Oddbean new post about login | logout Does nostr fix this? Depressing af: "All of which is why we may soon be entering a golden age for truly psychotic totalitarian regimes. The Kim Il-Sung of the future won’t need an army of peasants expecting tile roofs if he has an army of killer robots, and ChatGPT is much cheaper than a full-time propaganda minister. Depending on how good AI gets, it will sharply reduce the number of people required to run an effective regime. In the limit, you can imagine a single mad king with no human servitors at all, just a computer as his grand vizier. There would be no limit to how brutal or crazy this guy could get, no limit to what he could do to his populace for fear of triggering a revolt amongst his own bodyguards." https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-the-real-north-korea-by-andrei
Usually a counter force emerges in these situations, eventually. Presumably that force would also have AI assisting them.
Switzerland is fueling KimFatSun with Swiss cheese. Switzerland can make a difference and stop supplying the mad man with fuel 🧀 . This could make him think before he do something really stupid.
The US is not immune. I've heard multiple commentators make the point that this could be the last election. ie. Post this election, the rules will change. Meaning the US will soon have their own version of Kim, embodied in a new form of state and his computer embodied in the form of the military and the NSA. Regardless of the election, you, we are already living in a form of financial and technological dystopia. Only the great ravine fixes this. (From 'The Dark Forest')
To give a quote from the Carrol Quigley lecture i shared in my other responce: "the state is a good state if it is sovereign and if it is responsible. The idea that the state has to be any of these other things, such as, for example, democratic, is more or less incidental. If democracy reflects the structure of society's power, then the state has to be democratic. But if the reflection of power, and the pattern of power, in a society is not a democratic pattern, then you cannot have a democratic state. This is what happens in Latin America, and Africa, and places like this, where they have an election and the army doesn't like who's elected, so they move in and kick him out and put somebody else in. That's because the election did not reflect the power situation, in which the dominant thing is organized force. So when I say governments have to be responsible, I'm saying the same thing as I said when I said that they have to be legitimate, i.e., that they have to reflect the power structure of the society. Politics is the area for establishing responsibility by legitimizing power, i.e., somehow demonstrating to people that the power structure is this. And it may take a revolution, such as the French Revolution, or it may take a war, like the American Civil War. In the American Civil War in 19, 1861 the structure of power in the United States was such -- perhaps unfortunately, I don't know -- that the South could not leave unless the North was willing. It was that simple. But it took a war to prove it."
Need to build defensive AI tech to empower the individual.
Need an algo to detect and label propaganda. Bearing in mind that this is also subjective, to a degree. Nostr can do it. But no one has done it yet.
What comes to mind is a series of lectures given by Carrol Quigley (historian) called: “Public Authority and the State in the Western Tradition: A Thousand Years of Growth, 976-1976” If I recall correctly, it is in this series he discusses the impact of means of violence and warfare on the character and scale of states. I think the third and last part is most relevant. It should provide a starting off point of reference to ponder the topic. The audio quality is terrible even to the point the transcript (there is one so you can also decide to read), has holes in it due to inaudibility issues. So sorry for presenting a piece of shit of over 4 hours; but I promise it is a diamond. Part 1: http://www.carrollquigley.net/Lectures/The-State-of-Communities-AD-976-1576.htm Part 2: http://www.carrollquigley.net/Lectures/The-State-of-Individuals-AD-1776-1976.htm Part 3: http://www.carrollquigley.net/Lectures/The-State-of-Individuals-AD-1776-1976.htm
Thanks for sharing! I'm gonna look into this
They have no power if they don't offer a meaningful benefit to people in exchange for their taxes. Bitcoin stops their primary source of hidden taxation and power: inflation. Bitcoin fixes this by starving them off unearned energy taken behind the scenes in ways people don't understand. The future is bright!