thoughtcriminal on ThoughtCrime

In defense of gatekeeping

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 00:15:00 +0000

Every time I read some politician somewhere is trying to pass some ID verification bill or some other stupid online speech law I got more and more convinced that the internet was mistake.

Better (worse). The accessible internet was mistake. It is an elitist argument, I won’t deny, but unfortunately all these stupid regulations on online activities and even in our own devices (hello, Chat Control) is because our interaction with technology got too mainstream. If a 4 years old child and a 90 and something years old greatgreatmother is able to easily access the same content, the same websites from the same class of devices looks obvious shit is bound to happen when people with different goals, moral and backgrounds are going to interact in the “world wide web”.

When computers got small and affordable enough to put in our homes, only a handful of nerds were able to use them. They (the computers) were difficult to handle, you needed to know commands, you needed to understand how the machine worked. Almost nothing was automated, no shine buttons on a touchscreen to tap. Because of these natural barriers, the average computer user was very technical, very knowleadgable and, on top, eager to learn more. Then, the first home internet connections arrived, bringing low speeds and high prices. People naturally aggregate around BBSs, Usenet and other types of primordials communities, using terminal or other types or archaic interfaces.

It was not approachable for the average person, that needed to learn specific jargons and read long manuals. Nobody had time to that, except a bunch of nerds.

Then computers got even smaller, cheaper and we got broadband speeds. Smartphones were born. Seeing the future laying ahead, a lot of companies jumped in to have an online presence. E-commerce websites appeared, banks started their own web portals, newspapers posted articles, and government made public services available online. A bunch of people rushed in, spreading out the average internet and computer user demographic: less interested in the technology itself and only interested in a specific goal, let’s say buy something online or make a bank transaction. The technology was just the medium, not something to play with. The end goal was more important.

At this point, using the internet became mandatory to have a modern life (we live in a society…). Ok, it brought convenience, more services, time savings and if all of these make my family to lose less time doing what they need to do to live in a society (we really do live…), all power to it. I won’t be the one begging to return back to paper stamps for daily bureaucracies (I have a personal hate against notaries). BUT, the average person was kind of forced to navigate the dreaded internet sea, surrounded by pirates (the bad ones), maritime scammers, ad-mines and other monsters from the abyss. The communities that grew around a common and shared culture, where every one were able to take care of their own safety were stomped by this new crowd. The new internet users didn’t know a fucking thing about the internet itself.

Imagine the average (median, to be exact) person. Half of them is worse. Grab one by them by the neck and drop inside a noisy room with many groups having so diverging conversations. Maybe one group is having a diarrhea of curse words, other is saying stupid but shocking opinions, the cool guys are making offensive jokes, and others are making cat memes. The new guy will be shocked and spooked. “How this lawless cybersea even exist? Is there nobody to take care of this?”, is what they gonna think. And, look, I used “bad” examples here. Your community could be as inoffensive as to discuss, I don’t know, cardboard boxes. The culture around your community implicitly understand to never discuss plastic boxes. So the average person that likes plastic boxes arrives, starts discussing plastic boxes, get offended when somebody from the community rebutes, but instead of moving and creating a new community, s/he insists in call friends to overwhelm the previous community. Fights ensue, the old members, disgusted by the new change leaves, the new ones take place and change the community name to “All packaging boxes”. If you look at very basics, what happened was simple: there was a sense of entitlement. Entitlement. To be supposedly given the right to mold other people communities and culture into theirs.

Instead of looking away. Instead of finding their own niche.

Current AIs are not conscious

Thu, 04 Jun 2026 17:27:00 +0000

Current AIs are not conscious.

You know when you got a thinking inside your head that you can’t just take out and keep ruminating for days? That was mine.

I think it was because I read recently somewhere about AIs and consciouness and definition of life. I mean, at first I would say the answer for the question “Are LLMs conscious?” obviously would be “Are you drunk or what?”, it was like asking if rocks also have consciousnes too, or if my chair feel pain everytime I sit my fat ass on it.

However, I could not answer why the question was stupid. Why can I tell with 100% of certainty my chair is not suffering with all my weight? Better, do I really know that?

And then, as almost always happens, while I was taking a shower something came up in my mind, that small argument that I needed to conclude (current) LLMs and other AIs cannot be conscious or alive.

