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> Or maybe the AI is sufficient to act as a filter, but insufficient to surpass it itself. It stagnates.

> After all, an AI that can destroy a civilization isn't necessarily "intelligent" in the same way humans are. Or even capable of self-improvement. It could be sophisticated enough to (accidentally?) destroy its creators, but no more than that, and without evolutionary pressure, it may let itself die.

It doesn't even need to be AGI. It could be that some less-advanced "AI" technologies of a certain sophistication create perverse incentives or risks that cause their parent civilizations to collapse.

Think asshole billionaire hording all productive the resources, but doing nothing useful with them, while the rest of civilization starves and collapses. Or, AI becoming an irresistible opiate that causes individuals to retreat into some unproductive state then eventually die (e.g. into some VR videogame or something). Or weapon of mass destruction trivially created and deployable by any old wacko.

But in any case, given that AI and automation will soon make the majority of US workers economically unnecessary, it's more important than ever for the powers-that-be to ban end-to-end encryption and guns and maintain full control over social media. Otherwise, the obsolete workers may resist their obsolescence and cause problems for capital instead of being gracefully attrited from society.

> They do. I do not have to convince you that 2+2=4.

Yeah, because you're trying to convince me that 2+2=5.

> If you have read recent European Human Rights Court decisions, you can clearly see what kind of domestic laws is in violation of law. (Yes, I mean some domestic laws are in violation of laws)

And what's that court going to do to make Italy comply?

For instance: I can claim until I'm blue in the face that everyone has to comply with some "universal law" that I declare, and I can issue statements to that effect, but in reality that's totally meaningless because I lack the power to make others follow me. There are a lot of international bodies that makes similar claims, and similarly lack the power. Maybe those bodies persuaded you, but that doesn't matter to the unpersuaded.

International relations is literally anarchy. Sometimes there's cooperation that looks like law, and rhetoric that that claims the moral force of law, but the reality is anarchy -- which is why Putin was able to invade Ukraine and North Korea's government has remained in place for 70 years, doing things liberals find to be horrific and "illegal" the whole time.

> But 3G is being shut down by many operators and more to come. So voice downgrades to 2G, but 2G has a very low limit of concurrent calls, let's say a few dozen. So it's possible that your dumbphone won't work at all.

2G is being shutdown too (IIRC, I had a 2G pay-as-you-go phone that stopped working years ago), and it would be surprising to me that a carrier would shutdown 3G before 2G.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM#Discontinuation

> So I switched to the Punkt MP02

That is one expensive dumb phone.

> I later learned that if you use a portable solar panel battery pack, let the pack charge and then plug in your phone. Don't plug a near-dead solar panel battery pack into your phone and let. There's something about the low-voltage trickle-charge that can be terrible for electronics. I'm not an EE, so I don't understand the details. Perhaps someone else can explain it better.

I'm interested in learning more about this. I recently got a USB solar panel (with no battery). I wonder if it has anything to do with voltage dropping way below USB spec (which I've seen when the panel can't provide the current the device wants, which seems to be pretty easy when the panel is small and/or not in full sun).

> I would agree, but then I also would have agreed with this sentiment about much of what Snowden revealed. If you want to be paranoid, may as well go all in.

What Snowden revealed is way more believable than the government continuing to invest tons of effort into profiling typewriters. The whole thing with Snowden was that his leaks confirmed a lot of things reasonable people speculated.

>>> Don't trust old-school typewriters

> I mean, photocopiers have the exact same technology

They absolutely do not have the "exact same technology. That's totally, 100% wrong.

> Don't trust old-school typewriters and the postal system either. Letters are routinely opened and typewriters can be matched. For example, the Stasi (secret police of the former GDR - German "Democratic" Republic) had an archive of type samples of all sold models of typewriters for re-identification of political pamphlets.

That's theoretical. I highly doubt anyone extends that much effort to target typewriters anymore. The best they could probably do is match a series of messages to the same typewriter. Though they might not even be able to do that, because the law-enforcement skills to match typewriter documents to each other have also probably nearly completely atrophied.

You're probably more likely to be caught by being the weirdo still buying typewriter ribbons.

> Not at all. Laws has to be compatible with universal laws, international treaties/laws such as UN Geneva Convention and for Italy also the EU laws. Along many other conditions such as arbitrariness.

No they don't. What authority enforces that?

If not other country or international body has the willingness and capability to go to war with Italy in order to enforce its opinions, and if no country is willing to shun Italy over this or Italy is fine with the shunning, then Italy can have whatever laws it likes.

> Tax companies at 2x the single-taxpayer withholding amount lost per employee displaced....

> Put that tax revenue directly towards social services or minimum monthly reimbursement for everyone (UBI, just with a different name)

Nah. Politically, that's completely unrealistic. It also immorally directs too many resources away from the productive parts of society.

We have to balance our pursuit of technology with the need for economic productivity and efficiency.

