I think the best way to express this reality that I've heard was from a buddy, who mentioned offhandedly that it is wild we live in a time when if Ukraine and Russia teamed up tomorrow (by magic or whatever, obviously this isn't a real thing) they would rapidly defeat the standing European militaries. That's a historical anomaly big enough to choke on.
And, importantly, it wasn't true at the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. At that point, neither of these nations were producing millions of drones annually. Somehow, since going to war, both nations have grown dramatically stronger, in lockstep. It's a deranged outcome. If you read it in a novel, you'd laugh out loud.
Ukraine + Russia drone manufacturing goes up like a rocket, while France/Germany, which are not presently on fire and doing a draft...their drone production goes from nothing to nothing. It's wild.
Cade Metz doxxed the slatestarcodex guy, right? My conception going into this was 'this guy pretends to not understand stuff in order to hurt people and enrich himself' and this whole 'the science word sayers are really faith believers' take is pretty clearly more of that.
Invert it, if you like. Feels like, if silicon valley WAS a religious movement, Cade would describe it as cold eyed cynical pragmatism.
I wouldn't pay this scoundrel any more mind. Any engagement you give him will be put to use to the detriment of whoever is currently on his plate.
I deleted a lot of quibbling around the edge cases. I think you are putting into 'the Enlightenments' mouth a lot of stuff I'm reasonable confident its architects had no opinion on(3 branches specifically, a triumph?!), but that's whatever, it's not the main focus here.
It feels like this is incomplete unless you answer the central paradox, yeah? Like, don't skate past it. if concentration of power is bad, and must be prevented...
What can do that? Power is powerful, yeah? So a greater power is necessary to prevent bad actors from concentrating it? But this greater power itself (classically, in this sort of thing a state) is/was concentrated. If I'm not free to... (read more)
I tend to think their viewpoints are coherent. Both observe that the civil service is an unaccountable nightmare. Dom imagines that making them obey the elected officials would improve things, Jen imagines that severing them from the electoral interference would improve things. Both would plausibly be an improvement. The common factor is imagining a civil service that worked like everything else.
I don't think either can be implemented. Dom's desire is romantic, but runs against human nature (why would whitehall take on responsibility when it can just destroy him and his political masters, as it obviously did). Jen's desire is fanciful, the ossification that she rails against is exactly part of the accountability sink.
If you had a genie, you'd grant Dom's wish before Jen's, but neither is actionable.
It's mostly anecdotal from my experience, I'm afraid. That is, my conviction went the 'wrong way'. When I was poor, that's what I saw, then later articles mostly seemed to agree, rather than the data making me believe something and then experience confirming.
I looked up noahpinion's 'everything you know about homelessness is wrong' article, which I remember as basically getting stuff right. There is a citation link for 'the vast majority of homelessness is temporary and the vast majority of homeless people just need housing', but it is broken. womp womp.
The first link on searching 'homelessness is temporary' on google goes to What Are the Four Types of Homelessness? | Comic Relief... (read more)
There's a saying in Chess, that if you have one weakness, you can probably defend it, but if you have two, you are probably fucked. I dunno, it's phrased better, but that's the gist.
Most homeless people are only temporarily homeless. They are the 'one weakness' crowd. Something has gone wrong, they are on the ropes, but they are straightening it out. There are times and places I can point to in my life where I could have become a 'one weakness' homeless.
A one weakness homeless has fucked up in a royal way (drugs, hit his girl...), and fallen through the cracks, but in a world where Thanos snapped them into a suburban... (read 370 more words →)
If you watch the first episode of Hazbin Hotel (quick plot synopsis, Hell's princess argues for reform in the treatment of the damned to an unsympathetic audience) there's a musical number called 'Hell Is Forever' sung by a sneering maniac in the face of an earnest protagonist asking for basic, incremental fixes.
It isn't directly related to any of the causes this site usually champions, but if you've ever worked with the legal/incarceration system and had the temerity to question the way things operate the vibe will be very familiar.
Hazbin Hotel Official Full Episode "OVERTURE" | Prime Video (youtube.com)
No one writes articles about planes that land safely.
I'm confused by the fact that you don't think it's plausible that an early version of the AI could contain the silver bullet for the evolved version. That seems like a reasonable sci fi answer to an invincible AI.
I think my confusion is around the AI 'rewriting' it's code. In my mind, when it does so, it is doing so because it is motivated by either it's explicit goals (reward function, utility list, w/ever form that takes), or that doing so is instrumental towards them. That is, the paperclip collector rewrites itself to be a better paper clip collector.
When paper clip collector code 1.1 of itself, the new version may be operationally... (read more)
There is an old TV show called 'The Wire', and in it a con artist fleeces a mark.
The mark's friend tries to wake him up, whereupon the mark insists that the con artist has helped him. The mark's friend tells him to 'wake up, he rain-made you!'
"What?"
"A guy says if you pay him, he can make it rain. You pay him. If and when it rains, he takes the credit. If and when it doesn't, he finds reasons for you to pay him more."
This is a neat tv show moment, to be sure, but it is also a pattern that you will find everywhere in the corporate world.
A given product has a... (read 235 more words →)
This is a fun post. I remember enjoying Ada Palmer's fiction. It makes sense that someone who could write in such a manner does interesting things in their day job. More power to her.