751–760 of 1001 posts
I'm curious if there has ever been an instance where people have been able to "tame" a technology to consider a broader, societal good, or if we've always just been at the whims of how any particular tech naturally concentrates or dissipates power. For example, if you look at the boom of the middle classes in the mid 20th century, this appears to me largely a consequence of the fact that industrial technology at the…
I'm curious if there has ever been an instance where people have been able to "tame" a technology to consider a broader, societal good, or if we've always just been at the whims of how any particular tech naturally concentrates or dissipates power. For example, if you look at the boom of the middle classes in the mid 20th century, this appears to me largely a consequence of the fact that industrial technology at the…
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The pope can say a lot of things, but not everybody on this planet is Christian. So even if we restrict the power of AI, others may not. And this might turn out to be a mistake. I just hope this is taken into account.
This has weird “look what you made me do” undernotes. A Christian can live by their values without forcing them on others. As anyone can from any religion or not religious at all.
It has undernotes of being disconnected from reality so to speak.
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I am immediately reminded of my favourite quote from the Jewish book Pirkei Avot (‘Ethics of the Fathers’): > It is not your duty to finish the work [of perfecting the world], but neither are you at liberty to neglect it. [ https://www.sefaria.org/Pirkei_Avot.2.16?ven=english|Mishnah... ]
EVERY progressive needs to read this quote. It’s my biggest frustration with so many expressing progressive beliefs. I’ve lost count of the times a progressive expresses unwillingness to address problems at a smaller, local or personal level. Instead there is a demand to fix everything forever and at once at the highest levels, or do nothing at all.
There is nothing wrong with some people working on a regional or global fix while others work on a local one. The important thing is that they’re working for it.
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Thanks! This answer was actually the one that I found most helpful. I feel like some of the other responses to my comment were talking about how we regulate lots of other tech, but that wasn't really my point - I understand that we regulate tech, but only when it becomes "economically convenient". But your last sentence "Electric utilities did not end up ruling the world" really struck me. It's a great point, and TBH…
The electricity infrastructure where I was live was owned by the government. It's only in the last 15 years it was sold off to private interests [1]. I suspect you will find that the electricity systems in many regions are still government owned. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_Commission_of_New_...
This was deeply offensive to the economists of the 80s and 90s and so they were taken over by the state government and turned into a for profit company.
It was corporatised before it was sold off. Privatisation of the NSW energy market began about 30 years ago at this point.
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I had a look and yeah, Popes quoting Tolkien does seem to be a thing, at least in the last couple of decades.
It’s a whole thing. The priest at my high school was way into Tolkien and, more interestingly to me as a teenager: the Wolfenstein series of games!
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I worry that companies like Anthropic, which are moving toward RSI, may prioritize speed over the timely identification of irreversible risks.
Did you mean AGI? I'd think whatever else they are doing, LLMs are reducing RSI...
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EVERY progressive needs to read this quote. It’s my biggest frustration with so many expressing progressive beliefs. I’ve lost count of the times a progressive expresses unwillingness to address problems at a smaller, local or personal level. Instead there is a demand to fix everything forever and at once at the highest levels, or do nothing at all.
The fact that you call them progressives hints at a more general frustration that I doubt has anything to do with the problem. There is nothing wrong with some people working on a regional or global fix while others work on a local one. The important thing is that they’re working for it.
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Someone did an analysis and concluded that it appear to be at least partly (~10-15%) LLM-generated, or at least LLM-translated (see comments): https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/s58hDHX2GkFDbpGKD/linch-s-sh...
People need to stop acting like AI systems can detect AI. They can't. Pangram and similar are simply lying. There's no method to do what they claim and there never will be.
A church is the pattern for a brain-washing org. Catholic and derivatives just happen to dominate western hemisphere. Its operation is no different from, say, Scientology.
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This has weird “look what you made me do” undernotes. A Christian can live by their values without forcing them on others. As anyone can from any religion or not religious at all.
Sure, but it is very easy to say when you are currently not in the trenches. It has undernotes of being disconnected from reality so to speak.
the point of the entire Christian faith is that even God was in the trenches and died on the cross instead of picking up the sword. To the Christian the reality is the Christian life and the kingdom of God, the unreality is ceasing to be a Christian to engage in a nihilistic struggle for this world.
Given that a lot of people brought up Tolkien being mentioned. The Christian act is to reject the ring, not say I need the ring because someone else wants it.