A more realistic solution is state-sanctioned homeless camps in convenient, out-of-the-way places. Corporate taxes would probably have to increase a bit to pay for security, pacifying drugs, and food; but no more than what's necessary for containment. The camps will of course need to be sex segregated, to avoid wasting resources in perpetuity.

I think the main we need to do at this point is political, to prepare of the massive social and economic disruption. The first order of business should be the implementation (in jurisdictions that don't have it) of key escrow and restrictive gun control, to head off insurrectionist threats. After that, focus should then shift to dealing with the obsolete worker population in the maximally economical way.

They could also have some system to flag these listings for manual review by an Amazon employee, instead of expecting every individual customer to figure it out.

I mean with all the AI hype, you'd think they could whip something up that would at least be able to detect when the listing has changed to a completely new product category.

> I think the story is manna, by the founder of How stuff works. https://marshallbrain.com/manna1

Yes, that's it!

> it actually ends on a positive note, it's trying to compare two possible ways society could respond to the automation revolution.

Yeah, but I stopped reading at that point. Partially because I had something else to do, and partially because it seemed like a utopian fantasy.

> AI/Robots should replace physical labor before it replaces knowledge workers.

There's actually a kind of internet famous novel where the exact opposite happens. I don't remember the name of it or the site it's on, but initial premise has AI automating management (starting with pretty menial things like directing workers at fast food restaurant, and working its way up the value chain).

It was pretty interesting, but I only got as far as the protagonist getting interned in a kind of debtors prison once his savings ran out and he couldn't afford to live outside of it (due to all the automation). The prison was theoretically open, but if you wandered too far away, robots would tranq you (after very many "nice" exhortations to return) and you'd wake up back in your bed.

> Such images are shown in books about human sexuality, or sex guides. The purpose of those books is not to tittilate in an erotic sense, but to provide information or education.

How-to sex guides and the like are not appropriate for a high school library.

> To go further, almost everyone agrees that a cartoon of a man and woman having sex in the missionary position for the purpose of procreation is not necessarily pornographic; this is a standard sort of picture in age appropriate sex education materials.

Is it? I don't recall having been shown anything like that.

And I would say a cartoon of two characters having sex and showing penetration would necessarily be pornographic. A medical illustration wouldn't (think stiff, cutaway diagram, narrowly focused on the necessary parts), but that's not a "cartoon."

> Granted, these images concern sexual reproduction. However this only makes me question why people deem that image appropriate, but images of other positions or acts not worthy of learning about in other contexts.

I think you need to figure out the difference between sex education and a sex guide on your own. You're playing fast and loose with categories, and getting yourself tied in knots as a result.

> Well unless Levi's also makes the pants that the AI generates it's just horseshit isn't it?

That's an excellent point. While a human model may not "look like you," at least he's wearing an instance of the actual product you're going to buy. Who knows how what the AI model is shown to be "wearing" relates to that.

> I don't know, the US has been pushing that envelope for 40+ years and people are still paying taxes...

And people can push the "meth consumption" envelope for years before they finally die from it, too.

Getting away with unsustainable practices for X amount of time doesn't prove they're sustainable and won't end in collapse. It just means collapse can take more than X amount of time.

> Parents who don't like what their school libraries stock should lobby their school board, vote for school board members who share their views, and maybe even run for school board.

Maybe they should do that too (and I believe that's actually not uncommon), but it doesn't preclude or de-legitimize other political action to address the problem.

In any case, tactical criticism such as yours is almost always noise. It usually amounts to a veiled instruction to surrender, and in any case would be constructed against any tactic chosen (e.g. "whatever it is you're doing, it's not the right way and you should stop and do some other thing). Also, opponents are motivated to give poor tactical advice and typically do so.

> because the entire point of making this non-issue an issue in the first place was to boost state and national level candidates, not to do anything useful or appropriate

Come on. All sides are grandstanding all the time nowadays, even on this particular issue. Complaints about it are almost always soaked with myside bias.

> As I said, the first picture is taken out of context...

There isn't a context that could make that first POV/frontal view picture of someone getting a blowjob not-porn.

If that's appropriate for school, so is hentai.

> There is a clear difference between Hustler and a graphic novel that contains some sexual representations.

Not in this case. Those images are 100% graphic porn (of the cartoon/hentai variety). I saw the pictures upthread. Porn that presents itself as "educational" is still porn (IIRC, that's also a actual real-people-having-sex porn genre).

> These books aren't attacked because they contain pornographic scenes. These books are attacked because of the people, identities, and viewpoints they represent and affirm.

You do realize those aren't mutually exclusive? The wrong people attacking it on the wrong grounds is not justification for stocking pornography in a school library.

> (Also: the whole conversation is hilariously non-unique to libraries. 90% of male teens watch porn, and that's probably an under-estimate given that porn is embarrassing/stigmatizing... I promise you there are exactly zero high schoolers in this entire country who have access to this book in their school library who do not also have infinitely easier access to near-infinite amounts of actual porn.)

