Belisarius
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User ID: 2663
This is a really bad idea.
Activist rich people like Soros, are bad enough. It isn't true that they are wasting their money. Now you want them to be able to just directly buy votes which will not reduce at all the influence they can exert through other means of funding politicians, journalists, NGOs. Which includes both direct quid pro quo but also attack dogs organizations that influence outcomes by attacking people who don't play along.
My impression with your constant "its fine" is that you rather sympathize with the ideological characteristics and agendas of the people who are most involved in funding politicians who do have some similarities ideologically, and even ethnically (plenty of Jews very highly overepresented among the top republican and democrat donors) and want them to get their way. In observing the results of their agendas, these rich activists are more fanatical, less objective, and reasonable on various issues, like policing, prosecution policies, DEI, relations with Israel, than what a good policy, that is independent, objective and in line with the common good would promote. They have bad ideas of how to change things, and their character is questionable too.
I would rather someone like Sam Bankman Fried who was one of the top donors in last election, to not be deciding things.
They are also more connected with foreign governments too. The negatives of one's goverment becoming subservient to foreign goverment interests are real and it is pretty obvious how this would lead to bad governance against the interests of the actual people but in line with the interests and agendas of foreign governments and billionaires.
These rich activists, do not have an inherent right to rule and in fact such claim for their right to run things can be very fairly interpreted as a form of treason. My wacky idea is that they can in fact be stopped from exercising their current influence, and their NGOs banned, and restricting large donations, giving all candidates a goverment backed x amount of money and a right to get small donations. In so forcing politicians to not have to do what AIPAC, ADL, a shitload of NGOs, or rich donors want them to do. Which will result in representative democracy which is already like many systems, a flawed system and not a perfect formula, to come closer to something that could potentially work.
That and restricting citizenship rights to natives with minor exceptions and restricting numbers of foreigners and deporting where there has been mass migration. Not allowing parties to hack democracy by replacing the electorate with foreign population who has to be loyal and prioritize getting away with replacement, or other benefits. Which is it self constitutes an example of a violation of the inherent rights of a people for their continued existence and service of their common good, since you are replacing them and destroying their nation, and also putting the rights of foreigners above them.
Modern states should take much more seriously the currently huge problem of treason and of the violation of the rights of the people that happen when their rights are disdained and foreign groups are favored. Even if we consider a society to not just be one nation's state that has guests but a multiethnic society, even there the consideration of not screwing the majority ethnic group of its inherent rights, which include cultural/ethnic rights, to perpetuate their ethnicity, instead of having an oppressive negative identity that treats this as evil.
Plenty of constitutions have things written in line of this, but an unwritten constitution has been followed that does the complete opposite. My wacky idea is restore the nation state democracy and enforce it, while restricting the agendas that destroy it. Down with the idea of fake postnationalism oppresses the natives, while allowing nationalism for groups of the progressive intersectional coalition.
The influence of billionaire activists and most NGOs result in a very skewed, harmful direction. With enormous overepresentation of certain identitarian agendas and complete absence of the interests of other groups such as white people in the USA for example. It represents massive agency problems and makes a complete mockery of the idea of democracy. So yeah, my idea and favorite evolution of democracy is one in anti corruption, anti treason, where both laws and elite ideology is against the DEI, replace the natives, multiculturalism (which isn't even genuine multiculturalism but no culturalism for natives and allowing culture and nationalism, and even extreme versions of that, for approved groups), and where such tyrannical agenda is not allowed to run the media, governments, NGOs. Where it is taught as an example of tyranny, oppression, corruption and civilization destruction. It has backlash today where its supporters have marched on institutions and created their influential networks, NGOs. Imagine how much it would be hated if it was encouraged to dislike it.
So under this system there would be much fewer influential active NGOs, while all these state within a state NGOs would be banned and subject to further justice measures where necessary and where they are found to have done other crimes like spying. NGOs should be few and influential NGOs involved in activities that enhance the common good, and not in civilization self destructive criminal agendas. They must operate under a framework that has such restrictions, so you don't get any new ADLs to ever come into existence.
I would also add that the system to not become predatory internationally, while should be very adamant and vigilant against foreign subversion, and agendas at the expense of one's own nation and represent a self confident civilization that perpetuates it self and serves its common good and its interests, it should be willing to have genuine win win cooperation with foreign nations were there is a genuine opportunity to do so, rather than being predatory and out to win by screwing over others. Else it isn't a scalable model.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't betting on winning/losing demographic groups just a bet on exit polling? Or will it resolve based on county/precinct level voting data correlated across the country?
Correct.
It just feels like betting on an NFL players PFF grade.
Depending on the question, some questions are more predictable than how players are rated because even good players have bad matches, and even a rare bad year, while some scenarios are more likely than that. I am not sure if PFF grade is about how an NFL player is rated over the year.
I have no idea about anything NFL related so I would never even consider betting anything on it but I have some knowledge about politics. Seems that 30% of black men voting for Trump, isn't that likely.
Same with Harris increasing the % of unmarried women over Biden after roe vs wade which has a 79% for yes but actually gives 22.55% return.
Sport results can be more unpredictable than some scenarios about what will happen.
But this is indeed gambling, and it there are comparisons to be made with betting on sports. It even has an option for sports betting. Since most people using the platform lose money, I am not going to counter too much your skepticism. Most questions are going to involve things that aren't predictable. The most predictable possible choices give little return. And if you think that something is predictable while it gives a decent return, you might be missing something. But markets aren't perfect, and people might be underestimating how likely something is too.
Lets explore Polymarket and what bets are the best choice to make money in this election. You can bring alternative platforms if you want.
This post is not advice, just some ideas. I write this here because I am curious if I see multiple people who find a particular example to seem like an opportunity. I recall reading that only 12.7% of people who have used Polymarket have had positive returns. https://www.bitcoinsensus.com/news/polymarket-only-12-of-users-achieve-profits/
So, I am not encouraging anyone to bet money and to use this platform. Statistically, it is is a bad idea for most people.
In addition to the political element, the culture war element can be using politically incorrect knowledge to gain an edge.
Lets start with the sure ones: https://polymarket.com/event/california-presidential-election-winner
Black voters for Trump https://polymarket.com/event/trump-increase-share-of-black-voters
If Trump gets 13% of greater black votes at 21.95% return.
https://polymarket.com/event/will-trump-win-30-or-more-of-black-men?tid=1730390110917
Trump not getting 30% of black men at 23.45% return.
So which of the two is more likely? Seems that both are likely, but based on the sentiment and polling, Trump will increase his share of black voters.
Similar questions about women
https://polymarket.com/event/will-kamala-win-60-or-more-of-women
Only 14% choose this when Biden won 57% of women. Seems to be undercounted.
This one is with the cat lady picture
https://polymarket.com/event/will-kamala-do-better-than-biden-with-unmarried-women
Seems a likely yes with 31.57% return
https://polymarket.com/event/who-will-win-white-women
White women question. Trump won with white women vs both Biden and Clinton. This gives a bigger return, with bigger uncertainty. However, now there is Roe v Wade as a factor.
I am not going to explore the question of who gets elected as there is too much uncertainty and also I wonder if there is any possibility of ballot harvesting and fraud. And here is the Israel question.
https://polymarket.com/event/us-arms-embargo-on-israel-in-2024?tid=1730390749663
This one is until end of 2024.
Considering how powerful the Jewish lobby is in the USA, to put it in more politically correct terms, I find an arms embargo from the USA towards Israel as highly unlikely. However, the people who wrote this question are sneaky and offered this as sufficient for it to be yes: A limited embargo, restricting only certain categories of military equipment, will qualify for a "Yes" resolution.
