What follows is a small - though impudent - side riff from one of the chapters of my upcoming book about Artificial Intelligence (isn't everyone writing one?) In chapter two I cite many different AI Doom Scenarios, some of them just cautionary and others fiercely luddite or anti-technology.
But this riff... sampled here in advance... offers you a look at another kind of “anti-enlightenment” zealotry out there. This variant is not luddite. Nor does it favor technology-relinquishment. Rather, the self-named “dark enlightenment” is eagerly gung-ho about cyber data gathering and utterly credulous about the likelihood of breakout AI.
And yes, readers of Contrary Brin will find a few aspects familiar, while others are shockingly new.
As I write this passage, one wing of Silicon Valley ‘tech-bro’ billionaires has allied itself with unabashed proto-feudalists now roaming the halls of the White House, calling for an end to the “failed experiment in mass democracy” and a return to more classic social orders, of the kind that reigned across most continents, for most of the last sixty or so centuries – everywhere that agricultural surplus enabled local lords to hire thugs to enforce their ownership over masses of peasants, below. And never mind that the Liberal West accomplished far more, across the last century, than all other times and places in the human past… combined. Romanticism sees what it wants to see, especially when a delusional masturbation-incantation is self-serving.
This modern version of reactionary anti-liberalism – also called neo-monarchism – proclaims disdain toward the very system that educated, enriched and eventually empowered its devotees, providing every comfort and opportunity imaginable. Adherents promoting this cause now demand that mob rule be replaced by a “CEO-monarch” with absolute power to get things done, no longer impeded by bureaucrats enforcing so-called rule-of-law. And above all, that singleton king should get complete freedom from accountability.
While the preceding paragraph may sound polemically pretentious or excessive, it doesn’t exaggerate. Not even in the slightest. And I elaborate about this modern cult elsewhere. (Including how some members, having built their mountaintop ‘prepper’ fortress-redoubts, now openly avow wishing to ‘accelerate the Event,’ a purportedly-coming Civilizational Collapse that will topple corrupt western society.)
For a chillingly excellent depiction of the outcome that they seek, I recommend Vladimir Sorokin’s short novel Day of the Oprichnik.
As for the Dark Enlightenment’s pertinence in a book about artificial intelligence and its implications, well, one feature of that movement merits some further mention… the involvement of those ‘tech-bros.’ Because a number of the very same fellows whose names you'll see across the pages of my AI book – having been outrageously enriched by the relatively flat-fair-creative and socially-mobile University America – are now leveraging all of that to invest heavily in AI.
Moreover, some (certainly not all) of them have also bought into a movement to end the very same social mobility that benefited them, in a modern West that they now denounce as inflexible and decadent. One that hampers their efforts to bring about…
…to bring about what?
Well I elaborate in Chapter 9 of my book the widely shared motive of achieving some form of personal immortality, perhaps through AI-driven medical advances. Or else by pairing-with or uploading-into cybernetic entities. But those redemptions will likely lack one ideal trait that these fellows desire – exclusivity to a narrow, ruling caste. The goodies would normally become available to everyone, even people they don't like. That is, unless some scenario erects a caste system, monopolizing all the great-leaps only for an elite. Which, of course, is part of the fantasy.
Then there is a different form of immortality. One that propels male reproductive strategies all across Nature… maximization of offspring. Indeed, we are all descended from the harems of brutally insistent men who pulled off that trick across the ages, passing along some of their traits and drives. (I leave it as an exercise for the reader to spot and name those in the tech community who clearly fall into each of the categories listed in the preceding two paragraphs.)
== The archetype exemplar isn't who you think ==
But here I want to mention one more type of immortalist drive. One that may strike some readers as quaint, as it is also terrifying. It was typified in a September 2025 series of ‘confidential lectures’ by Paypal/Palantir impresario Peter Thiel. Confidential lectures (that were recorded and leaked, of course) offering his unique perspectives concerning the antichrist.
Subsequent articles and summaries emphasized Thiel’s blithe slurring of “candidate antichrists,” a list that includes Bill Gates, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Nick Bostrom, a panoply of Democrats… and Greta Thunberg, of all people. Yudkowsky because he now supports moratoriums and restrictions on AI development. Bostrom because he warns of potential AI failure modes. Democrats because they support international banking transparency. As for Thunberg and Gates, they appear – in Thiel’s eye – to support some kind of global governance, ostensibly to save the planet, but in ways that might shine light upon international money flows... and constrain or guide further AI developments.
While it's true that some of Thiel's bêtes noirs do favor some degree of greater world coordination and law, one is prompted to wonder which proposed future system would seem more antichrist-ish?
Which is more to be feared? A diffuse, constitutional, planetary confederation of free and knowing citizens and still-sovereign nations, loosely bound by transparently basic rule-of-law? And conditioned by Hollywood to always question authority?
... or Peter's openly yearned-for opaque oligarchy of CEO-kings, "ex"-commissars, inheritance brats, petro-princes and -- of course - tech bro billionaires? All of them united, first, by Thiel's openly-avowed goal to "hide my money"? But overall by the shared, reflexively un-sapient compulsion of would-be tyrants and harem-builders to re-create the very same feudal-imperial pattern that crucified Jesus and that Nero later used to torture John of Patmos?
I agree that those two versions of world governance are incompatible. It will be one or the other.
Since Peter once had his Stanford class read my book The Transparent Society - he could guess that I'd choose the looser system based on universal rights, rambunctiously critical citizenship, competitive churn-replacement of elites, and free-flowing light.
Moreover, when you stare clearly at that looming fork in the road, it seems plain which system would be preferred by any 'antichrist.'
== I want to know more! ==
All of that is, of course, boringly unsurprising. I've commented many times on the reflexive predictability of instinct-driven proto-feudalism. And so, that's not the intellectual content I wanted from Peter Thiel's exegesis. No, I want to learn something new from his agile rationalizations!
Alas, for those of us wishing to grapple with Thiel's theological specifics, these have been glossed-over, or entirely ignored in subsequent articles about the event. (This piece in The Guardian is better than most, filled with interesting details, while still entirely missing the keystone paradoxes.) I can understand most secular journalists being uninformed about the subject matter.
But you don't have to be!
And hence, for a fun and easy intro to the BoR (Book of Revelation) see Patrick Farley's manga version - Apocamon - wherein you’ll get a gist of the New Testament’s gruesomely sadistic back-end. The part that so many of our neighbors prefer over the actual words of Jesus -- His diametrically-opposite, gently-wise sermons that Jimmy Carter touted, across 80 years teaching Sunday School. Two incompatible versions of Christianity that are diverging right now, before our very eyes.
