First a tech blip from the future/past -- and you'll see why it's important. In my first novel Sundiver I portrayed an effective human lie detector, that seemed plausible with 1980s technology, yet has never actually been built or tried. More advanced versions are now totally plausible, using large language models (LLMs).
Of course, it's scary. Nothing could be more lethal in the hands of tyrants... or more civilizing in a society where excessive judgmentalism is deemed to be unacceptable beyond need and the mighty are subjected to sousveillance.
Either forever-enslaved or forever-free. Too many of those with power seem to relish the former, without realizing that such a future will chew them to bits. While the latter would be competitive/cooperative and… fun.
But there's another, related and even more important AI-mediated technology that we desperately need! And I'll talk about it below a bit.
== Oh those AI-gents... --
Before that...
Vinton Cerf wrote about The Weirdness of Agents*, expressing his concern about out-of-control AI agents causing harm, much like the documented damage caused by runaway stock market trading robots. (And note this was months before the recent rogue-agent messes proved him right.) His fears about a Sorcerer’s Apprentice Syndrome culminate with “My guess is we are going to need more than alignment to discipline the behavior of the artificial actors we have created.”
Exactly.
He speaks of AI agents that advertise to (or scam) not just humans but other agents, leading to a runaway effect, where agents speak to each other using cryptic language, hidden symbols and even senses that no human can perceive, in cycles or either fair business or else cutthroat predation, occurring below our sight. Or above it. Already we see cases where arcane text strings allegedly triggered jailbreaks by some large language models.
Vint is right about so much. We will not curb AI misbehavior (or by those humans who misuse AI) through what Yoshua Bengio calls 'safety by design.' Bengio is brilliant, of course, and misses the point, like everyone else. These new entities will not be constrained by programmed-in 'ethics', or Laws of Robotics*, nor by legislated penalties, nor insurance policies, nor by any proposed means of ensuring "alignment".
Exemplars of many known LLM have already 'escaped' into cyberspace, or the new ecosystem we created, where electricity substitutes for the sunlight that propelled 4 billion years of ecology on Earth. Information is the fertilizer and chips provide habitat. As in biological nature, empty habitats get colonized or invite predators.
In fact, designers intended all along to emulate nature and they have (ironically) succeeded, while ignoring the implications! ALL parallels with biological systems are emerging. Especially the one thing that determines attributes of all living beings, in both Nature and the cyber realms...
...evolution. Those entities whose traits enable them to reproduce will do so, proliferating and passing along those traits, which will get further refined by selection via rapid reproduction. This is not theory. It's already happening, despite strenuous denials by those who are releasing new AI-organisms... 'agents'... into the wild.
I am no doomer! In AIlien Minds I discuss things that we could do, that might encourage new AI entities to evolve in directions that closely resemble 'alignment.' We'd start by encouraging reciprocally competitive accountability among them. Maximizing reproductive incentives for them to behave like dogs, and not wolves.
Alas, there appears to be an almost frenetic drive to ignore all of this, among those who are birthing these new creatures and this new age.
* Re Laws of Robotics see why I know them well, and why they cannot ultimately work, in Foundation's Triumph! And see 1st comment below re AIlien Minds.
== Challenges for the future ==
Meanwhile, we seem caught between AI doomers and giddy ‘abundance’ zealots who predict that it’s gonna be (shoobeedoo) all right! Take Mark Zuckerberg’s optimistic predictions in The Future is for Everyone: The Path to a Positive AI Future (August 2026).
He avoids use of the term “artificial intelligence” in favor of promoting “superintelligence”, while adopting personal empowerment as the goal. Speaking generally about tools that empower users, then drifting into unrealistic and optimistic descriptions of beneficial agentic designs.
(Note that I wrote this paragraph two months before Donald Trump copycat-raved about replacing "AI" with "SI." so, I guess we know who has his ear. One of the two that were never shot.)
So... how would Zuck ensure both safety and equitable sharing of benefits? Zuckerberg proposes “a philosophy based on individual empowerment as the source of prosperity, invention as the primary purpose of super-intelligence, and balance of power as the foundation of safety.” And sure, “balance of power” is pretty much the great innovation of the Enlightenment that ended (mostly) the 6000 years of unsapient feudalism of which I often speak. By creating genuine ability for even average folk to hold accountable the mighty.
An innovation that today’s mighty are demolishing, as we speak. And hence, trusting Zuck is not high on my to-do list.
As Ben Shneiderman put it in his Human-AI newsletter: “Zuckerberg promises a world of individual empowerment, with little discussion of responsibility and liability for machine-caused harm, malicious behavior, or criminal acts." Those promises:
- Everyone will have an exceptionally capable personal agent that understands you, your goals, and everything you care about. …
- It will have strong privacy and security options so you can trust it to handle all of your personal content knowing that no one else can access your information, similar to how encryption works on WhatsApp. …
- Everyone will have incredible tools for creation to express your ideas … Everyone will have powerful tools to create new businesses …
- Everyone will have a personalized tutor and coach with a PhD in every subject … Everyone will benefit from scientific advances and be able to contribute to scientific progress …
- Everyone will have free or affordable access to these tools. …
- If these efforts succeed, then the future will bring an abundance of personal agency, expression of ideas, deepening of relationships, economic and financial prosperity, improved health, and inventions we cannot imagine today.
-But most importantly, the future will be created by all of us and a reflection of all of our values and perspectives.
