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PontifexMinimus

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PontifexMinimus
·3 месяца назад·discuss
> A human's value under a capitalist system is equal to their ability to create goods and services. And AI cannot make this ability smaller in any way.

Yes they can. Your ability to produce goods and services depends on the infrastructure around you. When that's all run by AIs for AIs, humans won't be able to compete.

See that land over there producing food you need to eat? It turns out it's more economically efficient to pave it over with data centers etc.

Under a US-style capitalist system the rich (i.e. the AIs and AI-run businesses) control politics, the courts, etc, so the decisions the system makes will favour AIs over humans.

> So, when it comes to the entire nation benefiting from AI, the most important thing is to preserve capitalism, and then the free market will distribute all the benefits

...to the AI-run companies!

> The main danger is a descent into socialism, with all these basic incomes

Without UBI most people (or maybe everyone) would starve.
PontifexMinimus
·3 месяца назад·discuss
The work at PARC in creating Smalltalk-80 was pretty impressive, IMO.
PontifexMinimus
·3 месяца назад·discuss
AI is different. It promises to be able to do everything humans can, but better and more cheaply. When AIs can do every human job cheaper than the subsistence cost of employing a human, humans will be economically obsolete and worthless.

Then there's the minor issue of AI deciding to just wipe us out because we're in the way.

Taking everything together, AI more powerful than that which currently exists must not be created. This needs to be enforced with an international treaty, nuking data centers in non-compliant states if need be.
PontifexMinimus
·3 месяца назад·discuss
I agree. My first reaction was "what the fuck's an 'M'?"
PontifexMinimus
·5 месяцев назад·discuss
> try using obscure CPUs

Better still invent a CPU instruction set, and get it to write an emulator for that instruction set in C.

Then invent a C-like HLL and get it to write a compiler from your HLL to your instruction set.
PontifexMinimus
·5 месяцев назад·discuss
Not constitutionally, at any rate.
PontifexMinimus
·6 месяцев назад·discuss
> In Holland I see a lot of defeatist attitude

The naysayer defeatist attitude is also very strong in the UK.
PontifexMinimus
·12 месяцев назад·discuss
What about using ssh and a SOCKS5 proxy? I would be surprised if the UK government blocked that.
PontifexMinimus
·4 года назад·discuss
> Hardware buttons and switches have to be designed, tested, re-designed, and validated very early in the process of designing a new model

No they don't, just use the same ones as the previous model.
PontifexMinimus
·5 лет назад·discuss
Not yet, give them time!
PontifexMinimus
·5 лет назад·discuss
A lot.

If one was actually banning books that did harm, those books ought to be at the top of the list.

But they are not banned (not should they be IMO). So books that've incited less violence then them ought not be either.
PontifexMinimus
·5 лет назад·discuss
> Before civilization, it used to be that the most violent person in the group could simply take whatever they wanted.

My understanding is that in hunter-gatherer societies, that is not the case and they were (and are) quite egalitarian. E.g. (https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/freedom-learn/201105...):

>The writings of anthropologists make it clear that hunter-gatherers were not passively egalitarian; they were actively so. Indeed, in the words of anthropologist Richard Lee, they were fiercely egalitarian.[2] They would not tolerate anyone's boasting, or putting on airs, or trying to lord it over others. Their first line of defense was ridicule. If anyone—especially some young man—attempted to act better than others or failed to show proper humility in daily life, the rest of the group, especially the elders, would make fun of that person until proper humility was shown.

>One regular practice of the group that Lee studied was that of "insulting the meat." Whenever a hunter brought back a fat antelope or other prized game item to be shared with the band, the hunter had to express proper humility by talking about how skinny and worthless it was. If he failed to do that (which happened rarely), others would do it for him and make fun of him in the process. When Lee asked one of the elders of the group about this practice, the response he received was the following: "When a young man kills much meat, he comes to think of himself as a big man, and he thinks of the rest of us as his inferiors. We can't accept this. We refuse one who boasts, for someday his pride will make him kill somebody. So we always speak of his meat as worthless. In this way, we cool his heart and make him gentle."
PontifexMinimus
·5 лет назад·discuss
Absolutely. If illirik was sacked from their job and made destitute, would that be "just basic conscientiousness"?

Maybe illirik should consider that the cancel culture weapon could just as easily be turned on them.
PontifexMinimus
·5 лет назад·discuss
> there is no power structure wielding a “cancel button” here

This is hardly an isolated occurrance, as you well know.

So we have all of Big Tech acting in concert to ban what they deem wrongthink -- but, oh no, that's definitely not a power structure! Nothing to see here, folks!