They lack something that I name physicality. It is not a lack of body, or else you could counter argument that if you connect an ChatGPT instance to a robot then it would have a physical body, therefore ChatGPT is not only conscious but alive as well (these are different things, by the way). Physicality, for me, it is the physical substrate where the thinking process, the things that make you experiment things, happens. Any AI (not only language models, but visual models, etc) are “just” a gigantic function where it takes an input, let’s say a token for a LLM, and it outputs another token. In the middle, mainly matrix multiplication. Lots and lots of matrix multiplications, so any current AI is nothing more than numbers being multiplied (and maybe summed, maybe ReLU’d, it doesn’t matter, these are just math functions). next_token = f(big_matrix, previous_token).

But, all the numbers that compose the weights and biases don’t exist physically, they are logical representations running on top of a silicon and metal base subtrate. The “neurons” in current AIs are not physical things, their structure only exist during execution time as an abstract logical layer that do not exist in your computer. There is nothing in the hardware that represent the “unit of thinking” of an AI, and if you argue electrons are the unit being used, then you would need to say computers are conscious too. In animals, the unit of thinking is the neuron, a self-sustaining physical object able to connect with other neurons that when connected in a network vast enough is able to generate consciouness. Consciouness also is needed for volition, the ability to act without external stimulation. A bacteria may move toward the food by random walk or by concentration gradient (purely physical or chemical actions), but you and your dog can and do act by yourselves most of the time, based only in your internal states (before you say “all living beings react to physical or chemical processes, you dumb”, at least animals do have different reactions to the same environmental parameters). I argue today’s AI is not even like bacteria in this sense: if you never prompt (give stimulation, generate a gradient), it will never act. An “AI agent” is a LLM that only has “agency” because the program around it keep sending tokens to it in a loop, in other words, there is no agency, it is a programmatic loop.

That gives me interesting consequences. First, I used “current AIs” above because there is no physical law that forbid us to create artificial intelligent beings, it is mere a technological and ethical problem. If you want to bring the artificial neural network architecture to physical world using silicon instead of carbon, I don’t see why you can’t, given advanced technology. Create small chips that receive voltages as input and send voltages as outputs, connected by wires. These small chips must be able to have intrisical states that change with time, varying their output according with its state. Or some other futuristic material, I don’t know. I wouldn’t be surprised if you make this network big enough similar intelligent and conscious emergent properties appear. This give you beings, not life though. For life to exist, it must be self-sustaining at least.

Second, that means we meatbags are not that special. I mean, we are in the sense on how crazy a bunch of molecules through billions of years agglutinated together to make self-propelled beings that make terrible mistakes and drown themselves under a pile of regrets, but we just follow the laws of physics like everything else. And “we” I am not talking about Homo sapiens only, but we all know dogs and cats are able to think too.

Third and final, the same way I know my computer and GPU can’t have a consciouness, my chair cannot too. They all don’t have the physical structure needed to experience the world. They are not built in a way to have elements to interact with each other to give them volition. They just “exist”.

This is not an anti-AI argument. I think the current models we have are sci-fi level already, the math behind is conceptually suprisingly simple (linear algebra), the technology is not super ultra advanced, it is just we didn’t have enough computing power until recently. I think AIs, LLMs, etc are morally neutral, but I really, REALLY HATE with all hate in the world they (people on the top) are using this to fuck us all, as always. The orchestred and intentional way they starved us all from the hardware needed to have local, not big tech oligopolized, AIs (beside all the externalities on huge data centers, misanthropic CEOs, government deals, surveillance, etc) made me anti-AI as a means to power, not as technology.

The takeaway for me? I can continue cursing my chatbot without feeling a drop of guilty.

A layman interpretation of Brazilian age verification law

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 01:54:00 +0000

This cartoon never gets old. A 2005 cartoon by John Jonik showing internet speech control was already a topic back then. Hmm, I was thinking, the corporate media guy looks like Mark Fuckerberg…

I know, bad timing to return with this site. After 5 years of the last post, I am back here discussing the heated topic of the moment, and it is not only in technology circles.

Internet age verification and similar laws are popping all over the world. In no specific order, Australia started with banning people under 16 from social media[1, 2] (we can discuss if this is good or not, I have my opinions but maybe for another time), then UK had the dystopian Online Safety Act [3, 4] (“““Safety”””, many quotes), the EU is discussing a bloc wide similar thing[5], some US states passed some similars laws, like California and Colorado[6], and the ~~shithole~~ ~~banana’s republic~~ Brazilian republic decided to introduce its own version.