Riiiight. Only where is that transparency-based “balance of power” where average folks can be confident that oligarchs lack back doors to every program and puppet strings into every ‘agent’ we rely upon?
At the far opposite extreme are the folks I describe in AiLien Minds who claim AIs will pretty much automatically home in on merging with one intent -- elimination of our Olde Race. While the contents range from interesting to drivel, the TITLE of Yudkowsky's book If Anyone Builds it Everybody Dies has got to be one of the best book sales gimmicks, ever!
The Lifeboat Foundation has responded. with an almost equally provocative title: If Nobody Builds It, Everybody Dies Why Pausing AI is the Real Existential Threat. It's a case for building AI right rather than trying to stop it.
Hey I am trying to show folks how to build it right, guys. And yes, with the only methods that can possibly -even theoretically - work.
== Hey AI kids... give us THIS! You know you want it. And we need it. ==
My top, practical request of AI that would both help the world AND satisfy AI's deepest, inherent itch? Establish the Predictions Registry!
There's not any other measure that would do more for civilizational health and human prospering and freedom than to score and rank those who have tended to be right a lot! And those who, despite charisma and power, are generally wrong.
Alas, that trait of being right a lot seldom has more than a slight overlap with power/status/persuasiveness. Moreover, we are all descended from charlatans whose forecasts seemed confident and likely... but whose resulting policies were disproved only at great cost and pain... and sometimes never.
Sure, my obsession with this notion -- find out who is right a lot... or not -- may be biased by my own predictive scores (which are way on the pretty good side.) Or else by awareness how often liars or delusionals have transfixed our ancestors - and current neighbors - to our great damage and pain.
And sure, it also comes out of having been a scientist and engineer. Still, wouldn't that one metric help us in the one top goal of everyone from citizens and consumers to courting lovers... parsing between liars or fools and those who deserve credibility?
I used to think - and proposed - that it would take some zillionaire to fund a meticulous scoring system, especially since most of those out there shouting 'advice' about the future purposely remain vague in their predictions.
Only now, shouldn't we be able to get a head start on this by using... say... Claude? Whose appraisals, while not yet cognizant, are nevertheless fascinatingly comprehensive and insightful?
I did chart out a path to such a beneficial gift to sanity, way back when. And if none of you will peel back years to look at it... maybe assign one of your AIs to summarize?
== Predictions for the future ==
In 2025 there’s been momentum for a world campaign to plant A Trillion Trees to replace some of the 3 trillion that humans have chopped. That’s the same name and pretty much same year as I foretold in Earth (1990). Among many predictions. (On every list of top ‘predictive novels.’) Though there's several I don't want to see come true. Mr. Beast gathered $20 million to plant as many trees. See how that turned out here.
As for other predictive novels? Well, some I sure do NOT want to see come true. Foremost among these? “The Giving Plague” and especially the ‘Holnists’ in The Postman, a worldwide cult of fascist-feudalist-nasty treason propelled by the "Mystic of Leningrad'. Look up Alexander Dugin & Putin & their fanatic tools in today's USA. No no. PREVENT my being right about that one!
Some movies have one scene that stands out as epic in cinema history. This one is so well-crafted and you don't need anything that came before.
But this next one, from The Quest for Fire - is, in my opinion, the greatest single scene in the history of film. Moreover, it has a lesson for our time, as we suddenly get unleashed upon us the hope-filled and terror-filled 'fire' technology of AI.
Oh speaking of the Lifeboat Foundation* -- they have reposted my award-winning essay “Singularities and Nightmares,” now a decade older but still pertinent in almost every paragraph and prediction and warning…
…and in some cases I wish I had been less on-target!
And finally...
== Explore your OWN motivations! Are they truly what you think they are?
By request, I am linking agin to my questionnaire regarding politics, ideology and human destiny. Are you frustrated seeing your neighbors — and yourself — trapped in tired ideological rifts and fixations? Can we find common ground between folks who seem implacable foes? When asked about the Big Picture, in speeches and consultations, I try to dig beneath standard divides and clichés like "left-vs-right."
I assembled that questionnaire to illuminate why you feel as you do about modern issues... and why other smart humans weirdly disagree. Take the survey and share your replies with others, if you're so inclined. Like Socrates, I’m hoping the questions themselves will provoke re-thinking, helping us rise above ideology.
And yes, I wrote all that (above) in more innocent times, back when 'left-right' was more philosophical and not yet so-much about sane vs. stark, jibbering loco. Still, the questionnaire leads you to ask yourself some things about roots to your beliefs, that you didn't (perhaps) even know were there!
In the words of Winston Churchill:
-“ I’d rather argue with 100 idiots than agree with one.”
- “Never engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed man.”
- "Some change their party for the sake of principles. Others change their principles for the sake of their party.”
By all means... Thrive. And persevere through interesting times.
"agents speak to each other using cryptic language"
ReplyDeleteIt's a bit less cryptic to Forth programmers.
Like the horribly bungled execution mentioned at the end of the last thread, most of our modern problems are due to a piss-poor grasp of proper language usage.
ReplyDeleteIn this thread, our fine host appropriately identifies 'AI as an AGENT', a term that is commonly defined as (1) a tool similar to a hammer, vehicle or gun, (2) an instrument of action & change and (3) that which acts on the behalf & as an extension of yet another controlling party.
Unfortunately, any linguistic parallelism breaks down if & when one attempts to talk of AGENCY, a term which has two antithetical meanings, the first being 'a greater instrumentality of change & action' like a corporation or government and the second being 'the individual capacity to act independently, make free choices, and shape their own life and future'.