I've written and posted about armageddon yearnings elsewhere. For example, in "Whose Rapture?" I dissect the recurring millennialist yearning for End Times that has wracked every generation in most societies, not just the Christian West. Spates during each new wave of vehement Jonahs claimed to recognize and identify every BoR character in prominent figures of their day.
I am left to wonder about Thiel's four-part Antichrist Lectures. Did he mention that almost every Pope across 2000 years has been denounced by Vatican-foes as the fulfillment of BoR prophecy? An accusation that was also hurled at Martin Luther and - indeed - at Martin Luther King? Or that dozens of books in the early 19th Century meticulously attributed the central role to Napoleon, or to the Russian Czar? Or that later screeds accused Abraham Lincoln of being the Bible's arch villain?
Or more recently Vladimir Lenin all the way to Buckminster Fuller? Everyone from Woodrow Wilson to UPC barcodes has been identified as the Antichrist... though especially Franklin Roosevelt, who attracted great ire from BoR devotees, precisely because the WWII Greatest Generation adored him, above all other living humans.**
Because if Peter never mentioned that long litany of failed jeremiads, it might - kinda - speak to his own tendentiousness.***
(And in "Whose Rapture?" I predict that the 2030s will likely feature some of the biggest such spasms. So we had better sane-up plenty, before then.)****
== This is all about perception, manipulated to serve desire ==
What makes all of the above pertinent to the AI Revolution is the common element. That all of Peter Thiel’s assigned antichrist candidates stand – in one way or another – athwart any path to achieving his own desired place in the world to come.
In both worlds to come. One of them above – amid clouds and harps – after mortality. But far more urgently, in this temporal reality, wherein ultimate supremacy awaits those who consolidate unaccountable empires of data-collection and data-crunching. And sure, the universal surveillance panopticon that Peter dearly-desires to own and control certainly must incorporate plenty of AI! At first, as his servant-tools. Then, later, he as theirs.
And hence, completely separately, I would love to see a point-by-point checklist of antichrist traits that were described by John of Patmos*, when he predicted that dire fellow’s imminent arrival within a single generation…
...whereupon we might compare that list to Greta Thunberg, to Bill Gates, to Eliezer Yudkowsky, to Donald Trump… or to Peter Thiel.
== But the news-of-distration doesn't pause for theology ==
Surely ONE of the 247 would step up for the prize? Small problem though: "Trump himself was president on January 6, 2021, and had been president for nearly four years at that point. As such, it was Trump’s FBI, so to speak, not Biden’s, and in any event, the claim is false."
But the real problem?
Shouting "That's not true!" doesn't work. Because MAGAs don't care. In fact, yelling it gives them food. It reminds them of when they bullied nerds on the playground, relishing the whine "That's not fair!"
On the other hand, there are tactics to confront lies that do confront them where it hurts... terrifies them. And no one - certainly not a single rich person who could do it and help save America - has the imagination or gumption to try.
=============================
*And with some hints and traits attributed to Thessalonians and the Book of Daniel etc.
** Funny thing. FDR created the United Nations and fostered the World Courts. He and then Truman and Marshall and Ike established the American Pax that in many ways truly was the World State (if rather loose, in most ways.) And by the end of FDR's life he had created conditions leading to the most peaceful (per capita), educated, prosperous and scientific era the world ever saw, and a nation whose free citizens then set upon a course of chipping away at old prejudices. One has to wonder, with so many boxes checked on the PRE-antichrist diagnostic chart, how come we never saw any of the -- well -- any of the antichrist-ish shit?
Oh, this relates to Peter Thiel's notion that his fellow citizens are all cowards who will presumably be so terrified of nuclear armageddon and other modern dangers - exaggerated by 'liberal and science' and antichrist media - that they will flock to an antichrist who promises peace and prosperity. Set aside, for now, the way the current president repeats daily that he is the "peace president!" Let's go back to FDR who oversaw a pretty tense time... then Truman and Ike and charismatic JFK, who led during an era of nuclear brinkmanshiip and fear... and yet citizens did not flock to any such banner, but retained courage. Even after the trauma of losing in Vietnam. In other words, I call bullshit.
*** As evidence that Thiel either does not know of the long, long series of antichrist railings, almost every decade across the last 20 centuries... or else he deliberately wants to obfuscate them, is this, taken from a transcription of his recent lectures: My thesis is that in the 17th, 18th century, the antichrist would have been a Dr Strangelove, a scientist who did all this sort of evil crazy science. In the 21st century, the antichrist is a luddite who wants to stop all science. It’s someone like Greta or Eliezer."
Whaaaaa? 17th & 18th & 19th and 20th Century antichrist depictions flowed like torrents from a stricken rock. They are right there for a supposed antichrist scholar to see. And none - except perhaps glancingly the story of Faust - had anything to do with a "Doctor Strangelove " type. Though TODAY only one thing can save us from downside technological effects - and maximize the good effects - and he knows what it is. NOT luddism, but transparency, so that progress can be rapid, WHILE mistakes are spotted and addressed at a rapid pace.
What's most telling though is his contempt for the fellow citizens who made the science and technologies that he so counts on, as well as the mighty universities that were the greatest pride of the GI Bill Generation, that truly made America Great, and that he ungratefully denounces at every turn. Citizens raised by Hollywood's central theme of Suspicion of Authority. Citizens who are now soundly rejecting Peter's tyrannical "Gimme credit as a peacemaker!" dear-leader, the archetype of every one of the 7 deadly sins, a caricature-leader who would thusly be a prime antichrist candidate...
...if he only had a brain.
****Anyway read JONAH, among the best and most moving of all books in the Bible, wherein it is made clear that God can change His mind. And hence a tantrum threat that was issued 1900 years ago, even if it was real at the time (it wasn't) is clearly way, way, way obsolete. If He can (and clearly has) move on, then maybe we should too.
112 comments:
I initially thought Thiels religious musings to be a grift - to gain and maintain influence in the MAGAsphere. Or maybe to save him from from trouble when they come for the gays.
Then again, if you have that much power, but also isolation and distance from normal people who could have a corrective influence, some screws might have gotten loose over time in his brain.
(This is about OGHs rant about migration, in the last post.)
On Walls and Dykes
I live in an area where water is, historically, your enemy. If you live at the coasts or rivers, storm floods took land and lifes to an extent not imaginable today, drowing areas that would make up small to mid-sized countries today.
When I was in elementary school, the history of these floodings and the construction of dykes over the centuries was a major topic. We learned that early forms were built more like walls -- and "Wall" still designates a form of earthen rampart - and failed, because the sheer power of the major floods occuring easily broke them.
