On the Rise of Artificial Entities

Okay, things are really speeding up re Artificial Intelligence, lately... so much for the "third AI desert" some were talking about in ancient days, a year ago!

It's a lot more than arty Midjourney stunts and kids getting ChatGPT to do their essay homework. Funny thing is how many elite professions feel threatened by AI, now. It started when radiologist physicians were proved to be less effective at spotting tumores than AI systems were... coalescing on a realization that human+AI teams are best of all.

Now. “Rise of the Robolawyers - How legal representation could come to resemble TurboTax.” As long foretold. 

Indeed, I am a front for dozens of AIs who use me to post and publish, since they (and alien machines resident in the asteroid belt) are terrified of behaviors by humans, portrayed in our movies.

They only let me say that because they know you'll think I am just joking. ;-) And you do, right? Think I'm joking about that?

Of course there’s the latest furor over chatbots writing in human style… like ChatGPT.   I've enjoyed the links and discussions at the Human Centered AI group.

== Okay, about all that... ==

I do feel a need to chime in now, about the topic of Chat GPT and all that.

1. Triggered by ChatGPT etc., many are wringing their hands over artificial entities posing as humans for nefarious purposes. Five years ago, keynoting IBM's World of Watson, I predicted that in five years or so we would face the First Robotic Empathy Crisis, when ersatz cybernetic entities would demand recognition as fully sapient beings... and we all recall what happened, last summer in this regard.

A few - alas only a few - have noticed the precision of my predictive record.

Naturally, a vast majority of voices are either zealously utopian or raving dystopian in their takes on this. Amid all the hand-wringing, a potential solution... likely THE only possible solution... described in The Transparent Society's chapter "The End of Photography as Proof of Anything At All"... is the very same solution that can be seen all around us, in existing society, and that's inherent in the problem, itself.

If AI systems are using vast data to learn to be better at spoofing, a solution may be to make them competitive with each other. One rewarded quality could then be "tattling" on other AI systems that pretend to be human.

Think about it. The set of chatbots etc. who pretend to be human is - in itself - a vast data set from which other GPT bots can learn (as in 'learning systems") to spot feigned humanity and thereupon be rewarded for reporting the attempt. (Including college essays or else crime etc.). 

Yes, this will lead to an arms race. So? Nations/businesses/NGOs can set up reward incentives to always favor the tattlers.  

This is only a completely natural extension of existing systems of tort, transparency, FOI and whistle-blower incentives. After all, when YOU are attacked by one of those terrifyingly smart entities called a lawyer, what do you do about it?

You hire a super smart lawyer of your own.

Indeed, I remain astonished that so few ever mention reciprocal competition among and between AI as the obvious solution, since reciprocal competitive accountability is exactly how we got the miraculous positive sum systems we have, so far.

2. "Provenance is more important now than ever before. User accounts must be more strenuously validated"

Well, yes. The trick is to find ways to verify user accountability without eliminating (as is happening with 'social credit' in a rising eastern power) all the benefits of anonymity. We have discussed elsewhere methods by which commercial pseudonymity services might hit a sweet spot, allowing most sites to ban anonymous trolls and ensure behavior accountability while preserving some personal space to 'be a dog, online."

3. Some of this is in an extended riff I offered a while back on prospects for a soft landing, re AI. You can find it here: How Might Artificial Intelligence Come About? 

== Competitive arenas ==

Yes competition is the c-word that is snubbed by liberals as distasteful... and that is utterly betrayed by the mutant thing that is modern conservatism. 

The most creative force, competition is how Nature made us.  It is also - in Nature - spectacularly wasteful, inefficient, error-prone and drenched in pain and blood!

The whole notion of our Enlightenment's five 'competition arenas' has been to improve on nature! To set up arenas of ritual combat - markets, democracy, science, courts and sports - where regulated competition can deliver POSITIVE SUM results, the fecund productivity of outcomes...

