Thanks for the insightful post. Yeah, if this was a practice test for our society on how to handle AGI, I agree we failed it.

As shown by the several of the AI company efforts (including OpenAI transforming into a for-profit), our current socio-economic system with its incentives to race ahead competitively regardless of the risks to society (so, privatizing gains, while socializing costs and risks) may ultimately just be incompatible with ever-more-high technology.

As Bucky Fuller wrote: "Whether it is to be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race right up to the final moment.... Humanity is in 'final exam' as to whether or not it qualifies for continuance in Universe."

I think we only have a chance of passing such a test -- whether it is about AGI, nuclear energy, nanotech, biotech, or even just plain old networked computing used by sprawling bureaucracies -- if we appreciate the humorous irony mentioned in my sig: :-)
"The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity."

Even that might not be enough -- but it is the main hope I have to offer.

Difficult to implode when the outside pressure is erm ... lets call it lower ... than the inside pressure.

Good idea!
But why not green?

No, I do not write that with a smile.

I just wonder how stupid you Americans are that you believe all the fake propaganda.

The last incident was which one?

Oh, and that was when? definitely OVER 30 years ago.

And what did "China" change after wards? Oh: EVERYTHING.

So no idea what your stupid problem is. Oh, it is simple: you actually don't know anything about China. That is your problem.

You do not grasp how a single party system works, while you simultaneously do not grasp why/how your two party system is the worst system ever invented.

Simple example: you have two parties. They have to decide it they are pro or anti abortion. For some stupid reason, the party that publishes first their point of view, forces the other one to take opposite stance. Makes sense? No, it does not. They could take the same stance.

So how does it work?
Party A has X1 members, 51% vote against abortions.
Party B has X2 members, 51% vote pro abortion.

It is already silly that 2% difference (51% - 49%) is counted as a clear vote.
And: how many people who are affected by that "vote" are represented by the size of the parties, X1 versus X2 members?

So, what now, you were in either party, does not matter which. Your vote lost. What are you going to do now? Switch to the other party?

So, now lets pick a second topic ... does not matter which one. Now the voting for yes or no are reverted in both parties. Because: that is what they want, what they think distinguishes them from the other one.

Now the outside voter is in a dilemma: I find party A good in topic one, but bad in topic two. And party B it is opposite. But I have to vote for one of them, or just swallow it and don't vote.

Both of your parties try to find controversial topics - that do not matter at all - (who the fuck cares if gays can marry?) to snatch a niche amount of voters next election.

And, how does that work in a single party system?
Simple, number one: you are not a member of the party, you shut up. No demonstrations against what was voted/decided in the party. If you ARE TO LAZY to join it, and to VOTE about it, shut up. You are not in harmony of system, you are sabotaging the system. And yes: everyone can join the party. The biggest parliament in the world.

Number two: all things where your two parties "argue" about - for the "sake of arguing" are big menu of topics to vote on in a single party. Every single voter can pick yes or no for every single topic. At the end you have a patchwork of clear decisions. Not two parties that somehow insist to take opposite position on every stupid topic.

Now, do you want to know how Taiwan works? They actually ask the population about EVERY new topic coming up. In a clever way. First it is published via internet. Up to 10,000 citizens who consider themselves "experts" in that topic can sign up to join a "task force" to tackle that topic. That task force is divided into 100 groups, which are supposed not to communicate amoung each other. They brainstorm, ideas and ways to implement them. Obviously, for example how to tackle fake news on social media, plenty of the groups come to the same (or similar) solution. So a relatively small set of solutions proposals emerge. Those are voted on again, amoung all of the task force, and the winning few are proposed to the parliament. And usually: the parliament votes them into action. Because: it is a disgrace for a politician who happens to be in the parliament - and has no clue about the topics solution - to vote against it, or follow a "party" line. All this is public. If a party dares to vote against expert's proposals they get hammered in the next election.

Both systems, Taiwan and China have two goals: vote for common sense solutions that can be implemented. And have the majourity of the population behind that decision.

Not a farking farked up voting system like yours. Population at the voting ballots about: TOPICS, not parties.

Yeah, and finally, don't come with the Uighur myth.
They live basically in their own country, with own language, wn schools, own government, own police, own military ground forces, where exempt from the one child policy from start on: like EVERY minourity in China.

Until the demonstrations and fights on Tiananmen square, the policy of China was: "one country, one culture".
Very quickly afterwards, the policy changed to: "China, the country of 1000 cultures".

Since then all minourities are encouraged to propagate their uniqueness. You should have watched the opening show of the Olympics in Beijing (actually: Peking).

