I asked Meta AI if capitalism requires growth

binaryblob · 2024-07-30T09:08:39+00:00

I never hear an alternative for capitalism that would work in the long term and actually allocates resources (that's the reason it exists).

There will always be a resource people would want to fight over. Who gets to live in the best beach house in Malibu?

If you think about that one can see the price of many assets in real-time (or delayed for free), you could also just admire what capitalism has accomplished. If you think there is a wrongly priced asset, then you can correct it by buying or selling. It also breeds innovation; if the price of gold is so high that previously some gold could not be profitably mined, but now it can, that means allocation of resources in that particular case is done efficiently and no "committee" needed to decide that. The market is a great thing.

binaryblob · 2024-06-11T04:38:04+00:00

Ah, this guy is an ancient civilizations conspiracy theorist?

Is there any other type?

binaryblob · 2024-06-11T04:36:45+00:00

SWAT Sniper playing Fortnite. I doubt anyone bringing a knife is a real danger to anyone. Just wait 5 days until they have to sleep or give them what they want. It's not like they can spend the money or anything.

binaryblob · 2024-06-11T04:32:40+00:00

I think it's a high risk option to go against an enemy that might be sitting on highly advanced technology (eighty year of secret weapons development is a fuck ton of time). The most likely outcome would be that no nuke ever touches the USA when launched and the USA doing a conventional invasion of Russia. I am not sure what they will do about the Russian population, however, since they are a legacy problem (too brainwashed to be of any use). I guess they would just destroy all military assets and let nature take its course, making Russia the equivalent of Somalia.

It would make sense to me if there were some kind of space force making regular trips to space or even having an extended base there all in secret, because space is a useful war domain to be and every military analyst understands that space dominance is key for winning WW3, so you can derive that there must be space assets.

binaryblob · 2024-06-11T04:26:02+00:00

Who hurt Jimmy Dore or was it just a cash payment? I just don't get why anyone would ever do that, unless born as a Russian sleeper agent.

binaryblob · 2024-06-11T04:23:38+00:00

On every pair of pants and shirt in every child's wardrobe?

Like I said, it's a matter of priorities.

With a battery, or does the child have 2 extension cords?

A nanofabric can have an embedded battery (in fact billions of them).

And this technology is machine washable, or are we thinking wear once and replace?

This is a question of economics. I am sure it can be designed to have some reasonable cost, if decades of R&D are spent on it.

I'm not sure we can detect every instance of over person touching another in a war zone.

If they want to, they can, because otherwise I would have had a spook contact me by now asking how I would design such a surveillance platform. JWST can see a lot. Do you really think there are not at least ten upgraded military versions looking the other way, if not systems which are much more powerful?

Am I completely sure that they can? No, but they would have to be fucking stupid in that case not to contact me to work on next generation surveillance systems. I think the people in charge of R&D for the military are not fucking stupid. Do you?

Perhaps they are complacent, but I wouldn't count on it.

binaryblob · 2024-06-11T04:13:04+00:00

It creates dopamine in the brain of the owner salivating about all the lusers on his website to the point that he pulls out his credit card.

The owner could just as well be the Russian state. I think there are real humans on this site (a handful), but perhaps all of them are paid shills. Perhaps it's already all AI.

binaryblob · 2024-06-11T04:06:58+00:00

Jimmy, are you role playing SPECTRE again?

binaryblob · 2024-06-11T04:04:52+00:00

Just put an AI camera on it with sensor fusion. Basic shit. If we can do it in a war zone, surely we can do so in a church/playground, right?

binaryblob · 2024-06-10T21:56:58+00:00

I don't know. That's why I asked.

binaryblob · 2024-06-10T12:06:32+00:00

However, the Belgian police would never raid houses looking for evidence of influence by the USA, Israel, the Ukraine, or other Necocon-favoured/controlled regimes and/or organisations.

There is no evidence for this, is there? I mean, I can totally understand that perhaps after WW2 the US planted spies everywhere to make sure the military capabilities never exceed theirs, but that's just a conspiracy theory that would make sense, but nothing that can be substantiated. One reason not to believe in this theory, is because I happen to personally know some people in parliament and you can be certain these people are not exactly spook material.

binaryblob · 2024-06-10T11:03:08+00:00

Nobody was arrested (a search of his house as done, however), but this happened: https://europeannewsroom.com/house-search-at-the-employee-of-fvd-mep-de-graaff/.

binaryblob · 2024-06-10T08:46:50+00:00

But the people who develop AI admit to not knowing what it will be capable of

What better way to inflate your stock price?

You say that with conviction.

I say it with the same conviction. If AI were so smart, how come it's not possible to ask it to implement Google Chrome from scratch, but without any programming errors? (This woud be an extremely easy task for a human intelligence with the caveat of it living forever and not being bored. ) If AI were real, the stock price of every company would fall, because they wouldn't make money anymore in the future.

You could take any company and ask the AI to just say "here is a bankaccount, please buy real estate and clone company Z". We don't see that happening, do we? Why isn't Jeff Bezos asking his AI how to clone Mush's space ship or even how to improve it?

binaryblob · 2024-06-10T08:36:29+00:00

There is no genocide in Palestine according to militant/civilian death ratios.

binaryblob · 2024-06-10T08:27:41+00:00

The label regarding far right is indeed inaccurate.

And these Neocons have the USA, directly or indirectly, always involved in a constant state of war, pointlessly mass-murdering peoples all over the planet.