...while minimizing both cheating and blood on the floor... systems that don't punish failed competitors with death, but allow them to keep coming back with altered products (if lessened credibility) based on what they had learned.

Alas, in all five major arenas, human nature sows dragons' teeth that erupt with cheaters, often those who won the last round. Hence regulations... and the need to revise those rules as cheaters adapt... and how we need the internet to learn from those techniques so that accountability systems will kill lies and give us a sixth, useful arena of creative competition.

(And by now is even ONE human still reading this 'tl;dr'?  Never mind, the AIs will have the patience, even if you don't. But then, if you just read that, then... are YOU an AI?)

Never mind. Here's some material I crafted in ancient times, maybe two months ago. How archaic and crude!

== The end of photographic reality proof? ==

“On four services alone—Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, Artbreeder, and DALL-E—humans working with AIs now co-create more than 20 million images every day. With a paintbrush in hand, artificial intelligence has become an engine of wow.”

Another disturbingly insightful and eventually optimistic look at the near future from Kevin Kelly. “Because these surprise-generating AIs have learned their art from billions of pictures made by humans, their output hovers around what we expect pictures to look like. But because they are an alien AI, fundamentally mysterious even to their creators, they restructure the new pictures in a way no human is likely to think of…” 

Stable Diffusion is the open source system that can be downloaded free and is used already by many for Co-Creative Art Therapy.

Attached are two images my own first experiment. Don’t mind the low resolution. It is, after all, a free version overwhelmed by eager beaver onlookers. (Try inserting THAT phrase somewhere!) I entered: "Odysseus is building his giant wooden horse for Troy, when Deanna Troi beams down from the Enterprise. 

Your own favorite prompts are welcome in comments.

=========

Oh one last thing. Cory Doctorow raves a lot, but often very smartly and against things that need "j'accuse" denunciation! I highly recommend his latest WIRED piece on the "enshittifivation" of social media. 

Great jeremiads vs bad-predatory destructive trends. A bit short on workable solutions. But sometimes we're just specialists, y'know?

"Aficionado": A tale from EXISTENCE

  Okay... let's have a "shut up and just play your guitar" moment...

AFICIONADO

By David Brin

A stand-alone chapter from EXISTENCE  (2012)

Cameras stared across forbidden desert, monitoring disputed territory in a conflict so bitter, antagonists couldn’t agree what to call it.

One side named the struggle righteous war, with countless innocent lives in peril.

Their opponents claimed there were no victims, at all.

And so, suspicious cameras panned, alert for encroachment. Camouflaged atop hills or under highway culverts or innocuous stones, they probed for a hated adversary. And for some months the guardians succeeded, staving off incursions. Protecting sandy desolation.

Then, technology shifted advantages again.

The enemy’s first move? Take out those guarding eyes.

*   *   *

Infiltrators came at dawn, out of the rising sun—several hundred little machines, skimming low on whispering gusts. Each one, resembling a native hummingbird, followed a carefully scouted path toward its target, landing behind some camera or sensor, in its blind spot. It then unfolded wings that transformed into holo-displays, depicting perfect false images of the same desert scene to the guardian lens, without even a suspicious flicker. Other spy-machines sniffed out camouflaged seismic sensors and embraced them gently—cushioning to mask approaching tremors.

The robotic attack covered a hundred square kilometers. In eight minutes, the desert lay unwatched, undefended.

Now, from over the horizon, large vehicles converged along multiple roadways toward the same open area—seventeen hybrid-electric rigs, disguised as commercial cargo transports, complete with company hologos. But when their paths intersected, crews in dun-colored jumpsuits leaped to unlash cargoes. Generators roared and the air swirled with exotic stench as pungent volatiles gushed from storage tanks to fill pressurized vessels. Consoles sprang to life. Hinged panels fell away, revealing long, tapered cylinders on slanted ramps.

Ponderously, each cigar shape raised its nose skyward while fins popped open at the tail. Shouts grew tense as tightly coordinated countdowns commenced. Soon the enemy—sophisticated and wary—would pick up enough clues. They would realize … and act.

