I can’t imagine any reasonable person having anything other than an unfavourable reaction to a petty, callow, thin-skinned, vindictive, childish, willfully ignorant and delusional narcissist and to the country that put him in charge.
That China and Xi benefit from that is really just a happenstance. Virtually any world leader and the country they lead are going to look good by comparison.
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I don’t have an “end goal” as far as “AI” is concerned.
I do have a short-term goal of contributing to the establishment of a humanity that’s at least smart enough to grasp the fundamental and unresolvable differences between language modeling and reasoning, but I have no particular hope even of that.
Oh definitely.
I didn’t shift to the “breeze in and get another Nobel medal” theory because I changed my mind about Israel likely having plenty of material with which to blackmail the rapist-in-chief - I have no doubt that they do. I just think that appealing to his ego and his childlike desire for recognition would’ve been seen to be a better approach, and having a Nobel winner in prison in Iran was just too perfect an opportunity to miss.
And yes to the blowback, but I’d go much further. I think that if he thought he was cornered and his ego was at risk, he wouldn’t even hesitate to start a nuclear war if nothing else seemed likely to save him from exposure.
I wish I was kidding.
On reflection, I think you’re right. I didn’t think of it as affectionate by any means, but I can see how it could appear that way, and at this point, appearances are far too important.
I thought at first that he was likely being blackmailed by Israel - it’s near certain that the Israeli government has at least as much evidence of his serial child rape as the US government does.
Mostly based on the way the whole war played out though, I tend more toward a different theory now.
I think Bibi convinced him that overthrowing Iran would be a cake walk - that just like Venezuela, they could go in fast and bomb the shit out of things and get rid of the Ayatollah and take over, and then Trump could get Narges Mohammadi out of prison and she’d be so thankful that she’d give him her Nobel medal, and then he’d be the bestest President ever in the history of ever because he’d have two Nobels (well - technically, he’d only have two Nobel medals, and claiming that he has a Nobel because he has a medal is sort of like claiming he’s a Super Bowl champion because he has a ring, but he’s too stupid to realize that).
And everything played out just as intended, right up to the point that Iran didn’t collapse and instead just calmly set about replacing the Ayatollah and systematically bombing American bases and property all around the Middle East while closing down the Strait of Hormuz. And he’s been desperately flailing around and throwing tantrums ever since, because that wasn’t what Bibi promised.
It’s as if some notable proportion of humanity suddenly switched to eating nothing but vaguely food-shaped plastic, then a study concluded that that might have negative effects nutritionally.
No shit?
So… they’re supposed to just sit there passively and let Israel invade their country and murder their people?
No.
AGI is likely attainable, but if humans are to accomplish that, it’ll have to be the civilization that’s built out of the rubble that ours leaves behind after the ruling class psychopaths get through destroying it.
It doesn’t get much more performative than that.
If it’s a plotline that requires and rewards concentration, then, if I’m in the right mood, I can concentrate on it. And if it doesn’t require concentration, then it doesn’t matter - I can wander away for a while, then catch back up later.
Though admittedly one of the biggest reasons that I prefer watching movies at home is that I can rewind them when my attention has wandered too far for too long. And there are times when I just have to give up, because it’s not going to be possible to watch this movie now. And there are some movies that I never have managed to make it through.
Generally though…
Think they’ll find anything wrong with Trump suing Trump’s IRS and then Trump’s Justice Department stepping in to negotiate a $1.8 billion “settlement” for Trump?
Yeah… me neither.
My favorite capsule description of (The Adventures of) Buckaroo Banzai (Across the Eighth Dimension) is “A stupid movie for smart people.”
It was actually my number 1 for a long, but somehow, over the years, Repo Man just crept up the list until it took its place.
Repo Man (1984)
Honorable mentions:
The thing with the data centers is that the goal is entirely different from anything we’ve been told.
The key is that Google is implementing a system that allows people to get the information they’re after directly from them rather than clicking theough to a website. That’s undermining ad revenue, which not only threatens the existence of the websites but threatens Google’s existing ad-based business model.
So it can only be the case that they’re pivoting to a new business model.
And the key to that is the data centers.
Their goal, I grow more certain nearly every day, is to effectively privatize the internet by driving independent sites out of business, so that they (and their handful of more or less equally wealthy and powerful competitors) become the only source for all of that data they’ve already stolen.
When IDF soldiers were accused of gang-raping Palestinian prisoners, people staged protests and politicians gave speeches in support of the soldiers. And not with the position that the soldiers didn’t do it, but that the soldiers acted within their rights when they did.
That says everything anyone needs to know about the Israeli attitude toward the sexual assault of non-Israelis.
Yeah - there’s a fairly significant game of The Emperor’s New Clothes going on, as the new set of impossibly wealthy assholes insist on pretending they’re not impossibly wealthy assholes and instead try to force society into accommodating them, apparently entirely unaware of the simple fact that all they’re doing is hastening the demise of the civilization that birthed them and on which they’re little more than grossly destructive parasites.
And that’s not an opinion - either mine or anyone else’s. It’s a simple fact that’s been borne out by history over and over throughout the ages, and will be again, no matter how many comforting lies people tell themselves and each other.
What’s a “Carrington” or a “Robinson” in the first place?
I wouldn’t presume to speak for anyone else, but I’m a human, and I thought the rest of us were too.
I don’t think whether or not they’re “good” people and the clients they end up representing have anything to do with each other.
It’s just a part of their job that they end up sometimes representing people who are charged with, and potentially even obviously guilty of, heinous crimes.
And their code of ethics specifically demands that they do their best to represent their client’s interests regardless of any and all other considerations.
So even just there, it could be the case that one defense attorney is a vile scumbag who gets off on the idea of freeing obvious criminals and it could just as easily be the case that another defense attorney is a veritable saint who sincerely believes that all people are fundamentally good and that it’s their purpose in life to help anyone who needs it, no matter who or what they’re deemed to be.
Both of those things undoubtedly exist, and pretty much any position one might imagine between the two, so I don’t think there’s any way to correlate who they represent and their own qualities.
Now all that said, I certainly couldn’t do what they do, and specifically because I couldn’t effectively represent someone who was certainly guilty. But that’s just me.
Colonist is passive while colonizer is active.
Colonist bypasses the whole concept of colonizing and treats the colony as a fait accompli, and the person as just someone who happens to live there.
Colonizer makes it clear that the person is engaged in colonizing.