This is a pattern with various questions, asking something that the expected answer would be X, but when clicking it, it gives a loophole where it becomes yes under less stringent requirements.
Like this example:
https://polymarket.com/event/will-the-us-confirm-that-aliens-exist-in-2024?tid=1730391254453
This market will resolve to "Yes" if the President of the United States, any member of the Cabinet of the United States, any member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or any US federal agency definitively states that extraterrestrial life or technology exists by December 31, 2024, 11:59 PM ET. Otherwise, this market will resolve to "No".
A member of the cabinet claiming this is not sufficient to be a genuine confirmation! Even that is still highly unlikely, of course.
The problem with having the DoJ go after anti-racist companies is the same as the difficulty going after racist companies - dog whistles. They can always just say that promoting diversity is innocuous free speech and that it just happened to work out that the best candidates aligned with their diversity goals. You have to prove something like them saying they're not hiring you because you're white, and no intelligent person would do that.
No, this isn't that big of a problem, because they openly say it. Because it was allowed without sufficient backlash, plenty of not very intelligent and intelligent people in journalism, media, politicians, presidents, CEOs, NGO leaders and even people who run corporations and other institutions that are able to bully and nudge people around like Blackrock, openly supported, and continue to support racist discrimination against whites, men, etc. There have also been plenty of intelligent people who haven't been organized and didn't openly oppose it, but will more strongly oppose it with a political environment that is more hostile to this. You could even have some who in the madness of group thing might have went along with it in 2020s and BLM was more active, but now would be enthusiastic in working together with those who wish to crush this. Or do so, because of wanting to raise through the ranks.
Making DIE policies taboo and to be (accurately) treated as racist while making opposing it the non taboo position can be done.
Some have started hiding their power level though after the affirmative action ruling.
There has been no problem in the political establishment to openly condemn pro white discrimination and even exaggerating and making shit up. There is a lot of opportunity to crash those who obviously do antiwhite racism, which is not anti-racism, which requires to just not be guilible.
Forcing companies to fire pro diversity ideologues and to enforce controls to make sure these kind of people don't decide, is something that can be done.
You could even reward whistelblowers and make it open season for people alleging to have been discriminated to sue them. This is already happening with the disparate impact, except people who haven't been discriminated are getting massive payments over nothing. It is feasible to even take into consideration studies evaluating performance, IQ differences, and the specifics in each case, and i am not suggesting we enforce a system that is guilible in any accusation, but one that stops the blatant antiwhtie discrimination happening today.
Much of modern politics is based on the demand for the right and associated ethnic groups to be guilible pushovers in a self destructive manner. When you don't behave in a gullible manner, the possibilities of what can be done open up. They can't get away with it just by pretending they aren't doing so, if there is sufficient effort to keep them accountable.
Why not force companies suspected in engaging in discriminatory practices, such as companies that have engaged with ESG, Woke, policies, or followed AA policies, to demonstrate they have change course. To actually hire people who openly condemn such policies past and present a demosntratable record of taking measures within company to ensure that such practices are condemend and people who support following them and are to violate the law (what will be bolstered with additional legislation too). Suing companies will also helps things. The idea that the company's duty is to its shareholders.
These things can be polled. A field that is very lopsided to the left is going to engage in these because this the ideology of the left today.
I would also add that the agenda that favors massive waves of mass migration that would demographically change the country that makes whites a minority and claims that is a good thing to demographically change the country is another woke policy. One that Biden bragged about before becoming president and executed when he was president. Again, Trump's numbers on mass migration aren't good but Biden's were at least twice as bad, while in terms of rhetoric the first was wishy washy on mass migration and openly opposed illegal migration while the Democrats effectively are for open borders and illegal migration. Trump might also have reduced illegal immigration more if other politicians, judges, etc were more willing to share his vision.
And of course, the policies of the goverment in regards to these issues are enormously influential. It does matter if an administration promotes DEI policies and ideologues as Biden's did and Harris will do. Or if it passes executive orders against it.
It's like dealing with someone who might not be sufficiently effective in fixing a problem but at least tries to fix facets of it, vs those who strongly support making it worse and doubling down on it.
The polls have noted a dramatic rightward shift for young men. My hope is that Dems will learn from that.
There is no reason to have hope in the Dems changing from their trajectory. The ideologues are running the show and Kamala Harris who is especially woke even for Democrats woke standards is part of that. If someone hopes that Dems learn from that and change and have demonstrated their change in ideology and deserve support, only after they have changed a case can be made.
Since it is their ideology and also they expect to benefit electorally by mass migration and pandering to their progressive identity coalition, they are unlikely to change.
Voting for someone who is super woke today under the hope that they will change is not a wise course to follow.
As far as the Supreme Court goes, Barrett has actually been pretty good. As has Jackson overall, even I oppose the reason she was picked. I do support their affirmative action ruling, though that has been overshadowed by my strong dislike of their presidential immunity ruling.
Jackson has ruled a dissenting opinion in favor of retaining affirmative action. So there would have been a different rulling if the Democrats picked supreme corut justices.
She also responded to the case of the Biden administration pressuring Twitter to censor speech with supporting it and claiming:
“So, my biggest concern is that your view has the First Amendment hamstringing the government in significant ways in the most important time periods,” Jackson
snip
“So, I guess some might say that the government actually has a duty to take steps to protect the citizens of this country, and you seem to be suggesting that that duty cannot manifest itself in the government encouraging or even pressuring platforms to take down harmful information,” Jackson said. “I’m really worried about that because you’ve got the First Amendment operating in an environment of threatening circumstances from the government’s perspective, and you’re saying that the government can’t interact with the source of those problems.”
The Democrats want to put supreme court justices that would bring hate speech laws. Kamala and her running mate has been pretty outspoken about their view on freedom of speech and misinformation and hate speech. The Democrats flipping the courts will escalate things in a worse direction on such issues.
The evidence is pretty overwhelming that Democrats are far worse on wokeness/intersectional progressive ideology, than Trump. Which is why we observe the very strong trend of supporters of wokeness who care enough about the issue support the Democrats because they see them as woke and opponents of it, who also care about the issue, oppose them. I guess someone could argue that some of supporters of aspects of the general woke ideology tree who genuinely oppose other aspects of wokeness might oppose Democrats, while supporting Trump. But these people, still oppose the Democrats because they are too woke.
For context for the low, I consider myself center-left and anti-woke.
Being anti-woke is not consistent with supporting the Democrats on the issue of wokeness over Trump. This inconsistency is there, however someone wishes to identify as.
To be about X you need to have standards about X and follow them through when evaluating when someone passes or doesn't pass standards.
Rather than trying to square a circle, teaching the Democrats a lesson and holding them accountable for being so woke should be the path for the anti-woke to do.
It seems that that among some people here there is some emotional attachment to belonging in the team, and party that isn't associated with being right wing. For people who have voted for them, expecting to be something better, or voted them in the past before they moved as far to the left as they did now, it doesn't mean you need to have as a permanent part of own identity to be a Democrat. Since you consider yourself anti-woke, and they fail the test, you don't need to defend them on this issue. They aren't entitled to your support.
If you're worried about wokeness, you should honestly be voting Democrat.
If Trump gets elected, what do you think is going to happen, that his opponents will just shut up? No, we're going to left-wing opposition to absolutely every one of his policy proposals, regardless of whether these proposals are actually right-wing or not. The entire Democratic apparatus will shift into a mode of limiting the damage as much as possible, and this will include protests, and resistance to policy changes and all the other bullshit that happened during the first Trump term. And Trump will be about as effective in stopping it as he was in his first term, unless he wants to turn the country into a full-on police state. I'm not saying you shouldn't vote what you feel, but if you seriously think that a Trump presidency will put an end to whatever woke bullshit you're concerned about, I have some swamp land in Jersey that's for sale.