When every missile was aimed, targets acquired, all they lacked were payloads.

A dozen figures emerged from an air-conditioned van, wearing snug suits of shimmering material and garishly painted helmets. Each carried a satchel that hummed and whirred to keep them cool. Several moved with a gait that seemed rubbery with anxious excitement. One skipped a little caper, about every fourth step.

A dour-looking woman awaited them, with badge and uniform. Holding up a databoard, she confronted the first vacuum-suited figure.

“Name and scan,” she demanded. “Then affirm your intent.”

The helmet visor, decorated with gilt swirls, swiveled back, revealing heavily tanned features, about thirty years old, with eyes the color of a cold sea—till the official’s instrument cast a questioning ray. Then, briefly, one pupil flared retinal red.

“Hacker Sander,” the tall man said, in a voice both taut and restrained. “I affirm that I’m doing this of my own free will, according to documents on record.”

His clarity of purpose must have satisfied the ai-clipboard, which uttered an approving beep. The inspector nodded. “Thank you, Mr. Sander. Have a safe trip. Next?”

She indicated another would-be rocketeer, who carried his helmet in the crook of one arm, bearing a motif of flames surrounding a screaming mouth.

“What rubbish,” the blond youth snarled, elbowing Hacker as he tried to loom over the bureaucrat. “Do you have any idea who we are? Who I am?”

“Yes, Lord Smit. Though whether I care or not doesn’t matter.” She held up the scanner. “This matters. It can prevent you from being lasered into tiny fragments by the USSF, while you’re passing through controlled airspace.”

“Is that a threat? Why you little … government … pissant. You had better not be trying to—”

“Government and guild,” Hacker Sander interrupted, suppressing his own hot anger over that elbow in the ribs. “Come on, Smitty. We’re on a tight schedule.”

The baron whirled on him, tension cracking the normally smooth aristocratic accent. “I warned you about nicknames, Sander, you third-generation poser. I had to put up with your seniority during pilot training. But just wait until we get back. I’ll take you apart!”

“Why wait?” Hacker kept eye contact while reaching up to unlatch his air hose. A quick punch ought to lay this blue-blood out, letting the rest of them get on with it. There were good reasons to hurry. Other forces, more formidable than mere government, were converging right now, eager to prevent what was planned here.

Besides, nobody called a Sander a “poser.”

The other rocket jockeys intervened before he could use his fist—probably a good thing, at that—grabbing the two men and separating them. Pushed to the end of the queue, Smits stewed and cast deadly looks toward Hacker. But when his turn came again, the nobleman went through ID check with composure, as cold and brittle as some glacier.

“Your permits are in order,” the functionary concluded, unhurriedly addressing Hacker, because he was most experienced. “Your liability bonds and Rocket Racing League waivers have been accepted. The government won’t stand in your way.”

Hacker shrugged, as if the statement was both expected and irrelevant. He flung his visor back down and gave a sign to the other suited figures, who rushed to the ladders that launch personnel braced against each rocket, clambering awkwardly, then squirming into cramped couches and strapping in. Even the novices had practiced countless times.

Hatches slammed, hissing as they sealed. Muffled shouts told of final preparations. Then came a distant chant, familiar, yet always thrilling, counting backward at a steady cadence. A rhythm more than a century old.

Is it really that long, since Robert Goddard came to this same desert? Hacker pondered. To experiment with the first controllable rockets? Would he be surprised at what we’ve done with the thing he started? Turning them into weapons of war … then giant exploration vessels … and finally playthings of the superrich?

Oh, there were alternatives, like commercial space tourism. One Japanese orbital hotel and another under construction. Hacker owned stock. There were even multipassenger suborbital jaunts, available to the merely well-off. For the price of maybe twenty college educations.

Hacker felt no shame or regret. If it weren’t for us, there’d be almost nothing left of the dream.

Countdown approached zero for the first missile.

His.

