this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2025
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chapotraphouse
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No anti-nautilism posts. See: Eco-fascism Primer
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I think it also has something to do with how distanced most of us are from creation and maintenance of machines, particularly electronics. if you don't quite understand what a transistor is, or how code works, or how a large language model turns inputs into outputs, then "well there must be a little dude in there somewhere" makes as much sense as anything. Plus people tend to personify inanimate objects to begin with.
One of my earliest memories is my mom showing me how a cash register works and telling me there was a little gremlin inside the machine powering it.
This your mom? ->
Mommy!
ngl, this is creepy af /s
It's true though, they eat the coins. Times have been tough for cash register gremlins since everyone started using cards to pay for everything.
6 year old me has verified this info as TRUE
Why do you think its called horsepower ? Ofc cars are powered by little horsies
In all fairness, this is how people come to believe in a consciousness too.
This is a really goofy argument. There's not a little dude in there, the whole "there" is a normal sized dude who, incidentally, can be disassembled into parts that are not themselves entire dudes. Most people don't believe in a Cartesian Theater sort of hypothesis.
There is a little dude in the AI. Millions of little dudes. AI is just pretending to be one of them.