But: China wants to be a united China. So, everyone, not only minourities, either has to do serve in the military, or do a "public service" - at a place remote from his "home culture" (for about 2 years). For example to accept other cultures, instead of claiming his own is the best. And: to learn mandarin. As the schools in the little provinces where the minourities live: teach in their own local language.

How assholes can call a mandatory service: forced labour, is beyond me. When I finished school in West Germany: I was supposed to either join the army or do a civil service. Because we had drafting. Just like nearly ever western nation. After the German reunion, most western European countries abolished drafting. Now as the new war is here, most European countries have mandatory inspections, and if voluntary numbers are not enough every year, they use drafting/pick a lot to get people that finish school into the army.

No one complains ... I never heard that americans made an uproar when Germany reinstalled drafting in the beginning of this year. But if China does it: it is forced labour?

How does the forced labour work? A guy with a gun is standing behind the guy who is using the CAD system to design a new optical TPU: "work faster"!! Or behind the guy who does QC on a new solid state battery is holding his kids hostage?

You morns know nothing about China. Except that it once had a leader called Mao, a famine, and ... what else? Ah the massacre, and that they "want Taiwan back" and that ... ah, Tibet, Mao the a*hole conquered it. So the Russians could not conquer it.

All the fancy stuff China is doing, is done by academics, and robots in 95% robotic factories. No one is putting "slave workers" into "forced labour camps" - if you believe that: you are a farking idiot.

Oh, btw, it is super easy, to avoid getting "drafted" into the "2 years displacement" program: you farking just go to an university on the other side of the country. Wow, that is so much life damaging. Become an academic, study where like minded people of ALL cultures come together. That is what China wants to do: just like Thailand did (but that would be another story).

You farking Americans are so out of place on this world. You are not interested to learn anything about how other cultures work. Everything that is like yours - a little bit, at least - is good. Everything that is not - is bad.

How many years did it take USA to reach its pinnacle after the revolution 1789? Oh, assuming you consider the current desolate state the pinnacle, obviously 236 years.

How long did it take China to emerge from a stone/bronze/iron age culture around 1930 to surpass USA? 95 years. Oh ... isn't that interesting? They did not even take half as long as your country exists to be the technology leader on the planet. And you still think: they are not the technology leader. Retards, sorry, so retarded.

They are supposedly suppressing minourites? For what? Because their universities are to small, and the minourities who want to become the next great minds to rule in STEM are taking up all the places?

Sorry, you Americans became a menace to mankind.

Hating something that you obviously know nothing about: is the most stupid thing you can do in life.

P.S. Taiwan tackles fake news supposedly published or supported by public figures, by forcing social media like Facebook, to sign every such post with a signature of that public figure. Facebook implemented that basically over night: in Taiwan. Rest of the world is waiting for the implementation :D

Well, not sure if I answered to the wrong person.

My point is that a Neo has nothing to do with a Mac Mini.

So? Why would anyone compare the prices? Does not make any sense.

A motorbike has nothing to do with an electric car ... regardless if the bike is electric or uses gasoline.

Of course, if it was "cheap enough" one might buy a Neo, and abuse it as a Mac Mini in a corner - why not.

Jobs also hated two button mice. No idea if that is true.
And not interesting enough to research - actually you would need to find a reliable source that claims s/he had heard him saying that.

Thankfully you could always turn on the context right click, but even to this day the right-click seems to be something you have to turn on in settings it never was in settings.
A mouse with more than one button always was interpreted correctly.
And: a single button mouse would use ctrl+mouse click as right click.

On the touch pad it is different: you can use settings to set, if a certain area is right click (I think lower left edge?) or if a two finger click is right click (or both?)

All the standard UNIX mouse clicks always worked in the Terminal. Pressing both buttons counts as middle button. If you have a middle button, or a wheel that also works as middle button: it works as paste.
The wheel works like always. In settings you set how far it scrolls. In some apps you can overwrite that. Especially in Games. The reason you can switch the scrolling direction on the pad is: most people like it either same way as on the iPad/iPhone, or same way as on the mouse wheel.

Nice story about your email!

More importantly: Capitalism is an ECONOMY and market system. It is NOT a blueprint for a society. You can run your commerce and trade as capitalism, when you run your SOCIETY along capitalism principles you end up... essentially with the USA.

This is the part that is constantly forgotten. As a society, we have values that are not represented well within capitalism. But for some reason, we dumb shits think that we can treat everything as a market and apply capitalism to it and that will magically solve problems. But in education, just as one random example, the goal of it all is educated adults as output. It is not maximizing profit. Same for the prison system, the healthcare system and two dozen others.

It's greed, pure and simple.

Making a good product is possible. KEEPING making good products for decades is hard. Even more importantly: You will have hits and misses. Which, for a quarterly-result-bonus oriented manager is a no-no. Subscription models mean plannable revenue streams. Then all you need to do is negotiate your bonus package so that the already existing subscriptions will provide and you're home free and can already order your 2nd yacht.

