Hey, I am just spreading word about this amazing retelling of episode 7:

https://youtu.be/CyxQyNQ00qo

Yeah, I totally agree. But the question remains: Where in the world is the money coming from?

I'm using 2011 figures, because it's what I have, but it should be close enough:

Total US Population in 2011: 311.6 million (today:331.9 million)

Money needed to give every American (and only Americans) $10,000: 3.116 $Trillion

TOTAL wealth of all billionaires, globally: 4.18 $Trillion

So, if you drained all of the wealth of all billionaires globally, a ONE TIME operation (since they'll have zero wealth afterwards,) that gives everybody in the United States (and only those in the United States:) $13,400. So everybody would get a ONE TIME boost of about $1,000 / month. And then that source is sucked dry.

If you took the COMBINED total income of ALL Americans, it would be (2011 numbers): 10.52 $Trillion

So, if you took all of the wealth of ALL Americans, and redistributed it evenly across ALL Americans, you would be giving $33,760 as the total yearly income, to all Americans. After that, there would be no more money to give. And you'll have taken ZERO in taxes. Every single social program would have a budget of ZERO. No social security, no medicare, no medicaid, no veterans assistance, no unemployment insurance, no housing assistance. The United States would instantly default on all debt, because there'd be no money to pay it. All of that, for a grand total of: $33,760/year/person.

Like -- I want to understand how this is supposed to work. I love the *idea* of an UBI. I don't buy any of the arguments that: "Well, nobody would work," and "Life would lose meaning," all of these kinds of arguments. I'd *love* for a UBI to work. Bring on a post-scarcity world.

But where's all that money supposed to be coming from?

I don't get it.

There are like a million risks with AI.

Are we seriously talking about how exactly they should be ranked?

I've been programming since 1983, and a professional programmer since 1999. I have been reading Vernor Vinge and Ray Kurzweil and Jeff Hawkins and Marshall Brain for something like 20-25 years. I thought I had a sense of where we were -- I wasn't expecting things like Midjourney and Chat-GPT until something like 2040. Not 2022, not 2023.

So, I'm throwing out all my timelines.

My own programming power has multiplied like 10x now that I can use Chat-GPT. I use it every single day. I see low hanging fruit, everywhere I look, and I'm not even trying. And this is just little old me. I try to imagine what it's like with countless numbers of programmers, roboticists, workers, technologists of all stripes -- this is just a massive, massive, massive boost to pretty much every kind of productivity I can think of.

I have no idea what will be invented when, now. All of the timelines seem dramatically pushed up, now.

So I don't think we should be trying to rank anything right now. That seems premature to me. Just think, evaluate, explore.

There is only a problem if you are straight. Gay men are doing just fine.

I visited Japan with a bisexual friend of mine, recently- I was shocked to see how easily and freely he had sex with gay men- he met 8 different men on multiple occasions, without a hitch. Had sex every time, including several threesomes. I was blown away to have this peek into the sexual world of gay men, and I was incredibly envious.

And I realized something- us straight men are basically gay men, except exclusively attracted to women. And that we are essentially brainwashed by the ever present needs of women to de-sex situations, to make women feel comfortable, and on and on. If it were not for the overriding interest of women to make sure that men are not creepy, per the system that women prefer, â" if it were not for the lack of interest women have in sex, or the very narrow band range of interest women have in men (wanting to have sex with only a very small number of men,) then the world of sex between men and women would look like the world of sex between gay men.

Honestly, I think that for all the talk of women being silenced, â" I think that what goes unmentioned is that straight men are brainwashed.

Are we at the part where girl tears come out, and she is just a victim, and she gets off with little to no punishment and is spared all the horrors that would visit a man in the same position? Are the men now saying But She Is So Pretty and But She is A Woman There Must Be a Man We Can Blame? Are we at that part now? Are we saying There There to her now? Is it that time? Is it that time when we send her out love?

I'm 45, I have ADHD, and have struggled my whole working career with maintaining attention, keeping up with my coworkers.

ChatGPT has been a godsend to me. I find that ChatGPT is like a coworker who I can talk with about what I'm working on, in order to get help getting unstuck, but without any shame or pressure. What I do is that I describe what I'm working on to ChatGPT, and then I simply ask ChatGPT to summarize what I said back to it. It helps me unclutter my thinking and get clear on what I'm doing, and what I need. It's an intelligent rubber duck.

Another thing I'll do is ask ChatGPT: "Hey, -- I'm writing this comment, but it feels confrontational. Can you tell me why this feels confrontational, and suggest two or three different ways of saying what I am trying to say, but in a less confrontational way?" It can absolutely do that.

Unless there is a magical intervention, it cannot be news?

I'm trying to wrap my head around this.

I'm imagining you in the doctor's office. The doctor says, "Your blood pressure continues to rise. And the cancer is getting bigger."

And your response is: "Nope. Not news. Not unless you supply my with a magical intervention. That would change whether what you say is news or not."

Doctor says, "Well, you could eat better, and we could look into surgeries for the canc-"

"Nope. Magic or STFU. Not news."

I need to be able to use my mouse and keyboard within VR. Put another way: âoeI need to be able to use a computerâ in VR. Kind of ironic, but there it is.

Orewa, koitsura sushiteroyarou ni ichi miri mo doujou nee zo.

The use I see for this is to support lunar missions. For example there is an effort to establish a moon base, and the computers and data storage could support that effort.

Your guess and doctors are as good as mine! I dont know because I have also been using phones for 15 years. My PT says that it is just accumulated damage over time- certain spinal parts got weakened over a long period of time of bad habits.

I do not understand it so I cant really say.

I was taught that the market solves everything. If people are needed for a labor, employers will pay more so that people will do them. If people do not want to pay for the labor, then the problem is not really there. The money will follow a different path. So where is the problem?

I am 45 and I have programmed computers since I was six.

I never had a problem with my neck or back until last year, and since I have had two cases of debilitating pain that took two months to recover from- so that is four months of not being able to work, not being able to use computers for longer than a few minutes at a time.

During my first episode I dramatically improved my ergonomics under the guidance of my physical therapist. I still had a second episode about 9 months later.

This is NOT anything you want to encounter- the pain can get so bad that - especially near the beginning of my two month recovery cycle, the only way to get to sleep for a couple weeks is to just crash.

I look around and everyone I see has poor posture. The neck hunched over. Looking at phones or laptops. Even with the screen positioned at eye level- I donâ(TM)t think that that is the solution that people think it is. It is taking me serious retraining to learn to push my head back and it feels deeply unnatural to me.

I would not think that this is just an illusion or a fantasy or other peoples problem.

That is a popular misunderstanding. The plank length does NOT mean that the universe is digital. We do not have any evidence whatsoever that space is not infinitely subdivisible, or that coordinates are on any kind of cellular arrangement.