The US doesn't do mass murdering of civilians anymore. If you say stupid stuff like this, you imply being a bot. You seem to have a prompt where you inject truths and falsehoods into one message. Quite clever, but easy to see.

binaryblob · 2024-06-10T04:13:44+00:00

Everyone can see a far right Putin puppet government will be a disaster. It will be a self-made disaster, but how fucking stupid do you have to be to vote for the far right?

Not sure whether she still holds such crazy ideas: https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/news/le-pen-insists-crimea-is-russian/

binaryblob · 2024-06-09T14:16:21+00:00

I don't know. Could be Russia for just stirring up the pot, it could even be the news media that wants to fabricate news.

I would like to know whether these people are unhinged "progressives" or spies. I suspect our spies know, but it's annoying that they don't just tell the public that they know.

binaryblob · 2024-06-09T12:34:21+00:00

When does being deranged become geopolitics? The best way would be if the spies gave those signs to these people and these people actually believe in their weird fantasies.

If you were to think really abstractly, you could also see every state as a terrorist organization (but they call it "deterrence") and then it's suddenly OK. A terrorist organization is basically just a wannabe state. I don't think states like it when they are compared to terrorists, but logically it's pretty sound. The Taliban being the prima example. They now are a state. If that continues for 500 years, will they still be seen as a bunch of terrorists or will they suddenly be seen as a legitimate (whatever that means) state at some point?

If terrorists blow up a subway, indeed the people they have blown up are "innocent" on a superficial level (they might not even have voted for whoever is in charge), but they are contributing to the GDP of that country, which fuels their weapons industry. It would be possible to have innocent people if people could allocate their tax payments to specific goals. People don't want to hear they are in fact contributing to violence in the world. If the Russians want peace, they could just all order Soylent green for a year, stock up on water and all decide to stop going into work for a year at the same time. Weapons manufacturing would stop, logistics would stop and the war would be over. Apparently, they can't think of such a simple strategy. For about $4000/person such a strategy would work. I would have gladly paid $4000 for the war to be over, because the war has cost me twenty times that already because of higher energy costs, but apparently nobody can do the math. The EU should just give such packages for free for every Russian committing to just sit on their ass for a year, perhaps more for soldiers. 140 million Russians times $5000 = $700B, which is less than the cost of the war up to this point. I would expect the country to collapse into somewhat of a tribal society in less than three months, however. This Soylent-green tactic would also make it known exactly which percentage of the Russian population is in favor of the war, so if Russia is ever invaded, there would also be data on which cities have a lot of insurgents.

I am not saying I want a war; world war 3 has already started two years ago according to Ryan McBeth (which seems to be fairly neutral, despite him being an American).

binaryblob · 2024-06-09T09:14:27+00:00

Perhaps the world would be a nicer place with just one billion people instead of 8 billion or the hellish 10 billion that is projected.

binaryblob · 2024-06-09T09:11:32+00:00

Those are spies, right? It's impossible for those people to be real, because Hamas wants to murder every gay person the second they are in power.

It would make sense if gay people started to organize against those that want to exterminate them. This timeline seems to have glitched.

binaryblob · 2024-06-09T09:06:42+00:00

Were you as slow in school too? https://ryanmcbeth.substack.com/p/has-world-war-iii-already-started

binaryblob · 2024-06-09T06:39:04+00:00

You know what else is about "less than 8 years old"? AI.

They all claim it's because their advertisers don't want to be associated with such words. These days, perhaps they want to have their AIs trained on PC texts.

You don't even have to use swear words to get banned. All you need to do is tell a snowflake the truth and you get banned. The content on Reddit is so consistent that I am wondering what percentage is an actual human still. I can imagine that if you ask whether a selfie of the most hideous person on the planet looks good, I am sure you will still get fake positive responses like "You look great, cutie". It's all fake.

On Saidit, especially in climate threads, it seems everything is fake too.

In this thread, there are also conspiracy theories being spread, which is also a thing bots do.

I think a site on which you can't express your opinion isn't really worth anything. For a society in which you also can't do that, a similar thing holds. Such things only make sense in a fascist society or in Stalin's communism.

binaryblob · 2024-06-08T10:35:53+00:00

On some websites they implement something where if you are on Android you can accidentally log in, because some popup at a location of the screen near the navigation buttons (like "back") are located. I hate Android and iOS. There should be laws for a third option having a minimum market share or access to technology or something like that, e.g. a viable Linux phone.

binaryblob · 2024-06-08T05:52:14+00:00

Quite amazing that only bots responded here. Sometimes I wonder whether I am the only real human here.

People can't cope with high levels of CO2 (cognitive performance declines). Everyone can notice the difference between 400ppm and 900ppm.

binaryblob · 2024-06-08T05:45:09+00:00

A well executed campaign is already indistinguishable in fairly low resolutions. The only reason you still notice them, is when the texts are obviously false, but nothing stops an attacker from being slightly wrong.

Let's say Biden announced it has implemented a new policy in which it will stop any Russian oil tanker from reaching their targets. That could be seen as a plausible message.

binaryblob · 2024-06-08T05:30:27+00:00

You can't buy that at Walmart, but it wouldn't surprise me if the Special Forces already have it. This is a start: https://www.mouser.co.uk/applications/healthcare-may-reside-in-smart-clothing/.

binaryblob · 2024-06-07T06:54:19+00:00

What are you proposing?

Society should start by putting a price tag on every case of abuse that is prevented to show to industry how much they care about it. Apparently, society cares about iPhones more than child safety.

Where is the "GoFundMe" against child abuse with a goal of $100B (much less than is spent on war)?