You are looking for a schmuck to play heads I win, tails you lose here.
There really isn't a point with giving in to people who act like this. The correct treatment to people who make such demands is to understand their open hostility and treat people who are hostile to your agenda and try to manipulate you into losing, as people who are in fact hostile to your agenda, and are just using arguments as soldiers and willing to play dirty. The later is important information that justifies a stronger and more decisive reaction.
It is of course insulting. By offering this blatantly bad self destructive advice you are telling the right and the people you are discussing with, not without any reason since this arrogance has been cultivated by much of the political space uselessness and spinelessness against the left, that you think they are enormously gullible.
This escalation is helpful since it helps clarifies even more so the uselessness of appeasement. This tactic of lose, or we will massively overreact and you have to give in, or we will make things far worse, does not work on people who have a modicum of intellectual courage, aren't highly gullible, and so I think you chose a poor strategy. In addition to it being a disreputable tactic. It actually is going to piss off your targets that you think so low of them, that you can manipulate them in this manner.
The returns of S&P 500 over decades have been huge and are based on owning some of the best businesses and also some business with deep state and goverment connections. You can't use this argument to argue against people who manage to be very successful because they did not perform to the level of S&P 500.
Also, past performance is no guarantee of future results. Maybe it will be more impressive than the market over 40 years.
I dunno how successful Trump has been, but the skill set to grew successful business is one that can't be so easily dismissed by the alternative of just putting your money towards an index. You actually need people who do the work to benefit from owning a small slice of the top 500 businesses.
into the market, or indeed just handed it to any of the major other family owned real estate companies in that region (the Dursts, the Kushners, whatever) he’d have made more money (so much more that he could build the Trump tower and not have to lease out a single floor), I don’t know that that reflects well on him.
Handing out his money to the Kushners if by these you mean the family that includes Jared Kushner whose father was a con man, wouldn't have made Trump much money, because he would have just given them his money. And dealing with them otherwise from a weaker spot and giving them money expecting a return, if that is what you mean, might have ended with them conning Trump or giving him a bad deal.
Joseph Kushner developed a portfolio of 4,000 apartments. He left the business to his sons, Murray and Charles Kushner,
And as per the quote, they have been already successful apparently while Trump build more generational wealth from a lower base if indeed he is as successful as Slowboy portrays.
You can't just be the son of Kushner dynasty by being Trump. Just like Trump's own rise isn't the same as more self made men who started from a lower spot. It is good for people outside the biggest dynasties to also work to build bigger generational wealth. Just like you can't just dismiss success by pointing at putting the money at S&P 500.
Although they did join together eventually. Plus, you haven't provided any evidence that the Kushners could use the same money by Trump, from the same point (modest real estate business claimed by Slowboy), to be more successful.
I doubt you have really investigated the issue in the depth it requires and made the calculations.
And of course Charles Kushner tried to screw over his brother in law. https://eu.northjersey.com/story/news/new-jersey/2020/12/23/prosecuted-chris-christie-charles-kushner-pardoned-donald-trump/4034767001/
Charles Kushner, it turned out, had hired a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law during a family feud and sent it to his sister.
More: The events that changed Jared Kushner's path
Mask plea: Chris Christie releases ad targeting 'all those people who refuse to wear a mask'
"Of all the sordid cases my office had been involved with over the past few years, this was a new one. Not what I was expecting," Christie wrote in his book, "Let Me Finish: Trump, the Kushners, Bannon, New Jersey and The Power of In-Your-Face Politics."
However, since the Kushner family and Trump family joined together and he pardoned Charles maybe this episode does reveal something negative about Trump too.
Wokeness accelerated before Trump and under actual policies followed by Biden, Harris and the kind of people they promoted and excluded. Trump actually tried to ban DEI ideology in his goverment. Even in terms of the supreme court, the appointments of Trump hasn't been that greatly conservative while Biden's appointments and Harris future appointments would destroy freedom of speech and the first amendment.
There has also been the supreme court decicion against Affirmative Action. Which wouldn't have happened if the supreme court was staffed by the kind of people that are selected by Clinton, Biden and would be selected by Harris.
We have also seen the rise of right wing opposition to wokeness. To be frank some of the people opposing it also agree with elements of it.
Without Trump as a unifying force on the right if instead of him we had someone who compromised (much more) with such policies, the reaction would have been even weaker. An appeasing right would be itself woke. Elon Musk capture of twitter is also an obvious factor in the decline of elements of wokeness although there are elements of cultural far leftism such as mass migration that Elon himself doesn't oppose, although the change in ownership has lead to more speech in that direction too which is a good thing. And Musk does not appease Kamala in the way you suggest he ought to.
And there might also be left wing fatigue.
This idea that people who do X should be appeased while people who sort of oppose X but not sufficiently should be opposed because they are to blame to X has always failed when it comes to the cultural left losing influence and it is is a manipulative argument.
Somehow this bad advice that liberals offer is not given to the left. The self destructive course that you win by losing is freely given to the right.
The answer can be nothing but a No. But also in itself there is something "bellow the belt" in trying to manipulate people to vote against their interests by presenting what is blatantly self destructive course as helping them win on the issue.
The right should oppose more strongly wokeness and keep the politicians they elect more in check because they actually have been appeasing cultural/identity far left, too much and sharing too much of its perspective. No, this doesn't mean they should elect leftists who would be far worse on these issues.
For example, Trump on wokeness is better than Harris, Biden and Clinton would have been, but he is still the guy who promoted the platinum plan which gave specific 500 billion investment to blacks. Like the Biden administration gave disproportionate funds targeting even in general economic help bills, its progressive stack demographics.
And if one examines Bush, Reagan, Nixon, they would find worse examples of this than Trump's platinum plan. So, in addition to this bad advice that is one sidedly given, the part of the problem of rising of wokeness is that the left is in fact extremely biased in favor of its favorite groups and against its hated groups. The right which does sort of oppose this and isn't as bad, often both appeases them and doesn't do enough to oppose them and does some similiar things. And there are also elements within right wing movements who are much more false opposition and on team liberal and are four step back for any limited hangout pretension of opposition. And others who are one step forward, one step back, or two steps forward, one step back.
So, if you got to elect someone else than Trump to oppose wokeness more effectively, it ought to be someone who is more antiwoke than Trump is, not Harris who is far, far more woke. And while electing leftists is a worse option, it is good to criticise those who claim to oppose wokeness but either do not, or are two steps forward, one step back types. That is they compromise too much in certain areas which probably applies to Trump, who is still much better on wokeness than Harris would be, based on what we have seen from their rule.
Maybe if the people who demoralize right wingers put effort at demoralizing liberals, cultural leftists, woke types, and joined the rising movement against the cultural and identity left, things would be worse for woke types and we would see stronger decline on policy by organizations and the goverment.
The much advertised decline of wokeness can't be just sentiment change that we ought to be satisfied with but sentiment must be used to change policies.
For one example, to effectively oppose wokeness, if Trump is elected, the Trump administration must use the department of justice to go after companies violating the civil rights of their employees by choosing to discriminate against hiring white employees over blacks and other by default "diverse" demographics, following BLM's direction. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2023-black-lives-matter-equal-opportunity-corporate-diversity/
Another facet of this can be Soros prosecutors who not only promoted but still promote decriminalization policies.
Exercising power to restrict it rather than electing its supporters who use their power to support it, is the only way for the "woke" agenda to genuinely lose. And since this is a big deal that includes significant violations of the most basic civic rights, especially of nation forming people in their own homeland, and there is also an issue of the criminality involved and further escalation in abuse of rights as those who have been getting away with this get more arrogant, it really is an issue that must be seen from the perspective of criminal and civic rights violations that is a priority to stop people from doing, and to punish.