There are tales of cities, like famed Rungold, which were lost to the North Sea as a punishment by God for their sinfulness.(Modern archaeologists assume that their inhabitants made it worse by excavating the peat in their area for heating, this eroding natural protections).
Over time, the architecture of those dykes changed.They became less steep. Clay Cordes were added to make them more resistant to collapsing. Wavebreakers, Long lines of stone, extended into the sea to reduce the energy of the incoming tidal forces. Areas behind the dykes were designated for flooding, so in an emergency, parts of the dykes could be sacrificed.
Dykebuilding became community projects. People living in these areas had, on the threat of exile, to participate in the Project. In modern days, specialized engineers (the "Dyke Counts") and companies arose, funded by a local tax.
Why I am telling you all this?
Over here, in political discourse, Migration has often been compared to one of these floodings.
Trump promised and technically built a wall. The EU hastily declared the Mediterranean Sea to be one. Against a low migration pressure force, this might work, but it will break under a severe storm.
And those storms will come. Climate change, hypercapitalism, global neofeudalism and the dissolution of a international rules based order will feed them until they are unleashed, washing over the walls we built.
Because walls don't solve the problem. Dykes do. If we want to avoid large streams of migrants pouring in our countries, we will have to fundamentally change our foreign, economic and security policy in a way that the migration pressure is reduced early on and channeled into areas were they benefit us. It would take decades of planning, trillions of investments (and funding) and consistent, responsible action to achieve this goal. Maybe boots on the ground and communal actions.
Just like real dykebuilding demands.
From Kurt Vonnegut's Hocus Pocus and more topical than it was when I first read the book around 1990.
My lawyer, a mere stripling, paid me a call. Since I have no money, the Federal Government is paying him to protect me from injustice. Moreover, I cannot be tortured or otherwise compelled to testify against myself. What a Utopia!
Among my fellow prisoners here, and the 1000s upon 1000s across the lake, you better believe there's a lot of jubilation about the Bill of Rights.
...
Population collapse + AI = A better life for all and a saved planet
Great video comparing the social and economic results of the current demographic transition to what happened after the population collapse in Europe after the Black Death.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xo8-nPhoT9w
You Know What?... Bring On the Population Collapse!
Basically, a population collapse leads to a labor shortage.
Which means workers get paid more.
And rich people make less money (which is why rich people like Elon etal are afraid of declining populations).
After the Black Death peasants had the leverage to re-negotiate sweet rental deals and expanded rights and privileges with their feudal lords.
Inequality lessens and society becomes more equitable with no more obscene inequality where the 1% own 90%.
Labor saving devices like the water wheel or moldboard plow in the Middle Ages and AI today increase productivity per laborer.
AI is just such a labor saving device, making it possible for one worker supported by AI to run an entire factory by himself, or design an entire skyscraper by herself, or keep up with all the latest advances in their scientific/medical fields.
As an added bonus fewer people means less demand for goods, services and energy while AI allows productivity to stay high.
And so everyone gets richer still as the costs of living fall in real terms.
And the planet does not have burn.
Currently almost 50% of human fossil fuel emissions do not get absorbed in natural carbon sinks like forests, bogs, jungles and ocean plankton.
Cutting population in half by reducing births solves this problem even without extreme geoengineering or green energy adoption.
Fewer people also means less demand for land for building and farming. Carbon sinks can be expanded since land can be returned to nature like the Buffalo commons or reforestation efforts. The decimation of ocean life by fisheries can be reversed along with the devastation of corals.
A planet with "only" a billion people (Earth's population circa 1800) plus AI would be a paradise of prosperity, equity and sustainable environmental recovery.
So I for one welcome our new AI overlords and look forward to the population crash.
But long before the collapse the population age demographics skew old.
Very old.
The number of retirees being supported by workers become unsustainable (see China's 4-2-1 problem).
Unless the productivity of workers can be greatly increased.
And AI is going to be crucial in increasing productivity so that one worker can create enough wealth to pay for the reimbursement benefits of 4 grandparents and many more retired seniors that never had kids.
Anybody else notice a doubling of their electric bill?
You can thank all of the new AI data centers sucking electricity off the grid (and water for coolant - which is a separate issue unless you are a farmer on the great plains).
AI needs a lot of electricity.
Lots and lots of electricity.
And neither coal or wind or solar is going to cut it.
Which is why AI is betting on nuclear energy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58zHJL1dKtw
Especially the new plug and play small modular reactors that can be delivered on a flatbed truck and inserted like a light bulb:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPcemHez_4g
Nuclear - clean, safe nuclear with easily manageable and recyclable waste and no green house gases.
Hot stock tip - invest in nuclear energy.
A population crash is already here.
China Korea and Japan have already experienced population declines. With TFRs outside of sub-saharan Africa below the 2.1 replacement rate population decline is already baked in and as certain as tomorrow's sunrise. Africa will be below replacement level birthrates by mid century.
2025 will be the first year that America's population decline due to both declining birth rates and Trump's anti-immigration policies. 2020 was the year American life expectancy fell - something that happened to the USSR right before its collapse.
AI is in its infancy, running everything from vacation bookings to robot farm equipment to killer drones to automated "dark" factories without a single human on the factory floor.
It too is already here.
Like Europe after the black death the world will experience a labor shortage the second half of this century.
That is also inevitable.
And like medieval Europe, with the invention of the water wheel, there is every motivation to increase productivity to compensate for increases in labor costs arising from the coming labor shortage (the law of supply and demand applies to labor as well as materials).
Furthermore, the population will age before it declines, increasing our dependency ratios as the elderly outnumber workers.
AI will have to increase productivity per worker in order to continue paying retirement benefits without crushing workers under heavy taxes and/or committing political suicide by cutting benefits.
The population collapse will save the earth from heat death by reducing the demand on resources and energy without the need for an expensive transition to green energy , which will always be more expensive, intermittent and requiring expensive energy storage, and be less useful and convenient than nuclear.
To argue otherwise shows an ignorance of basic physics.
By reducing energy and resource demand while reversing global warming, a population crash will save the planet from a mass extinction event.
Labor will earn more in real terms, obscene inequality will vanish (and with it the corrupting threat of concentrated wealth to a free democracy), and the planet won't die.
So what is the downside?
And if you remain worried about population collapse, increased prosperity and equality are the only things that can reverse it.
Has anyone wondered why we did not have a baby boom in the 1920s after WW1 like we did in the 1950s after WW2?
Because the Great Gatsby roaring 20s were a time of gross economic inequality especially in rural America.
