"They described the strange feeling of peace that came over them when they handled the Book of Science, the pleasure that it was to repeat certain statistics out of it, however little meaning those statistics conveyed to the outward ear, the ecstasy of touching an instrument, however unimportant, or of hearing new Scientific revelation, however superflous.
"The Science," they exclaimed, "feeds us and protects us and elevates us; with it we speak to one another, with it we teach one another, in it is the totality of being. The Science is the friend of rationality and the enemy of superstition: the Science is omniscient, unquestioned; blessed is the Science." And before long this allocution was printed on the first page of the Book, and in subsequent editions the ritual swelled into a complicated system of praise and prayer."
- A parody of The Machine Stops
Don't leave me hanging, given that we are in a "for all the marbles" point in the game of civilization, what's the next move?
I want to believe there's something better than, "Stop the world, I want to get off."
What is the compelling alternative to this somewhat unrestricted growth we have currently going on? I know there's lots of "if only we just..."s, but what's the implementation plan? How do we install socialism on hardware that was built to run capitalism and seems to be running super well, except for all the pollution it causes?
I support the artists and writers, the creatives and creators, hell, I even support the social media influencers, but this strike is a stopgap, if that. What's our plan? What can we offer the capitalists to get them on board with it, other than the guillotine option?
Is that all we really have to offer? I have to believe we have more than, "be nicer to people, or we'll kill you".
I do not support writers and creatives who profit from intellectual 'property', they are themselves a part of the problem. I reject the notion that workers are free from blame for their participation in the system.
A good first step to solving much of society's problems, including this is to nuke the financial sector from orbit, companies like Netflix and Universal will then go bankrupt and their employees will be forced to do something that is more beneficial for society, instead of contributing to the useless glut of for-profit entertainment.
Furthermore, transhumanists should be persecuted for their anti-human beliefs especially for creating human likeness, until their beliefs are erradicated.
None of these are easy solutions, but if solutions were easy we would not have reached this point.
Thank you for clarifying. Is it difficult to get people on board with the "transhumanist persecution" thing, or do people take to it naturally, in your experience?
It depends who I'm talking to. Conspiracy-oriented people tend to be receptive to it, while the kinds of people who generally trust the narrative presented in mainsteam discourse and free-speech types tend to react with horror at the suggestion that some beliefs should be suppressed because they endanger humanity.
I remember my mom taking my White iBook G3 to the repair store and them upgrading me from Panther to Leopard in 2010. Completely blew my mind and I'm still in love with the UI.
it's already beyond my comprehension, i've not lived very long but in the time i have i've never seen any technology develop so rapidly and at such a rapidly increasing pace. I assume this is what it must have felt like during the dawn of the age of computing.
It makes you wonder if those singularity proponents don't have a point, and it all depends on whether it keeps accelerating or whether it will slow down again. I hope for the latter and I fear for the former. Even if it does slow down eventually a long enough period of such change is going to make the industrial revolution (whose negative effects we are still coming to terms with today!) like a walk in the park.
Reality is biased towards the fast-moving scenario, so long as we aren’t running into the bounds of physics, which as far as I can tell we’re not. Kurzweil was much more right than he was wrong. The opposite is true of people who strongly disagreed with him and called him a quack.
The transhumanist movement has more than its fair share of quacks, but I think Kurzweil is enough of a scientist to take his arguments a bit more serious. That said, I'm getting pretty tired of all the mind uploading, eternal life and other afterlife nonsense. That to me is just religion in a new jacket.
Ya there isn’t enough talk of the more medium-term, practical uses of AI. I don’t care about mind uploading or AI doom risk. Will AI make stuff cheaper and better? Will it incrementally improve my life? I think the answers are yes and yes. That’s where the focus should be. Where and how can AI can help in construction, finance, medicine, etc…
A so-called singularity would require accelerated development for many more technological spheres, not just semiconductor fabrication, and related information computation and AI advances. Logistics, supply chains, mining, farming, manufacturing, energy, biotechnology. While the former may continue to accelerate development in the latter categories, the scale of such impact is purely speculative. I don't believe the advances will be proportional in these harder spheres, as their physicality cannot be as readily manipulated as information.