Thanks! I've been seeding my sig across the web for almost twenty years in hopes it would eventually become part of AI training data -- hoping that future AIs would appreciate the irony outlined it and make decisions informed by that insight (even if most humans might not). It would be very gratifying to know I succeeded! :-)

"The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity."

Wont work. As in plenty of places in the world, tractors are already shifting to electric.

And John Deere, will be the last one to adopt that. I do not think they even have a big market (in tractors) outside of the US - hm, perhaps in Australia?

A decent tractor for usage on small farms in Thailand (and for relatively small roads), you get from Alibaba around $3500. Yes, in words three thousand five hundred.

So your idea they order them and assemble/rebrand them is plausible.

I do not know, is Alibaba and all the other sales sites blocked in the USA? I guess importing agrar machines fall again under a special law, and no one bothers to do it.

You get plenty of interesting stuff, like laser cutting machines, or "lego" houses to assemble at home, for close to nothing.

Have you ever seen a lase cutter that can cut a hand width thick plate of steel?

Don't google for it or your /. advert area will be cluttered for month by alibaba advers for high tech machines you not buy elsewhere on the planet.

Do you own a shovel or a chicken?
Nope. They are not means of production.

They are simple: a shovel.
And: a chicken.

You are stupid or uneducated or both: beyond believe.

Markets existed before capitalism.
Long before.

As capitalism has nothing to do with the concept of ownership.

Capitalism as the name implies means: money is power.

Owning a house, or a sword, a horse or a slave: is not money. Why is it not money? Oh you can not carry your house to a place and sell it there. You can not have a bank account fill with houses, and invest them into a 5 years delivery plan of grain. Doing business without money, or as ersatz: gold, is complicated.

When money got invented, many things got more easy. And here, arguable when Great Britain switched to paper money: capitalism started.

Either you are dumb, or you play dumb.

And the only restrictions the "anti capitalists" invented once was: rich people should not own mines, and oil wells and other core resources, like the most important industries, or indefinite large patches of land.

Simply speaking: rich people should not have power over poor people. Anti capitalism tries to achieve that, sometimes in some areas it works. Unions for example. Or Norway with its resource fund. And Germany with incentives for "workers" to accumulate a simple wealth (but fails badly there), or strong workforce protection laws (which kind of work). And so on ...

And that rich people should not have power over poor people is a no brainer, and has nothing to do with free markets or not free markets.

Again: what has capitalism to do with ownership, or a market?

Do you want to call the middle ages capitalism? In a certain sense they were. Could a random person own a random thing? No.

Often even the possession of gold was forbidden.

Were the markets free? Not really. Most of the time prices were set by "agencies", a guild or something like that. Lots of trade was barter trade.

So: even with capital, you could easy just found a brewery. Or have grain mill, or god forbid: a mine.

The critics on capitalism came during and after the industrial revolution. Money gives to much power and makes it easy to have wage slaves, people in bad health, treat the environment like shit, have real slaves, exploit resources in ways that are not good, who cares if a mine later collapses and then towns above them crumble ... you can make corporations that shield you from liability, in some countries you can make corporations where the owners are unknown ... and so on.

Capitalism basically means you can abuse the power of having capital unrestricted.
I can buy ALLL the food, and burn it up, and the rest of you useless scums, starve to death ... until [give me what I want]. That is capitalism. Now you can say: free markets make that difficult.

But in those times we had no regulated free markets. And if you want to play the game a bit bigger, you invest capital into something that is quite common, perhaps under valued, and: start a war.

You idiots who mix up all the *isms have idiotic ideas, for example that an "anti capitalist" is against free markets. Only Russia after WWII and parts of its block tried planned markets. And: how far did that go? It is a no brainer that a planned market can not work, and that free market - albeit regulated - is a corner pillar of a modern society.

All other communist countries either had no markets at all - see Cambodia - or always had free markets, see China, Vietnam, Laos.

And the problem is not capitalism versus whatever*ism, it is the idea that rich people have political power. China is proud that rich people in China only have the power they acquire by being members of the party, and be voted into positions inside that party, by other party members. And have otherwise no power at all ... as they can not run around outside of the party and do "politics". Sure, they are rich and there is corruption ...

Free markets and capitalism are parallel concepts.

None of them requires the other.

The two prime doctrines of capitalism are:
- you may use you capital how ever you want, for example exploit natural resources - and own slaves if
- you are free to accumulate as much capital as you with - how ever you can

Free markets and other things have nothing to do with capitalism.

And for starters: all those *isms can overlap or exist together in the same environment.

Fact is some ways off overlapping *isms work better than others, in one way or the other.