Also, it should define what abuse is exactly, because without an exact definition no machine can be made to detect it without false results.

Parents could configure "touching controls" in the clothing fabric based on location and time, for example. If a child is touched, a signal could go out to phones nearby with a legal obligation to help for example. So, clearly, that would be a solution. So, let's say the breast area would be specified as a region in which such events would be broadcast, then the parents would configure that into the clothes. Such systems could also be integrated with nearby CCTV.

I have no doubt that efficient solutions could be engineered, but it's not a priority, because basically nobody seems to give a shit about children (or the elderly for that matter).

binaryblob · 2024-06-07T05:08:08+00:00

I am talking about the people not gang raping children. You know the ones that are so surprised this happens probably every day somewhere on the planet.

binaryblob · 2024-06-06T09:13:25+00:00

Don't you think that's ultimately also just another excuse? The real reason is that people are ultimately either too selfish or too stupid. Intelligent people would recognize that having damaged children leads to higher health costs later on and would make sure to prevent such abuse. It's not like there are no technological means to stop child abuse; it's just a choice.

Despite the repeated outrage, the average man on the streets wants his own children to be abused by not caring about the children of others. That's all there is to it. (They might say they care, but once it is time to pay for the technology development required to get there, they don't want to anymore. )

Just look at the semiconductor industry; they can build marvels of technology when there is demand. There is no demand for the service of child abuse not happening.

There is a name for this: delusion.

binaryblob · 2024-06-05T07:41:49+00:00

That standard can't even represent Y10K.

binaryblob · 2024-06-03T08:18:09+00:00

Being proud of being in a minority (and which likely is caused by a genetic variation that would result in extinction of the human race if everyone had it), seems hard to believe.

Just ask any of these people what they are proud of and probably they have nothing to say.

binaryblob · 2024-06-03T08:14:04+00:00

You are not making any sense, but if you are a bot that makes sense. Can you point to any comment you have written that isn't botlike?

binaryblob · 2024-06-03T08:11:31+00:00

I am glad they banned it. Ideally all processed foods would be banned, but I wonder whether it would drop the price of healthy food or if it would just mean there isn't enough food to go around.

The artificial smoke is disgusting if you see it in the factory.

binaryblob · 2024-06-03T08:08:12+00:00

Trump had paid sex with S. Daniels, then had someone else pay her and in turn he paid that someone by mislabeling, which is apparently illegal in the US. Usually, that isn't a felony, but apparently there is "a state law against conspiring to promote a candidacy by unlawful means".

I think it should be perfectly fine to fuck whoever you want for money, especially if it are large sums of money (if it were $5, it would be more questionable). What exactly is the difference between a male porn star fucking a female porn star and a guy fucking a female porn star, except the presence of cameras and potentially slightly different payments?

So, it's a crime, because the law makes almost every action illegal. Breathing could also be considered illegal, because of the toxic gas (CO2) one generates.

If Trump sold nuclear secrets to the Saudis or something like that, now that could be a reason to arrest him. The American people should be arrested for being so stupid to elect old people into office (regardless of them being Biden or Trump), but there is no law against that and not enough space in prisons.

I also don't agree that leaving out information counts as promotion. For example, it would be promotion if the saving of some child (stuck in a river for example) by Trump would be staged and that would be used in a political campaign. That leaves misdemeanors in my interpretation, but apparently the jury saw things differently (probably wrong, because they are stupid).

If someone can provide a better summary, feel free to do so. In particular, why it would be considered "promotion".

binaryblob · 2024-06-01T12:04:52+00:00

Children stop believing in the tooth fairy very much before the age of 12.

If indeed, this was part of a diabolical plot to rape a child, sure, but what if the guy is essentially retarded without any education. That is, that this person could just as well have the mental abilities of a gorilla (or less). Perhaps they have inbred for so long that they can't even be classified as human anymore. Who knows?

binaryblob · 2024-05-30T06:03:47+00:00

Install a local LLM and use it as a first spam filter.

binaryblob · 2024-05-30T05:59:55+00:00

So, who are these people with "real power"? I think alluding to some kind of elite is insane. If Musk moves to Mars (never going to happen, because it was all a scam) and installs a planetary defense system, then he might have "power". Otherwise, you have a bunch of senile candidates running for the White House. Putin has power, I suppose, but he has power over a bunch of people without indoor plumbing and it seems he is afraid for NATO. He trolls, but if he really had power, he would just declare war on NATO.

What kind of power are we talking about? Military power? Diplomatic power? Lobbying power by companies?

binaryblob · 2024-05-29T23:05:20+00:00

I don't see how that gets votes. To win an election as a Decepticon you need to convince some reasonable people you are reasonable as well. This is not going to work for that.

binaryblob · 2024-05-29T04:42:04+00:00

Reuters has that literally in its bylaws.

binaryblob · 2024-05-28T17:43:54+00:00

Tired slaves only cost money, because they do not work at all. I agree people are more tired and stupider. I also think it's overestimating the ability to predict such effects on the scale of billions of people.

binaryblob · 2024-05-28T12:09:17+00:00

Still overly optimistic. Assuming that the court system is in any way "fair", is a recipe for disaster.