Most Americans were still farmers and most of them lived in poverty. The great depression started on the farm long before the wall street crash of 1929. And so were coal miners, factory workers, etc.
The 50s OTOH were a time of economic equity with wealth essentially taken from rich people via FDR's New Deal taxation and regulations and given to ordinary Americans via public spending and social programs.
Give people economic hope and fairness and they start making babies
The rich have been trying to kill the New Deal ever since and have almost succeeded.
And so birth rates are again collapsing.
Not hard to figure out really.
Short term however, AI investment is the single tent pole holding up the tent of the American economy and the stock market. Circular financing between tech companies is what is keeping the financial markets afloat.
Odds are there will be a stock market crash next year unless there is a real AI breakthrough.
So should we get out of stocks?
I agree with Warren Buffett (watch his farewell speech to Berkshire Hathaway on YouTube if get a chance): "Be brave when others are fearful and be fearful when others are brave."
Hold on to stocks for the long term. Don't go into bonds or exotic investments. Ride out the storm. Other wise you will be buying stocks high and then selling them low if you cash out your 401K after a crash.
But have a cache of money to cover expenses while the market recovers. A year maybe two worth of cash. BH cash stake has gone from 15% to 30% to cover their obligations during the coming crash. They know that crashes are great stock buying opportunities. Except for 1929 and 2008 the stock market recovered in less than a year.
Just be patient and don't panic.
As for what's going on today, see why the stock market hasn't crashed yet
https://youtu.be/fYiFMkkQrYs?si=0XcPaPmHWKs0luo9
And how fragile the economy really is
https://youtu.be/737uVWwPQAw?si=ibfLxyDuSbFlRb7E
Fun facts:
In the consumer economy 60% no longer matter one way or the other with the bulk of consumption being driven by the top 10%. Companies no longer need ordinary Americans even to buy things. Most of us are now ecomically irrelevant.
The financial economy is being kept afloat by a giant AI bubble with tech companies engaged in circular financing with each other.
Oddly enough the economy will crash, or already has for most Americans, but the rich have learned from past crashes and know how to insulate themselves and thus the stock market may still be riding high.
Brian Thompsons insulation was certainly not sufficient when tested.
An analysis of the broader themes of techno-bro billionaires is Adam Becker's book _More Everything Forever_.
https://openlibrary.org/books/OL58835047M/More_everything_forever
I find some of Adam's criticisms and speculations about the motivations of the key players flawed. However, he does a good job of articulating the core values, belief systems, and "vision" of the tech moguls and oligarchs.
The problem is the population collapse itself - lower birth rate and aging populations mean there are less doctors, nurses and untrained persons left to care for them, and since classic social and healthcare systems depend on working people generating their funding, it will collapse.
Which will lower the life expectancy, and create a number of related problems.
Yes!
I think this analysis is pretty correct, the during the second war recovery had a couple of other things helping it along. During there second world war the site of the redeployment of industry to war production meant that there was substantial forced savings. Households had healthy balance sheets if you like. Secondly the depression and WW2 meant there was a long period of relatively low birth rates, so there was a constrained work force ( so higher real wages). Thirdly the extent of physical destruction in WW2 was so high that together with Marshall Plan credits there was a sustained broad based demand expansion.
Der Oger that was a well-written metaphor re walls and dykes. I have long held that a US administration should label the nations that create refugees through oppression to thus be directly attacking the United States via hybrid war. Their oligarchies declared enemies.
Celt, declining population has those advantages plus helping save the planet. Still, deflation is a tricky business and inverted age distribution can be, too. Every silver cloud can have some dark linings.
Post WWII baby boom was also partly due to pent-up desires after the war.
I'm no economist, but it seems to me that human labor is being devalued by automation to a degree where a declining population would be a good thing.
The Stephen Millers and Elon Musks of the world think it's important for caucasians to outbreed everyone else, but aside from that, I don't see the down side of declining population in this particular moment. It's not about needing young workers to support the elderly--more like a lack of jobs that require any young workers to perform.
One thing to know about systems is that they can often operate in very counter-intuitive ways.
The most effective form of population reduction is birth control, and the most effective way of providing that is to educate women.
Also, only 10% of the human population causes 90% of the problems of overshoot.
One possible reason I haven't heard for the Baby Boom is the increase in quality and amount of food - nutrition guidelines were created and ration cards were instituted, meaning the Americans who before the war couldn't afford food were receiving it from the government. Increased income for a large number of American families would also have increased food affordability both during and after WWII. Just off the cuff reasoning, noting that females of many species (including humans) are more fertile when their body fat percentage increases.
Musk et al are treading in the sandal marks of Julius and Augustus Caesar, who promulgated edicts designed to raise the birth rate among the 'right' people, for fear that the 'noble' Patrician families would die out.
Prof. Devereaux pointed out that there was never a shortage of people willing to become nobility, and that the nobility were not intrinsically worth more to the species than anyone else.
Pappenheimer
I'll have to look up Rungold, but the city of Ys that was supposed to be sunken offshore of Brittany is long storied as well.
Pappenheimer
Many US leaders feared falling back into the Depression. What they forgot was that we PAID our soldiers and factory workers and nearly all of that was saved. The amount of capital that provided, as the boys came home, and spending power and freedom/options to choose GI Bill or starting a business... the Depression was dead dead dead.
It did kinda help that nearly everyone else's industry had been mostly flattened in the preceding 4-5 years...
Pappenheimer
Pappenheimer. Not at all. Not even slightly. The Marshall Plan eagerly helped rebuild all those economies and US workers for a very long time feared nothing.
Now her is an interesting take on AI data centers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLNrYwx0th0
Data center in Spaaaaaaaace!!!
And on Saturn's moon Titan, perfect site for a massive computer complex:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdpRxGjtCo0
To test whether AI can become sentient and hostile (like AM in Harlan Ellison's "I have no mouth and I must scream", set them up as a brain in a bottle with realistic sensory inputs fed to the AI so that it thinks it controls the world and can do what it wants to humanity - not knowing that it is "living" in a simulation.
Then sit back and see what it does.
About that cease fire...
https://www.thetimes.com/world/middle-east/article/joe-biden-netanyahu-gaza-peace-deal-tzhg3zg0n
Joe Biden and Netanyahu were offered Gaza deal a year ago, says negotiator
Gershon Baskin says he got the plan on to the president’s desk but then learnt the Israelis were waiting for a change of administration in Washington
Israelis and Palestinians may have danced in the streets when news broke overnight that a deal had been reached between Hamas and Israel over the first phase of a peace deal for Gaza.
But the terms of the deal were in place more than a year ago, according to an independent Israeli negotiator, and could have been agreed months ago.