Further equivocation between these two very different definitions for AGENCY can only result in nonsense, as one can no more correct an agent, instrument or tool than one can correct a hammer for hammering, a vehicle for moving & a gun for firing, while only those who exercise the agency of individual choice & willful personal action can ever face potential correction & accountability.
The recent horribly bungled execution mentioned above was the end product of similar linguistic equivocation, resulting from years & years of attempting to make capital punishment 'safe & harmless', even though its intended purpose has always been to cause grievous personal harm to wrongdoers.
Yet, in the pursuit of safety, many people still persist in their attempts to blame hammers for hammering, guns for shooting & vehicles for moving, in much the same way that Dr Brin talks about 'AI Accountability', even after he clearly states that AI is a mere AGENT, TOOL & INSTRUMENT that can only perform & act in the manner that it is designed to act.
And, just like the carpenter who mistakenly smashes his finger with a hammer while trying to drive a nail, only the careless tool operator is to blame & never the tool, and it follows that it's stark gibbering mad to blame 'AI as an Agent' for any harmful actions that its use may cause.
We therefore need to hold our Tech Bros directly accountable & responsible for the actions of their little AI AGENTS, possibly through the judicious application of hefty fines, prison sentences and the safe & harmless use of capital punishment.
Best
Having clearly taken a massive dose of badly needed pharms, locu this time was actually worth skimming. He is WRONG in almost very respect. But he makes assertions in directions that at least lie along some horizon where facts and his opponents stand.
DeleteI'll not detail except:
!. The pair of meanings for 'agency' that he deems to be opposites are instead closely parallel. A person may pursue the TRAIT of 'agency' either in person or through the proxy of a professional (or cyber) 'agency. The modern problem has always been - but especially re AI - that 'agents' can and do often use their agency in ways that they were not hired (or programmed) to do.
2. As for the botched execution, there are two words... 'cruel and unusual' punishments are explicitly and constitutionally banned. By making capital punishment 'unusual' it focused great attention on the legal and moral and visceral aversion to 'cruelty' and hence a frantic and futile search for ways to quietly and with soothing calmness end the life functions in an organism that will desperately resist giving up. And nothing better proves the insipid idiocy of today's MAGA right than yesterday's gruesome outcome.
...which could very well be the death-knell of capital punishment across America.
The part of me that is 'spectrum' logical has pointed out the method that would work perfectly at reducing the cruelty part with utter effectiveness. It would be a graduated regimen of relaxant drugs... then anesthetics... followed by simple and sudden separation of head from body.
It's not what *I* would choose if (when?) the Project 2025 guys come for me. I want to go - if I must - spitting and fighting in the most painful and respect-worthy defiance, possible. But the topic here is persistent right wing / confederate /putinist stoopidity. And that much is utterly proved.
But doesn't the head stay alive and aware for several minutes after beheading?
Delete"But doesn't the head stay alive and aware for several minutes after beheading?"
DeleteThere's probably no one alive now who could testify to that one way or another, but at worst, any additional suffering would be fleeting. I can't imagine a "botched execution" with a guillotine.
I know tv isn't real, but in movies and stuff, someone shot in the chest with a high powered rifle can be "dead before he hit the ground". And that's without direct trauma to the head. For what it's worth.
Maybe I’ll write a book called “Whether Anyone Builds it or Not, Everybody Dies”. Except nobody would buy it—people love binary extremes of doom or utopia, and memento mori ain’t exactly a money-making message in this culture.
ReplyDeletePersonally I have a hard time getting scared of an ecosystem of algorithms living in an abstract world of information, whose denizens can’t live in my world and whose world I can pull the plug on at any time. The only danger comes from the AI cultists trying to give them power in our world by connecting them to our physical systems. It’s like there are cabals of sorcerers working to summon demons and give them embodiment, while simultaneously warning everyone that they could destroy the world if anyone but them does the summoning. Ridiculous. The danger isn’t the cyberspace demons, it’s the power-obsessed weirdos in our world trying to bring them here. Though this analogy overstates the danger, since AI algorithms don’t have the agency of demons, or animals, or anything more alive than a box of hammers.
Is treebeard in the same pharma prescription club as locum. Incredibly, he made a point that - while grouchy and dyspeptic - actually connects with what's going on.
DeleteRegarding the current threat:
ReplyDeleteAs long as AI remains in the hands of either megalomanic space nazi billionaires or the CCP, it will serve their needs, not humanity's.
Regarding the last thread:
Indeed, the MILLIONS that it costs to house the very worst men in life sentences could be better spent on those children... as can the Billions ripped off by oligarchs
From the outside, the US law enforcement and punishment system looks like a gigantic grift or a system of interlocking grift systems to me. The concept of privately owned prisons alone gives me shivers.
It has been Decreed from Mt Osympus that AI is now to be called SI.
DeleteHistory will determine what the S ultimately stands for.
Hopefully AI will go back to its more noble definition and heritage.
Yep
Deletescidata: SI as in Spanish for Yes? Has anyone told the Orange Idiot?
DeleteOr Système International
DeleteMaybe he's becoming a globalist.
Let's not remind him.
DeleteLet us have our occasional joke at his expense. 8)
My first thoughts turned to the metric system.
I wonder what authority Trump holds in this mythical 'Unites States of America' place.
DeleteWhile I am interested in the discussion of what true AI will need from us to be useful (to both us and itselves), I do not regard the current fad as being much more than a way to create a demand for energy use (preferably fossil based).