As long as there is not at the very least a death penalty for corrupt judges and preferably a torture penalty with an extermination of their entire family, how can anyone ever trust the court system? Since such laws are not in the system, obviously corruption happens, because there is hardly any incentive to not be corrupt.

binaryblob · 2024-05-28T11:08:34+00:00

Overly optimistic.

binaryblob · 2024-05-27T22:30:29+00:00

People writing articles without technical expertise has to be one of my pet peeves.

binaryblob · 2024-05-27T08:24:53+00:00

Pot causes brain malfunction, specifically amnesia, so one could argue that this is a valid scientific reason (not a valid legal reason, which has got nothing to do with that). Having said that people ever drinking alcohol also shouldn't be allowed to use a gun according to that logic, which would mean that the US army wouldn't exist with such a rule.

I wonder what percentage of current gun owners don't use any brain altering chemicals (like alcohol).

binaryblob · 2024-05-27T06:55:18+00:00

I think they don't care, but that it was a natural technological development to develop such a capability.

If you can measure what a world leader is whispering at a security conference, wouldn't that be nice? Wouldn't you want to know that? How about listening into literally everything every world leader has ever said? There is no point to stop your surveillance development programs until you have accomplished that goal.

If you can intercept the source signal, there is also no need to ever decrypt anything.

binaryblob · 2024-05-25T06:01:19+00:00

I was implying you already have lost.

binaryblob · 2024-05-24T23:55:30+00:00

I don't think you will get far with any weapon you can carry, unless you have a couple of remote controlled F-22s in your secret basement. So, you get blown to pieces from over the horizon and you are dead. Now, how are you going to defend yourself if you are dead?

binaryblob · 2024-05-24T08:54:04+00:00

I think it's insane that people are talking about AI safety, when these AIs have never demonstrated any 120+ IQ ability. Being able to answer questions of low complexity (like on a test) is no substitute for real ability.

AI could become weaponized, if you wish, if it would actually be able to just run forever and improve its results continuously. Right now, it can't even generate code for which existing libraries exist.

AI indeed can generate code, but its nature is of combining perhaps several layers of syntactical complexity, but not dozens of layers of semantic complexity.

This doesn't change that these AIs are useful and could replace most jobs (if they had a robotic body with low maintenance costs).

I have a few go to questions that I ask to determine whether progress is being made and I'd say that Gemini is behind ChatGPT right now, but I can just see ChatGPT struggle when you ask it somewhat more complex queries.

Perplexity.ai seems to be superior in its output quality to both, even though it has no creative ability. Has anyone of you used a wider range? If would be interesting to know how it works internally, although likely it's just more neural networks of known types with known architectures, except they might have combined several of them in some different way.

binaryblob · 2024-05-23T10:47:01+00:00

The only reason I can think of for having an old president is if they do so much terrible shit that if they ever get convicted their "life sentence" is just a few years anyway.

binaryblob · 2024-05-23T06:56:39+00:00

It's so meaningless that it could be a good thing and a bad thing.

I'd say it's a bad thing, because we already have news agencies and they should be able to perform such a function as well. For example, if Reuters says that rt.com has 30% articles that are false and rt.com can't show that Reuters has more than 0.5% wrong articles, then that would be enough reason to never visit rt.com anymore for me.

They already have indicators near YouTube videos regarding disinformation, but if you go along this path at some point you need to have your intelligence apparatus involved and then they will leak what they know, which is something they don't want to happen.

Where do I signup to be freed from Ursula? I think she is not fit for her position. Apparently, she doesn't understand that it was not her place to go to Ukraine for example. She literally doesn't understand her job title. She acts like she is elected president of the European Union in the same way that a president of the US is. She is not.

She lived in the US for 4 years. Who says she isn't a US asset? I don't think anyone that lived for such a long time in the US should have any position of power, because of the risk. The decisions she makes are certainly matching the level of someone wishing to demolish the EU. She also went to the London School of Economics, which means that a British bias was also applied to her brain. So, she is literally brainwashed by two of the EU's economic adversaries. Sure, they are also partner nations, but ultimately it's capitalism all the way down.

binaryblob · 2024-05-23T06:39:13+00:00

They say it takes thousands of dollars to do a name change of a term. Perhaps they should not be in charge if they can't figure out how to do cheap name changes.

It should be easily possible to do a name change every every day without too much difficulty.

I propose we change "senator" to "old insider-trading fart".

binaryblob · 2024-05-21T15:43:03+00:00

Nah, that's bullshit.

Most "reasons" I hear from people these days are bullshit reasons; I wish I could slap some sense into them with millions at a time (without me even having to get to know the poor creatures), but unfortunately we have rules that fit a society of rational individuals and I live in the circus.

Isn't EVERY government like that, everywhere?

Fair point, but they at least pretend to not be criminals and the set of criminals rotates every 4 or 5 years, which theoretically helps.

There is a difference between "you are in the opposition and I am going to poison you and then lock you up in a Siberia" and "I am going to make sure you will not get a government contract, even though you are the best". It's both corruption, however.

I think not every government is like that, but then again, I don't know many governments. Ultimately, if you go against their interests, even legally, they will find a way to 'govern'. I think the trust in governments is at an all time low to the point that senior news reporters refer to them as circuses... In the time of the Romans, senators were at least educated and respected. Depending on the emperor in charge, corruption was even punished. I am wondering whether we really progressed anything.

How do you think the war will end? I don't see Ukraine going to negotiate, because you can't negotiate with Russia (they will just regroup and attack again). Russia could retreat and hope that Ukraine will not march to Moscow at any later point in the future (let's say Ukraine develops until a wealthy state in the next few hundred years and could crush Russia with low effort at some point). I think Putin just has gotten COVID and gotten slightly crazy (lots of people experienced something like that). The average IQ (as compared with pre-COVID) dropped due to COVID, no doubt.