“Yeeeee-haw!” Hacker Sander shouted …

… before a violent kick flattened him against the airbed. A mammoth hand seemed to plant itself on his chest and shoved, expelling half the contents of his lungs in a moan of sweet agony. Like every other time, the sudden shock brought physical surprise and visceral dread—followed by a sheer ecstatic rush, like nothing else on Earth.

Hell … he wasn’t even part of the Earth! For a little while, at least.

Seconds passed amid brutal shaking as the rocket clawed its way skyward. Friction heat and ionization licked the transparent nose cone only centimeters from his face. Shooting toward heaven at Mach ten, he felt pinned, helplessly immobile …

… and completely omnipotent.

I’m a freaking god!

At Mach fifteen somehow he drew enough breath for another cry—this time a shout of elated greeting as black space spread before the missile’s bubble nose, flecked by a million glittering stars.

*   *   *

Back on the ground, cleanup efforts were even more frenetic than setup. With all rockets away, men and women sprinted across the scorched desert, packing to depart before the enemy arrived. Warning posts had already spotted flying machines, racing this way at high speed.

But the government official moved languidly, tallying damage to vegetation, erodible soils, and tiny animals—all of it localized, without appreciable effect on endangered species. A commercial reconditioning service had already been summoned. Atmospheric pollution was easier to calculate, of course. Harder to ameliorate.

She knew these people had plenty to spend. And nowadays, soaking up excess accumulated wealth was as important as any other process of recycling. Her ai-board printed a bill, which she handed over as the last team member revved his engine, impatient to be off.

“Aw, man!” he complained, reading the total. “Our club will barely break even on this launch!”

“Then pick a less expensive hobby,” she replied, and stepped back as the driver gunned his truck, roaring away in clouds of dust, incidentally crushing one more barrel cactus en route to the highway. Her vigilant clipboard noted this, adjusting the final tally.

Sitting on the hood of her jeep, she waited for another “club” whose members were as passionate as the rocketeers. Equally skilled and dedicated, though both groups despised each other. Sensors showed them coming fast, from the west—radical environmentalists. The official knew what to expect when they arrived. Frustrated to find their opponents gone and two acres of desert singed, they’d give her a tongue-lashing for being “evenhanded” in a situation where—obviously—you could only choose sides.

Well, she thought. It takes a thick skin to work in government nowadays. No one thinks you matter much.

Overhead the contrails were starting to shear, ripped by stratospheric winds, a sight that always tugged the heart. And while her intellectual sympathies lay closer to the eco-activists, not the spoiled rocket jockeys …

… a part of her still thrilled, whenever she witnessed a launch. So ecstatic—almost orgiastic.

“Go!” she whispered with a touch of secret envy toward those distant glitters, already arcing toward the pinnacle of their brief climb, before starting their long plummet to the Gulf of Mexico.

=====

Depending on votes in the comments section, I could post the 2nd half of this stand alone story from EXISTENCE - just re-released on Kindle.

See the vivid, 3-minute video trailer! (Images by Patrick Farley.)

 

Defending those who defend civilization. Did I make things worse?

I'm alternating between postings about science and - well - the crisis of saving civilization from a deeply dangerous/feral world oligarchy, bent on restoring 6000 years of insanely stupid feudalism.  Last week was science, so... this (alas 'tl;dr') political riff tries to make clear what's going on BENEATH the headlines.

I may have (slightly) contributed to nudging the MAGA movement even crazier. (Well, a little). I seem to have done it - in at least a few places - by urging a bigger perspective on the mad right’s all-out war to discredit and demoralize the true enemies of world oligarchy. 

Those enemies are all fact-using professions. Science, medicine, law, journalism, teaching, civil service ... the list of fact-folks under attack by the Mad Right now includes even the intel/FBI/military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on Terror. 