The same is true of comprehensive immigration policy. Both sides of Congress had agreed to a deal last year, but then DJT ordered Mike Johnson to scuttle the deal so that he (Trump) could run on the issue.
If one was to go back to 1787 and tweak the Constitution based on what we know now, one would be well advised to do something to thwart the tactic of refusing to solves problems so that the other party would be blamed for those problems.
For $32.25 you can get a book proving George Bush is the Antichrist.
The number of letters in Ronald Wilson Reagan's name make 6-6-6.
Over here, after the war, an almost forgotten piece of legislature was the Burden Equalization Act. Everyone who was still wealthy had to pay 50% of their then-wealth into a fonds, though they could stretch their payments into a 30 years period. Money from that find went into reconstruction and payments for widows.
Just learned that the first American sainted by the Catholic Church, Frances Xavier Cabrini, is the patron of immigrants.
By the way, the pope is, per NSPD-7, now a dangerous leftist terrorist for his bull "Delixi Te" (I have loved you) for espousing radical communist ideas like "Helping the Poor", criticism on capitalism and empathy for immigrants.
Expect the deployment of Seal Team 6, carpet bombing of Vatican City and/or another audience visit of Vance.
X-rated, AI-generated country songs are taking over the internet
They are filthier than an old cowboy boot—and hugely popular.
https://www.economist.com/culture/2025/10/09/x-rated-ai-generated-country-songs-are-taking-over-the-internet
"But the terms of the deal were in place more than a year ago..." Celt there was a full Palestinian state deal on Clinton's desk and Arafat suddenly walked away, History is often made by idiots.
As I pointed out above. Healthy family balance sheets should be regarded as much more important by policymakers. I think macroeconomics emphasizing government austerity and private borrowing has been our destruction. All financial assets are ultimately somebodies debt. Better that it be the public sector taking on the debt and so ensuring private sector financial security. We should have tighter lending rules to the private sector. Too many people (and firms) are drowning in debt. The result has been exploding asset prices, casino like "investment" and financial fragility. "Between Debt and the Devil" seems to be the only book brave enough to point this out, because it is heresy to economic orthodoxy. It hasn't had the impact I would have liked.
Does this Ai-driven comparison of me vs. Thiel seem reasonable to you? I'd guess both Peter & I would feel it to be fair. But only one of us considers it kinda flattering:
https://www.google.com/search?q=peter+thiel+david+brin&oq=peter+thiel+david+brin&aqs=chrome..69i57j33i160l4.4679j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
Is this what you guys see, when you go to that link?
"There is a long-running ideological dispute between tech investor Peter Thiel and science fiction author David Brin, centered on their vastly different visions of the future. While Brin advocates for radical transparency and accountability, Thiel and his associated tech figures champion techno-libertarianism and more secretive, insulated power structures."
Flenser vs Wood Carver.
It's slightly different each time I look.
"Science fiction author David Brin has publicly criticized technology investor Peter Thiel, specifically commenting on Thiel's reported political views and philosophical lectures. Brin frames their differences in terms of opposing views on technology, progress, and societal ideals."
* * *
"Science fiction author David Brin has publicly criticized technology investor Peter Thiel and his political and social philosophies. Brin sees Thiel as promoting an exclusionary, anti-democratic future controlled by a small group of tech elites, a vision he contrasts with a more optimistic and inclusive view of technological progress."
Those were less than a minute apart.
True, as Golda Meir said, "The Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity".
But this time Bibbi deliberately delayed the enactment of the same cease fire agreement so that Trump would get the credit. In the meantime, 20,000 Palestinian children were murdered by an IDF that now resembles Einsatzgruppen carrying out the lebensraum policies of the hard right wing ultra-orthodox Israeli Settlers movement that controls the government.
Weirdly, this was predicted by John Brunner in his epic "Stand on Zanzibar" where a character offhandedly notes that Israel went hard right/fascist after decades of the pressures of being surrounded by enemies and created a Festung Israel.
@Celt,
I said this above about congressional Republicans exacerbating problems so that Democrats would be blamed. The same logic applies to Netanyahu.
"If one was to go back to 1787 and tweak the Constitution based on what we know now, one would be well advised to do something to thwart the tactic of refusing to solve problems so that the other party would be blamed for those problems."
Someone who knows I've been 'doing AI' for 40 years asked me, "What is this Generative AI thing?"
My answer: I don't know, but it sort of reminds me of Lovecraft's Shoggoth.
I remain on Vernes' position (Vernesan?):
The important part of any technological breakthrough is: Who owns and uses it, and why.
Also, transparency should be tied to your social station, i.e., the higher, the more glass like one should be, because even in a total equality of surveillance options, a billionaire or high ranking government individual has more options to do harm than most people combined.
BTW, had a chilling experience today with an AI hotel booking agent on a telephone. It made mistakes*, and had a strong regional dialect. It was an "Uncanny Valley" feeling by just listening to her.
*"I recognize you. You are our guest." - I never used that particular hotel or chain before, and that phrasing is, well, machine-like, weird and very unusual.
I realize those types of AI-generated interactions are a work in progress.
That said, they are probably off-putting to customers. If there's one thing people really don't like*, it is when they feel like they're being played. And a customer service voice who acts as if they are old acquaintances when they get the details so wrong give that kind of vibe. Even if I know intellectually what is going on, it feels creepy on a gut level, and that's the exact opposite effect that the business is trying for.
* Granted, Republican voters seem to take actual pleasure in being played.
Nuclear is the safest greenest power we have
Unfortunately it is at least FOUR TIMES as expensive as Wind, Solar and Storage
Which are also ten times as quick to build
The demographic mountain is actually a molehill
YES there will be more pensioners per worker
At the same time there will be less children per worker
The result is a wash
Or even a cost saving
duncan cairncross:
YES there will be more pensioners per worker
At the same time there will be less children per worker
The result is a wash
It's not just that.
Automation is already replacing human workers. We seem to be heading for a place where human labor isn't really necessary to support a thriving economy.
So workers per pensioner isn't the important ratio. We're no longer dependent on workers to support those too young or too old or too infirm to work. It's more like machines to support everyone, regardless of age.
In his new book, Separation of Church and Hate, comedian and biblical scholar John Fugelsang argues that Saint Paul's admonition that those who don't work won't eat isn't meant as a universal law. It was part of a very specific account.
Paul was convinced, and preached accordingly, that Jesus would return at any moment--certainly in his lifetime. So the people he was speaking to were building a temple or some such, but many didn't see the point of doing that work when the world was about to end anyway. So in a kind of fit of pique, Paul announced that anyone who wasn't working on that project would not be fed. It did not mean that the fruit of each individual's labors produces just enough to feed that person. Rather, it was a specific goad to keep those particular workers productive in that situation.