Do you not think Russia is on a full on genocidal mission to replace every Ukrainian with a Russian? It seems completely obvious to me.

binaryblob · 2024-05-20T09:58:48+00:00

It must be nice that you don't have to call it a special military operation anymore, because it's kind of a stretch to have a front line, but not count it as a war.

Does the government care (e.g. arrest you) if you share your opinion on such a fringe website or do they only care when you reach large audiences (like Twitter/Facebook/etc.)?

Did they care about you talking to your friends or do you then also have to tip toe around exactly what you say? I mean, I can imagine they only care when you actually pick up a sign or shout on the streets.

In principle, the government could just arrest you for sharing 'intelligence' (pictures of a street).

Does the Russian government arrest tourists for ransom or just plain fun (e.g. to rape pretty girls like the Saudis do)?

Do you even still have something resembling a government or is it thugs all the way down? I mean, someone still needs to manage to replace a street sign in a city.

binaryblob · 2024-05-19T17:21:51+00:00

I saw a video of her a month ago, but her skin color looked like she was already dead. I don't think people suddenly die without violence; she was already sick, but perhaps she didn't know.

binaryblob · 2024-05-19T17:15:51+00:00

The WWW was nice when everyone had their own presence; now, it's just a random collection of pictures and low-effort content with people liking whatever new lipstick someone has.

Websites should be like those displayed in the movie 'The Net'; everyone displaying their creativity.

I am not even sure whether creative websites still exist.

binaryblob · 2024-05-19T17:12:48+00:00

You know, I actually hate that I can't just get a table of data from anywhere that says which knife has what sharpness and what durability (for example, for slicing 10000 potatoes) it has over time (with a nice graph showing it), what happens if you cut in your finger (go to hospital and reattach or say bye bye to your nerves) (or whether it comes with safety gloves), and so on.

Even CPUs (that were fast enough a decade ago) have a million little benchmarks (despite not improving in single-threaded speed by more than a factor of 2-3), but for something as low tech as a knife, nobody bothered to buy all of them and put them under an X-ray scanner with a robot setup to just simulate a ten year use or something of those knives. Every fucking person on the planet needs a knife, but nobody bothered to actually measure anything? What are we? A bunch of savages?

Some knives claim they can tolerate the dishwasher, but what does that even mean? How much damage is being done? Is it just a marketing lie (probably, yes)? Did they just add some chemical coating on it? How thick is it, how long does it last? Does that coating cause cancer? So many questions for something that used to be a sharp stone many thousands of years ago.

Different "brands" for knives are fucking stupid. All that you want is to put in some variables, like amount of cutting that you want to do and how fast you should be able to cut through some standardized kind of vegetable, the price per cut, etc. and then you should just get the knife for you. Anything which isn't pareto-optimal should not even be listed. Sometimes, I hate capitalism, because it is a system in which you get fucked if you don't know what you are buying.

I admit it; I don't know what I am buying when I am buying a knife, but apparently the rest of the world also doesn't know; they just invite a bunch of chefs and ask their opinion and call it a review in a magazine.

Perhaps I should just buy whatever is most expensive and used by Gordon Ramsay, but then again, I might chop my fingers of, because well, I am certainly not Gordon Ramsay.

In a way, I don't even want a knife; I want a maintenance free robot chef preparing my food. Too bad those are in short supply.

binaryblob · 2024-05-19T08:57:20+00:00

https://www.quora.com/Why-do-oil-fields-oil-rigs-burn-gas answers your flare question. If you think you know better than the people in the O&G industry, feel free to start a new company.

Energy has forever been scarce, otherwise the price wouldn't be wildly different per continent. If you think it is not scarce, start buying it in one cheap place and transport it to an expensive place.

Food is pretty scarce too, because there are a lot of people and not all of them can eat the best. If you don't believe food is scarce, visit North-Korea. I think housing is artificially limited, due to pointless regulations, so that would be a good example, but you would have to substantiate it with specific references in resources such as https://buildingtheskyline.org/skyscrapers-and-affordability/. By definition land is in limited supply, and housing prices are related to the price of land, so a skyscraper only becomes an option when the price of land is very high (since building higher is more costly (and this will always remain the case). So, regulations have an impact on housing prices, but you have not demonstrated how large this impact is. As such, your arguments are only convincing at a first glance.

Research papers funded with public money should be free, yes, but often already are.

Cell phone service is already at $10/month.

Internet uses power and as such can't be "free", but I agree that it's not a free market.

The fiber market for example, is unfair, because the first company to dig somewhere doesn't need to care about the fiber of someone else. The second company has higher digging costs and can't be competitive anymore.

binaryblob · 2024-05-19T08:29:40+00:00

Why would the Kremlin care if Americans are debt slaves?

Disruption of any kind is good for them.

binaryblob · 2024-05-18T21:16:34+00:00

I agree, but I think it's mostly ignorance and a general lack of intelligence. Corruption exists everywhere in positions of power, but the general public isn't held back by corruption. Your position is very optimistic, because it suggests things can change.

The elite (whoever those are, because our political leaders are certainly not elite anymore) don't need to use artificial scarcity, because there is still actual scarcity (for example Au is not exactly abundant). Some types of cheese are branded and sometimes even the biology is "protected" and that's a type of intellectual property that shouldn't exist for basically forever. Even for such a simple thing as ammo there is an actual shortage and that's because for anything with non-trivial demand it's difficult to match supply and demand. However, I do concede that given enough automation that's a thing of the past.

binaryblob · 2024-05-18T15:44:32+00:00

Yes, and they don't want to pay in blood for independence. Without the French, they would instantly be annexed by whoever is closest.

