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A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

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Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

#441

Post by Talanes »

dragonwriter wrote: post #424
DanBC wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, they are often (though very, very far from most often) used in reverse because people forget which is which. Even in that case they have very distinct intended meanings, and are not equivalents. Isn't this just another way of saying they're equivalent as used? People don't know which is which, they often don't car,e and they pick one. Prescriptivist "what should eg mean in this sentence?" Descriptivist "what do…

> Isn't this just another way of saying they're equivalent as used? No, it's not. One is used a vast majority of the time to mean “that is” and occasionally, by different people , to mean “for example”. One is used a vast majority of the time to mean “for example” and occasionally, by different people , to mean “that is”. Neither group (not the one with the dominant understanding nor the one with the minority underst…

The only time I would use "that is" as a distinctive phrase is to mean "for example" though.

Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

#442

Post by graeme »

yesenadam wrote: post #437
graeme wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US govt spends 7.3 trillion dollars per year. So that’s about 0.5% of spending. As a fraction of US GDP it’s about 0.17%. It’s tiny. The claim I was arguing against was this: > the armaments manufacturers who actually control our society You can’t control society with 0.17% of US GDP! Note also that most of that spending does not flow to arms contractors so the actual figure is less. The bulk is spend on the defe…

Well, it seems a bit pointless debating whether billions of dollars is not much/tiny or a lot. >> the armaments manufacturers who actually control our society > You can’t control society with 0.17% of US GDP! That doesn't seem fair. The companies involved are involved in a lot more than nuclear weapons, as I guess you know. (see my last 2 links)

Yeah, they’re much bigger, but the point is the nuclear spending is clearly not the key to any power they do wield.

As I said, 0.17% of gdp covers all the spending, including on govt salaries. Only a portion of that actually goes to manufacturers.

Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

#443

Post by graeme »

PeterisP wrote: post #418
jessaustin wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you need the other 18,000 bombs? Every bomb must be purchased from the armaments manufacturers who actually control our society. The same who originally bamboozled Truman into damning our species. Your question is equivalent to "why do they want more money?"

That might explain the USA part of the arsenal, but it can't be the whole explanation because that would not work for USSR. And, since whatever was the reasons for USSR, it most likely also applied to USA as well, reducing the need to pin it all on commercial interests.

Thanks this is much more elegant than what I came up with.

Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

#444

Post by bordercases »

blt wrote: post #130
cryptica wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is complete BS. In our unequal society, some people have 100s of potential partners waiting in line for them while for others, they will never get a single chance in their entire lifetimes. Same with career opportunities. Either you're rich and have more opportunities every single day than you can possibly fathom or you don't have a single good opportunity in your entire lifetime. What's more tragic about it is…

Your statements are extreme. There may be some subcultures and bits of society that behave like this, but it is far from universal. Please take a break from your current forums/podcasts/youtube/etc.

> Please take a break from your current forums/podcasts/youtube/etc.

This is pretty condescending!

Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

#445

Post by Talanes »

danaliv wrote: post #150
Talanes wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where does using one over the other cause an actual change in information though? Not just sticking out as the wrong one if you know the proper distinction, but actually conveying different information? The comparison that follows is the important part, the abbreviation is a part of grammatical dressing that provides some flow and framing.

I read my daily updates on technology, i.e., HackerNews... Totally different meaning if you replace i.e. with e.g.

How so? Because I'm not going to assume that you are calling HackerNews the same as technology in any reading of the sentence, purely from context. So what other shifted meaning can be had from the swap?

Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

#446

Post by badRNG »

bambax wrote: post #257
yesenadam wrote: post #216

> Has Tech Destroyed Society? I recently watched the documentary The Man Who Saved the World [0], about Stanislav Petrov, who one day in 1983 made the decision to ignore the early warning system computers telling him the USA had fired 5 missiles at the USSR.[1] It seems had he followed orders, a report to his superiors would have resulted in mass retaliation. The decision was in his hands. In the movie, as well as a…

It's possible that had "AI" been in charge at that time, the world would have been destroyed. I don't think "AI" is a threat in itself but relying on technology to make life-or-death decisions without human application, feels extremely dangerous.

There are an awful lot of lines in the sand that have to be crossed prior to "oh, we just rig up nukes to this computer that checks for incoming missiles and fires back."

Using nuclear weapons is one of the most bureaucratic processes the government has by design. There are an awful lot of people in the loop that must work in concert to make something like that happen.

Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

#447

Post by jessaustin »

PeterisP wrote: post #418
jessaustin wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you need the other 18,000 bombs? Every bomb must be purchased from the armaments manufacturers who actually control our society. The same who originally bamboozled Truman into damning our species. Your question is equivalent to "why do they want more money?"

That might explain the USA part of the arsenal, but it can't be the whole explanation because that would not work for USSR. And, since whatever was the reasons for USSR, it most likely also applied to USA as well, reducing the need to pin it all on commercial interests.

Stalin was (justifiably) frightened by nuclear weapons. Any time between August 1945 and mid-1949, Truman could have picked up the phone and said "we've decided to step back from the brink". Stalin would have eagerly agreed. Instead, USA developed vastly more destructive fusion weapons, and the first unofficial act of newly created CIA intentionally leaked designs to the Russians. That's why their first functional weapon was a carbon copy of early American weapons.

Truman would later regret creating one of the several monsters that ate his soul [0], but he was clearly out of his depth from the moment that he learned of atomic weapons. None of the top military brass wanted to use the atomic bomb. [1] The reptiles knew what they were doing in 1944 when they replaced Henry Wallace with an easily controlled Missouri hick. Truman himself didn't know their precise plans, but he had to know he wasn't the man who should've gotten that job. He let ambition overrule propriety.

Of course, Truman isn't the only human to blame for the mess we've been in for 75 years. Most of the scientists who developed the bomb knew better than he did what the result would be. "MAD" is not an acceptable condition for human life. We endure it because some reptiles desired further enrichment. No good intentions paved their way to their current location.

Throughout our existence, USA's projections of the worst possible intentions on the part of other nations have driven our deepest depravities, to a far greater extent than the real situations we've faced.

[0] https://truthout.org/articles/trumans-true-warning-on-the-ci...

[1] https://www.thenation.com/article/world/why-the-us-really-bo...

Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

#448

Post by jessaustin »

yesenadam wrote: post #435
graeme wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any money is in selling bombs that are used , so you can sell more. Not much money in nukes, and you can very by stock exchange listings. This kind of conspiracy thinking utterly ignores the horrifying logic of MAD. Read a bit about Bernard Brodie, pre-eminent strategist, he laid it all out for why deterrence was sadly the only way to go and that we must live in a state of mutually assured destruction. https://en.m.w…

Thank you, am reading his Strategy in the Missile Age , which is surprisingly a very enjoyable read. Brodie was evidently a cultured guy and a good writer. There's quite a bit of history and philosophy, and the first 2 pages are entirely about Paradise Lost ! PDF: https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/commercial_books/...

One can't be surprised that Rand Corporation, an entity created by the military-industrial complex to help it control journalists and politicians, would publish such a book.

Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

#449

Post by jessaustin »

graeme wrote: post #442
yesenadam wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it seems a bit pointless debating whether billions of dollars is not much/tiny or a lot. >> the armaments manufacturers who actually control our society > You can’t control society with 0.17% of US GDP! That doesn't seem fair. The companies involved are involved in a lot more than nuclear weapons, as I guess you know. (see my last 2 links)

Yeah, they’re much bigger, but the point is the nuclear spending is clearly not the key to any power they do wield. As I said, 0.17% of gdp covers all the spending, including on govt salaries. Only a portion of that actually goes to manufacturers.

We currently spend about $750 billion every year on the military, not counting the "black" budget. The stinking, offensive waste will soon exceed a trillion every year. That ain't all going to the VA hospitals. Besides, at this point every American who could have remembered a more normal way to live, is dead. The reptiles won. We literally can't stop spending vast sums killing brown people and preparing to kill more.

Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

#450

Post by dragonwriter »

Talanes wrote: post #445
danaliv wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read my daily updates on technology, i.e., HackerNews... Totally different meaning if you replace i.e. with e.g.

How so? Because I'm not going to assume that you are calling HackerNews the same as technology in any reading of the sentence, purely from context. So what other shifted meaning can be had from the swap?

> Because I’m not going to assume that you are calling HackerNews the same as technology in any reading of the sentence, purely from context.

The first is saying “HackerNews” is the same as “my daily updates on technology” .

The second (replacing “i.e.” with “e.g.”) is saying “HackerNews” is an example—one item in a broader collection—of “my daily updates on technology”.

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