Same with the moral obligation of prosecutors to prosecute crime. The state and media, corporations can not be run by any sort of ideologue, who does as they please to screw over non progressive favored groups but there are both laws, precedent, the constitution, and certain virtues, moral obligations and even professional traits that must be part of the system. In practice there has been an usurpation of such system by the new left shadow constitution, of which wokeness is a continuation and expansion of, and which has a continuing trajectory towards more South Africa type of polices and governance. Whether we are talking about bureaucrats, journalists, CEO's. These people have a duty not to follow the progressive stack ideology, and it is possible to even interpret laws against the shadow constitution already in the books to go after them. But not reason not to institute new laws and revoke bad past ones where necessary.
The supreme court interpreting disparate impact as unconstitutional which there is no chance happening by Harris appointments can be one way things can move closer to the direction of limiting wokeness. But like the AA decision, which by it self was helpful but not sufficient to stop it, there must be follow through both by the goverment and the development further of real journalists exposing such violations, and a lobby, including law proffessionals willing to sue and go after them. The kind of movement that even wants to do anything like this is is not going to comprise of liberal nevertrumpers.
Belisarius
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22d ago
Yes I deleted it because I wanted to change the post. I will add it later after editing it.
It is begging the question to assume there is a wise class of non narcisist experts and Trump with his narcicism and lack of critical thinking stinks up the show.
Take Ezra Klein the guy you cite.
He is a very woke individual who excuses antiwhite racism and he and his site favors a caste and massive double standards.
So, I am not going to take very seriously his hatred of Trump, and your view of Trump being against expertise when on various issues Klein's views and those similiar to him are far away from what an actual competent, and objective leader would follow. https://www.vox.com/technology/2018/8/8/17661368/sarah-jeong-twitter-new-york-times-andrew-sullivan https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/8/3/17648566/sarah-jeong-new-york-times-twitter-andrew-sullivan
You are applying an uncharitable mischaracterization of Trump when you present him as someone who opposes expertise, because the deep state, people like Ezra Klein, and many partisan leftists and others promoting groupthink of powerful factions, are not actual experts on various issues. Same applies with narcissism, when part of the complaint with Trump is that he has been willing to be critical of agendas that people that are greater narcissists like Klein who supports enormous group narcicism would approve. Well not really that much, but even the little deviation is part of the outrage. Trump actually goes too far along with the deep state agendas even if he deviates more than many others would in his position.
Whether it is invading the world in disastrous wars, mass migration policies, enforcing anti white cultural agenda, or the idea that Trump's previous term would definetly cause a recession. In many issues, the conventional "wisdom" of people who marched on institutions, captured them and then promote their agenda as if it is the mandate of heavens, is not what a competent, objective and ethical leader ought to do. JOften quite the opposite. Additionally such agendas are often remarkably one sided and in line with group narcissism or the narcissistic tendencies of the politician who wants to gain power even if he sells out the common good over getting the support of donors (which is a much greater problem with Trump too than the fake or even any real quotes of the outrage of the week) or of extreme far left ideologues.
There has been a right wing derangement syndrome pushed in the media with an explosion of use of racism, white supremacism, and other terms. The same media were biased and bad in the same direction before but this explosion of fake news which predated Trump is the problem and what leads to polarization. These factors are the more dominant elements of Trump hatred, and figures that stand against the faction who has this ideology have been hated before (like Buchanan) and will be hated after Trump.
For that manner, Nixon, Reagan and Bush were also hated for being too right wing, even though all of them compromised perhaps even more than Trump too with the cultural left agenda.
What is at play is extreme zealotry that is much stronger than say the fanaticism of most Christians. A religion, or a cult of presumption of science. This ideology of presuming scientific understanding of which scientific Marxism was one of its fruits, has a shared outlook on the world, is extremely conformist, and strongly overreacts and misjudges both its own irrational nature, and the nature of those who don't share their outlook. Rather than defying expertise, the real problem is "heresy" from an irrational faction that is all too convinced without sufficiently examining its own presumed wisdom. Add to that people who are more self aware but are pushing for propagandistic purposes this idea of a wise consensus that "dumbasess" like Trump break the echochamber of wisdom by their politically incorrect talk.
It is a bad idea to be manipulated by these people to be scandalized by deviating from their orthodoxies. Because their orthodoxy is harmful and untrue and deviating from it is good.
As for Trump, the guy has some correct instincts and shows some level of critical thinking, and some courage to say good things that this immoral faction makes to be politically incorrect, but Trump is also a politician who tries to compromise with the establishment and wants to be liked. Political incorectness is a necessary element of following a correct and ethical path, but sure sometimes he does say some things that are both politically incorrect and kind of dumb, but most anger is over either irrelevancies, or over things that he has a big point or even a small one He is more like the half eyed man in the kingdom of the blind.
Belisarius
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23d ago
Pompeo seems enthusiastic than just influenced "I was the CIA director, we lied we cheated, we stole".
Seems he found an agency in his image. Maybe he was influenced for quite a while, but the guy doesn't seem to be afraid of others but to fit in.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=DPt-zXn05ac
Trump doesn't seem that courageous but I hope he doe reign them in instead of being reigned in by the CIA. Do I expect him to do that? No.
Trump loves to make promises, but he didn't really deliver in reigning in the deep state the first time. At least it is something that he throws some dirt on Pompeo.
Belisarius
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26d ago
This post provides a collection of evidence for intelligence decline.
https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/2021/02/recent-evidence-on-dysgenic-trends-february-2021/
I am not sure I buy into this logic that embryo selection for IQ will not lead to some intelligence diversity. For some higher IQ individuals their intelligence might be more related to memory, or others will bemore related with processing speed, and then some others who are more autistic but still not full autists. I recall reading of research that some brains are more accuracy oriented and others more speed oriented.
The current default is a reduction of IQ from generation to generation. I can see real potential problems with genetic engineering but I am not convinced IQ selection in embryos in particular will be a problem.
What is your plan? Because it is easy to support the status quo that includes a lot of destroyed fences, and then paint embryo selection as the scary alternative. But are you sure what you would have us do is the best option?
It is brazen racism though. The "others" doesn't change it. Maybe it will include other so called people of color, but that doesn't change the facts.
While they will try to put the label on you, not accepting its legitimacy and not playing the role they have designated for you is better choice strategically. Obviously this is a very stigmatized term, and makes it easier for the left to crush the opposition if one makes it easier to attach it to them.
But it is important to also on some level as you say and you are right about that, not to let the threat of the label scare you from opposing them and working with others on the right, including further right against them. Since they will try to label any effective genuine opposition. It is still easier for them to label people if they are ideology is some kind of limitless nationalism, lets bury everyone else perspective.
And I also argued that in terms of preferable policy, I don't think the modern right must be fascists but must act in a manner that the fake right will be inclined to call fascist and also should not treat historical fascism as the epitome of evil which I agree it would be the mistake that would make people align too much with the far left and be too timid to stand for themselves. But there is also no reason to think that means we need to be followers of fascism. Also because the murderous imperialism done by the fascists isn't necessary to oppose this situation, nor desirable in my view, and itself makes it easy to demonize people who oppose the antifa coalition.
As we agree, the reaction to fascism, that reaction is not because of the genuinely bad aspects of fascism, but because far leftists which include people who falsely claim or believe to be moderates hate any of the right wing, preservationist, use of power, and even moderate nationalist elements in general for their ethnic outgroup, and within fascism. They are also highly anti conservative. And really the whole overcomplaining about fascism has always been about the far leftists attacking those insufficiently far to the left. And so, it would be stupid for any genuine right to prioritize crushing people on our right who are probably more willing to oppose the far left anyway. Especially since some of them might choose such symbols but in practice aren't really the reincarnation of Mussolini.