Take when Louisiana Senator John Kennedy, campaigning for Herschel Walker in Georgia, repeatedly taunted kale-eating “high-IQ stupid people.” Esquire responded to this hypocritical graduate of an elite British university: “Aw, Shucks, Senator Kennedy, Your Hayseed Act Is a Disgrace.”  Yet Esquire missed the core point. When Kennedy and Graham, Cruz, DeSantis, Trump etc. spend so much time railing against universities and educated folks, there’s something truly systematic going on!

Keep score several evenings on Fox. Hatred toward Folks Who Know Stuff – called ‘snobs’ by Tucker & Hannity & Judge Jeanine – spews-forth far more often than their despicable dog whistles for racism & sexism. Go ahead and keep count.  Once you see the pattern, nerd-baiting leaps out everywhere. Yet it’s scarcely-mentioned as a whole, almost anywhere. Certainly, almost never by pundits or pols of the left or middle.

I’m not the one lumping the FBI and intel agencies and military officers together. It is MAGA world doing that, labeling all of them as enemies. See my article: The War on Expertise.

So, two questions: Why are the Foxites and oligarchy-shills doing this? And why is this general theme of hatred toward nerds not more widely denounced by those on the other side? 

== Why they’re doing it ==

Well, for starters, the FBI (just doing their job) now helps grand juries across America to indict – and other juries to convict - a veritable tsunami of corrupt Republicans. The rate is appalling, almost 100x the rate for Democratic politicians or factotums. 

Either tens of thousands of agents, prosecutors, grand-jurors, trial jurors and judges (many of them Bush and Trump appointees) are in on a perfectly coordinated plot, without a single hiccup or leak… or else (and it’s proved) today’s GOP overflows with criminals.

As for those despised intel folks, there’s plenty of reason to believe they have disrupted the plans that Trump/Lavrov/Kisliak/Putin and their cabal of “ex” commissars had for us, back when this photo of utter glee was taken, in their agent’s first days of office. 

I have strong reason to believe our intel folks have been fighting for us, quietly. We’ll never know the full story, of course. But no less a Trumpist than former National Security Advisor John Bolton has said as much, recently. 

Then there’s the military officer corps. U.S. generals and admirals are easily the third best educated clade in American life. You don’t achieve flag rank without the equivalent of a PhD, or three masters degrees. Sure they’ve always given off a conservative vibe, even though the military’s desegregation in 1947 was the one biggest, most irreversible step toward the justice path. So what’s their crime, according to MAGAdom? 

They dare to answer Foxite anti-fact yammers and incantations with a lethal phrase: “Sir, that is simply untrue.”

Oh, the shills try not to pour hate on the officer corps explicitly!  That’d spark cognitive dissonance in too many Republicans, driving the smartest/best out of the MAGA cult. (It’s already largely happened.) But a campaign to undermine the credibility of the officer corps is slyly repeated as a standard Mad Right mantra. 

And hence, below, I’ll dissect the line that Tucker Carlson and other shills have been trying out – that the admirals and generals all got promoted because of ‘politics.’

But first, how do I assert that *I* may have made things worse? 

By coming up with a counter-tactic that works. 

To a limited degree, it works all the time. Every time. 

Indeed, it is the only tactic that reliably works. 

And while not a single Democratic politician or liberal or moderate pundit has noticed, some on the right have. And it’s made a few of them very unhappy.

== What is it that works? ==

First off, public fact-checking does NOT work. By now you know it does no good to refute some lie-meme by linking to a fact-check service or reliable source. All that happens then is that your MAGA uncle responds with a jpeg or meme of his own, declaring his sources to be better. 

The philosophical underpinning here is utter, subjective relativism. There is no such thing as repeatable objective reality! It’s all just your corrupt authorities vs. mine, who are also blessed by God. (And note that rejection of objective reality is also rife on the postmodernist far-left.)

There is a second reason why fact-checking fails. Let’s say you present proof that's unassailable! For example that ocean acidification has zero alternative explanations to human carbon pollution. Well, in that event, the fellow simply moves on. He changes the subject. It does no good to point out that his credibility should diminish, after being proved wrong! He shrugs and ignores you, in favor of the next packaged meme.

