All joking aside, a few years ago defunding the police was a policy that was seriously pushed in many cities throughout the US. A few actually tried it. Not only did it have the rather obvious effect of increasing crime rates, but it invariably hurt the communities it was intended to help the most. It just pays to keep a skeptical attitude about all new policy initiatives, no matter who is putting them forward. Most of the policies we currently have, though imperfect, were created for some kind of reason. It's not stupid to demand change, but it's stupid to demand change when you have no idea what problem the current policies were created to solve. I'm not sure why we have to keep learning this lesson the hard way.

After WWII, the US spearheaded a new idea in geopolitics... instead of empires, the world would use a system of institutions like the UN, the WHO, the WTO, and the world bank to resolve disputes. The US invited countries to join this alliance network. In exchange for being able to trade with any country in the world (with the US guaranteeing freedom of navigation across the oceans) that country would agree to join the alliance network and basically have the US write their security plan. This was a remarkably effective strategy for both the US and the other allied nations. The US got the benefits of an empire without the nasty necessities of brutally oppressing the other nations under its umbrella, Russia (and later China) were effectively contained, and worldwide economic growth was exponential, with the US being the trading hub for all that money flow, which gave them enormous intelligence gathering potential, not to mention leverage.

The fact that the US forgot how it became the only superpower is rather sad. Yes, there were several missteps along the way, like Vietnam. But it was largely successful. The second gulf war was the first breakdown of the rules-based world order. The UN refused to authorize an invasion of Iraq, and the US said, "to heck with you, we're going anyway, and if you're not with us, you're against us." It's not a coincidence that Putin used the second gulf war as justification when invading Ukraine.

I appreciate that the American people no long want to be the world's police force. I really get it. The thing is, the US did this because it had just fought two world wars, and they knew that Europe, being Europe, was just going to keep fighting wars over and over again, and the US was going to be drawn in every time. When this rules-based world order falls, we're going to see a (hopefully conventional) WWIII, and the US is going to be drawn in again. Everyone in the geopolitical space seems to be saying this is pretty much inevitable. It's sad, but it's a bit like watching a train wreck, and being powerless to stop it.

Both Russia and China had a chance to adopt democracy and join the rules-based world order, and after flirting with it, both have recently turned their back on it. Can Europe save itself? I don't know. It's been demonstrated how to go about it. But can the diverse people of Europe come together and do it? I don't think they're capable.

While I do agree with you, as a citizen of a country that's been on the receiving end of some 51st state rhetoric lately, do you see how the US is being a little expansionist now too?

Speaking of stupid, if IQ peaked around 2012, then it wasn't LLMs that caused it, because they weren't around back then. However, 2012 coincides with the beginning widespread smartphone usage, particularly among high schoolers.

The tools to create this already exist and you can't take them back. Using the same tool to solve some other problem is a completely different question.

The point is that the speaker isn't controversial at all, and the fact-checking that TED did in advance confirmed this. A group within TED tried to silence his message simply because they disagreed with him, not because he said anything verifiably incorrect. As to the rest of your comment, it's so completely bonkers, you should put it in a TED talk. Please come back to reality.

I love the comments here. Any other /. story: "Follow the science!" This story offers a scientific study and conclusion: "that can't be right!" You guys are not super-smart nerds... you're humans with the same monkey brains susceptible to confirmation bias that everyone else has.

I'm talking about sites other than Wikipedia too, which don't change.

The worst part of AI for search, is when you click through to the linked reference page, you often find information that directly contradicts what the AI summary is telling you. Absolute garbage!

If you really want to see how lost TED is, take a look at the story of Coleman Hughes who did a very reasonable and interesting TED talk and then they wouldn't publish it on their site due to bizarre ideological capture. Here's his story on the negotiation he went through with TED to get them to actually put it on their site and not de-list it. Very strange stuff.

Do you really think Apple Computer was finished growing after the Apple II?

More dubiously, the AI sometimes doesn't spit back out what you trained it on. Sometimes it just makes stuff up, even when training data was available that it should have based the answer on. The technology doesn't really work, and experimenting on kids with it isn't a good idea.

Apple Computer Corp

You're correct that Woz is brilliant, and did brilliant things, but it's completely incorrect to discount what Jobs did. For example, Apple floundered when Jobs left, and came roaring back when he returned, and Woz never worked on the iPhone, which was revolutionary. Jobs had an understanding of what people actually wanted, and had to work hard to get the people at Apple to actually do it. There's ample stories of Jobs insisting over and over again that the engineering team work harder to get the original Mac to boot faster, or insisting that people really needed to be able to draw rounded rectangles. Jobs was the one that pushed for aesthetics and user-friendliness, which became hallmarks of the Apple brand.

People using PCs to be "productive" has long been the minority of PC users. Microsoft knows this and is always trying to optimize for the "what's a computer?" crowd. But they don't realize that the *demand* for PCs comes from people using them to do actual work, and for that we need a mouse and a keyboard.