Hacker News Reader

Comment by matheusmoreira | Hacker News Reader

Is he really going to insist on this super intelligence thing? Like he's actually going to somehow punish people who don't adopt it?

Pretty insane to literally make enemies over terminology. I don't understand what he's thinking.

View on HN

It's a loyalty test. And he's given his supporters permission to classify anyone who doesn't follow along as 'the enemy' aka 'the other'. It's a shortcut so his supporters know they don't have to give any credence to anything else they say, since now they assign all the other labels and insults he's hurled at 'his enemies' to the person they are talking to.

Gulf of Mexico -> Gulf of America

Department of Defense -> Department of War

Lake Ontario -> Lake America

AI -> SI

He's been doing this for years. Change the name from something widely used/adopted to something brand new and watch who follows along. Anyone who starts using the new name is a friend, and anyone who doesn't is an enemy.

Kennedy Center:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennedy_Center#Second_Trump_pr...

Including threats to demolish it:

* https://abcnews.com/Politics/trump-administration-suggests-k...

Twitter -> X

Same playbook.

I don't want to defend Musk, but renaming a thing you own is a far cry from renaming geography.

(And on that spectrum, DoD > Department of War is somewhere in the middle)

Since he deadnames his own child, I’m happy to deadname his business.

In English?

Trans people typically whose a new name, referring to their old name as their “deadname”. People who insist on using the deadname when they know the person has a new name are deliberately mocking, and even being cruel to, the person who has changed their name.

Musk continues to refer to his trans child by their birth name and gender. I can’t understand how someone would do that to their own child (much less anyone at all).

After purchasing twitter he chose for it a new name and wants everyone to use it, but by not bothering to I’m simply following his example.

I make it a rule to refer to companies by the name they least want to be named by and making sure to tie the old and the new name at every opportunity. More often than not these are attempts to whitewash some crime.

In this case though it appears to be a desire to promote the name as part of committing moral crime.

(Most ppl have forgotten that X was the name of one of the two failing companies forcibly merged by their respective investors to form PayPal. I remember musk being a dick back then too)

Apple Computer -> Apple

Google -> Alphabet

Facebook -> Meta

Each of these cases makes sense, though, because the scope of the wider companies had expanded well beyond their original product.

Unlike “Lake America” or “X”, they weren’t renamed just because of ego or out of spite.

I think that is different, alone because the companies still call it "Google" and "Facebook" themself.

This is the right answer. People should start pronouncing it see as in yes in Spanish. Let’s see how long he sticks with it then.

There's already been a few media outlets (and not just the obvious way right pseudo-media) who have started using it, eager to stay in his good book.

So he renamed AI to SI and decreed that all must use it, and whoever acquiesces is loyal and everyone else is a traitor?

Surely there are less embarrassing ways of doing that sort of thing...

That's pretty par for the course - at least, as far as authoritarian regimes go. It's getting very difficult to think of the US as anything but, at this point.

It's meant to be embarrassing, that's part of the control strategy. Once you start doing embarrassing things on Trump's behalf, everyone will know you've done a shameful thing, and you can only escape the shame by digging your way deeper into his cult where it becomes a virtue.

He doesn't really think, he reacts. And his every reaction is centered around "How can I make this about me?"

True, but his "handlers" are very smart and behind his rants there's usually a very deliberate motivation and accompanying action.

Yeah, that's what I'm trying to puzzle out... Surely there's some kind of objective here to justify this overtly aggressive language?

I mean he invaded Venezuela, and everybody knows he wanted the oil, it makes sense. This super intelligence stuff is not making any sense.

Maybe it's just a loyalty filter to easily see who is actively "bending the knee". If you use "AI" in your discourse it's a subtle sign you don't align with Trump. I'm not sure but we'll know soon!

Peter Thiel recently said that Trump's handlers are not smart but very loyal. Loyal to him, if that wasn't clear.

I don't consider Peter Thiel to be very smart. I've read his "sermons" for lack of a better word and they're just pseudointellectual nonsense, and tech-babble with a dash of religious justification to appeal to conservatives (Federalist Society/Heritage Foundation etc.) I wouldn't seriously consider anything he says to be viable. They're (Trump's cabinet/oligarchs) only loyal as long as MAGA loyalists keep blindly supporting Trump, the second the tide turns they'll scatter like cockroaches.

They don't have to be smart to be dangerous.

Terminology should not be underestimated, propaganda is a lot about terminology, and whoever designed this renaming campaign knows what he's doing. The politics behind this SI push is pretty transparent to those who really care about these issues.

Please expand on this... I can't think of a reason to rename AI to "super" intelligence. What objective does this accomplish?

Propaganda is simply spammed until it sticks. How could it be worth it to literally make an enemy out of anyone who doesn't take to the new terminology?

Creating a partisan naming controversy sabotages nonpartisan discussion, and the specific choice of name makes it extremely challenging to talk about the unique dangers of superintelligent AI.

You're a victim of "sane washing". The media has been suppressed to the point of trying to justify every move of this administration as serving some kind of brilliant purpose. Surely the usual special interests are getting their gifts, but a lot of our national policies can strictly be explained by narcissism and dementia. Big Gulf and Big Lake aren't making billions off his other name changes.