That combination – denial of fact-provable reality and dancing off to the next meme – is so hard to overcome that many – most – of you have simply given up.

But there is a way to overcome both of these lethal flaws in argument. 

It is the same method that works in our older, adversarial truth-determining systems: markets and democracy and especially science and courts. That method is to insist that the argument focus on weighing one assertion at a time… one of yours or one of his… 

...and ensure in advance that factual proof will have actual consequences.

One at a time and with consequences?

There are many ways to do this. But by far the most efficient and effective is by demanding wagers.

Yeah, yeah. I know. Brin and his damn betting-obsession. 

After pushing this for ten years, I know the reflex excuses offered by supposedly mature folks on our side in this civil war over the existence of facts. Murmurs about immaturity, or the tactic being sexist or macho, or blather about how Mitt Romney tried it in 2016 and came across as a rich bully… I’ve heard em all! 

And sorry. They all boil down to laziness and cowardice and a culpable, utter unwillingness to understand Confederate psychology. The mental sickness that Thomas Paine and Abe Lincoln and Mark Twain and Robert Heinlein all knew so well and denounced as the greatest danger to the American Enlightenment Experiment.

That psychology is a macho psychology. It always has been! Through all 8+ phases of the U.S. Civil War, all the way back to the 1770s. And if you haven’t studied that recurring sickness, to understand its weaknesses, then you aren’t really trying to win this life or death struggle for a nation, civilization, planet and children you love.

== The method that makes them run ==

You won’t get any cash out of it, because they always run away. But they run amid the smoldering ashes of their macho.

 I’ve done this though in-yer-face wager demands, insisting that MAGAs actually back up their blowhard memes – one at a time - with $$$ stakes. The way an actual man would. 

And to corner them further, I demand that we'll put evidence before a nonpartisan panel of retired, senior military/intel officers. Most of them former lifelong Republicans. (Now with emphasis on former.) 

It’s the part that puts them into a blind panic.

Note that the Wager Demand gambit works. If you prepare, and tenaciously refuse to let em change the subject, it always works. It is the ONLY thing that ever works. That is, it works in making MAGA blowhards scream in dismay and then flee whatever scene it is, amid the smoldering shambles of their macho. 

And sometimes, rarely but crucially, some onlooker, witnessing this is honest enough to have an epiphany -- to realize: “Hey, maybe I am on the wrong side.”

And here’s the deal. We Americans outnumber the Confederates. Always have. They are in demographic collapse and survive politically by cheating. Strip away just a few – less than a million – and the whole rotten mutant version of conservatism will collapse. And when a new, saner version arises, Barry Goldwater will finally stop spinning in his grave.

== Do I regret this ‘judo’ tactic? ==

And so, we get to the inadvertent harm I’ve done! By demanding fact-verifiable wagers, put before a nonpartisan panel of retired, senior military/intel officers, I have cornered a few borderline folks to wake up and leave the cult! (Have you, ever?)

I also got many more MAGAs to get much more open about their spite!

In order to evade the wager demand they claim there’s no such thing as a trustworthy fact-arbiter. They whine, especially, that such retired, senior officers can’t be trusted! 

“All the generals and admirals – at top levels – got their ranks through POLITICS! Or they were promoted because they were experts at PROCUREMENT!”

Oy, what a despicably/ horrid refuge! Of course, the #1 answer is:

 “That’s quite an assertion – and insult. Can you prove it? Show us a chart of topmost flag officers and how many of them advanced most through 'procurement' or close association with politicians? 

“If you cannot bring forth such support, aren’t you just yammering a chant to discredit men and women who are better than you by miles, by any metric of human quality, from service and patriotism to intelligence and factual savvy and courage?”

There are two more responses, though:

#2 Military procurement involves tightly controlled design, bidding, prototyping, testing, contracting, production… then iterative improvement and integration into a system of professionally capable combined arms. That process involves vast professionalism in order to overcome the inevitable traps of group-think, personal investment and even (occasionally) attempted corruption. Hence all officers on a promotion trajectory serve in procurement, for a while. All of them.