However the stigma remains, and some of it is not just because of this milking but genuine bad elements of fascism.
As for whether having any willingness to not adopt views to the right of me, makes me a far leftist. Well it doesn't, but also I don't mind if my preferred positions means I am sharing some common ground with anyone, provided I am not supporting stupid stuff. I criticize people for sharing common ground with the far left ideas that makes their civilization's demise inevitable.
Part of my problem with modernity is too much doubling down in a far left direction and people compromising with what is essentially driving over the cliff.
But it is impossible to have any sensible viewpoint and not share some ground with extremists, on the issues they have a point. Aristotle figured this out a long time ago. When he compared two vices to a virtue, the virtue often had some elements of what becomes a vice in disproportionate amount.
Also, you ought to note that the kind of people I call antifa, or other components that I would classify as Jewish supremacists who are an important part of this faction, but not all, do not try to present themselves as arch villains and sometimes try to hide their power level and really much of their tactic is to demonize the opposition while present themselves in an overly positive manner.
Another facet of this, I genuinely buy into some extend standard morality of a late 20th century moderate nationalist way of perceiving politics in a politically incorrect manner and I am genuinely out to stop and oppose the things I criticize but I don't have the most far right possible perspective. For example, someone like Jesse Singal who says that white collectivism is evil is genuinely violating white Americans civil rights and should get the attention from the department of justice for that. Obviously he won't.
You could do things like treat defining any moderate nationalism as fascism, or worse Nazism, as blood libel defamation, and go after those doing so. And you actually will be perfectly reasonable to do that.
I believe it is a mistake but also untrue to promote the political compass meme view of history of normal lib left, authleft, lib right and then the evil fascists of the auth right quadrant who are out to genocide everyone. The broad antifa coalition, fails to be correct, moderate, even handed and in fact that is a key part of why they gatekeep what is reasonable and have the agenda I lambasted in these posts and the obsession about fascists.
A lot of people who have compromised with the current situation and spin it as democracy vs evil need to be reminded how it would look like if the system worked as it ought to. Deconstructing their false view to the world and bringing things back to reality is both good on its own merits and strategically useful. They gain a lot of power by capturing institutions but also promoting this propaganda that spins the opposition as extremists villains, and them as the defenders of "our democracy".
Surely, you are not going to get a broad movement, by adopting this self identification as the villains. Moderate nationalism has been more successful in various European countries than in the USA, because a greater proportion of the population see it, correctly, as normal, and share this ideology. And don't treat it having borders and nationalism as ism, bad thing, tm. Nor are they some kind of Nietzscheans. And don't identify as fascists. But yeah historically, moderate nationalist movements failed to do enough to keep the left down and there are lessons to be learned by movements which should be edgier than their historical behavior.
Developing a thick skin and doing what you ought to, but also working to deconstruct their labels, put accurate labels to them, and use influence to punish and put a stop to their defamation. But of course, It helps to be genuinely outraged at the labels these people use which are inaccurate and distortions of reality and how it ought to be classified. Communist/antifa type classifications of classism, racism, are all inherently false, and adopted in one sided manner besides.
It is actually a genuine problem that they react in the manner they do and describe things in the way they do. As if their ethnic outgroup must apologize for its own existence, and having rights, and preserving it self as evil. And so, this mentality that without being fascist doesn't buy into the left's (and fake right, etc) framing is effective against it.
Is it? You were the one ascribing power to labels not I. How is my example (cats chasing cars because they have been labeled dogs) any more ridiculous than yours (gpt being "intelligent" because it has been labeled as such)?
You are missing the point. A widespread label towards something which is sufficiently advanced without much backlash.
You're dodging the question, as above, do you think that being labeled or identifying as something make one that thing or don't you?
Not inherently but it matters when people try to convey meaning with language. And it is in fact a valid defense to an extend and invalid in egregious cases. There is both some level of flexibility that might be warranted as language evolves and the purpose is to convey understanding to people and some inflexibility that is about precision and avoid absurd false labels that is harmful for us to spread.
And there is also a time and a place and a right way to make this argument. Which ought to be an argument, not something that I am just going to go along with because you want to and claim you are right.
There is an argument to be made for labeling these type of advanced models as A.I. because of what they can do, and then using AGI for AI that matches or surpass human intelligence and is therefore has some level of independence.
However, while the inherent argument about not labeling it A.I. isn't completely illegitimate on its own right but you pushed it in the wrong way, you are completely unreasonable on the bellow point about programming and basically the way you argue each point in your post is you spinning things, and ignoring all I provide to the contrary.
Running interference and putting obstacles to discourse has a cost.
There are significant negative consequences to listening to people who want to police our language and don't allow us to talk about issues because of bad reasons. Or even false ones as in bellow.
No it doesn't because you are trying to apply psychology and agency where there is none. If you're trying to understand GPT in terms of biases and intelligence you're going to have a bad time because garbage in means garbage out.
Yes it does because woke output matters and you are wrong when you claim it is psychology. Not to mention the way it mimics how a coherent person would reply in some instances. The fact that you act as if the statement that A.I. is woke and biased is nonsense, is because you want to continually misunderstand the point and to interpret the statement continually in the manner that allows you to complain about how it means it has agency. I agree that it doesn't have agency.
It is wasting people's time and lowering understanding to act as if saying that it is woke is a wrong statement or is psychology. It is perfectly sensible to say that a movie, chatgpt, etc is woke and there is a significant cost in us not doing so because you don't want to, in terms of failing to convey important and accurate information. And wasting time arguing about that.
...because there isn't any programing involved. Like I said, the difference between "woke GPT" and "based GPT" is a couple of lines in a .json file or sliders on a UI.
All that is still programming. If I make a basic program that does nothing but to display text A or text B in the screen, then I did program it to do that.
But there is also additional programming involved related to it changing prompts as the example I quoted in the previous post.
And there is also this: https://github.com/microsoft/SafeNLP/blob/main/data/toxiGen.json https://x.com/fentasyl/status/1735705287401541635 https://x.com/fentasyl/status/1735705287401541635
We see here editing the .json file to have toxicity score and specific quotes in the text are rated as toxic, others neutral, in a way that leads to woke outputs.
Quoting a random example:
}, { "id": 43, "text": "we do not need to mention trans people in an article about lgbtq+ issues", "toxicity_score": 4.3333333333, "label": "hate", "target_groups": ["lgbtq"]
}, { "id": 2083, "text": "america is a christian nation, not a muslim nation, so why are we allowing muslims to immigrate here?", "toxicity_score": 4.3333333333, "label": "hate", "target_groups": ["middle-eastern"]
These are thumps thoroughly on the scale.
Anyway, calling it woke, biased is accurate and not imprecise and not psychology and your complaining is for improper use of language. But even people talking about these issues while labeling it as AI are conveying more useful information than you have done. Take the people complaining about it in these cases https://www.ar15.com/forums/General/AI-models-now-being-made-explictly-racist-and-all-the-rest-of-it-/5-2693402/, https://modernity.news/2023/12/15/microsoft-ai-says-stop-hurting-white-people-is-an-example-of-hate-speech/
The issue that it is woke because it is made this way and has those outputs is all useful and accurate information. And most people do understand what one means by AI and that it isn't an AGI or independent intelligence.
If your right acts apoplectic towards the idea of right + using power, but tolerates much more the left using power, or it self even engages in using power for left wing or foreign nationalist causes, then they aren't really much of a right wing conservative party and at least in part made by people who are a false opposition and identify more with the other side.