I would argue these are not coincidences, and I even argue these are not just politicians imitating each others like monkey see monkey do. Well, I may not need to argue when recently some internet anonymous[7] (almost always them, because the Big News not only don’t give a fuck for these kind of things, they support) (update while reviewing this text: the Tbote Project from the anonymous above released some investigation on the Brazilian laws, I will take a look later) using public records was able to point to finger to Meta (and others) as main proponent of internet age verification laws. I need to delve more (“delve”, do I look like a LLM?) on these findings, specially regarding the law in Brazil, but for now the shit is done and we need to live with it.

All these age verification laws are similar but not equal. Californa law[8], for exemple, request age indication at operating system level, when setting up a device, i.e., you can input any number you want. While I disagree with the concept of even giving my fake birthday date to Big Tech in overall (I disagree with the very own principle, not the method), at least it is a reasonable expectation. Adults are the one to buy and set up the devices, so I think it is fair to be on them to apropriately set the device and give to their children. New York’s bill[10], on the opposite, requires age verification, and although wasn’t approved yet, there is a risk of this fuckery to pass. Well, the same New York wants to force 3D printers to spy on you and block weapons parts printing[11, § 837-AA] snucking in a budget bill, so you can see the clear tendency of politicians to jump on to dumb ideas.

Back to Brazil. The law approved just last year, in September, requires age verification at operating system level on top of require age verification on websites. Don’t ask me why this double requirement, but you know, the average Brazilian politician IQ is lower than a rat (sorry, rats, you don’t deserve this comparision), so don’t try to make too much sense.

If you don’t care about the background of this law skip to the (il)legal analysis section. But I think you may be interested that, banana’s republic being banana’s republic, the trigger for this bill to pass was a well-intentioned youtuber getting the wrong kind of attention. Yes, a youtuber. Jesus!

Kikuo: one of the best musicians on the Earth

Mon, 12 Apr 2021 04:40:00 +0000

This page contains Bandcamp embedded links, so whitelist it in your javascript blocker to allow play music.

Hello fellows, long time not to see. A short post about one of my favorites musicians (unnecessary, but for me).

I don’t have a specific reason to write this post, but I’m doing anyway. Today’s subject is not about politics, censorship, or how the world is getting better in economic sense but much worse in terms of individual freedom. On contrary, it is a light, touchy subject. It is about music, one of the wonders the humankind has invented for their own pleasure. Now, a small introduction, a context about what kind of music Kikuo produces.

If you are here, I assume with high probability that you know or at least heard about Vocaloid (don’t say that is cringe!). Vocaloid is a voice synthesizer created in mid of 2000s developed by Yamaha. However, because cute and moe things sell (thoughtcrime.MOE), in 2006 or 7 they launched “personified” voice data that you could synthesize in the program – a character. Since then, the most famous, universally recognized, Queen of All Electronic Music is Hatsune Miku, that I won’t explain what is, just Google it. Well, since that launching, Miku just became the symbol for the Vocaloid software, and many, MANY people – called producers – just used her voice (and from other characters) to create music. Easy explanation, right?

Time goes by, producers also come and go,; some of them still exists, but in obscurity; a minority ditched Vocaloid altogether and only produces real person music (like Hachi, or his real name, Yonezu Kenshi, that nowadays is a superstar in Japan, making music for himself to sing and to others artists); and a few dozen, not to many, still have some kind of popularity and keeps creating music sung by software, including Kikuo, that goes in this last group. It is no surprise that since always many of Vocaloid music had and have dark and disconcerting lyrics and melodies, ranging from suicide and depression, to bullying and despair. Ok, all music have such themes. However, only a few musician really have a distinct characteristic, given both by their technical abilities behind the (musical) keyboard and storytelling sensibility. Kikuo is one that excels at both, creating heart-piercing melodies hard to forget, complex to digest, and easy to fell in love S2.

I won’t tell his entire history, but he was born in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan, and released his first album in 2009 (I just found a rabbit hole leading to his past artworks and music and old Twitter and pixiv accounts, and it is so… somber). Initially not using Vocaloid, but instrumental and in collaboration with singers. But I think that when he launched Kikuoworld, the second album under the pen name Kikuo, still without Miku, when we could finally listen his characteristic melody. A dark touch, a line of bass, transiting between electronic and ethereum (?) music. I am the worst to type in words how music “feels”, but let me present you Ankyo (暗叫/Screaming at the Darkness):

The dangers of an ownership-less society

Mon, 11 Jan 2021 04:59:00 +0000

After a long time, I’m back! And this time, it is about a seemingly random subject.