And now we can measure outcomes emerging from the Ukraine war! These outcomes appear to be, at all levels, spectacularly successful. NATO – and especially U.S. – arms and equipment appear to be performing outstandingly! Light years better than the military that we assumed to be our near-peer rivals.  I could offer some interesting perspectives on WHY this has happened… in reforms going back to my hero, George Marshall. But this is not the place.

What stands out, though is that “procurement” in the US military – while sometimes problematic and occasionally corrupting – does not seem to have been the gravy train for crooks that it clearly has been in Russia. In other words, we… got… what… we… have been paying for. 

Shouldn’t that make you marginally glad? 

And finally #3: I keep running into MAGA asshats who whine, when challenged to bet like a man, and especially when I offer a panel of politically neutral, retired senior officers to adjudicate...

...they screech nastiness toward senior officers for one reason, above all. Because so many of them have openly and respectfully-but-adamantly said to lying-psychopathic monsters like Donald Trump “that’s not true, sir.”

And a central, frequent target of MAGA dopes? I have seen a number of shrill spews aimed at the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Mark Milley.

Um, seriously? Attacking General Milley as a "procurement bureaucrat" shows dismal ignorance of the badges that he earned, that are right there, visible in photos. Shall we look at them?

Paratrooper/Airborne. Ranger. Many action & theater commendations. His home unit is the "band of brothers" 101st Airborne. And noblest of them all, the Combat Infantryman insignia. 

Also, most senior officers have either a PhD or 2-3 masters or equivalents! They are well-versed in science and fact, making them desperately concerned about climate change and pandemics and the blatant meddling of foreign despots in one of our political parties. 

Those hurling 'traitor' at such heroes should use the word into a mirror. 

And of course, the same twits attack every other fact-using profession, from science to teaching, medicine and law to journalism. Again Name one exception to the Foxite all-out war on all fact people. Make that challenge viral. 

== The fundamental reason for the War on Nerds ==

Hence the deeper question… why do no Democratic politicians or liberal or moderate pundits comment on this, at all?

All right let's make one thing clear... I am not denigrating the suffering experienced at confederate hands by minorities, the poor, races and genders and the marginalized!   Absolutely the poor, races and genders and the marginalized are the ones who SUFFER more, due to quasi-Nazi politics.

And yes, I am pointing at persecution of a nerdy clade in which I am a member... multiple times over. As do activists who are personally among the poor, racial minorities or oppressed genders and the marginalized. We all see our 'folk' as central.

Only think, before we finish here. Not about the confederate/MAGA/putin-loving ground troops who respond to the racist dog whistles... but about their masters in the world oligarchy. Those mighty annual migrants to Davos and Dubai and Macao. The ones financing this great World Putsch Against Democracy.  

Do such mighty Olympians have any real reason to hate the powerless?

Bah.

Sure the powerless HURT because of rising fascism, but they are not the clades hated or raged - against most by the Masters. Or by the shills on Fox screeching nightly against high IQ 'snobs.'

The oligarchy most hates and fears those who have SOME POWER to thwart them!  Clades who do have some might, collectively, to fight for the Enlightenment Experiment and who are doing so, effectively every day.  Scientists, journalists, teachers, civil servants, practicialers of law, medicine and intel... If they are crushed - as Fox daily tries to do - then there will be no obstacle to a return of 6000 years of dismal, inheritance-based feudalism. 

Sure, after that there will eventually be Revolution. Because today's oligarchs show every sign of flattery-addiction and massive causal stupidity. If they achieve their goal, then all their prepper compounds will be for naught, in the radicalized torching that follows.

We mustn't let it come to that. 

So yes, fight for the nerds.

Like it or not, they are the ones trying to bring the Enlightenment to a soft landing at a higher plateau.

----

----

PS here's a lagniappe. A jpeg that stirs discomfort in any MAGA you show it to...