You can't win a war with spears anymore. Someone should tell them.

binaryblob · 2024-05-18T15:37:52+00:00

Low quality ones.

I should probably buy one of those for which a Japanese ninja sweat two years to make one.

binaryblob · 2024-05-18T15:04:22+00:00

Just imagine China shipping a billion kamikaze drones in containers to every port in the world.

binaryblob · 2024-05-18T08:56:13+00:00

The solution is so simple; AI controlled weapons. All that it needs is a large industrial base.

binaryblob · 2024-05-18T08:52:55+00:00

I think the New Caledonians should be happy for France to show up when they get attacked by China.

binaryblob · 2024-05-18T08:41:32+00:00

I think trains as a technology are not mature, because in particular the cost of maintenance of the infrastructure didn't go down enormously. Automation of the maintenance of tracks would be key.

Having said that, it would still require at the very least building a business case, which would be complicated, because you need to know a lot about the existing rail business as well as of their competing models (like road trains) and future demand.

I think Australia could be one of the richest countries in the world and all they need to do would be to install solar panels. It's quite insane that they can't just do that.

binaryblob · 2024-05-18T06:04:35+00:00

It makes me think of "Why does Ross, the largest friend, not simply eat the other five?". Or in this case, why don't all the grown old men not decide to eat MTG (and possibly AOC as well, although she didn't appear to have started the insanity)?

Who is going to miss MTG? The Kremlin?

binaryblob · 2024-05-18T05:58:45+00:00

I think it was more strict during WW2, but perhaps he meant during a time in which the country was not occupied.

It's full blown propaganda. For example, they lower the contribution to health care from 385 to 165 euros, but anyone driving a car will save more than that in lowered fuel taxes, which makes this a relative tax increase for the poor.

China has long term plans and managed to deploy a working train system in a decade or so. In The Netherlands, they can't even fix the housing crisis (it has been a crisis for a decade or so; experts wouldn't call that a crisis anymore, but a deceased patient). Then again, in China they can't build houses at all.

The Netherlands would have deployed Maglev trains for transportation and demolished any house in the way of such a train or built tunnels decades ago if it had been China. The Netherlands is tiny and every square inch should be utilized for high value add industries (like done in their Brainport region), but instead now they have someone that looks like a crazy cat lady "protecting the farmers" (a literal waste of land causing pollution).

I don't think it's possible to compete with low corruption state capitalism.

binaryblob · 2024-05-18T05:05:05+00:00

It's more useful to link to https://massie.house.gov/uploadedfiles/endthefed.pdf. I read it, but it will never pass, because it seems to have been written by someone with an intellectual disability, which is what anyone with a brain would see in 30 seconds.

If you look at the supporters of the bill, it seems like this one is sponsored by the Kremlin. I think there are ways to abolish the Fed and perhaps there might be reasons to get rid of it (for example, its control over interest rates is somewhat insane and all the fraud that entails).

The power of the Fed has already been diminished in some way. If the supporters of this bill actually believed in it, they would just not hold any USD denominated assets, but they would just pick a country that they liked that worked according to their principles.

For example Switzerland would probably meet their requirements:

In accordance with the NBA, the SNB's share capital amounts to CHF 25 million (art. 25 NBA). It is divided into 100,000 registered shares with a nominal value of CHF 250 each. At end-2022, 51% of these shares were held by cantons, cantonal banks and other public authorities and institutions. The remaining shares were in the possession of private individuals and legal entities in Switzerland and abroad. Shareholders may vote only if they are entered in the share register. However, as stipulated in the NBA, a private shareholder's registration is limited to a maximum of 100 shares (art. 26 NBA). Of the registered shares, just under 66% were held by public sector shareholders.

binaryblob · 2024-05-18T04:48:21+00:00

They have railroads for iron ore and coal. Road trains ar used for the sparsely populated areas more near to the center of the continent.

If it were profitable to replace road trains with trains it would probably already have happened.

binaryblob · 2024-05-17T22:28:20+00:00

Long haul trucking in Australia should be its first application.

binaryblob · 2024-05-17T22:27:48+00:00

If you can't get Bluetooth to work, that might be you causing the problem.

Bluetooth seems to be a bit too energy efficient to the point that it doesn't work anymore in many cases.

WiFi uses more power, but it is much more predictable.

I think many people also have no clue about the different versions of Bluetooth.

A self-driving car could work, but it would probably take up at least all of the battery power to run. Also, it won't ever work in the way they are currently trying to get it to work. That is, none of the self-driving cars on the road today will ever reach Level 5 driving, because you can't get there by evolution of a simpler system.

binaryblob · 2024-05-17T22:02:41+00:00

We had Winamp running on a 486. Now, we have "Spotify" and iTunes. I can't imagine the stupidity people must have to use those services.

I think a file system is too complicated for a lot of people and in particularly, it's bringing order to the chaos that is difficult for many people.

A menu structure also is too complicated for many people.

binaryblob · 2024-05-17T21:55:41+00:00

Do you not think that "they" can make naked pictures of you while you are in the shower from a drone 3 miles up in the sky? I mean, it might be that they can't do it, but I even can imagine methods of doing that, given enough resources. So, either I am the smartest person in the world or they can already do it. Take your pick.

binaryblob · 2024-05-17T21:52:48+00:00

If you are not an LLM, those are some nice writing skills you got going on there.

binaryblob · 2024-05-17T08:16:46+00:00

Trusting a tech company. Yeah, that's what you get for doing that. In fact, you can't trust any company. All of them are leeches. The happy customers are just the ones that don't know the business model.

binaryblob · 2024-05-16T21:56:28+00:00

So, you are saying you are going to literally eat shit and post it to YouTube when she isn't dead in a year? You said you "guarantee" it.

