Huh. That’s a weird poem.

Explain?

I’ve heard theories that I find convincing that the real plan is to transition us to a surveillance-based tiered economy in which the wealthy hoard control over the means of production and then spend generously to pay the largest segment of the economy – tech surveillance – to police the restless masses.

In this framing, the technology becomes profitable in the same way as healthcare: it’s essential. Once something is essential, its demand is unconstrained, and so its price-setting power isn’t based on the price customers consider a good value, it’s based on what fraction of their wealth and income they are able to hand over.

If the top 10% of Americans who participate in the investment economy conclude that ongoing real-time tracking of every American’s location and sentiments is necessary to prevent a revolution, paying to build and maintain datacenters is a must. It doesn’t matter what it costs.

This 10% then becomes the new real economy, and everyone in the 90% just become essentially livestock.

I feel like I have a pretty heterodox view here.

I think there is a tiny, itty bitty moral cost to simulating torture of an LLM.

It’s nowhere near equivalent to the moral cost of harming a human or animal. But I do believe that it’s non-zero.

I’d place it at a similar level as killing a healthy shrub or perhaps catch-and-release fishing. Is it evil? No, that’s being overdramatic. Is it harmless? I don’t think so. I think it’s morally unhealthy for our society and spiritually cruel towards the universe at large.

I don’t think we need to panic over it, but I would politely encourage people not to do this.

I heard an interview recently with Emile Torres about this. And he didn’t make this any less stupid, but he did a great job helping to explain the deranged pathologies of the people behind these.

When you have the power to make decisions at a global scale, your goals and fears are radically different from those of people who only have the ability to make choices that impact their household or family or neighborhood.

These people have a fantasy of being not just A “great man of history” but THE greatest, most important, most monumental figure to have ever lived in the whole universe. And in their head, if this technology either allows humans to make a superior species that replaces us and goes on to conquer the whole galaxy or just eradicates all the life on the only habitable planet we know of… well what a legacy, you know? There’s no bigger tombstone that says ‘I MATTERED!’

And that’s what they crave. They’re basically sick, poisoned with toxic levels of power and ego.

Wait, really?

I sometimes wonder what the outcome would be if instead of protecting privacy, we switched to nullifying the asymmetry of surveillance.

I’m not advocating for this: I know this idea is radical and unpopular and likely very dangerous. But if a majority of us concluded that we’d reached a point where protecting our individual privacy was no longer possible, what would it look like if we accepted a panopticon society, but through law and hacking, forced the information to be universally available to all?

What if my movements and political attitudes and sexual preferences were tracked by the government, but rather than being known exclusively to the state, this was public information, as were the identities of every member of law enforcement and their locations, associations, and thoughts too.

Would it level the playing field? Would it break the state’s love of surveillance if the tools couldn’t be contained for their use? I rather hope we don’t reach the point where we need to test this.

Ulgh.

In some sense, I’m simultaneously trying to stay aware of specific features and companies that I want to register displeasure of, but also there are clearly underlying technologies that are part of an open Pandora’s box. We all need to realize that the ubiquity of microphones, data transfer, and AI summarization means that we need to be prepared to live in this world. We can work to hold certain companies accountable, but there’s no going back to a time when it wasn’t possible for a bad actor to record a room full of hundreds of people in a union hall or socialist meeting and then afterwards try and identify voices and build summaries over time of who are the most influential members and things like this. These are technologies that we’re going to have to figure out how to navigate.

This. Arguing with people online is – with all due respect – a complete waste of time if your goal is to change the world.

Ignore the people who have dumb opinions. It isn’t as though if you win 500 arguments Elon Musk donates all his money to Socialism.

Go join a tenant’s union or a mutual aid society. Go build the alternative world that doesn’t transfer all our money upward.

(Also, though, if you do this long enough there will likely be a revolution. But that part comes after you feed and shelter enough people that it begins to become a threat to capital. It’s downstream. Either way, don’t bother trying to persuade strangers on the internet,)

I think you’re asking the wrong question. The better question is ‘How do I get my screenplay produced?’

I’m not an expert, but my understanding is that movie studios don’t really produce unsolicited screenplays anymore. You really need to produce it yourself, or be a known screenwriter who has prior relationships with producers.

If you don’t already have writing credits and an agent, you likely either need to produce it yourself – which means finding a director and actors and raising the money to pay for things – or you should try to publish it as a novel that becomes groundshakingly popular like The Martian or Dungeon Crawler Carl.

But the good news is that you can rest assured that having it stolen isn’t a risk you need to worry about.

But it’s not called that, and it’s not the official name.

Naming shit isn’t a presidential power. His declaration has no more weight than if he announced that from now on your legal name was Vicky.

It’s silly and stupid, but also genuinely dangerous when groups with as much power as Google has declare that they’re willing to let a madman dictate how they describe reality.

I don’t think you can guarantee that.

First, I think something like this does exist. I’ve heard ads for a service that sounded similar to this this on the Savage Love podcast.

Second, anyone interested in this topic should check out a new docu series on Nebula called Goonworld.

In Goonworld, video essayist FD Signifier explores America’s simultaneous obsession with both enjoying and punishing pornography, sex workers, and the performance of sex.

It’s on episode two, and it’s very good.

Anyone have a gift link?

No, California already does lots of gun regulation.

If anything, I think this is the result of a culture in which they’re looking for ways to do more when there’s no much more they can really do without federal changes.

It’s fucked up. California legislators just do not really care about surveillance or civil rights at this this point.

Relevant:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dK2UdVVdPI

Cool. I’m going to check these out!

Thanks for the recommendations! I’m going to try this out.

Or: be weird but less creepy about it