Advances in the harder spheres will come. It’s just a matter of time. Their transformation will happen in a step-wise fashion, unlike the curvy exponential growth you’re seeing in pure software.
AI cannot safely and cheaply be used to drive trucks. But as soon as it can with one truck, it can with millions of trucks. All at once.
AI and robots haven’t advanced enough to replace construction workers for fluid, dexterous tasks, but as soon as they do, robots can replace millions of construction workers and surpass them in sophistication and speed.
This will happen in our lifetime, and the change will be extremely transformative.
I don't even need to delete my account, I'd be suprised if I didn't get resuspended eventually for like the 16th time at some point this month either when they find out I'm still ban evading or when I inevitably say something the moderation doesn't like again
I got IP banned across my older unused accounts, and my newer ones for mass editing, then deleting my comments to a message that was basically "reddit killed itself due to this API change".
I've been shadow banned several times for linking subreddits relevant to the discussion more then once in a comment section. So I started only sharing it once.
I've also been shadow banned for sharing large lists of on topic youtube links.
I believe I am running into some sort of spam prevention system, even though I see other users posting similar content. So my theory is that there is some sort of whitelist for this activity (i changed my username often when i used reddit), or I am running afoul with a certain moderator or admin.
Hard to tell when you're not even banned so there isn't a reason given to me. Wonderful system.
Back to imgur's user-sub I guess. Also I appreciate yall having me here as well.
One time a guy said disabled people should kill themselves for the good of the gene pool so I told him eugenicists should be publicly flogged and I got banned for inciting violence, and then I got IP banned when I told the moderator there's no point banning me because it's trivial for me to just use another account (in more colorful language). I'm also pretty homophobic & transphobic so I've caught a number of bans for that sort of thing before. My current account is on 1 warning atm cus I said something about feminism, I don't recall what it was.
I'm not sure why you would think being banned should prompt self-reflection? It's not like any of my reasons for believing the things I do has changed, and it's not like being banned from Reddit really has any negative consequences for me.
Getting banned 16 times from a social space is a pretty clear message that you're not welcome. Equivalent behavior in meatspace would likely get you trespassed from the property or arrested.
it is also worth pointing out that there is an nascent increase in guns in addition to knives now. Plus fighting back often leads to academic consequences even in cases of self defence. I was placed into a behavioural management program the one time I fought back.
Theoretically, but in the situation it's hard to percieve the threat level of your perpetrator and it can affect your education long term. Often bullies will be satisfied with only mild violence or insults, and trying but failing to defend yourself can often worsen matters and more permanent solutions are off the table thanks to criminal law.
This analysis is silly because it neglects the fact that the poor are disproportionally reliant on polluting infrastructure that does not have any safe and affordable alternative, while also being those most affected by its dangers. Big corporations have ways to make lots of money from so called 'green technology' and they have the capital to diversify into it and they do, poor people do not.
People want to act like there's a simple solution but anyone whose analysed the situation closely enough realizes that climate change is already locked in and renewable technology is not a good enough replacement given the power output and resource wastage. There is no way to even reduce energy demand since any reduction from one entity will be made up for by another entity, nobody has any desire for meaningful degrowth. Now that we have AI just watch us spin up nuclear reactor after reactor, drinking the ocean, and leaving every beach bare for the sake of 'progress'.
Society is already collapsing into violence and BOE is a couple years away if we're lucky. There is a reason I don't bother investing in retirement. It's a tragedy and people are in denial.
The companies I'm talking about do this since more than 50 years, that's why the infrastructure wasn't changed when the costs would have been lower because there was more time This changed would have benefited the poor too.
Now the time is running out and they choices are they suffer now because of higher costs or suffer later from the effects of climate change. They are the victims one way or the other.