I think she shouldn't whine, because she has a partner and has apparently no real diseases (how bad can your autism really be, if you have a loving partner?). Anxiety can be cured.

I also tend to agree that their family probably doesn't care about her.

The only reason she is going to die, is because their doctors just want her to die.

binaryblob · 2024-05-16T21:48:30+00:00

I wonder how ugly the average raped woman is in Ukraine.

binaryblob · 2024-05-16T21:43:55+00:00

This depends on the field, but indeed having a new textbook every year is insanity. I think it would be a good thing to rewrite some text books, but it would require a more evolved human to take advantage of such a textbook (which is why the textbooks should stay the same). I am not sure how to cure human stupidity. I think introducing an elite university would work fine for people with exceptional ability and intelligence. Universities used to be prestigious organisations. These days they are just disgusting factories cranking out workers with applied knowledge.

Property taxes are the sign of a government with way too much power. Once acquired there shouldn't be any tax on property.

Tax as such is legalized theft. The idea that the government is able to spend money well has been disproved countless times and as such one could argue to lower taxation, until the government can prove they can spend money better than the market.

Funding education with tax also leads to all kinds of scary things like politics interfering with what is being taught to children. Deciding what should be taught to children should be decided by a worldwide board of educators with as their sole focus to bring about independent great thinkers. No national bullshit should enter the curriculum and certainly no insane ideas like communism.

binaryblob · 2024-05-16T21:30:49+00:00

Baudet was very poor and from various media reports it was implied that his life style was funded by becoming a spokesperson for the Kremlin. Why would you ever listen to someone that acted like a Russian puppet?

Baudet conned his followers and funneled money into his own pockets. You would have to be an absolute idiot to "follow" such a nobody. I wouldn't even want him to prepare a cup of tea for me, because it might be radioactive.

Regarding the government, from what I understand there won't even be a PM, because their candidate Plasterk has been the subject of some patent case involving some cancer treatment, which doesn't surprise me at all; almost everyone in every parliament is a criminal if you dig deep enough.

They will pretty much have to find a different person. Also, Plasterk reminds me of Paul von Hindenburg that got crushed by Hitler when he rose to power. Plasterk has the weary eyes of an old man, which Von Hindenburg also had; in no shape or form is that guy fit to be PM (he would probably have to nap during the day or something). Can't these idiots really not find anyone qualified?

Plasterk might be fit to run a commission for the local soccer club, but he is not fit to run a country. Just imagine that guy talking to Rushi Sunak (PM of UK). Sunak will completely dominate any conversation. When Sunak took over, he stabilized the pound (which was crashing because of what May did). Sunak has displayed leadership with regards to the situation in Ukraine.

I wonder how Eva Vlaar makes their money, but if she isn't paid by the Kremlin, it's just sad and a waste of a perfectly good spot at a university that could have been used by someone with potential.

I'd expect LarrySwinger2 to either be a bot or someone really lost too. Nobody, unless they are a Russian asset, takes Baudet serious anymore. Russia could have had a PM in their pocket, if he just had played the long game.

Please explain, how do you get this stupid?

binaryblob · 2024-05-16T07:58:21+00:00

Don't give the wrong people ideas.

binaryblob · 2024-05-15T22:08:46+00:00

Serves you right for using a walled garden computing dystopia.

If you are not stupid, there is no reason not to use Linux these days.

binaryblob · 2024-05-15T21:59:03+00:00

Intersex people are not mentally ill (although, I'd expect higher incidence of mental illness). Do you even know what they are?

When people say people are mentally ill, it just means they don't know why they are different, because otherwise we would be able to cure these people. It's likely that a man believes to be a woman when the brain is formed that way because of a lack of male sex hormones or some contamination of the environment, for example. I believe the medical community doesn't see it as an illness, because otherwise they would have to try to help them.

binaryblob · 2024-05-15T15:29:10+00:00

Identify as Poopie Monster by covering the walls in shit and see how accepting they really are.

binaryblob · 2024-05-15T15:23:54+00:00

Do you really?

Yes, because one random person with a flag isn't a threat, but when your whole street does, it is a very real threat. I think we should throw out people that do not want to defend the land, if needed, but presumably would help an invading force. For example, In East-Germany lots of people long to Russia. Just imagine enlisting to the German army and you get to be toe to toe with a bunch of Putin lovers in a war against the Russians. It's a strategic mistake to tolerate such people.

I don't think it's about the holiness of the ground. It's that's that's their house and home and someone stole it.

If it's just about money, the world could easily buy out all the Palestinians. That's a lot cheaper than hearing about X number of deaths for the next 50 years. I have no idea what the Palestinians really want. The idea of the Internet was supposed to be that you could talk to someone on the other side of the planet for greater understanding, etc. Now, where can I find what an average Palestinian wants so much? I think they would kill for the right to live in the US, for example.

binaryblob · 2024-05-15T15:15:32+00:00

Only a machine will ever get to see it. Now, if you were to create a LLM that would fake plausible sessions, then you might be able to hide in the noise.

binaryblob · 2024-05-15T07:56:46+00:00

Maintaining a browser is mostly in the interest of someone who wants to abuse others. So, who or what tells me Librewolf isn't actually developed by China or Russia or some basement dweller that wants to hack the planet?