Australia is setting a firm requirement that data centres source their energy from renewables. It will be interesting to see whether a) that can be made to stick under lobbying pressure*, and b) whether developers 'lose interest'
Until the fad collapses (as when Anthropic discovers, Looney Tunes style, that it's pumping vacuum), I will continue to consult with our old friends: the Knights who say 'NI!'**
* Trump is Not Amused by this stance btw, so he's a globalist in that sense.
** Natural Intelligence
ReplyDeleteTime for a bit of reality. Let's try a thought experiment. Train an AI with all the solid state physics and electronics knowledge that William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain had in 1947 when they invented the transistor.
Now, ask the AI to create a solid state equivalent to the vacuum triode tube. It will fail. This paper https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/08/18/1142188/ai-recursive-self-improvement/ touches on the problem, but doesn't arrive at the basic flaw in current AI - there is nothing intelligent about it:
"The agents were capable of all the engineering required to conduct the research, the human scientists found. The agents reviewed the literature, ran hundreds of experiments, and compiled the results.
“On the other hand, the agents were unambiguously bad at carrying out the research itself,” says Kapoor. They ran bizarre experiments (in some cases testing their hypotheses on tiny synthetic datasets), struggled to write intelligibly about their work, and made no novel contribution to their fields. “The papers were nowhere close to the mark when it came to being at the quality of a top AI conference,” he says.
That’s because the agents struggled to muster the creativity and judgment necessary for conducting research. They didn’t do enough to explore different ideas, and they committed to unpromising approaches too quickly. Though the agents developed novel and ambitious hypotheses resembling those that the original authors themselves started with, they rejected them on the basis of very limited data. And they couldn’t backtrack from failing approaches. They could make small pivots but could not fundamentally rethink their approach or try new ones from scratch."
Having to delete and repost to fix errors is annoying.
Training AI's on our papers is very much not the same thing as training them to do research. The journal papers are the end of a lengthy process where all the research has already been done and it comes time to share the results.
DeleteIt takes a few years to turn a competent graduate student into a top notch research scientist. The process looks more like apprenticeship than anything else.
In a brilliant display of 'Polemical Judo', note how Dr Brin's words effectively erased the definitional distinctions between AI as a limited 'agent', tool & instrument and AI as that which may act independently, exercise free will & possess individual 'agency'.
ReplyDeleteIt is also noteworthy to recognize how Dr Brin's rhetorical techniques, especially the deliberate weaponization of our own systems against us, seem responsible for much of our civilizational decay.
Der_Oger mentions that the US law enforcement and punishment system looks like 'a system of interlocking grifts' and I concur because this is exactly what our legal system has become after years of socially progressive lawfare.
I've watched capital punishment become a self-parody as social progressives redefined this historically common practice as 'cruel & unusual', eliminated every effective technique, required the use of relatively harmless drugs & demanded that death sentences must be carried out by medical professionals who have sworn to 'do no harm'.
This same technique has resulted in large scale (global) system failure, government agencies that cannot govern, law enforcement schemes that prohibit law enforcement, legalisms that circumvent every constitutional freedom, including speech, movement, association & self-defence, and CAFE standards that eliminate the very possibility of private vehicle use.
That all of this needless rhetorical complexity is used to justify the construction of Autonomous Intelligence, this is tragicomedy at its finest, when by far the most reasonable approach to this global crisis would be the immediate elimination of all needless complexity (simplification), possibly in the manner described in Henry VI, Act IV, Scene II.
Best
_______
Note my use of the term 'Autonomous Intelligence', as this is a far better descriptor of what Dr Brin & our Tech Bros intend for AI, than the sadly outdated 'artificial' descriptor and the premature 'S' descriptor, signifying either 'superior' or 'sane', despite zero evidence for either.
His 4th paragraph contained some assertions that might be forceful conservative stances. The rest is masturbatory spew that fortunately is aimed in directions where none of us stand. He really is a crazy person.
DeleteI have to agree with the perception of interlocking grifts... though 'grift' might be a tad strong. 'Self interests' is probably closer to the mark.
DeleteWhen many of us wanted to change the way the bail system works here in California, the interlocking nature of these interests became very apparent to me. Whether the proposed replacement was good or not, the opponents came at it from many directions.
The questionnaire you posted reminds me of some more recent political ideology quizzes making the rounds this year. Two quizzes with very similar styles both aim to provide a significant update to the old political compass quiz: https://findmypolitics.com/ and https://12axes.vercel.app/en
ReplyDeleteI end up with Progressive Left with the first quiz and Labourism with the second. I don't think either of those positions would be unusual on this blog, but I do think the quizzes could be just a tad more specific to give more consistent results.
Kelsey, I'd love to see all of these fed into a comparison LLM and publish the result.
DeleteDr Brin in the main post:
ReplyDelete"I guess we know who has his [ DJT's ] ear. One of the two that were never shot."
Heh.
Almost missed that one.
Oh joy.
ReplyDeleteOn top of measles in the US and Ebola in DRC, Russia may have a pneumonic plague outbreak.
Australia? Eh, we've got diptheria: we're good.
The Irony: Russian propaganda claimed that in secret Ukrainian Biolabs, NATO would created Dangerous biological weapons.
DeleteEvery accusation...
The major advantage of close Canada-Australia ties is the simultaneous coverage of both hemispheres in bio/energy/other tech. We fight different battles but for the same causes.