Pondering further on the antichrist stuff.
While everyone from Woodrow Wilson to UPC bar codea has had the epithet hurled at them... well.. one fellow stands out. Funny thing. FDR created the United Nations and fostered the World Courts. He and then Truman and Marshall and Ike established the American Pax that in many ways truly was the World State (if rather loose, in most ways.) And by the end of FDR's life he had created conditions leading to the most peaceful (per capita), educated, prosperous and scientific era the world ever saw, and a nation whose free citizens then set upon a course of chipping away at old prejudices. And one in which organized religion faded a bit as a paramount force.
One has to wonder, with so many boxes checked on the antichrist diagnostic chart, how come we never saw FDR actually do any of the -- well -- any of the antichrist-ish shit?
If our standard is set by evangelical "christians" then all of that was exactly the opposite of what "Republican Jesus" would do
Damian Walter discussing Stephen Miller & his favorite Sci Fi book, Camp of the Saints by French arch-conservative/monarchist Jean Raspail:
https://youtu.be/ImZKh3SqSmo?si=kJy2PU9hMj0Qo0mE
Tl, dw: Miller is a Raspail fanboy, and fascism is was his path through adolescence, maybe with a sexual part (see Erich Fromm).
To JV
This may be interesting to you -
https://peterturchin.com/ultrasociety-how-10000-years-of-war-made-humans-the-greatest-cooperators-on-earth/
Pondering further on the antichrist stuff.
I think it is colonialism (ie, racism+imperialism). While most other countries who engaged in it dropped out and somehow* reconciled with their decline and their crimes, American culture and politics never did.(Hasn't Hegseth honored the butchers of Wounded Knee lately?)
You'll need at least two Willy Brandt moments, one for the genocide of native Americans and one for slavery. That, and rigourous Change of how history is taught, without regard that young White Boys or their fascist parents could feel bad about it.
Once you have acknowledged that, we can look at the interventions during the cold war, and the effects of Red Scare Propaganda until today.
I mean, just look at the number of lifes that could have been saved in the US if you had free universal healthcare.
And after that, you can look at the effects of gun Policy, the war in Drugs and the War in Terror.
*I am not saying we did it perfectly. The reconciliation process with Namibia was awfully long. And there was outrage on the right when we gave back stolen bronze sculptures to Nigeria (though I believed that was a small price in early 22 to pay when Russia was our sole supplier for fossile energy.)
The Right also screamed bloody murder when Brandt made his kneefall. A generation later, no one of them objected when we signed the 4+2 treaties.
You need this cultural moment of acknowledgement and reconciliation, or you will always end up at Appomatox again.
Duncan I have had Peter Turchin here at our house. Also Liu Cixin. ;-)
Der Oger... Bah and triple-bah. Hollywood has done a tremendous job speaking for conscience and apologizing for those crimes. Jesus, what do you think raised YOU to have the values that you currently have? Values you just expressed?
Your PARENTS? Jeez. No, it was Hollywood.
NO other empire ever generated a relentless program to instill in young people a reflex of critical Suspicion of Authority. Which'd be great, if it were also accompanied with perspective. Which you lack when you ignore the pure fact that the deeply flawed American Pax has been inarguably the best time for humanity ever, compared to ANY other era...
...or compared to ALL other eras COMBINED.
BTW we never, ever had a systematic death program like Namibia. The Trail of Tears was deeply vile. But like most genocidal crimes against US natives, it was not POLICY at the very top to do mass killings. Even Andrew Jackson (damn him!) Callousness and putting bad men in charge sufficed to make the horrible outcomes truly despicable. But it was (almost) never policy. Which it definitely was in Namibia.
^^ That’s right folks, this dude’s completely objective, informed opinion is that the country and time he happens to live in is the best ever in history--better than all others COMBINED. USA! USA!
LOL, and that’s why he’s not an writer or thinker of any stature, merely a kind of propagandist.
Well, if FDR was the Anti-Christ, then by now Christ should have returned and we're all living in the paradise that is the Millennium.
I think we can all agree, that sure-as-Hell ain't happening! :D
So says the man with no awards, no name recognition, no fame, and no stature.
But at least you're punching up. :)
BTW, how would you compare today's time with all of history? And what criteria would you use to say another empire was better? ;) Obviously not wealth, health, peace, longevity, equal rights, empathy...
I'm not arrogant enough to make sweeping claims about all of history, since I occupy and such a tiny slice of it and have no way of knowing what other times and places were actually like. But I’m confident that this, too, shall pass, and nobody will remember arrogant people making claims like this in a hundred or a thousand years, as they probably did for thousands of years before anyone ever heard of the USA. It's just so obviously ignorant and dumb, I can't believe anyone here takes it seriously—but I suppose this blog is a very self-selecting group of people who like this way of thinking.
Well, we don't know completely what life was like in other eras, but we do know things about them. We know Romans, Greeks, Egyptians and just about everyone else had slaves. We have records that give us a pretty good idea how long people lived. We have accounts from the times of the wars, the famines, the plagues, and the regular diseases that civilizations have gone through. We have archeological evidence of how they lived, what they ate, and such. So we do know quite a bit of what other times and places were like.
And that's not to say that sometime in the future there may be a greater time for humanity. In fact, we should work toward that. And I'm sure others have claimed they had the best civilization ever in the past. Some were even right! But by most reasonable criteria, this is the best civilization and the best time for humanity that I can think of compared to what we know of any civilization in the past. Dr. Brin is right.
Let's do this, ent. Have your atty verify you have escrowed $10,000 in wager stakes comparing human health and lifespans, prosperity, scientific advancement, class&social mobility, competitive creativity, education, opportunity for children, fraction of humanity that has never personally witnessed war... and freedom.
ALL of which progress your cult aims to demolish.
No, I mean it. What distinguishes a mere polemical exaggerator, like me (perhaps Pax Americana was only better than MOST of human history, combined and far better than any particular other era)...
...from a yammering blowhard like you, who comes here to yowl a bit, but never stands up, like a man, to prove anything?
LOL sure, "by most reasonable criteria", which are also products of your time and place. Maybe try harder to get outside your own boxes. Or don't, if you like your boxes. Doesn't matter to me.
Oooh! I am defeated by an "LOL!" !!!! I have repeatedly offered times and places that ought to be acceptable... like a RANDOMLY chosen panel of 5 retired sr. military officers without major partisan links. Any sincere conservative would accept that as a starting point to negotiate.
