Clankers Die on Christmas

Robot Slur Tier List: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoDDWmIWMDg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpRRejhgtVI

Responding To A Clankerloving Cogsucker on Robot "Racism": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zAIqNpC0I0

It has a strong smell of "stop trying to make fetch happen, Gretchen."

It has a strong smell of "stop trying to make fetch happen, Gretchen."

The blog post seemed so confident it was Christmas :)

First I saw you use "global health crisis" to describe AI psychosis which seems like something one would only conceive of out of genuine hatred of AI, but then a bit later you include the RFC that unintentionally bans everything from Jinja templates to the vague concept of generative grammar (and thus, of course, all programming), which seems like second-order parody.

Am I overthinking it?

Everyone makes jokes about clankers and it's caught on like wildfire.

yeah it's not directly harmful -- wizards aren't real -- but it also serves as an (often first) introduction to children of the concepts of familial/genetic superiority, eugenics, and ethnic/genetic cleansing.

I can't really think of any cases where setting an example of calling something a nasty name is that great a trait to espouse, to children or adults.

I think there's a clear sociological pattern here that explains the appeal. It maps almost perfectly onto the thesis of David Roediger's "The Wages of Whiteness."

His argument was that poor white workers in the 19th century, despite their own economic exploitation, received a "psychological wage" for being "white." This identity was primarily built by defining themselves against Black slaves. It gave them a sense of status and social superiority that compensated for their poor material conditions and the encroachment of slaves on their own livelihood.

We're seeing a digital version of this now with AI. As automation devalues skills and displaces labor across fields, people are being offered a new kind of psychological compensation: the "wage of humanity." Even if your job is at risk, you can still feel superior because you're a thinking, feeling human, not just another mindless clanker.

The slur is the tool used to create and enforce that in-group ("human") versus out-group ("clanker") distinction. It's an act of identity formation born directly out of economic anxiety.

The real kicker, as Roediger's work would suggest, is that this dynamic primarily benefits the people deploying the technology. It misdirects the anger of those being displaced toward the tool itself, rather than toward the economic decisions that prioritize profit over their livelihoods.

But this ethos of economic displacement is really at the heart of both slavery and computation. It's all about "automating the boring stuff" and leveraging new technologies to ultimately extract profit at a greater rate than your competitors (which happens to include society). People typically forget the job of "computer" was the first casualty of computing machines.

“During the Vietnam War, which lasted longer than any war we've ever been in -- and which we lost -- every respectable artist in this country was against the war. It was like a laser beam. We were all aimed in the same direction. The power of this weapon turns out to be that of a custard pie dropped from a stepladder six feet high. (laughs)”

-Kurt Vonnegut (https://www.alternet.org/2003/01/vonnegut_at_80)

The whole article is unfortunately very topical.

> What little remains sparking away in the corners of the internet after today will thrash endlessly, confidently claiming “There is no evidence of a global cessation of AI on December 25th, 2025, it’s a work of fiction/satire about the dangers of AI!”;