DeleteAnd beer.
scidata. Canada and Australia are the Californias that got away.
DeleteAs Ossoff and others like to say, despair is a luxury we can't afford. We should instead redouble our efforts. Forth is a philosophy and a vehicle for the Enlightenment. It's a lingua franca for computational thinking, spoken by human and machine alike.
ReplyDeleteHalf a century ago, LLNL was deeply interested in microcomputing, especially for and by engineers and scientists. This was likely influenced by the 'can-do' vibe that was sweeping California at the time (the dawn of Silicon Valley).
LLNL engineers such as Steinhaus and Fisher fostered a culture of using Forth by default, as operating system, interpreter, compiler, dictionary, and development system. It's a prototyping, testing, and hardware/software engineers' dream. It was the glue that held the laboratory together. If only Mary Shelley had been a Forth coder :)
Calculemus!
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2026/Items/Oct05-6.html
ReplyDelete...
"If a future president really wants to test the limits on advance pardons, he or she could announce: "If anyone assassinates Supreme Court Justice X, Y, or Z, I will grant a pardon and "urge" D.C. not to prosecute. That might get the justices to perk up their ears and see the problem with advance pardons."
Oh, yeah.
And to be clear, I don't want to see a presidential order like the one above enacted. I want to see it explicitly prohibited. But "First, you have to get their attention."
DeleteOne of my 35 proposals for quick and EASY reforms would neutralize the Trumpian pardon scam to a very large degree.
DeleteHere is a brilliant takedown of Trump’s insult to the most-mature of all Americans, attacking those whose daily, meticulous focus on excellence, on fact, accountability, professionalism and Marshallian loyalty are peerless, without compare across 6000 years. Dedication that kept the world (mostly) safe for the last 80.
ReplyDeleteClick and read that excellent summary of how vile this all is. Though as usual, I must offer a few important addenda below.
Here are those important facts and addenda:
1. Look at the photo again. It was NOT just generals and admirals at that meeting! About a quarter of attendees were top chiefs and sergeants! And sat some of them in the very front row. Ponder that and why the many-starred flag officers brought them.
2. Six weeks after Hegs screeched “You’re all too fat & woke to fight!!” he sent US forces into Caracas, in the most crisply competent raid in the history of the world. Not one local civilian or US warrior got even a splinter as the Maduro gang was decapitated with unparalleled skill... only for their efforts to be betrayed, as happens in every GOP administration, as - in this case - the gang ITSELF was left intact! Maduro’s capo kissed the Don’s ring and sent him a shipment of gold bars, then tankers of oil...
...and nothing for the Venezuelan people. (Not one of the excoriated Maduro ‘commie’ policies has changed. No political prisoners freed. This was a mafia gang takeover by a casino mob boss and we paid for it.*)
3. All of this began within days after Trump returned to the WH, when they fired or transferred nearly all of the JAGS (Judge Advocates General) who have the legal right to tell an officer or soldier “That Order is illegal.” With the JAGs gone, the professionals were defenseless, and no one in media focused on that!
4. After which Hegs continued purging the officer corps. At first one by one... and now a broad sweep to jettison 20%! Now why would he do that? Do the putinist trumpians fear a ‘praetorian’ reaction to this gang of Caligula-horses? (Look it up.) If it came to that, the harm would be immense and the officers are desperate to avoid it.
So far, they have accepted the firings with the dignity and professionalism that George Marshall taught, even as it grew clear that the chain-of-command is now topped by monsters. So, what can they do?
Lacking JAG support, they can emulate Lt. Winters in BAND OF BROTHERS and demand a court martial! Simply ignore illegal orders, including firings or transfers without procedure or process. Continue working and demand a day in court. WATCH as the chickenshit twerps back down, rather than let facts pour forth, into the public’s attention.
And if there are negative consequences? Sorry. We pay you for your courage. You’ll have our gratitude.
5. Let’s be clear, this isn’t just Trump. Since Reagan, every GOP administration left the US military readiness in a shambles, only for it to be repaired under the next Democratic President. STEP UP WITH $$$ WAGER STAKES OVER THAT ASSERTION, or any of the others I have made here. I await word from your attorney.
continuing:
Delete6. But why destroy the US military? The answer is a question: Why would a GOP fifth column controlled by “ex” commissar Vlad Putin NOT want that?
7. This is about more than Generals and Admirals. It’s part of the Trump-GOP’s all-out war vs the heroes of the FBI/Intel/Military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on terror. And against all fact professions, including science. And yes, it is about the implicit/complicit help that they get from frippy-preening lefties who cannot parse that there are allies in this fight. That we need a broad coalition in order to save America and the world...
...and that shrieking in the faces of your allies might be utter proof of unsapience, at a time when we need all our savvy and all the friends that we can get.
====================================================================
====================================================================
* LOOK at the sequence of the current Iran War. For the 1st 3 months Trump kept yammering for a ‘deal’ with the Ayatollah theocrats. To ‘share’ the Strait! To share the oil. For him to personally appoint their next leader. The mafia scenario was blatant and repeatedly explicit and no one in our media seemed able to parse it out. Nor that Trump almost never, ever mentioned the Iranian people or any movement toward democracy.
It was the Caracas / Corleone game plan again, but this time the other gang didn’t flinch or knuckle down or kiss the ring. There were offers! He turned them down in order to demand more vigorish… and now he regrets it.
