Um. What country are you talking about? It certainly isnt China. At least, not in this timeline. Basically, every line of your post is grossly distorted or straight up wrong. Home ownership means something totally different than in the west, and the hokou system means that huge numbers of peoples official âoehomesâ are plots of land a thousand kilometers out in some rural area. Their inflation numbers are grossly distorted by their trade policy and monetary control. Medical bankruptcy most DEFINITELY exists. Most would never admit it openly because they dont want to spend 6 months in a âoere-educationâ program, but pensions are so small and state support is so thin that people have no faith that the government will take care of them in any way at all, so they save obsessively. China has made some incredible accomplishments in the past century that the west ignores (eg a legit billion people raised out of poverty), but you are completely confused about their strengths and weaknesses.

But you cared ssssoooOoooOoOOOOOooooo much about what Biden’s sons were doing.

This guy teaches at a pretty mid-grade “online college”. Context matters. The population of students in a class like his are going to be the most marginal university students. Barely qualified for university education. Nearly all of the strong ones go to higher tier colleges, and they attend in person.

Additionally, this article is about a university, instructor complaining that his class cannot keep up with him. Well, duh he’s a university instructor probably a top 1% in his field in terms of raw ability and he is wondering why a group of students barely above the 50th percentile struggle to match him?

The part about AI use in writing is also no surprise. If you measure my brain while I’m doing manual long division, it’s gonna be working way harder than when I’m using a calculator. Using AI to write will definitely make it easier on my brain.

The dumping down is real though. It seems like human intelligence peaked in the late 1900s. Since then, if I have my facts right, there has been a real reduction in human intelligence in the human population, probably because we don’t have to exercise our brain muscle as much as we used to. I don’t know what the consequences of this will be. But, when a college instructor crumbles about how their class can’t keep up with them, it says more about the instructor than the kids.

Hm. You’re 1) equating nazi ideology and “mean words” and 2) failing to distinguish between porn and revenge porn.

Seek help.

concerns about AI safety far more seriously if they were equally concerned about the risks that Grok poses because of its tendency to spew nazi propoganda and it’s world-class capability at generating revenge porn.

That’s gone. And, barring some sort of technological collapse that I don’t see happening, that form of privacy isn’t coming back.

The important question: what replaces the old way? Nowadays, governments see basically anything/everything about their citizens private lives. That’s a given. So, now what? The way I see it, there are three models. In the Russian model, anyone identified as a potential troublemaker goes pavement surfing from a hotel balcony or gets a dose of novichok in the tea. In the Chinese model, any troublemakers disappear for six months of “re-education”. In the American model, the government watches, but doesn’t take any action until a violent crime is imminent. Heck, that’s not quite true. In the American model we generally won’t take any action until AFTER the crime is committed. We’re actually really committed to this form of freedom. Our government will stand by and watched a clearly mentally ill, pissed-off 19 year old guy acquire assault riffles, ammo and tactical gear, and then basically announce on social media that he’s gonna shoot up a school. Nobody does anything until AFTER the shooting.

I’ll take the American model over the others. Any day of the week. It’s got problems, but the other ways are worse.

The change in the warrantless wiretapping law won’t have any significant effect. Privacy laws have gaping loopholes. All the government has to do is set up a single FISA judge with an overclocked autopen, and it can get legal permission to monitor as many US citizens as it pleases.

Again, the important question is not IF the information is being collected. The important question is WHAT is done with the info?

The advocacy groups didn’t stop datacenters from getting built. Reality did. Altogether, the big companies had announced enough data center building to consume 10 times the total planetary electricity generation, and also use up the next 150 years of semiconductor production. The math and physics literally didn’t work. Only a sliver of them can get built. The rest are vapor. It’s like Meta assuming that it’ll command every ad dollar on the planet, or a memecoin valuing itself at “a HUnDREd tRIlliOn doLlARz”. Just cause someone says it, doesn’t make it reality.

The anti-datacenter movement is full of people who need something shiny and new to be outraged about, and the politicians pander to it because they can pass laws banning the construction of datacenters that were never gonna be constructed anyways,

will be calm, fact-based and respectful of peoples opinions.

X ad revenue is still way way down because of its content. It also operates at a loss. Its basically Musks bullhorn and he pays for it. It doesnt make him any money. The link to the government will last until the next president and not a second longer. Once Trump is out of office, Musk will probably need to stay as far away from politics as he possibly can.

I really didn't think that was possible. Facebook has allowed it's platform to be used for straight-up ethnic cleansing.

https://www.asc.upenn.edu/rese...

But, apparently, that's not permissive enough? Maybe they fired all their content moderators and it's now complete free-game?

Setting aside the moral considerations, this is bad business. X, 4chan and 8chan already occupy this space on the right, and bluesky is dominant on the far left. And most companies don't like their ads to be shown next to neo-nazi and revenge porn content. The possibility of losing ad revenue is way higher than the possibility of selling more ads.

This is a puff piece. The “scientist” quoted in the article is a Greenpeace guy. The content is designed to sell ads in left-wing echo chambers. It will convince exactly zero people who aren’t already on board with a fairly leftish point of view.

It’s like having ICE write an article about immigration, or listening to the Cuban government about the wonders of socialism. Not a serious attempt to convince people. Note that I picked one example from the right and one from the left.

I wasnt gonna go there. That whole situation is fascinating because it’s so anomalous. Its like watching the worst characger in the dnd group roll a dozen natural 20s in a row.

This has nothing to do with police competence. Like every organization and company nowadays, police departments are very short of manpower. This incident involved a guy stealing an armful of hot yoga pants. No violence, low property damage and very low value stolen. In terms of priority, this would rank above robbing a vending machine but lower than literally every other crime. Dealing with this stuff take time, and each cop only has 8 hours per workday. You do the math and this kind of thing gets neglected or straight up ignored. They choose to focus on the violent crime, drug stuff, and higher dollar value things.

I basically agree with you that the idea of privacy-in-public is dead but a lot of people missed the memo. However. Even in todays strange world, a persons reputation can matter. A lot. If a person develops a reputation for being an unapologetic glasshole, that can have a LOT of consequences - professional, financial, legal, relational. And a reputation like that is VERY hard to shake once you build it. Even nowadays. There are some very public examples of as$holes that succeed in life, but theyre generally the exception to the rule.

Deafness is not a disease.

But, it is without a doubt a disability. I won’t insult your intelligence by giving trivial examples of why this condition is a disability.

The unique nature of this particular disability gave rise to a language that deaf people use. When groups of people use a shared language, they naturally develop a unique culture and a sense of identity, and then a sense of pride in their identity. I suspect this feeling of identity is probably what leads some people to be proud of their deafness, and deny that it’s a disability. People are emotional creatures.

I certainly don’t represent deaf people in any way, and I’m not going to tell other people how to think or feel about themselves. But, this is what I think is happening in this particular group.

Your larger points about the dangers of human gene editing are valid. This will be hashed out over a very long period of time. Mistakes will be made.