It's only a matter of time before an OpenAI killer drone accidentally targets Gary Marcus and Scam Altman says "oopsie".
[dead]
The whole thing was a scam
81–90 of 347 posts
Re: The whole thing was a scam
#82Re: The whole thing was a scam
#83"In capitalism, the market decides. In oligarchy, connections and donations decide." Who's gonna tell him there never was a difference?
[dead]
Re: The whole thing was a scam
#8425M isn’t even that much money. Not only are they whores, they’re cheap whores.
Quite tangential, but this reminded me of a line from Human Target: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6tqvzt?start=872&mute=fal... "I'm sorry, you... You think I'm a prostitute?" looks at offered cash "A $40 prostitute?"
Cheap or not doesn’t matter.
Sir Winston Churchill supposedly asked Lady Astor whether she would sleep with him for five million pounds. She said she supposed she would. Then he asked whether she would sleep with him for only five pounds. She answered,"What do you think I am?" His response was, "We've already established that; we're merely haggling over price."- Marcus Felson, Crime and Everyday Life, Second Edition, 1998
Re: The whole thing was a scam
#85In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. This HST quote seems severely outdated by now. They have already been caught, committed all the sins of stupidity and some more. All of it to the clapping mob of people who yearn for some kind of social revenge. And it’s happening everywhere these last years. Who could possibly know…
Not a week goes by without me thinking "what would HST have made of THIS fresh bullshit, if he were alive today"
Re: The whole thing was a scam
#86Re: The whole thing was a scam
#87[deleted]
Re: The whole thing was a scam
#88A lot of rightfully righteous anger here. I'm amused that this wasn't the response when semiconductors from Taiwan were exempted from tarrifs. There, the bribe was much smaller...
The corruption is never-ending, but I think with this case people were especially struck by some of the details like OpenAI claiming their "red lines" were exactly the same as Anthropic's.
Not even trying to justify the switchover would have raised less eyebrows than giving it a clearly nonsense justification.
Re: The whole thing was a scam
#8925M isn’t even that much money. Not only are they whores, they’re cheap whores.
That's something that has bothered me about this entire administration, particularly the bizarre and disturbing involvement of the Diablo-cheating billionaire.
Everyone knew that a lot of politicians have been for sale, but I didn't realize how cheaply they were for sale. Musk able to buy his way into being in charge of an idiotic department with basically no regulation while still being allowed to CEO like five companies, and he did it for like $100 million. That's a lot of money, more than I'll ever be worth, but it's way less than I would think it would cost to buy the presidency, in charge of billions (and maybe trillions?) of dollars of sales and contracting.
Re: The whole thing was a scam
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's bizarre seeing the outright bribery. A lot of things that people call "bribery" is really just ensuring that your preferred candidate gets in office. You couldn't give money directly to the candidate for personal use. Donations went to the campaign of the guy who already agreed with you. The FEC used to take a dim view of outright pay-for-service, even dressed up. This is new. And now people need to decide how t…
> A lot of things that people call "bribery" is really just ensuring that your preferred candidate gets in office. Having a preferred candidate you give money to is already bribery - whatever the law says. You fund your favorite pony to get the power. They then scratch your back or lend a sympathetic ear.
Simply spending money to get someone you like elected isn’t bribery.
To the degree great inequality leads to this being decisive in elections, it is a corrupting influence, but the term for it is still not “bribery”.
But when a presidential candidate tells oil companies they should donate because he is going to help them, that’s solid bribery.
When companies pay to “settle” ridiculous accusations, or “donate” to a president’s causes, while their mergers or other business legal issues depend on an openly pay-for-play president’s goodwill, that’s solid bribery.
The country’s policies, discipline, reputation and competence (economic, diplomatic and political) are being sold off for a tiny fraction of what their future adjusted value is worth.