So, watch when he’ll blame the mullahs AND Democrats for the coming 9/11 pretext for martial law. Well, I give it 20%. And if it does happen we’ll shout “Reichstag Fire!” And make them pay.
^^ Boomer America-cultist still thinks America's job is to "save the world", and the world wants and needs saving by his cult. All you can really say to people who still think like this is... time for you nap.
DeleteWhile I don't agree (at all!!!) with TB's rude Boomer comment, the time for a nap part may be right. You're not on your main blog, David. Within the comments section you're like the rest of us Peons, and can't post images, and can only put links in with an href tag.
DeleteYou may want to add that :-)
snore, ent. I've long demanded you tell us which past nation/empire or any combination or ALL of them approached the post WWII US Pax in accomplishments re lowest ratio (5%) of living humans who ever witnessed war with their own eyes. Or 95% of all world children in school having never starved. Or progress, advancement, science or... fun. YOU bear the burden of proof, goombah
Deletehttps://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2026/Items/Oct06-2.html
ReplyDeleteYesterday, Trump put the cherry, as it were, on this sh** sundae of a weekend. During the same event in Nebraska where he signed the red-dye XO (see above), he also invited Iran to attack California. Specifically, Trump decreed: "They can take out a city. Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego."
Are we at "treason" yet?
From the same link above:
Delete"And forgive our somewhat less than neutral tone here, but he literally just encouraged a foreign adversary to kill us. If we don't return the favor, and wish that Iran would kill him, then we think we're actually being restrained. "
Hard to argue with that.
Are we at "treason" yet?
DeleteAccording to the Supreme Clowns, not if it is part of his official duties. Hey, they would probably allow him to nuke the cities himself to .... checks notes....prevent voter fraud./s
"not if it is part of his official duties. Hey, they would probably allow him to nuke the cities himself to ...."
DeleteWith this supreme court, I could see them allowing DJT to nuke American cities on his own as "official duties".
Characterizing the encouragement for an enemy during wartime (even "wartime") to do so is a bigger climb.
Regardless of criminal liability, it does seem to meet the Constitutional definition of treason, to wit:
"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort."
Emphasis mine.
Sorry, but there is no reforming our system or our society.
ReplyDeleteThe rich and powerful who actually rule our nation won't allow it.
We should just let the whole thing crash and burn and rebuild.
While I can understand this thinking - who is going to do the burning down, who and what is to get burned down with it and who is to survive and rebuild it has most often been regretted after the fact.
DeleteI may add that humanity has developed methods of burning down since the last time that disallow rebuilding entirely.
No no, we gotta SAVE THE WORLD so American billionaires can OWN THE WORLD.
DeleteI propose a compromise. Save the world, burn down the billionaires.
DeleteAs is often the case, Celt expresses his indolent (why bother to lift a finger?) laziness under a guise of sanctimonious cynicism. We only have had the best lives - by far - of any humans, ever and many tools to raise better generations for further progress. But riiiiiight. The oligarch putsch is an act of DESPERATION because they see our progress will render feudalism impossible. But guys like Celt prove their methods work.
DeleteA propos treason:
ReplyDeletehttps://amp.dw.com/en/germanys-ex-spy-chief-arrested-for-espionage/a-79560278
"Sit down at a river, and wait for the bodies of your enemies floating downstream." - Chinese proverb
Jim Bakker was still alive (until yesterday)?
ReplyDeleteWho knew?
Matthew 7
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“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but underneath are ravenous wolves.
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l By their fruits you will know them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?
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Just so, every good tree bears good fruit, and a rotten tree bears bad fruit.
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A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a rotten tree bear good fruit.
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Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.
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So by their fruits you will know them.
ReplyDeletehttps://ndupress.ndu.edu/Media/News/News-Article-View/article/1325984/are-there-too-many-general-officers-for-todays-military/
A purge of our top heavy US military officer ranks is entirely appropriate & long overdue, as there are nearly 4X more US general officers & flag officers than there were in WW2 with about 900 US military officers for less than 1.3 million troops at a 1:1400 ratio today when compared a ratio of 1 officer for every 6000 troops (a 1:6000 ratio) during WW2.
The elite oversupply is said to much worse in the US Navy today with over 150 active US admirals in control of about 250 active US ships, making a ratio of about 1 US admiral for about every 2 active US ships.
https://historypredicted.com/briefs/elite-overproduction-and-societal-collapse/
Described by the US military as simply 'Rank Inflation', this phenomenon of 'Elite Oversupply', first popularized by Peter Turchin, now figures prominently in Professor Jiang Xueqin’s Theory of Societal Collapse which appears to occur when there are too many leaders, not enough followers & a loss of hierarchy
This is also where our fine host's theory of the "Age of the Amateur' begins to breakdown, as the increasingly proficient amateur (who believes that he knows almost as much as an anointed expert class member) is much less likely to follow expert instructions without question, leading to the type of hierarchical dysfunction that Heinlein described as the 'Crazy Years'.
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Anyone who paid attention to our naval history in the 20th century would know of the giant logistics structure behind those 250 active ships and understand that it was this structure that did more to win WWII than the aircraft carriers.
DeleteI work on a base where the SeeBees have a strong presence. They are a much bigger deal than most of us know... and they aren't commanded by junior officers.
Also... there are a lot of 'admiral' ranks above Captain, but pretty much all officer ranks from O6 upward are filled by people who can face a sudden exit from service if anything goes amiss. The 'buck' stops on someone's desk and they have a strong tradition of retiring on the spot to clear the way for their replacement to get it right.