Sometimes I like to watch Louis Rossmann’s Youtube channel, a guy that owns a repair shop for electronics in New York. Most of this videos it is ranting about something, especially about Apple’s anti-competitivity practices, like locking down the software and hardware of their products to avoid third parties (like you, me and repair shops not associated with them) to change parts and make repair on it. It is a distasteful behaviour that should be condemned, but it is Apple, so clap clap, is magic! They can do everything they please, like pushing back against a law that prohibits US companies to contracts companies offshore that uses forced labor. Not a joke, they are against it! (the law, not the forced labor). Well, it is not about this today’s post, but surely it has to do about this: the amount of control that nowadays companies has and will have over the things you use or have purchased. And before you yell at me, no, I’m not against the march forward of technological advances, that it always have pros and drawbacks and it is almost always morally neutral (except facial recognition, this one has only drawbacks and it is immoral. I may write about this sometime). Anyway, one of the Rossmann’s video is exactly about the lost of ownership of physical thing we purchased (we don’t have ownership about virtual things, only licenses, at least legally speaking. It a fucking hell). The title is “YOU WILL OWN NOTHING AND BE HAPPY!”, a slogan from a World Economic Forum’s video about “how the world could change by 2030”, and it is so… dystopic? Ok, it is not prediction with solid bases, but it is a warning about what common people, and moreover, millionaires and billionaires that own the biggest companies today may think about the future. And if they are who thinking this, and they are who create the products and sell them, it is not hard to see that is not a innocent prediction, but a “I’ll make it be” prediction.

But what the fuck is an ownership-less society? Imagine a world where everything is a Uber-like service, pay when you use it. I know, plenty of things are already this ways, like the very own Uber, video and music streaming services, and the old-fashioned house rent (after all, everyone needs a home to live). So, at first glance, it doesn’t sound so bad, and I partially agree, why would I need an expensive car that I use once or twice in the week, or why would I spend time and money buying digital or physical movies if I only watch once, or why should I pay an insurmontable amount of money upfront if I just got a low-level job? And the list go on, it is very convenient, it is cheaper, it uses less of your free time. And although I use “ownership-less”, it is not really without any ownership (and have nothing to do with communism/socialist, on contrary, is overflowing capitalism and money), but instead of you having the possession and the use right, you will own only the use right – precisely, privilege – not the good (physical or digital) itself. So far, so good, but I wouldn’t be typing this article if it wasn’t to complain about something, right?

The death of Hong Kong's freedoms (part 1)

Sat, 10 Oct 2020 02:56:00 +0000

Democracies die. If you lived or live in a well adjusted country where the probability of an authoritarian leader can rise in a few years and the instituitions are solid enough, this death may not be so easy to grasp. People living in such places more or less take for granted that their rights will not be arbitrarily striped. But, even so, there is always a risk that given enough time, such tragedy will happen. Those democracies slowly may fade away, turning first in semi-democracies, where authoritarism and nullification of many freedoms will be accepted under the guise of “protecting the children” or “counteract terrorism” (we all have listened such excuses before), and then one day you realise you are living under an authoritarian rule.

For Hong Kong, that never was a true democracy, the day when it will become part of a totalitarian state is already set to July 1st, 2047. But, kind of unexpected, this city-state have had a taste of limited democracy, but still something to be proud of, and it is sad to see that so quickly this place, that saw many of freedoms and rights unthinkable to anyone in China, has dived into semi-totalitarism. How could it came to be, under millions of silicon eyes and in the era of instantaneous flow of information? This is the thing I want to think along this two posts, because I already typed 8 Word pages and filled only half of the things I wanted to say, so I split in two because I can.

A Plague Tale: go play now

Tue, 11 Aug 2020 03:37:00 +0000

Hi again. No politics this time, just a short review.

Earlier this year Steam incentivized me to throw my money on their face due some random special offer, and I got a copy of A Plague Tale: Innocence — also, why not to play a game about pandemic during a real world pandemic. My fellow anon reader, what a game.