So should the high school library have a hentai section next to the manga? Hustlers on the magazine rack next to Newsweek? Lots of teens vape, so no one should have a problem with vape juice vending machines in the cafeteria, right? Wouldn't it make sense for the school district to have a PornHub subscription to supplement ProQuest?

The fact that teens do some thing does not at all imply it's appropriate for a school setting.

> I've read that book and it's not aimed at children. No sane educator or library person would offer that to a young child.

It doesn't belong in a high school library either.

I thought they were exaggerating when they said it that book was pornography, but holy shit it was literally true.

What's next? A hentai section in the school library next to the manga?

> It's not censoring books; rather a state choosing which books to publicly fund in school libraries. No one is banning parents from buying those books on their own dime.

It's censorship and an infringement on the basic constitutional rights of public employees to independently make purchasing decisions for the government.

> It doesn't really make sense though does it? Musk is rich because people buy his cars. If we're all impoverished ants, no one is going to be buying cars. Musk's money has to come from somewhere.

It does make sense, but you're not thinking about it clearly because you're too tied up in existing social structures. The end state "AI-fueled Elon Musks" (note that's a type, not a particular man) don't need common-man customers or their money, because they don't need to pay labor to operate their capital. They can directly operate their capital themselves, so they'll just do whatever the heck they want and nearly everyone who's now an employee becomes an ant.

At that point the main economy would mainly consist of billionaire ego projects and some trade between large corporations to support them. Common people would scrape by on billionaire largess and by squatting on resources not currently needed by billionaire ego projects and using it for small-scale subsistence production.

> ...but at least most people know that "Google programming" is sort of bad. I think we're going to be cleaning up the GPT messes for decades to come because it's very confidently incorrect and much more accessible as you point out.

Speaking of which: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/421831/temporary-po...

> Overall, because the average rate of getting correct answers from ChatGPT is too low, the posting of answers created by ChatGPT is substantially harmful to the site and to users who are asking and looking for correct answers.

> The primary problem is that while the answers which ChatGPT produces have a high rate of being incorrect, they typically look like they might be good and the answers are very easy to produce. There are also many people trying out ChatGPT to create answers, without the expertise or willingness to verify that the answer is correct prior to posting. Because such answers are so easy to produce, a large number of people are posting a lot of answers. The volume of these answers (thousands) and the fact that the answers often require a detailed read by someone with at least some subject matter expertise in order to determine that the answer is actually bad has effectively swamped our volunteer-based quality curation infrastructure.

If we're lucky ChatGPT will poison itself by pissing in its well, but it will take a lot of good things with it.

>> The masses don't tend to act to project their interests until it's too late.

> The masses are already showing signs of restlessness

IMHO, "restlessness" doesn't mean anything. It would be expected in a AI-driven usurpation of labor. People have already been restless for decades due to de-industrialization, and that mainly got us Trump and an opioids, but the factories are still gone.

The key to fucking over the masses is making sure the "restlessness" doesn't get too strong, and doesn't have a clear (and correct!) villain identified, and maintaining a sense of inevitability.

> I don't think the masses will wait all that long.

IMHO, they probably will. Any individual or small group who takes action will be pilloried as wackos and thrown in jail. A larger movement will be (rightly) characterized as an insurrection and dealt with harshly.

People are complacent, and often don't realize they're really losing something until it's already slipped from their fingers.

I also think the Western world lacks the ideological tools to stop technologies like this. They'd basically have to start looking at technology like Amish do: rejecting technology that would undermine their social structure, rather than expecting the social structure to adapt to the technology.

> you assume that the vast majority of people in china are outright unhappy with their government right now, I don't think that this is the case.

I'm not talking about right now.

> And trump is simply an idiot that only get enough votes somehow because both parties in the US are a joke to begin.

Trump literally had "a crowd of people at some point ... walk into the [government's] home and make [them] agree with handing over [power]." How did that go?

> you vastly underestimate civilians. probably not a single gun is needed. a crowd of people at some point will walk into the billionaire's home and make him agree with handing over his wealth.

I'm not underestimating civilians. If what you're suggesting was at all realistic, China would be a democracy and Trump would still be president.

Sure, tens of millions of unarmed people with a single mind could probably do anything (like a mass of zombies can), but you'll never actually get that. There are numerous mechanisms preventing such a mass from forming, and more to dismantle and negate it afterwards.

> Yes, I'm seriously asking. If a junior programmer wants to create a mobile app, or a desktop app, or a cloud service, what are the barriers? All the ones I can think of will get lower, not higher, as a result of the AI revolution.

Seriously, think about it a bit, without being sanguine.

The junior dev is inexperienced, in everything, and now has no path to build up that experience. No one's going to want their 18/22 year old amateur-hour "chatgpt make me a cloud app" (which is in competition against millions of others). So unless they're extremely lucky, they goto fail.

Maybe after 10 years of those failures they could build up enough experience through trial-and-error to maybe see a little success with a "chatgpt make me a cloud app," but how are they going to feed themselves the meantime? Maybe that will work if they have rich parents, but otherwise they're probably going to have to use up their energy to scrape by. So another goto fail.