for now, chatbots tend to sycophantically confabulate upon and reinforce user prejudices and inclinations, rather than reining them in. there’ve been prominent cases of people going a bit mad this way. 1/
that could be remedied. chatbots could have some version of consensus reality towards which they guide users. but then these massive, centralized, profit-seeking companies that run the chatbots would largely define that “consensus”. 2/
do you think “touching grass” with that version of reality would, eg, dissuade people from voting for Donald Trump, or, less politically, force them to confront realities like climate change is real and vaccines work and tylenol has not been shown to cause autism? /fin
i just love on so many levels his use of "habibi".
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So, chat, does this China trade deal make any progress on China's export controls of rare earths, or do we just TACO that?
Excellent, by @ryanlcooper.com. Our political problem is not some disjunction between Democrats and voter preferences on "the issues". It's a social + informational environment in which attending Bowdoin and murdering boaters are, like, symmetrically issues to discuss. prospect.org/2025/10/29/v...
Voters Did Not Understand the Stakes in 2024 - The American Prospect
Link Preview: Voters Did Not Understand the Stakes in 2024 - The American Prospect: A large majority of American voters are greatly dissatisfied with the state of things, most especially the economy. It turns out that median voters were catastrophically misled about the stakes of the...
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(you still get to deduct your tax expenditures though, and pretend the government didn't just pay you. the part of the submerged state the right likes most stays pretty submerged!)
Fake incriminating material is already fully democratized. This would be authentic. 1/
I suspect the big AI platforms will include authentication tokens in the data they collect (something like automated hashes published to a blockchain L2, establishing proof of existence with a firm-controlled timestamp and signature), distinguishing it from unauthenticated kompromat. /fin
i mean, we could get to a place where everybody has something on them so we could all agree to overlook things. but it's a relatively small portion of the public that people with privileged access to platforms would seek to blackmail, so i don't think that happens unless they are dumb about it.
friendship is the microstructure of solidarity. AI companionship is an opiate of the masses.
kind of the Model T of blackmail, devalues earlier, more bespoke, versions of the product.
if we think of Jeffrey Epstein as a kompromat op, isn't AI erotica served by centralized platforms likely to become Jeffrey Epstein blitzscaled? i don't mean to draw a moral equivalence. no children are harmed indulging a weird fetish with Mistress GPT. but it'll become a blackmail treasure trove.
if you don’t maintain your assets, they become liabilities.
that human nature changes so much with the times suggests it isn’t really nature.
i kind of prefer doing business with firms that haven’t bribed the President.
"much of the wealth isn’t a reflection of labor or even invention—it’s a gain based on the negative externalities and private monetization of an unrecognized public good—the network effect—with no associated compensation to the public." @hussmanjp.bsky.social www.hussmanfunds.com/comment/mc25...
An Unsustainable Equilibrium - Hussman Funds
Link Preview: An Unsustainable Equilibrium - Hussman Funds: The S&P 500 stands at the most extreme level of valuations in history. This record aligns precisely with the happiest and most satisfying moment of a speculative bubble: the point where wildly misalig...
also, from the above, "ultimately, the strongest consumer benefit and economic growth goes hand-in-hand with the erosion of profits." both are great points to remember.
i can’t, motion sickness.
you know what, i am really effing tired of displays of pure power. whether by humans, nature, or in this case their collaboration.
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Well, this was my weekend! It's long bothered me that stuff I wrote on bluesky I don't really have access to except on bluesky. The "repo.car" you can download is pretty inscrutable! So I made a thing to turn all your Blueskying into a pretty, self-contained static site, with quotes & images, e.g…
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