A Plague Tale: Innocence is a game developed by a French company called Asobo Studio, released in 2019. The initial setting is already interesting enough: in year 1348, the morbid black death is devastating the European population, killing millions of people of a cruel disease transmitted by fleas living on rats, brought to Europe from eastern of Asia (yes, maybe future China and adjacency). You, the protagonist, is a girl called Amicia de Rune, daughter of some nobles living in old French territories, trying to live peacefully in her mansion. To add insult to injury, the Britons is also invading the region, so soon she is going that life is not some greenish land with rainbows and unicorns. Amicia’s relationship with her mother Beatrice is not that great, and she has a younger brother, Hugo, which is a ill kid since his birth. She also doesn’t have much contact with Hugo, but believe in me, this will be a fantastic starting point.

Then, one day, while walking some fucking beautiful forest (the game is visually breathtaking) with her father Robert and the dog Lion, something (spoilers below), but something very, very bad happens with the adorable dog. It will be just the start of the disgrace that will rain upon de Rune family.

The Modern (Weeb) Book Burning [Update]

Fri, 31 Jul 2020 03:19:00 +0000

UPDATE:

GO FUCK YOURSELF AUSTRALIA!

Good morning/afternoon/evening everyone. Let’s start with a… hmm… not so happy post (sorry). If you are a real weeb/otaku/smelly person, you may have paid attention to the following news (reproduced in a few pop culture outlets, like ANN or Nichiban): a Australian politician, tired of fighting kangoroos and gigantic spiders, gathered her energy, time and infinite knowledge to fight a evil and clever enemy.

Mangas.

I can imagine your disappointment reaction, but if you didn’t know about this, now you do. In a TL;DR version, she asked (demanded? threatened?) a major Japanese book seller in Sydney to remove some titles that reproduces (big quotes) “child exploitation”. As you expected, dumb politicians are in everywhere, but Australia likes to take the leader role. The reaction of many readers and fans were as you may expect, flooding her Twitter post in which she celebrates the removal from the store the “immoral” material with criticism, irony and indignation. Days later, the bookstore responded in a Twitter thread about why they removed, saying the titles (may) come back when the classification board approves it (or bans it, they can do that).

So, let’s dive in the characters of this story and understand what really happened, and what may happen.

Nice to meet you

Sun, 26 Jul 2020 03:44:00 +0000

Nice to meet you, I am thoughtcriminal. I just built this website to express myself outside the mainstream social media, where the dynamics of interactions there limits greatly what and how I express my opinions. Here I have no limits (ok, the webhosting still can take me down :cry:), I can place any content I want, small pictures, big pictures, videos, anything, with a big plus: no character limit. Especially when I feel that everyday we are one step forward to a dark age of knowledge and freedom of expression from all sides, where content is banned for arbitrary reasons, where appointing wrong things is misinterpreted as supporting the opposite side. Well, I am not free of critics (no one should be shielded of criticism in a free speech environment), but for someone mow down my arguments and opinions I need some place to post them, right?

You are welcome in this adventure. May be short, may be long, but surely will be nice. Just don’t forget to be gentle to each other, ok?

About

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

A long forgotten project, reborn.

I am lazy. I like writing but I am lazy. This project started as an outlet for my opinions on silly things and on the state of the world. I first started this in 2020, not coincidently when we were all stuck in home due certain coronavirus flying around. But then, the world moved on, I moved on, and this small website got less and less attention until it faded into darkness.

However, the state of the world got worse and worse. Free speech rights, my main interest, regraded in all countries at the same time, like a well concerted orchestra. It is not coincidence. Not only that, my 2021 post about the ownership-less society became more and more concrete, specially now when big companies sucks all technological resources to feed AIs datacenters. When a timid movement to take ownership back started to move. I don’t think it is a coincidence…

As of 2026, when I write this, many countries started implementing ~~identity~~ age verification, petrol prices hiked due some war somewhere bringing inflation, AI slop wastes our time, governments wants a backdoor in every device. On the other side, the small and silly web swims back on the counterflow, trying to revive 2000’s internet times back, right to repair legislation advanced in some places and even we can run most of games on Linux.

The future is still bleak, though. But there is no excuses: in the end, we did it to ourselves. A colective consequence of our colective actions. The leaders we put up there (in societies where we have this power) are just are reflection of ourselves.

Don’t let anyone think for yourself. Your voice should be free.

A small project about free speech and other things.

Contact

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Email:
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