General Discussion

I consider myself an American ally to the extent that I was educated in America and my friends and colleagues are there though I can’t personally see ever wanting to go back.

And I am alarmed at the idea of China and Russia as superpowers. How many times must we learn that critical thinking demands a worldview that recognizes that people are the same everywhere and democracy and enlightenment values (not a thousand low priority bs based drivel) are the only things that are retaining sanity and undermining it bts is a horrible idea.

But I am alarmed to see American ideas like this commercial crap and transactionalism exported the world over without American democracy or checks and balances. Your founding fathers weren’t entirely stupid. Separation of church and state ; checks and balances. Apparently senselessly yapping on and on sans expertise/experiences outside the anomalous are the only ones that appeals to people these days. I never talk without expertise or some relevant experience. Earlier I was talking more frantically but these days I don’t curate etc but if I say something it’s because I am worried about what lies downstream some 13 years from now if democracy wanes at this pace.

I am the type of person who can laugh at bad jokes as one offs (very part of the human experience) but not serious kayfabe that responds to a changing world by learning the worst possible lessons.

I am very displeased with a lot I have seen that I see as selling out democracy to technocrats who see life through the lens not even of game theory (which itself is imo not a universal lens) but of low rent to deluded gamification.

Kayfabe, influencers etc-these are terrible concepts and the whole world is not a stage. It seems to be a lab increasingly and not a very good one at that. What sort of experiment has no controls anyway? Daft and at scale.

Can even humans be this fucking stupid I ask myself everyday these days? The only AI scientist who comforts me some is Yan LeCun. He is not insane. That’s a good thing. He could be another Norbert Weiner. He is the only one I see who has the gravitas needed to be a Norbert Weiner (this cool scientist I read about thanks to the one journalist I trust Yasha Levine). He wrote this really good book “Surveillance Valley”. His next book should be really good though but it seems like a lot of work for one person.

These fields are drastically changing everything and I can think of one AI scientist I trust and one journalist I trust. Terrible ideas..simulation theories..
The implementation of a slightly manipulated internet in subtle ways (like the three body problem alluded to is scary enough). These are terrible concepts.

I keep thinking with revulsion how terms like creators ..they are so common now and with the implications re intelligent design and creationism being the plan rather than evolutionary biology (I mean real evol bio - not fugly takes on evolution and social Darwinism).

Society is alarmingly stupid and getting more so. I look at Quanta Magazine bleakly these days and think..various unflattering if not yet dire things..
Women’s rights have gone right into the toilet as well. Creepy and icky and braindead.
A real strain on any real scientists and doctors or people who take life seriously in any profession as adults do and get reality well enough to be allowed to access data etc.