Post #1690748

Erised, Everywhere! People want to make a presentation, [but not to actually communicate](https://nvie.com/posts/15-years-later/). They want to submit software patches, [but not to actually contribute to open source](https://theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-piece-on-me/). Students want to get a degree, but not to actually learn the stuff. Even inside organizations that "do things", incentives are often aligned around appearing to do things. The philosophical [definition of bullshit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit) is communication with complete indifference to truth. Unfortunately, AI enables a lot of "appearing to do with complete indifference to doing". Actually, there are a lot of people that take pride in doing things well, and a lot of people that need things done well. Despite all our communication and information infrastructure, it's hard for them to find each other. An incentive problem. In Harry Potter 1 (spoiler), when people who wanted the benefits of doing the thing looked in the Mirror of Erised, they just saw themselves enjoying the benefits. But someone who wanted to actually do the thing learned how to do the thing. So the mirror could be used to distinguish the two. Feels like a Mirror of Erised could help in a lot of places right now.