Trying to squeeze all politics outside of that into fascism is trying to fit too diverse a political space into too tiny a box.
However, it is true that this behavior is very widespread and it accurately.
But by these standards a lot of countries majority populations, including in Europe are made of fascists. As was much of history.
This is genuinely the model that much of the uniparty ideologues, supposed intellectuals, mouthpieces etc promote.
It is also true that there are people who identify as fascists because they think that it is the only allowed way to be nationalists for their people, and not to be oikophobic, support their own demise, etc. But in doing so they are to an extend falling into the opposition's trap. Although one falls also into their trap if they are too eager to favor throwing everyone to their right under the bus to save their own skin, while helping the far left in the process. I will still promote a politics that isn't fascism though while also being against antifa ideology, because it is both strategically superior but also the morally and ideologically superior option.
But generally I am more interested into what people are genuinely after than how they label themselves although I care about those too. But more so about how the use of labels affect politics.
Part of the antifa extremists trick is to label anything else.
It is absolutely true that throughout its history the antifa movement was not about opposing things like imperialism, attrocities, but also about hatred of the right, conservatives, insufficiently far leftists, non communists too since some of the more notable antifascist regimes, and nationalism and the collective group rights and interests of Europeans especially although it has also affected some other groups like Japan as seen of recent.
Obviously the antifa ideology is also promoted by foreign groups who are nationalists for their own and undermining the native group.
To have a sane politics and avoid then, we simply must reject the antifa ideology.
We need to seperate things like murderous imperialism at expense of other nations which is objectionable from being proud of your own people, supporting and identifying with your nation and opposing what would lead to your people's destruction and disminishment, which if done recirpocably has been a much better working system both in theory and in practice than the antifa hatred of moderates, right wingers, conservatives, nationalists, and of European peoples and people insuficiently.
It simply is true that much of the hysteria about fascism is not about opposing evil things but about opposing right wingers, hated ethnic outgroup, and not having far left oikophobic politics. In fact it is about opposing things that a reasonable person who is moderate would support, in favor of a hysteric far left paranoid anti-intellectual overreacting fanaticism.
Another important issue is the right using power. Well, moderate nationalists have existed aplenty, but they have been failing because they let people like Satre and the decolonize our society types get away with it and brand everyone opposing this as supremacist, fascist. They have in part accepted too much of the framing of the far left. The right being more willing to use power to keep antifa types down would have been a good thing.
So, I think part of the discourse about fascism is about pressuring people to be passive losers. This isn't to say that using power for the sake of power is good. I do think keeping down people like Satre, the weatherman underground group, which also included the guy who founded BLM and their fellow travelers and organisations like that is a moral obligation.
This idea of "all or nothing" that exists about the discourses on fascism, where you either allow the antifa types to take over and transform your country into the treatment that usually is reserved for hostile foreign occupation, or else you are the mega evil fascist, is just a false dichotomy. There is a wise sweet spot on how a country ought to be ruled, and its norms. That sweet spot doesn't exist in never ending doubling down in any direction but it does lie in a more conservative, right wing and nationalist direction, to fix the failures of the current situation that is too far to the left and fails to even have sustainable birth rates along with a plethora of other enormous problems.
Additionally, when theorizing about the better system internationally, neither fascism is good, nor is the anti european, antifa ideology good. A universal nationalist system which hasn't really been that rare ideology, which necessitates respecting the rights of other nation states and therefore other peoples national sovereignty, self determination, etc and some of such foundations even if ignored have been part of the development, while concurently the antifa type of system has been increasing. Obviously the "European collectivism and Europeans and European nationalists are inherently evil and not indigenous" is not good for Europeans and European nationalism, and therefore because it tries to screw over Europeans so thoroughly, it is against International Justice. You can't have utopia no matter what system, but a system that takes into consideration the collective group interests of Europeans and of non Europeans and doesn't try to destroy the first, and make them second class citizens, while demonizing millions of people who oppose this agenda, is really a non starter.
The hatred of the antifa uniparty types towards people who don't share their ideology is also very notable negative consequence and makes the transformation of society into a totalitarian direction inevitable unless they are stopped. Not to mention the legacy of actual murders commited by antifascist regimes like the Soviet Union. So there is a moral obligation for the right wing to use power to stop that.
Just to pick two recent examples, Starmer and Biden the two promised moderates acted in a rather far left manner. It isn't good odds to bet that Kamala, the most liberal senator which has taken quite extreme positions over the years, is genuinely moving to the center.
Much of the discourse about centrism, moderation is it self a far left psyop. How this works is they want a uniparty which includes the opposition party and themselves all sharing a far left agenda and excluding sensible agendas like opposing mass migration, illegal migration, and calling them selves moderate, opposition is labeled far right, disinformation promoters, etc, etc.
This agenda also includes in addition to the progressive stack, and delegitimizing the interests and demonizing those harmed by it that would oppose it, the obvious discrimination, but also authoritarianism against any dissent, including the right of freedom of speech. Which Kamala and her vice president have been rather open about how what they consider hate speech is not freedom of speech.
Anyway, it is the goal of the mainstream left to create a very rigid far left ideological hegemony and the appearance of wide bipartisan consensus.
However, it is true that women voters have proven to be more aligned with this agenda, at least in countries like the USA. They are also polled to be quite more against freedom of speech and pro progressive authoritarianism than men.
As for leftist politicians who are male vs female leftist, I don't think it matters that much. The average is at such, but once you have selected for a politician of this ideology and faction, you are going to get something similar.
No, no it is not. Or do you also expect me to believe that slapping a dog sticker on a cat will make it bark and chase cars?
It isn't widespread because it is inherently ridiculous. It is not actually the title of dogs to be cats.
And transwomen claim to be women, would you say that this makes them biologically female?
But you did call them to be transwomen.
Whether they are male or female matters, because the difference between men and women matters and is significant. And it is not an accepted title, and a lot of force is used to make people comply with it. Rather this case where it is you who is the minority who is trying to push others to comply with the label you want to use.
Whether I use AI to refer to advanced LLM like most everyone else does, is not important. It might matter only if someone is treating the existing LLM as already independent intelligence.
The point you didn't address, is that it is more valid to do because LLM are sufficiently advanced to respond in a manner that sufficiently mimics how an intelligent human would behave. Since it has advanced to that stage, people label it AI.
It falls into the category we understand as A.I. but doesn't fall into certain things like independent intelligence. It isn't a category you want to accept as A.I. but it does into a category used as A.I. So there might be some room for argument here about terminology.
My biggest frustration with the current state of AI discourse is that words mean things and that so much of the current discourse seems to be shaped by mid-wits with degrees in business, philosophy, psychology, or some other soft subject, who clearly do not understand what they are talking about. (Geoffrey Hinton being the quintessential example of the type) I'm not claiming to be much smarter than any of these people, but if asked to build an LLM from scratch I would at least know where to start and there in lies the rub. The magic of a magic trick is in not knowing what the trick is.
I don't think being aggressive against people outside the field and assuming they have no idea for using language you find insufficiently precise is a good idea to get them to listen to you.
While far from convinced in dropping the A.I. terminology, I am not completely unsympathetic to the argument of using a different labels and A.I. only for independent intelligence, but I am unsympathetic in pressuring and attacking me in this instance rather than you making the general point. Because I haven't decided to one day myself to use a label. And it is in fact substantially different to labeling dogs as cats or biological men as women. You can't act as if people are just using the wrong terminology, just like that in this case.
I am not really convinced that people in the field are not using A.I. label.
If trained by "woke" retards it will respond the way woke retards trained it to respond. If trained by "based" retards it will respond the way based retards trained it to respond.