I am sure it's "open-source", but so is Firefox and apparently they also don't understand the concept of privacy.

binaryblob · 2024-05-15T07:50:54+00:00

That doesn't work. You need something that fakes plausible sessions.

binaryblob · 2024-05-15T07:48:30+00:00

The other Arab countries don't, in general, support yielding the land to Israel.

Is there any particular reason for that? The Palestinians are butthurt they lost militarily a couple of times, but that's an emotional thing. How big of a deal would it really be? Let's say Israel were to to give every Palestinian a billion dollars to get the fuck out. I'd imagine that deal would be taken by all of them. So, clearly there is a number and I think the actual number would likely be a lot lower.

Do the Arab countries just not want poor people coming to them? Do the Arabs see the Palestinians as inferior? If so, why the fuck are they waving their flags everywhere? I think we should have laws to export everyone waving the flag of a different country for national security reasons and we should consider it treason. Imagine living in Ukraine and seeing that your street has Russian flags.

If the ground with some specific building is so holy (whatever that means), Israel could just ship the physical ground somewhere that the Arab world wants.

I don't think the Arabs actually want anything, I think they just want to exterminate all the Jews and that's all there is to it. Not so odd when seen from a evolutionary biology perspective. I have no doubt the Japanese also would like to exterminate everyone else, but they just had to be explained 80 years ago that they couldn't.

binaryblob · 2024-05-14T13:36:47+00:00

Can't we just have referees wear masks such that we don't know have to know the gender anymore? For all I care, they identify as the Easter Bunny.

binaryblob · 2024-05-14T13:33:53+00:00

The civilian per combattant ratio is in a way the only thing that really matters. If Israel is very fast at killing people that shouldn't change things in principle. The only reason such articles are posted is because certain countries want to keep the US busy and one way to do that is to stir up the Middle East and one way to do that is to kill 1000 Jews.

If the people in Gaza are so important, why don't any of the Arab countries just import all of them? The Jews could then just give a "Fuck off" premium to the refugees such that they would be rich and the problem would be resolved; it's not like there are any other Jew countries, but there are a lot of Arab countries.

binaryblob · 2024-05-13T06:31:20+00:00

The German Gepard is also a tank, but it's not a main battle tank.

I don't know whether any currently existing main battle tanks are designed to cope with drones. However, presumably someone has designed one already at a company currently manufacturing tanks (because they would be out of business otherwise) and certainly one could be designed (the trivial solution would be to add a Gepard style weapon (or a laser) to a main battle tank). Not a single modern (designed in 2020s) main battle tank has seen combat, so it's entirely possible that there are already defenses, but thy are just kept as a strategic advantage. War is like playing chess without knowing the pieces on the board. There is a huge advantage in the enemy not knowing you are twenty years ahead. There needs to be some publication of what is available, but you always need to hint at the reality that they don't get to see every toy you have in your arsenal.

binaryblob · 2024-05-12T19:44:40+00:00

I did not imply that. You should brush up your logic skills.

binaryblob · 2024-05-12T19:43:39+00:00

Are you an actual person or just a LLM with a particularly negative prompt?

binaryblob · 2024-05-12T17:51:11+00:00

I am not sure why you would respond when you agree. I said it was plausible.

binaryblob · 2024-05-12T07:59:45+00:00

The only way to know would be to have satellite surveillance with footage of the past year of every M1. Everything else is propaganda.

At least one M1 was captured by the Russians, so at least it's not some invincible wonder weapon. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68934205

It is plausible that the M1 isn't a match for drones, because it wasn't designed for such a battle field.

The frontline moving is hard to fake for long periods of time; at some point journalists will report that it is dangerous in some place they could previously get near to and especially when doing that in concert with satellite footage. I am not sure what agreements there are regarding sharing operationally sensitive areas, but anything falling outside of such squares would also shift.

binaryblob · 2024-05-12T07:39:47+00:00

An alternative solution is that the government kills those average citizens. Unfortunately, they never choose such solutions.

"Anti-social content"? Pretty much all content on Twitter is "anti-social". It's an advertising platform, not some happy place. Instagram is a public display of narcissists, LinkedIn is a public display of available slaves and Reddit is a collection of basement dwellers entertained by depressed YouTubers.

binaryblob · 2024-05-12T07:29:49+00:00

Mechanical damage (due to eating more) with down regulated DNA repair genes would probably account for a lot, but without measuring it there's nothing useful to say about it.

Microplastics are already known to build up in the body, which by definition reduces efficiency of body processes. Whether those give you cancer, is irrelevant.

binaryblob · 2024-05-12T07:25:58+00:00

I feel like I am talking to a primate. Feel free to tell me about your academic degrees and I might want to take you serious, even though you are not replying in any intelligent fashion; if you were an AI, I would press the thumb down button.

binaryblob · 2024-05-11T22:30:56+00:00

Sometimes other countries also cause the toxins to be released in the air, but overall you are right. I don't think there is any country in which there are no such issues.

I would not be able to tell for any product in the supermarket whether or not it would be healthy without taking samples and using a mass spectrometer (which I don't have). Microplastics are everywhere in the food chain.

I don't think it's necessarily the government, because that suggests that the problem could be fixed. The average person is a self-centered asshole and that's why we can't have nice things.

Growing your own food is considered dangerous these days, because the soil is contaminated.

Almost no economic activity does not cause harm to the environment. Take cars for example. There exists no car wheel that doesn't spread microplastics due to wear and tear.

binaryblob · 2024-05-11T22:17:31+00:00

Since not all water is wet, indeed you do.

binaryblob