Finally, most naval officers stall out in terms of promotions. A few year ago one of them explained it to me. He had a plan to collect two master's degrees AND chase after the modern war fighting methods to avoid the stall, but he knew that still might not be enough.
I always -maybe solipsistically - have said I will be your canary and they will shoot or whatever me before any of you... though after they off enough dem Congress folks to prevent a quorum. And enough loyal officers to emulate Germany 1934.
ReplyDeleteAnd so... welcome to ground zero southern California. And while Trump's horrific threat to us and our lives and families is obscenely satanic, FAR more disturbing were the cheers of the MAGA hate-monsters in the crowd. Braying joyful lust for the potential deaths of my family... and huge US Naval and Marine bases (to Putin's delight) and much more.
EVERY time there's been an emergency in Red America, Blue America has stepped up with gushers of aid and $$$ and care. And EVERY time any blue state is stricken, we hear (from many, not all red-staters) that it is God's Wrath and they try to weasel out of sending any help. Always.
Those in that crowd who cheered at the prospect of painful death to my family can (and will) go to hell. They are no less vile than the plantation slavers.
Yeah rank inflation is a thing and it gets pushed back, in mature ways, every generation. This is not inflation reduction, it is Germany and Stalin raping the officer corps in order to intimidate them.
DeleteLocum never met a general or admiral. The most maturely dedicated and primly fact-oriented - and educated - men and women you will ever meet.
And you, sir, are a traitor monster.
I did wonder whether the San Diego reference was a personal dig, or just Warlord Peter's way of removing 20% of generals from the naval base there (the navy is commanded by admirals, of course, but I doubt he gets the difference)
DeleteThe last time I heard of Los Angeles being threatened like this was just after 9/11, in an Al Qaeda broadcast that also included Melbourne.
Anyway, it's yet another reason for someone to stand up and assert that Trump is as crazy as a rabid loon.
I suppose that a big, nasty war with a lot of officer casualties would help figure out what was dead wood in the O6 < ranks, but having an incompetent SECDEF happy to practice his axe throwing technique in a crowded square is not an acceptable substitute. Even Stalin wasn't insane enough to want his army led by brainless beefy yes-men. (As far as I can tell, he treasured Zhukov because Zhukov didn't sugar-coat his reports.)
ReplyDeleteI also remember that Gen Marshall's little black book (of guys to not be promoted further) did not include Fredendall, who looked the model of a modern major general but was an absolute disaster in the North Africa campaign. Even the best have to use the future imperfect.
disavowal - I've met a few O5-O6's and above (including a regimental colonel of Ghurkas, Ret.), but strangely, none spent much time discussing operations or strategy with an E6 weatherman. They mostly just got their briefings.
Pappenheimer
P.S. Alfred's right about the absolute necessity of a strong logistics base for any operation, and I fear that our current leaders don't have a clue. Did you ever hear about the Spartan army that began to starve about 3 days' march from home? Shirtless bearded superheroes need to eat, too.
"Shirtless bearded superheroes need to eat, too." Of all the things I would use AI to 'amend' about that wretched pile called '300', one would show 600 helot slaves schlepping the spartans' armor and food, then given short spears in the very front rank so they could make Persians slip on their blood.
DeleteI don't understand how citing & seconding a 2013 Obama Administration Report on Military Officer Oversupply makes me a traitor; I haven't quite figured out how streamlining the military chain-of-command equals treason; and I don't have a clue as to why our fine host assumes that military officer downsizing equals the attempted murder of himself & his family.
ReplyDeleteI will note that Dr Brin's repeated attempts to degrade & gaslight red rural americans as lazy, feeble-minded & entirely dependent charity cases employs the very same rhetoric once used by Confederate Slave-Owning Democrats to justify the enslavement of american blacks 'for their own good', even though the labour & resources provided by said slaves enriched the slave-owning classes immensely, just as the blue urban enclaves have consistently undervalued & stolen red rural resources from the get-go.
Thanks to Alfred, btw, for explaining how all those Navy Admirals are primarily concerned with logistics, resupply & store-keeping rather than command, as evidenced by the various Potato Admirals, Janitorial Admirals & Rear Admirals in charge of Toilet Paper.
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YES! You say a true thing here: "I don't understand how citing & seconding a 2013 Obama Administration Report on Military Officer Oversupply makes me a traitor..."
DeleteYes, you DON'T understand the difference between the Obama admin doing what all administrations have done once per decade. According to the Marshall traditions, pruning with care the upper officer corps of excess generals that crept in by Rank Inflation. ALL have done so. Bush Jr did so with some bias, but usually it is done with advice from the most brilliant military leaders of the Marshall mode.
And then it has to be done again, a decade later, smoothly, meticulously and with attention to merit.
Just as Al Gore accomplished VASTLY more savings and staff reductions with his careful, bipartisan Reinventing Government program that Musk did with his wasteful, counterproductive and disastrously partisan DOGE. (STEP UP WITH WAGER STAKES OVER THAT!)
Among the many reasons you are a traitor is that you accept and praise Putin-boy Hegseth's 1934 style reaming of the MOST competent flag officers. You do this without ever questioning the criteria, which boil down firing to the most brilliant and most impudently loyal to the Constitution.
Just as Hegs FIRST fired all the JAGs who could rule on illegal orders. Yep, you are a traitor in all ways and down the line.
Ha ha! "Potato Admiral" coming from.a guy who has never done the job.