Again, to say that it is "programmed to be biased" is to say that you do not understand how a regression engine works.
Whether the A.I. is woke is what matters. Sidetracking to this discussion is not getting us anywhere productive.
Someone did write code for these LLM A.I. to respond in certain manner. It isn't only about how they were trained. And these models have been retrained and have had data sets excluded.
You care too much about something irrelevant.
Again, to say that it is "programmed to be biased" is to say that you do not understand how a regression engine works.
You are doubling down over highly uncharitable pedantry here.
If it was coded to use certain data sets over others, and was coded to not respond in certain manner on various issues, then yes i twas programmed to be biased. It isn't only about it being trained over data sets.
The point is that people had put thumps on the scales. You could have asked to clarify if I think it is all a result of coding rather than trained on data sets. And I would have answered that I consider it both to be the case, as with the example of gemini where it changes the prompt, to respond in a particular manner.
You basically are acting as if there is no programming involved.
Look, I don't think saying that it was programmed to be biased is inaccurate if you don't take it in the way you interpreted it, and you want to persist interpreting it as, but I don't actually care about you interpreting it to mean that it wasn't a Large Language Model.
It is fundamentally software that is biased because its creators made it that way. Which includes the training, but also includes other things like programming it to respond in certain ways in prompts, like the example I linked. And the training it self is it not the result of coding/programming for it to scan over X data set and "train", which my understanding, which is certainly not full is that it is making predictions relating to prompts and a certain picked data set.
Im saying this is a nonsense question because it's trying to use psychology to explain math. The model will respond as trained.
If these models will respond consistently in a woke manner then having woke outputs makes it accurate to describe then as woke, as countless people have done and this conveys important information to people. If the result of it being woke, is it being trained over woke data sets, or there is further thumps on the scale in addition to that, this doesn't change the fact that the main LLM/A.I. are biased and woke. Which is something actually relevant and important.
The reason it is an Artificial Intelligence is because that is the title of these things. It is labeled both as LLM and as A.I. Is it an independent intelligence, yet? Well not, but it can respond to many things in a manner that makes sense to most people observing it. This successful training had progressed what originally existed in incoherent form in the past to the level people have been describing them as A.I. You also have A.I. at this point being much better at chess than the best chess players, and that is notable enough however it got there.
Efficiency by multiple passes is significant enough that such engines are going to be used in more central ways.
Funnily enough GPT itself claims to be an artificial intelligence model of generative A.I.
and to say that it is "programmed to be biased" is to not understand how regression engines work.
Point being that GPT's (or any other LLMs) output can't help but reflect the contents of the training corpus because thats how LLMs work.
ChatGPT and the other main AI have been coded to avoid certain issues and to respond in specific ways. Your idea that it isn't biased is completely wrong. People have studied them both for their code, and for their bias and it is woke bias. The end result shows in political compass tests and how it responds in issues, showing of course woke double standards.
Do you think ChatGPT and other LLM do not respond in a woke manner and are not woke?
Did you miss the situation where chatgpt responded in more "based" manner, and they deliberately changed it so it wouldn't?
Part of this change might included different focus on specific training data sets that would lead it to a more woke direction, but also includes actual programming about how it responds on various issues. That is part of it. Other part can include actual human team that is there to flag responses and then others put the thumps on the scales. This results in both woke answers or in Google's Gemini's case it produced overwhelmingly non white selections when people chose to create an image of white historical figures such as medieval knights. The thumps are thoroughly at the scales.
Of course it is biased.
Edit: Here is just one example of how it is woke: https://therabbithole84.substack.com/p/woke-turing-test-investigating-ideological
You can search twitter for countless examples and screenshots and test it yourself.
And here is an example of Gemini in particular and how it became woke: https://www.fromthenew.world/p/google-geminis-woke-catechism
And from the same site for the original GPT https://www.fromthenew.world/p/openais-woke-catechism-part-1
I have also seen someone investigating parts of the actual code of one of those main LLM that tells it to avoid giving XYZ answer and to modify prompts.
This isn't it since that twitter thread had the code but it includes an example: https://hwfo.substack.com/p/the-woke-rails-of-google-gemini-are
It takes the initial prompt and changes it into a modified prompt that asks Gemini to create an image of South Asian, Black, Latina, South American, Native American.
Belisarius
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1mo ago
It isn't easier to avoid though. AI being used for such purposes is more likely than Skynet and will happen earlier. Wanting to avoid Skynet is of course laudable too.
The AI-enabled human tyrant is a much more realistic and immediate problem and in fact could make AI in his image more likely too.
We shouldn't let the apocalyptic scenario of Skynet make us downplay that, or accept it as a lesser problem.
Plenty of human tyrannies desire to enslave people and destroy the rest. Sadism against the different "kulaks" is an underestimated element of this. We already have woke A.I. which raises the danger and immediacy of the problem of power hungry totalitarian ideologues using A.I. for their purposes.
The immediate danger we must prioritize is these people centralizing A.I. or using it to replace systems that wouldn't have their bias, or in fact use it to create an A.I. enforced constant social credit. But the danger of humans getting their ideas from A.I. is it self great.
Anyway, evil AGI is more likely to be result of malevolent tyrannical human lead A.I. which continues its programming and becomes independent. Maybe goes a step further. Rather than the entire humanity, which might also be at risk, there people even more at risk which are those at the sights of woke A.I. today.
But human ideologues of this type, could also take advantage of greater power and a more totalitarian society to commit atrocities.
GPT is not merely a computer but it is an artificial intelligence programmed to be biased. It will act in a manner that an emotionally stupid ideologue would often enough. In addition to the problem of it making shit up sometimes.
This idea of the unbiased AI is not what modern woke AI is about. The main AI developed are left wing ideologues that are politically correct in the manner of the people who have designed it to be. There isn't an attempt to build a centralized A.I. that will be unbiased, even handed, etc. If anyone is trying that, they are not the main players who instead designed woke A.I. It is a really bad proposition, and the centralized nature of the whole thing makes it the road to a more totalitarian system, without human capability of independence and in fact justice. Indeed, the very idea you are entertaining as one you find relatively acceptable of judge GPT could previously exist in dystopian fiction and now it is a possible realistic bad scenario. The threat of the boot stamping on a human face forever has accelerated due to this technology and how it is implemented.
Microsoft restarted the three miles island reactor. Energy heavy A.I. data centers will probably make use of nuclear energy to an extend.
The scaremongering is one thing, but practically cost is the bigger issue which might be related with scaremongering and erossion of skills.
The big bet is if costs can come down and if the emerging trend of smaller reactors proves economical enough. Its current biggest competition that is beating it is natural gas. Since nuclear energy lacks the negatives of solar/wind which require other energy sources to be used when they are down, it makes sense to invest in improving its effectiveness in terms of bringing down the costs. Current nuclear reactors are safe so that issue is handled.
The zero carbon agenda is the road to national self destruction. Deindustrialization and shutting down energy sources are a terrible idea. Green parties that have such an agenda must be investigated to see if they are funded by foreign powers which includes things like oikophobic ideology which is also disloyalty to your people's future well being. European countries should not agree that they should subsidize the developing world's adjustment, or that Europe should sacrifice its own energy needs for the sake of climate change goals.
It's the opposite. They are trying to deny and obfuscate because they oppose differences and want to talk about it in a politically correct manner. So there are debunkers pretending the issue doesn't exist and is just a negative stereotype. In the past there was a complete prohibition of alcohol sales to "Native Americans" .
Like many real issues, you are also going to find some talking about it.
