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There is a shadow hanging over this Fable thing

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351–360 of 518 posts

Re: There is a shadow hanging over this Fable thing

#351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can reverse it. "If the government gets involved" doesn't work unless you presume government is beneficial (it is not since you just recreate all the bad parts of no government anyway).

> unless you presume government is beneficial That's the constitutional bedrock of our societies. That doesn't mean it's always true but if you denounce that as a legitimate and achievable goal then you don't have a society anymore.

Is it? Don't know about other countries, but I am pretty sure the constitutional bedrock of the United States is to limit the federal government's ability to be malignant, even at the cost of some benefit. Whether that has been achieved is a separate question.

Re: There is a shadow hanging over this Fable thing

#352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American hostility to the whole concept of government has led you to Trump’s brand of gangster capitalism (which will lead you to fascism if you let it). Government intervention is good and useful and keeps a markets free and society fair, preventing things like monopolies, robber barons and insider trading. When those constraints are removed, when government becomes the source of corruption, we end up wheee the US h…

> where companies that bribe government officials get preferred treatment Do you think lobbying did not exist prior to two years ago?

Lobbying is bad, open corruption, grift and bribery at the highest level is even worse.

Re: There is a shadow hanging over this Fable thing

#353

> But this government [...] I'm hearing a lot of this kind of thing. "Oh if only it was a different government". I'm sorry, but when you cry out for government involvement, it's not always going to be coming from the government you personally wanted. This is the whole problem with government involvement! I don't think that message is getting through, but it's the real lesson that should be learned here.

Whenever someone wants "small government" I assume they mean "a government that does not prevent me from shackling you" and hoo boy does that end up correct a lot.

Re: There is a shadow hanging over this Fable thing

#354
post #221
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it should be noted that the current government, which did this silly thing, belongs to a party that is pretty much advertising on wanting to be a smaller government that gets involved less. That is a large part of why people vote for them.

> belongs to a party that is pretty much advertising on wanting to be a smaller government that gets involved less. It's the other way around. Americans voted for Trump hoping he'd improve the country's economy and address the cost-of-living crisis. For example, one of the main proposals was to make ICE bigger and use it to deport as many people as possible, hoping it'd give back jobs to Americans. Another key propos…

Right, but both of those examples are terrible ideas on their face.

On migrant workers, much of the US economy is underpinned by the assumption that cheap manual labor is abundant, with the implicit assumption that this tier of labour isn’t going to try and clamour for workers rights (which is a whole other story, but whatever). It’s (part of) the reason the US continues to have globally extremely cheap gas even as the prices hit highs within a domestic frame of reference.

And restarting mining rather than trying to adapt the mining workforce better to a changing landscape is just going to make it hurt worse when the US has to catch up with the rest of the developed world on that front.

As a close outside observer, it feels more like one side of the US electorate is motivated by sore and a misplaced sense of being owed retribution more than anything else.

Re: There is a shadow hanging over this Fable thing

#356
post #21

> I actually have another draft post in the barrel about how I think we should see a resurgence of the ‘flash game’ renaissance because it has become so much easier to make fun little games with AI tooling. I have been lurking on the aigamedev subreddit to see exactly what sort of games people are coming up with and I can say I have been incredibly disappointing. I've been faithfully trying the games people post and…

>> And there are so many quality indie games you could get for the 25+ dollars you'd spend generating the code.

But those games have already been designed a specific way, based on the developer's ideas and imagination and vision.

If you're the sort of person who always thinks along the lines of "I wish there was a way to upgrade spells" or "it would be great if you could open this door and see what is behind it" or "I hate the way orcs and goblins are friends, they should actually fight each other"

That has always been the issue with games: they capture the imagination... and then stop there. There's no way to expand them the way you want (except for submitting requests/wishes to the devs and hope they listen and add it in a short enough time period) and customization options are always very limited.

AI, on the other hand, empowers everyone to bring their own ideas to life. Sure, those ideas may not be great, or the execution may not be great, but at the end of the day it's a way to express one's imagination that would otherwise take years to do.

Re: There is a shadow hanging over this Fable thing

#357

> But this government [...] I'm hearing a lot of this kind of thing. "Oh if only it was a different government". I'm sorry, but when you cry out for government involvement, it's not always going to be coming from the government you personally wanted. This is the whole problem with government involvement! I don't think that message is getting through, but it's the real lesson that should be learned here.

Whenever someone wants "small government" I assume they mean "a government that does not prevent me from shackling you" and hoo boy does that end up correct a lot.

There were certainly self-styled libertarians who were very keen on this particular US administration and its laissez-faire approach to rules, especially rules binding on the executive...

Turns out the alternative to bureaucracy and regulation (good and bad) is executive fiat, which is a lot less predictable and trustworthy even if their reasoning is good (which in this case it theoretically might be) and often is bad

Re: There is a shadow hanging over this Fable thing

#358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is not much example of actual democracy at scale though. Even Switzerland which is often cited as the closest form of actual democratic governance is still not ticking all of the basics of a democratic checklist.

No. The average Democracy Index of Western Europe is 8.05 (full democracy), while the US scores 7.65 (flawed democracy, trending downwards). Just below Poland, just above Botswana. You might shrug and say "well pobody's nerfect", but the disparity between the American narrative and the reality is actually quite extreme. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index

I don't think this index holds much value TBF.

Look at the what The Economist is and promotes. I'd have about as much trust in Faux News Independent Press index.

I used to work and live in Poland for almost a decade (I visit friends there often), and I live and work on the UK and to be fair Poland seems far more democratic. Actual independence of the Judiciary, proportional representation Parliament, vacatio legis (as opposed to UK's "hey, that's your new tax code, effective immediately"), growing local democracies (despite 50 years of Soviet occupation, thanks to the betrayal from the West).

Re: There is a shadow hanging over this Fable thing

#359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is garbage reposted in every HN article that starts to talk about any related to politics. I will gladly live in a conservative county over progressive one. And reading this paragraph in a article about AI is complete nonsense. This is a go touch grass moment if you needed one.

I personally repost it everywhere because it is an hypothesis that I believe has strong weight of evidence behind it, and I think it's important to repeat. Your personal preferences and beliefs have little to do with conservatism at large and the motivations of the powerful people who promote it. If you want to reach a place of open minded debate and discussion in which there can be different legitimate approaches to…

The Democratic Party are the one losing elections they should trivially have won therefore it is clearly the Republicans, vile as they are, that have a more "honest assessment of the world as it is".

Re: There is a shadow hanging over this Fable thing

#360

This kills the entire enterprise market for AI models better than Opus 4.8 1) No one is going to build any workflows/capabilities that could have the underlying intelligence rug pulled instantly by a bureaucracy or malevolent politician. 2) Even if a company was silly enough to take on the risk, is Anthropic going to ask all their enterprise customers to provide passports for all their employees and then setup indivi…

For American AI models better than Opus 4.8.

The much-decried EU AI Act provides a safe, predictable regulatory framework to base ones AI development on. It provides legal stability compared to unpredictable arbitrary decisions by the US executive.

If AI companies have any sort of sense in them, they'd be well-advised to consider relocating to Europe.

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