Post #3831236
2026-07-15 11:50 UTC
Replies (3)
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@YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems 2026-07-15 14:07
On one hand I agree that in a lot of ways our current tech surveillance regime looks like the kind of orwellian nightmare that people are raising red flags about. I’m admittedly less terrified by this than I am frustrated at how quickly and easily these systems get assembled when it comes to protecting shareholders from potentially unfavorable market conditions like “people using the software they purchased and installed on their computer in a way we didn’t expect”. Like, the US can’t get it’s shit together to do basically anything about domestic terrorism to the point where elementary schools are having domestic terror drills in order to feel like they’re doing literally anything to acknowledge the problem, but God forbid OpenAI has to acknowledge their product’s risk of aiding those terrorists when they’re trying to get their IPO off the ground. But also I think Scott is hilariously uninformed about how in-depth the kind of monitoring systems would need to be in order to function trans nationally and not be subject to individual jurisdiction (because otherwise the only one with authority to go after the secret illegal chinese AI bunker project would be China and that’s a non-starter. As I said in the OP I think this combined with the level of transparency that they’re discussing would basically amount to opening up all the books and internal communications directly to your competitors whether on a corporate or national level, which makes it a non-starter.
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@BioMan@awful.systems 2026-07-15 21:25
Comments in FAVOR of billionaires being those who seize control of the entire universe at the expense of everyone else (!) are appearing. Land reform / redistribution is always popular with the populi, but per your other point, unless you somehow forbid them from selling or leasing it, it will inevitably end up in the hands of those better able to use those resources pretty shortly. And I will argue that this is a good thing, at least in a capitalist and non-coercive society - much like people think of heiresses leaving their floofy little dogs mansions and million dollar annual stipends as wasteful, leaving an equal proportion of the cosmic endowment with a bunch of v1.2 murder chimps who were so unsuccessful that they couldn’t even buy any of it is a colossal waste of that matter/energy. Much like land today is much more valuable to people / governments who have money, the cosmic endowment will be no different. Today we waste something like 99. nine 9’s percent of our sun’s energy. If we’re the only conscious and intelligent life in the universe, every other star is wasting 100% of their energy. That energy is going to be similarly wasted in the hands of average people, just like the mansions and stipends are wasted on the dogs. “Well lease it out and profit share!” I bet you’re saying. But what will a base human even DO with that energy? It’s like the dog. Most “regular” people who remain human will be eaten by digital Infinite Jests, where they can the be tippy top of made up status hierarchies and live out their wildest, meaningless dreams 24/7. You probably barely need $10k a year to do that in terms of matter energy budgets. Sure, let’s guarantee a really generous UBI, Scotts $1-$2M per year in today’s wealth equivalent. That’s fair. But the cosmic endowment is many, many orders of magnitude more than that, and allocating it to a bunch of floofy dog equivalents is a huge waste.
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@scruiser@awful.systems 2026-07-15 22:50
apparently he’s having a bit of a hard time selling his crowd on the really obvious totalitarian implications of instituting a global surveillance system to track and remotely disable chipsets I thought I would agree with his libertarian audience about this much at least, but reading their comments… some of the angles they take and line of argument they make actually makes me more in favor of totalitarian dystopian regulation on computer chips.