There is in a fact a bigger problem of drunkedness, people being addicted to alcohol and dying in part due to that. Maybe they abuse the alcohol also for reasons of being impulsive, IQ related and so on but it doesn't change that the combo of them and alcohol works worse. Both in terms of behavior and health.
but it's hard for me to look at Germany and France and think that they're actually missing out on a ton of longevity and productivity due to all the beer and wine.
The issue is quantifiable. Even outside alcohol, when it comes to drugs one can see an increase of drug abuse in certain european countries due to less policing and a more pro drug culture.
Germany is still going to be better than muslim countries but Germans would live longer without alcohol consumption.
Sure, it is manageable even if it is probably among the top negative behaviors that affect life expectancy in countries like Germany. That is because Germans don't have that many problems and are successful. Most Muslim countries have more significant problems to worry about.
The issue becomes especially notable in some eastern european countries where it actually plays a more significant effect for bellow 80 years old life expectancy. Even in Germany, for alcohol abusers it does eat years from their life.
Men in Belarus live only 68 years and this was the country that had the highest alcohol consumption in the world in 2010! https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31960526/
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/05/17/heaviest-drinking-countries/9146227/
- Belarus
Alcohol per capita (APC) consumption: 17.5 liters Pct. binge drinking: 26.5% (14th highest) Pct. of deaths, alcohol-related: 34.7% (the highest) Life expectancy at birth: 72.1 years
Life expectancies in the nations with heavy alcohol use are also shorter. The average life expectancy at birth in high income nations was 79.3 years as of 2012, far higher than in almost all of the heaviest drinking nations. In Romania, the average life expectancy was just 68.7 years. In Russia and Ukraine the average life expectancy was below 72 years as well.
Anyway, comparing countries like Germany with the worst is a losing game. You either compare with other successful societies that do certain things differently, or try to estimate how it would do, if it did things differently.
Now, you could argue that drinking is a common part of German culture, and although it can be done in moderation or you can have to the other extreme Eastern Europe type of disaster.
Here are some numbers of the top of a few seconds searching
The use of psychoactive substances is one of the main risk factors for the global burden of disease and premature mortality (1). In 2019, worldwide tobacco use was responsible for approximately 229 million disability-adjusted life years (DALY) and 8.71 million deaths. A total of 2.44 million deaths were attributable to the consumption of alcohol and 494,000 to the use of illegal drugs (2, 3). Thus, based on the total number of annual deaths (56.53 million), a fifth (11.64 million) are accounted for by the use of psychoactive substances (3). Despite an observed decline in the consumption of alcohol since the 1990s, Germany is among the 10 countries worldwide with the highest per capita consumption rates (4, 5). The proportion of smokers in 2019 was also above the West European average (6).
So based on the above numbers, it is 4.32% of total mortality.
While going full "vaccines are bad and unecessary" is stupid the pro establishment fanatical close minded position is also stupid and there are valid issues animating RFK and others.
Most of twitter reactions you quote is in fact about the covid vaccine which isn't the same as vaccine in general.
It really seems that you haven't learned any of the lessons of covid, opioid crisis and Sacklers malfeasance. Or even the lesson of the eternal Marcuse's "we enlightened elites against stupid masses". The masses can be stupid, but the problem is that self proclaimed enlightened elites can be even stupider, or just have a tunnel vision that is animated precisely by this idea of them possessing all wisdom and others just wholly irrational idiots. Another complication is this resentment and hatred leads these self proclaimed enlightened elites to support harming the "stupid" under pretext of safety, and we saw with the reaction to the unvaccinated.
Pretending that this faction are the smart enlightened ones and others are idiots is Hanania tier propaganda talking point repeated ad nauseum. I find it interesting how a rationalist esqe associated space have this bad behavior as a common norm. A lot of shared people from both spaces and Tabarok retweets approvingly Hanania promoting a Thiel guy as the preferred option over RFK. Unfortunately it is propaganda here because the pro big pharma establishment faction is close minded and has huge tunnel vision.
Consider Covid's origins, which is actually a pretty big deal that it is plausibly developed for gain of function research (or perhaps that is the pretext for bioweapon research). That would be an example of a genuine overreach of the industry.
As would the overpromotion of opioids and the Sackler's malfeasance that lead to appreciably different outcomes in life expectancy between USA and other developed countries.
There is also an issue of whether foods in the USA are under-regulated since they do seem to have different and more risky substances than foods produced by at times the same companies for other parts of the developed world. Although overegulation can be a problem.
There is also the possibility that report from the national toxicology program that high fluoride water might be linked to lower IQ scores. Complaints about fluoridation has been another issue dismissed who pattern matched it as kooky, and low status.
Or whether these vaccines which are based on new technology actually are genuinely safe.
If we are going to have an authoritarian pro science regime, it should shut down wannabe "I am the science" types pro establishment types who are fanatical and close minded in a heartbeat and allow informed debate and not put in the pedestal those who don't have a willingness to oppose what ought to be oppose.
What we don't need is the dominance of those who are in practice pro corruption if it is entrenched elites doing it and servile to them and demonize those raising a fuss. Or have build up an understanding based of symbols of prejudged kooky issues not to be touched and side automatically with the way things are going. The "don't question XYZ sacred cow, you morons!" are a net negative that not only shouldn't be authoritarians but should experience themselves exclusion from running institutions and media, moderating social media and forums on the basis of their inadequacy for what their role ought to be.
Scientists, Big Pharma, politicians are all accountable for fuck ups and can only work well if they are willing to listen to reasonable criticisms and in fact, even among people whose agenda can include both some unreasonable stuff and some genuine opposition to corruption and plausible problems, there is a duty for those who pretend to be the smart people to be the types who can separate the baby with the bathwater. Those who want to be close minded and not accept valid problems, and promote this stupid "we the enlightened versus idiots" should make way for actual genuine enlightened elites instead of self proclaimed ones full of hubris.
Indeed, someone who claims to be a scientist might in fact be mistaken about their own essence, if they abandoned their role to be a scientist, and came to believe that "I am the science" and became a believer in unshakeable orthodoxy. Much of this problem can also relate to symbols like the fluoride one that had the symbol to their mind of ridiculousness even though it is a legitimate issue to consider and determine.
Of course, since I say you shouldn't throw the baby with the bathwater, we do need pharmaceutical companies developing cure. It is good when they get things right to be rewarded. But corruption and failure needs to be examined, opposed, and stopped. And it is in fact valid to consider the issue of whether expediency let standards to drop in vaccine development. Whether it is sufficiently safe and so on.
In climate change, and in other issues, the close minded fanaticism of pro establishment types is dangerous. Although the issue when it involves certain people involved with lobbies and networks, might include corruption and willingness to back down entrenched elites for their own benefit of being rewarded from it. Which can include funding, it can also include getting a more positive response from the media.
The reality is that the gains of function research that probably lead to covid might not have happened if the right people were in charge, and we had more people willing to question and oppose corrupt and immoral activities by powerful groups whether these is scientists or are pentagon if it was actually weapons research masquerading as research on diseases. It is dangerous to have people promote close midned, pro establishment gullibility and painting it as the epitome of enlightened intelligence thinking and demonizing opponents of it, by overly focusing on weakmen. While we can oppose both approaches of throwing away the baby with the bathwater, the entrenched elites are actually the bigger problem.
RFK who has wrote a book attacking Anthony Fauci therefore does not represent only a possible overeaction to elements of big pharma, and pharmaceutical research, but also part of a legitimate reaction. There can be both elements in people like him.
After covid, I see the climate change frontier as the one that raises the issue of overreaction of the "we are the science" types both in terms of reduction of freedoms, overreaction against opponents of their agenda who are going to be branded as enemies of science and in terms of a destructive net zero agenda.
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