebrations,
momentary lapses of fear.
The only way to keep the tables clear.
“Drink up — Cheers!”

They’d make being young but
a time before your older
Fashion, a follow me,
hey, there’s not much to shoulder!

They’d make ignorance a virtue
but call it by another name.
They’d make it a law that
there’s always another to blame.

Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!
They’d dam up all the rivers
(only they’d know how it figures).
Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!
They’d clear up all our livers.

They’d give hell a better name
sprinkle out to all, 15 minutes of fame.
Hey, look at him!
They’d even bring back shame.

They’d make trees grow but straight,
in public, unlawful to hate
(but my how the tongues strain, they can’t wait).

They’d nail down logic into its proper place,
give every mirror a proper face
(my head must be screwed on wrong — what a waste!).

They’d move back the dawn
an hour or two
tell you all that’s wrong with you.
They’d outlaw all foul language
I swear,
but hey! who’d give a f**k (read, care).

Everybody’d have to want to own a house
have 1.3 children, be quiet as a laboratory mouse
and replace their old doodad with a doohickey
at least once a year (or when bankruptcy is near).

They’d research for endless years
so that onions wouldn’t make your eyes cry
(they’d even give bawling babies a sigh).
They’d always make sure to remind you,
it’s not proper to ask why
(why, is it only me that’s not shy?).

They’d try to make the weather
the same every day
(but then, what would they talk about anyway?).
Even, extract from the seasons
all their seasoning
(but I can follow their reasoning).

They’d make all the answers
come none too soon.
They’ve even succeeded in 
de-mystifying the moon.

They’d turn water into wine
and turn a profit too.
But they won’t sell you much
fish and bread will have to do,
but don’t ask how it’s done
it might be the end of you.

They’d stuff all hope into
a lottery ball.
Let the world pay just
to watch ’em fall.

They’d make intelligence, just knowing
(my can’t you hear their noses blowing!)
and all comings a going,
nothing left on the table but Spam
and little jars of freckled jam.

They’d take us all for fools
and that’s how they’d rule
(but aren’t we …. stroke that — it’s cruel).

They’d live unleaking, then expire
like a fat firm tire
unburped by a bump,
never roughing the road
just spinning around a point of nothing
to nowhere, god knows I suppose.

They’d move beauty back to center
make every unliving thing better
(but our eyes keep getting wetter).

They’d refer over and over to rights
(what you can get away with is right)
and article 249BS.3 (d),
have the whole world energetically flying kites
thinking they were free
(but having to ask to go and pee).

Yes, it’s done like a deal!
(can’t you hear Orwell and the pigs squeal?)
What we don’t know, we have and they
intend to steal
and they know who they are.
(I can only see them cuz I’m so far….)

In the high branches of the tree
baboons howl
while below lions saunter about
with a scowl.

The zookeepers are getting paid
cashing in
(they know how to put the knife in).
Cuz, they know who they are
and that
the jail bars are ours.