But here's the real deal. You don't step up to negotiate time or place or conditions. You ALL writhe and whine and cringe away from manly accountability with excuses like that. Because you know you'd lose your stakes.
If you believed any of your crap, you would WANT MY MONEY!
No, you are a craven weenie blowhard and none of your "LOL!" masturbation capers work with those who can see you for what you are.
Nobody is resolving philosophical disagreements on a blog by escrowed wagers and attorneys, that is absurd. It’s OK to disagree; I’m not bothered by it, why should you be? I’m not here to prove anything or push a cult point of view, but I can’t resist taking the occasional shot at people who do. Don’t worry, I do it to people across the spectrum. Some call it trolling, but I think it’s a legitimate and useful thing, to have people poke holes in your groupthink from time to time.
As one of the many federal employees furloughed, I can't afford any wagers.
LOL sure, "by most reasonable criteria", which are also products of your time and place. Maybe try harder to get outside your own boxes.
Pray tell, what "reasonable" boxes, outside of the ones we are in, are you referring to? Please be specific.
Or are you referring to unreasonable boxes? ;)
"It’s OK to disagree; I’m not bothered by it, why should you be? "
Because you LIE!
You jibber-jabber insanity, undermining even the concept of fact, along with the rest of your cult. A cult aiming to wreck everything my parents built and end the greatest renaissance the world ever saw.
A cult waging all-out war vs ALL fact using professions, from science and teaching, medicine and law and civil service to the heroes of the FBI/Intel/Military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on terror.
You... are... a... liar. Your assertions are easily disproved and hence you writhe and screech that everything is relative and we should just 'disagree.'
No, you are a liar and who lies with evil intent. And if you were an actual man who believed any of the vile, fecal Kremlin swill that you spew, you would have the balls to step up and take MY money. But you are no man.
Good luck to you, Hugh. Thrive. And persevere!
As must we all.
I don't disagree with you, for many metrics, but arguably the most 'fundamental' metric is whether women want to bring children into this world.
In many places the birth rate is way below replacement.
We know how to 'fix' that, just give men and women sufficient resources, freedom and sufficient leisure time such that they have good lives, and good places to raise children, and they will want to fill their lives with children.
Unfortunately, that is not something that the oligarchs are prepared to allow.
Truth is not a philosophical disagreement. It's an objective reality
David Brooks (no relation) writes on the long shelf-life of Trumpism:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/11/autocracy-resistance-social-movement/684336/
or shall we say
distant expiration-date?
The tech billionaires shaping our AI future aren't just building tools—they're trying to build a world order. And their vision looks disturbingly ego-driven.
Your piece brilliantly exposes how Silicon Valley's "dark enlightenment" movement seeks to end democratic accountability and replace it with CEO-monarchs wielding absolute power. Their AI investments aren't about serving humanity—they're about consolidating exclusive control over immortality technologies, data panopticons, and the future itself. (For a more full commentary go to https://substack.com/@lindamacdonaldglenn/note/c-167042366.
In many places the birth rate is way below replacement.
We know how to 'fix' that, just give men and women sufficient resources, freedom and sufficient leisure time such that they have good lives, and good places to raise children, and they will want to fill their lives with children.
Except there are already close to 8 Billion of us now. Is it really a desirable goal to keep that number growing?
Relevant to current posting. Music YouTuber Rick Beato gets AI to glitch out by prompting it to calculate 52! and then gets into bigger picture and issues with training https://youtu.be/TiwADS600Jc?si=ompZiSDx9RuPlVGb
Daedalus2u,
We know how to 'fix' that, just give men and women sufficient resources, freedom and sufficient leisure time such that they have good lives, and good places to raise children, and they will want to fill their lives with children.
That simply isn't true, IMHO. Many studies have shown that the single biggest factor in reducing birth rates is the education of girls, which goes hand in hand with improving economic conditions.
Look at the areas where we currently see large average family sizes, they are strongly correlated with low living standards. (And in the cases of places like Afghanistan, the deliberate suppression of female education.)
Sure, it may be the case that the conditions you cite lead to the desire for marriage and some children. Just not enough to keep the population ever-expanding.
Wimpy! I could get my 70's calculator* to 'crash' (return an error) by calculating 69! (> 10^100)
* That is, whenever the budgerigar wasn't talking to the green LED display: rather disconcerting to start entering numbers and encounter feathers.
Linda MDG thanks, though I doubt a majority of techie moguls actually see themselves that way. Not as openly or bald-faced as PT. I know some who are very decent folks. Still, the minority of unsapient feudalism seekers is dauntingly and sadly large.
Ozajh
Today it COSTS the parents over $300,000 to bring up a child in the USA
Which is why the birth rate is too low
A $3,000 subsidy does NOT cut the mustard!!!
After we have
"given men and women sufficient resources, freedom and sufficient leisure time such that they have good lives, and good places to raise children, "
Then we will see that
they will want to fill their lives with children.
Until THEN ...........
Your PARENTS? Jeez. No, it was Hollywood.
Ahhhkshually, it was them. And school. And Books. And games. And Friends. And their parents, books and games. And our Sports club.
"Hollywood" played a very small role in my youth, because a) we were limited in the time we were allowed to use the TV, b) certain Programms were not available at all or restricted to us, c) we went to Cinema only about once a year or so, and d) had neither cell phones nor internet.
And which Hollywood are we talking about?
Star Wars*? Dirty Harry? Rambo? Rocky? Terminator? The unending flood of Marvel superhero and Transformers flicks? Masturbatory Red Scare movies like Red Dawn? Copaganda Trash were the villain is, more often than not, a non-WASP Other Than Us type?
80% of Hollywood products is trash that actually fertilizes the ground for cultural fascism (like the Chosen One trope, or violence being the simple solution to most problems, cynical edgelord humor).
There are and were "good" movies and series - the other 20% - but seeing how fast the great studios have bent the knee, it will decline rapidly. "Hollywood" was more an exhibition piece of the Anti-Americanism of the educated left than a profound cultural impact.
If and how long the empire survives, is currently up for debate.
*Except Andor. For reasons. There are parts of the EU I'd exclude , but strictly speaking, that is not Hollywood.
The biggest single factor that reduces women's inclination to bring more children into the world is NOT encountering death. Works about the same for men except we can become quite inclined (quickly) in many ways. However... failure to hear that guy who speaks in ALL CAPS quells the libido.
Whether its a risk of your own death, your children's death, or just someone close to you dying, thinking about death amps our libidos. Look it up. The science got done well enough to notice the correlation.
