597 karma · joined February 11, 2023
But despite the author's veneration of 90s and 2000s, I'd argue the works from the late 2000s and early 2010s are just as sophisticated and arguably more relevant to our modern world; Project Itoh (Genocidal Organ, Harmony), Gatchaman Crowds, Beatless, alot of their themes were prescient; Because the frontier isn't hardware, it's ontology and semantics.
You could replace AI with Advanced Education or Automation or Transhumanism really and get the same result, but I don't think there is really a "solution" beyond either staying as pets or catching up as an individual.
But at the same time, even if the rich become completely autonomous to the rest in some walled enclave, that would just resolve to the unemployed all just creating their own parallel economy again. You might loose much of the inheritance of wealth and infrastructure from the preceding civilization, but then again the preceding civilization's own norms that legacy was owned by the rich, so it's just returning back to basics.
But a post-competence future is ultimately a good thing for humanity. There is no inherent reason why somebody who is talented or skilled in the specific abilities that society deeems necessary should be privileged if those needs can now be automated. It just sounds more like an arbitary class deemed the "skilled" complaining about the loss of their elite status against another, more entrenched elite class relying on wealth. But as a commoner, why should I favour the meritocrats who look down on me over the wealthy who might be more magnanimous in understanding their privilege?
You... didn't learn history from before 1945 did you?
They were funding and arming proxies that were bombing and destabilizing neighborhoods. Nobody in the region likes Iran, that is precisely why the Gulf States want US bases and a Israeli military pact.
And this is not a reactive policy as it is an explicit proactive policy of exporting the Islamic Revolution and gaining regional hegemony. Which no one wants.
AMD has no equivalent to NVidia in the high end, it isn't tax as it is functional monopoly
That is to say, if you want a system that keeps up with 32 GB Ram, you'd be already willing to spend alot what with options for noctua fans, water cooling, higher end MOBOs, premium cases, OLEDs etc. If you can't afford that then you won't be buying expensive DDRD5 RAM either.
This only effects a very narrow slice of highly budget conscious consumers trying to build high end PCs at razor thin margins.
The problem was the lack of hit IPs, and buying a bunch of studios with good histories like Bethesda was on the surface, a logical choice. The problem is that the Western AAA industry was also undergoing through a general decline amidst a larger cultural shift that was anathemic to originality, so no new hits could be made.
Nintendo and Sony in contrast still had a portfolio of more niche legacy studios like Monolith or Atlus or Kojima that could create new things. Obviously the talent for that does exist in the West, from Larian or smaller indie studios, but it is very hard for upper management to discern these kinds of details or be willing to take the risk with them.
And I would say that one reason for that is the elements I mention is something an individual can take seriously and integrate into their own world, while enclaves stay perpetually from the vantage of exoticism rather than integration.
None of this is "unaffordable" as you say as it is just a month's worth of savings.
Besides, if you want to optimize for pure consumerism, you can just look at how roman slavery worked out for roman freemen in the late republic.