> What objective does this accomplish?

Why do you want to know this? Are you planning to do something about it? Anyway, see below.

> How could it be worth it to literally make an enemy out of anyone who doesn't take to the new terminology?

You seem to be mixing the ends here, you think he is the one who's supposed to be afraid of "literally making enemies"?

I'm going to update my world view based on this new information. I used to think Trump was just a right wing guy who put his country first. His actions seem to have become increasingly unhinged.

This is relevant to me because Brazil is going to have a presidential election soon and the right wing is taking over. Trump's brazilian ally is expected to win. I'm gonna start paying a lot more attention to US-Brazil relations.

Thanks for sharing. Also, just for clarity, if you look at how my previous comment to you was moderated, you'll understand why I write the way I write here.

Congratulations. Have an upvote.

> I used to think Trump was just a right wing guy who put his country first.

I struggle to remember when I would have ever believed that. I know it is a meme, but there is still so much unfortunate truth to the notion "what would Donald Trump do differently if he were actually a Russian asset?" Because the only good explanation that fits is that he intends to do lasting damage to the USA. Like he is spiteful, feels like we have collectively shat all over him his whole life, taunted him, and now we are to be punished.

A foreigner's amateurish assessment: to me many of Trump's actions at least try in spirit to increase the leverage of the American people.

Tariffs on other countries is exactly what my country did last century in order to foment national industry. It did produce results, including a national computer. I'm not exactly sure why it backfired when Trump did it.

If Trump's someone's asset, he's probably Israel's.

A weak marionette can be played by many skillful hands. He is very weak in his predictable childish tantrums and narcisstic ego polishing.

I'll add he is a china asset - he is really paving way for their unchallenged hegemony in few decades. Also making Europe stronger long term, despite trying hard the opposite. For that and that only, I surprisingly commend him. Not best move for US but we dont care about that.

Maybe its actually better for the world overall, china is now looking as best moral new leader by virtue of just doing nothing, its enough these days. Imagine if ie Xi or puttin' would do same ai -> clains, the laugh around the world would be loud and long

Artificial has bad connotations. Super gas good connotations. Trump speaks to the feral mind that drives survival instincts and overrides rational thought. If you’re influenced by it he warps your world in a way that is overwhelming. If you’re immune it’s hard to comprehend because is seems so glaringly stupid.

It's not about whether or not "Super" makes sense. He could have just as easily changed the name to "potato." The point is to change a commonly-used word to something else, and measure who follows along. If you go along with it, you're a loyal friend, and if you don't you're an enemy.

It's like the Facebook -> Meta rebrand, Facebook was a dirty word at the time while Meta wasn't (gosh that didn't last long though) so it was an attempt to try and get rid of the accumulated negativity and hope that searches for the topic of Meta only returned bland and positive results instead of dredging up the many ongoing court cases.

Establishing precedent. Uncovering who is with him and who is "the enemy".

It’s a dog whistle. Plenty of political zealots coin their own idiosyncratic terms to affirm loyalty.

Can someone PLEASE convince him to hold back the tides at beach somewhere?

He is a bit of a Cnut, to be sure.

It's a loyalty test. He has done this repeatedly. Just like the hilariously dumb Lake America nonsense, where he stomped on 400 years of American history to think he's somehow punishing Canada -- only to us it was just incredibly pathetic, and yet another example why we need to move on from the fallen husk idiocracy the US has become -- and then celebrated that it was "ratified" because Apple and Google foolishly changed according to the government GIS changes.

Trump is an insanely stupid person. Like, this is beyond doubt at this point. But he is so utterly shameless and unaware of his own endless limitations that it somehow breaks the brains of tens of millions of Americans. It's astonishing.

Important distinction: Google’s official, publicly declared policy is to follow the government names. Apple has never publicly declared any such policy. It was a choice.

(If Apple have indeed said this somewhere I’m happy to be proven wrong)

i feel like it’s something Elon probably said and he ran with it

That would be a very original way if this is what finally pops the bubble. :)

Kind of annoying for all the people with .ai tlds

But great news for Slovenians!

It's literally just a blatant favour to Mark Zuckerberg in exchange for ??????

Here, let me prove it: Meta is the only one that has used that term in the past, going back to the announcement that they were founding "Meta Superintelligence Labs" (end of June last year). Zuckerberg reinforced their plans to use that term back in August when that essay of his that was the talk of the town for like a few days, which used the term "superintelligence" 50+ times. Then, just this week, we found out about Meta's ICANN bid to own .superintelligence TLD. The deadline for those submissions was August 12th. Trump signed the EO on Sept 29th, and now Zuckerberg effectively "owns" that term.

Of course, if it ever caught on, I'm pretty sure Slovenia would benefit more from it (by owning .si).

Yes. Trump is not a rational actor, it is textbook narcissism, not as a critique of his personality but I think he meets the criteria for clinical diagnosis.

If you don't listen to him then it results in narcissistic injury and he will retaliate.

He does not think, he simply has no filter and that appeals to the working class people who feel like they have been shunned by elitist democrats and their woke fluff (while maintaining the status quo on anything that actually matters). He would have not stood a chance against someone like Bernie Sanders, who cares deeply about working class people without the fluff.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com