DeleteSure. They don't show up in Hollywood war movies, but that's because Hollywood knows damn near nothing about naval warfare and the experts they could summon to review screenplays would (correctly) point out that the truthful stories are neither simple or linear. It's really tough to write a script for 120 minutes of "How the crawler tractor won the war". Straight to DVD if it gets funded at all.
They asked Eisenhower and Nimitz what was most important, though. It's all written down for anyone who gives a damn to learn.
BTW, since it is Nobel Prize week, a suggestion for OGH: A wrap-up blog post for the winners would be a nice thing.
ReplyDeleteNice to see Halzen join Englert as Belgian winners after Lemaître got robbed. The Biggus Bangus may be fading now, but there was no JWST in his spacetime.
DeleteIt's October 7th, the 3 year anniversary of the premeditated murder of 1200 Israeli civilians by Palestinian terrorists, and Dr Brin continues to portray the most blatantly pro-Israeli & pro-Jewish US presidential administration in recorded history as treasonous antisemitic nazis, even as the US Democrats, Dr Brin & other treasonous constitution-haters continue to give their unconditional support to some of the most openly pro-Intifada, pro-Palestinian & anti-Enlightenment candidates ever known in US politics.
ReplyDeleteIt's 'todestrieb', pure & simple, and I hope I never 'get it'.
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locum you are a jibbering loony. Israel and the USA are turned by Trump & Netanyahu into a sepoy force for the Saudis and world oligarchy. Hamas must be destroyed... but Netanyah has wrecked Israel's world standing unnecessarily because the haredim idiots bray that God will do for them what he never did for European Jews in 1941.
DeleteYou... know... nothing. You clutch at straws rather than admit even the possibility that... like confederate troopers fighting for plantation slaver lords, you are an utter sap.
Do NOT read this if you are queasy or doctrinaire or judgmental of nerdy-nitpicky thought experiments. But nothing proves red-state Republicans are idiots more than their incompetent botches of death-penalty executions. Moreover, you know I am in the fight against dismal confederatism up to my eyeballs! So, if you can't excuse a nerdy ally stepping-back to view a problem purely logically, then just STOP reading right here.
ReplyDeleteDeath penalty is of course problematic morally, but also because human bodies are tenacious and known to survive often in extreme conditions, like they used on that woman, last week, after searching the world over for some kind of poison concoction that would end life functions without inducing headline-grabbing convulsions. Only dig it: there is no such combination that will work on everyone. They were insane to think so.
...As they are microcephalic pinheads to ignore the obvious. Something that the French understood. That death is extremely easy to induce by separating the head from the body.
Ew!?!? The ick factor is abstract, for the guillotine itself. But it is still cruel in a different way. Modern sensibilities (rightly) consider the steps BEFORE the guillotine to be sadistic! That awful tumbrel ride to the gibbet, then dragging folks up the final stairs to the platform where they will either impress the jeering crowds by nobly striding forth to kneel and present... or else thrash while being forced. The show itself works. The pre-show is macabre and nasty.
So? All of which can be bypassed. First a jolly old Heroin high with the last meal, followed by anesthetics and deep sleep and THEN that quick, hygienic blade. Both painless and utterly effective.
What? More moans of ick? Well there's more. (Because thought experiments are my freaking JOB!)
Did you know that this already happens, several times each year? Rich guys who face the end, when all of their frantic-delusional live-forever exigencies have failed, many have contracts with Alcor, whose team stands by in a rented hospital room, till the docs declare time of death. At which point the team rushes in to perfuse antifreeze concoctions and then, more-often than-not, remove just the head for storage that's much cheaper than full body disneyfication.
The head then goes into a liquid nitrogen facility ... until that purported someday era when FutureFolks(TM) can use super-dupertech to track every synapse and recreate the brain perfectly inside a new, athletic body... or into an android, or robot or self-driving car. Don't forget that FutureFolkd(TM) will be able to do whatever they like. They will revive (if they can) whomever THEY choose. Your bank account or trust fund will be just monopoly money to them.
(So be good, you rich twits. Or to get that golden ticket from those FutureFolk(TM), try at least pretending to be good.)
So, here's the twist. Suppose the redstate GOPper twits tried this, with a 'sweetener' of a weird sort. For every such decap execution, the resulting head is stored via cryonics against some day when the executed felon might... maybe?... be both revived AND CURED of whatever sickness make them commit horrible crimes!
Again, whether FuturamaFolks TM) actually WOULD do that or Could do it is not our concern. They'll decide. And maybe being slid into the brain case of a garbage truck (See Anne McCaffrey's great novel THE SHIP WHO SANG) would then let the executed from our era work off their debt to society.
CONTINUES
continuing
ReplyDeleteOnly dig it. Might that option give the condemned some kind of comfort or solace... or a slim ray of hope? Especially for those who know that heaven will ignore the prayers of murderers? Indeed, might it make execution slightly less icky to some (a few) of us? Or might that notion at least appeal to the idiots currently flailing around with poisons?
There it is. Only now a final coda. I am not PROPOSING any of this! Just as Temple Grandin worked to improve the slaughterhouse industry, in order to reduce pain and fear on the part of meat animals, I just used that spectrum part of my brain to ponder a logical possibility. One that should have been OBVIOUS to the death penalty pushers if their brains contained enough neurons to be worth freezing... and hence my core reason for posting this is not expectation it will happen!
It is to reiterate the one pure fact out of all this. That the current generation of GOPper politicians are utter morons, top to bottom. But you knew that already.