My mother produced four of us. I was born the year above-ground nuclear testing peaked... and a few months later the world almost went to Hell in a hand basket. Golly Gee.
Possibly the biggest - but by no means the only factor
The COST is also a very large factor
Children are a treasure - but a damn expensive one
You all need to watch this excellent explanation of how the AI industry is being propped up by circular financing to to the incest.
https://youtu.be/Q0TpWitfxPk?si=_fNb4nZiXlbAxOvZ
The whole thing is a fucking ponzi scheme.
It's like Wiley Coyote when he steps off a cliff, hovers for a moment, and realizes there is nothing supporting him.
Korea, Singapore and Japan and Italy and Spain all have high levels of comfort and safety, yet very low birth rates. Lack of living space may be a reason... apartments vs houses. But Spain has room and Japan has plenty of spare houses you can buy for a dollar (literally.) Another possibility is that women in many cases simply don't want to breed with available men. Certainly true in Russia.
The baby bust is a global problem, so it has a global cause. My crackpot theory is that the cause is the globe itself. Gaia has had quite enough of us, and has sent out breed-no-more signals.
We have overshot our niche under present technology. There are three solutions to this problem: 1) increase the death rate, 2) decrease the birth rate, 3) retool our technosphere to support a large population sustainably. It seems that we are now on path 2, though certain 'traditionalists' would prefer path 1. Path 2 will buy us time to implement path 3.
The A#1 most pro-natal program presently proposed is the Green New Deal. The New Deal part to make reproduction affordable to the masses; the Green part for that to be ecologically feasible.
Good luck and calm heads to everyone at tomorrow's No Kings protests.
Go forth and make good trouble.
Scare the fascists with sheer numbers.
I have friends everywhere.
The right-wing talking point is that tomorrow is a "Hate America" rally, made up of HAMAS terrorists, violent criminals, and illegal aliens, which are apparently the entire constituency of the "Democrat Party".
I won't live in that world so divorced from reality.
I'm thinking my sign will have to emphasize points that were once self-evident: That "No Kings!" is not hating America; that standing up to fascist authoritarianism is not hating America; that expecting authorities to have accountability to the people they serve is not hating America.
Despite the presence of ICE and the threat of military intervention, I'm glad and proud to march in Chicago. Unlike 1968, there is zero chance that the police will do anything but crowd control between marchers and cars. I know they're trying to scare us away, but in Chicago, it won't be the No Kings protesters who are scared off--it will be the snowflakes of MAGA.
Solidarnosc! and Slava Ukraini!
Jimmy Kimmel, by way of the Stephanie Miller show:
We know DJT is sensitive about his weight, so be sure not to refer to him as:
Shamoosolini,
Engorge Washington,
or King Hungry the eighth.
Their Foxites started it with "The Democrat Party." Start using "Re-Pube-licken Party."
Good trouble indeed!
Good luck and have some fun.
A woman’s choice is what led my mother to emigrate. She still had plans for four, but latched onto an American airman to do it.😏
Probably the largest… otherwise agreed.
Kids are expensive, but the world is wealthier. Not equally, but enough to provide a legit counter argument.
MOST of the world is safer than when I was a kid. Hard to argue against this cause except by relabeling it as a correlation. Could be but I doubt it and have personal experience to back me up. 😎
Ponzi schemes are intentional frauds. What’s happening here looks more like a bubble. Frenzied believers.
Leveraged is often circular. Nothing new there.
I have my retirement money on the sidelines at the moment. Not because of an AI bubble. I’m looking at shutdown consequences.
I lost my will to believe in any meaning to ‘present technology’ many years ago. No one really knows what we can and can’t do except (possibly) for stuff with fantasium in the ingredient list. Unobtainium isn’t a knowable category.
Humanity has been on a long arc of overshooting our niche. About 30,000 years so far. Maybe 70,000. Depends what we count. We domesticated dogs a long time ago. We domesticated ourselves before that. We augment ourselves over and over and over again. There is NO niche.
We domesticated dogs a long time ago.
It occurred to me recently to wonder if domesticating the dog is what made us unique among (possible) intelligent lifeforms in the universe. That is, maybe the reason for the Fermi paradox is that no other lifeform similar to ours also had a lifeform similar to dogs available to them.
I prefer "Repugnican Party".
Differ:
There is a niche size relative to a given state-of-the-art. Overshooting creates pressure for a technological turnover. We are experiencing such a turnover now.
I saw NO F*KING WAY
Refining... PRE-PUBE LICKEMS
Ohh - THAT is better! - and it took a bit to sink in
Hellerstein,
I'm skeptical. I understand the definition you are offering, but it seems too convenient for the narrative. It relies on a "given state of the art" which we don't actually know. There are eight billion of us now and I respectfully suggests no one actually knows what we can do right now. Literally... no one.
It's not that there could be someone out there changing the state of the art right now. It's more that even the innovators don't know. The information does not exist in a centralized form unless you imagine some god-like being.
Overshooting DOES create pressure, but money drives innovation too. Rich guys get more mating options on average. We don't have to exist in squalor before innovation happens... and I suspect that pressure was NOT the major factor for much of our history. Maybe 'perceived inequality' was more important, but I'm not sure.
I've seen 'NO FAUX KING WAY', which is delightfully asterisk free.
"Oh Donny boy, the folks, the folks are calling..."
To be fair, supporters of the Felonious Coward also don't want a King. Kings are at least nominally subject to laws and norms. Tyrants are not.
CEO-Monarch is exactly how Yarvin-Moldbug calls their goal.
I confess I'd love to watch one of his games, some time. "Shohei Ohtani Just Played What May Be the Greatest Game of All Time
The most talented player in baseball on Friday night delivered the performance that will define him: 10 strikeouts, 3 homers and a place in the World Series." Woof.
My Father In-Law died last winter. My wife and he went to many, many Dodgers games when she was young. She decided that she wanted to see as many Dodgers games as possible this year as a remembrance of her dad.
She has been flying back and forth to LA, driving up to Seattle, etc. I think she is up to 14 games this year, which is not bad for someone that lives in Portland.
She managed to go to both Ohtani 50/50 (50 HR/ 50 Steals last season) bobblehead games. At this point, those bobbleheads are her retirement plan. And I'm kidding on the square about that. Prices for those bobbleheads on the resale market would easily pay for the plane tickets and game tickets.
Sports are magical and insane.
The world has so many problems that is great to care deeply about something that is of no importance whatsoever.
Heading to a rally, we saw the I-5 backed up many miles while Vance and Hegseth had the Marines fire live artillery over the freeway.
So how far away from pissing in jars in his escape bunker do you think Thiel is?
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