It’s translating time.

Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation.

Aka: Silicon Valley elites figured out political power derives from the barrel of a gun and want to control the guns.

We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps. Is the iPhone our greatest creative if not crowning achievement as a civilization? The object has changed our lives, but it may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible.

“We want to mentally prepare you for a world where AI infrastructure demands and possible starting of a war with China makes it hard to get the tech you used to have.”

Free email is not enough. The decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public.

“We are capable of doing neither, but we still want control over the levers of power. Please?”

The limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software.

“They keep dunking on Musk on twitter. They keep calling it twitter even though he renamed it to X! It exposes the fragility of rhetoric [on our part] so we need to beat people up more to stop it. Not exactly sure how though, maybe more apps?”

The question is not whether A.I. weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose. Our adversaries will not pause to indulge in theatrical debates about the merits of developing technologies with critical military and national security applications. They will proceed.

“If we don’t build the Universe Destroying Machine, they will. Do you want us to destroy the universe or them?!?”

National service should be a universal duty. We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost.

“We’re in serious decline and no matter how we crow about the need for tech development in war, it’s not enough to compensate for flagging interest in getting killed overseas.”

If a U.S. Marine asks for a better rifle, we should build it; and the same goes for software. We should as a country be capable of continuing a debate about the appropriateness of military action abroad while remaining unflinching in our commitment to those we have asked to step into harm’s way.

“We know people won’t give up on freeze peach easily, but we still think people should have to thank military members for their service no matter what and if a soldier asks for a Universe Destroying Machine, should we really say no? Of course not. We will build that Universe Destroying Machine. It’s like Build-a-Bear but for soldiers. Those poor dears need to murder or they get sad.”

Public servants need not be our priests. Any business that compensated its employees in the way that the federal government compensates public servants would struggle to survive.

“We believe in running a government like a business… exploiting the public, employees, and eventually bankrupting it so we can move on to the next one.”

We should show far more grace towards those who have subjected themselves to public life. The eradication of any space for forgiveness—a jettisoning of any tolerance for the complexities and contradictions of the human psyche—may leave us with a cast of characters at the helm we will grow to regret.

“Elon Musk’s fees fees keep getting hurt from people dunking on him for being a terrible person.”

The psychologization of modern politics is leading us astray. Those who look to the political arena to nourish their soul and sense of self, who rely too heavily on their internal life finding expression in people they may never meet, will be left disappointed.

“Elon Musk is getting a bit creeped out by how many fanboys have a parasocial relationship with him.”

Our society has grown too eager to hasten, and is often gleeful at, the demise of its enemies. The vanquishing of an opponent is a moment to pause, not rejoice.

“It’s making the elites uncomfortable how happy some people are about the US losing ground by attacking Iran.”

The atomic age is ending. One age of deterrence, the atomic age, is ending, and a new era of deterrence built on A.I. is set to begin.

“Never stopped us from starting endless wars though. Heyo!”

No other country in the history of the world has advanced progressive values more than this one. The United States is far from perfect. But it is easy to forget how much more opportunity exists in this country for those who are not hereditary elites than in any other nation on the planet.

“Colonialism is alive and well in our minds, even if not as strong in practice. We still see the world as civil and savage.”

American power has made possible an extraordinarily long peace. Too many have forgotten or perhaps take for granted that nearly a century of some version of peace has prevailed in the world without a great power military conflict. At least three generations — billions of people and their children and now grandchildren — have never known a world war.

Okay I can’t even do this one. LOL. LMAO EVEN. The US has been at war nonstop since it became hegemon and was violent since its inception. WW3 has been conducted primarily by the US, inflicting itself on the world. Which is a joke that Norm Macdonald made about Nazi Germany declaring war, but the US actually did it.

The postwar neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone. The defanging of Germany was an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price. A similar and highly theatrical commitment to Japanese pacifism will, if maintained, also threaten to shift the balance of power in Asia.

“Stopping Nazis in Germany was bad actually, as was stopping imperial Japan. We had to pick up the slack on mass murder where they fell off! It’s a heavy burden.”

We should applaud those who attempt to build where the market has failed to act. The culture almost snickers at Musk’s interest in grand narrative, as if billionaires ought to simply stay in their lane of enriching themselves . . . . Any curiosity or genuine interest in the value of what he has created is essentially dismissed, or perhaps lurks from beneath a thinly veiled scorn.

“Poor Elon Musk is the greatest victim of our age. crying face emoji.”

Silicon Valley must play a role in addressing violent crime. Many politicians across the United States have essentially shrugged when it comes to violent crime, abandoning any serious efforts to address the problem or take on any risk with their constituencies or donors in coming up with solutions and experiments in what should be a desperate bid to save lives.

“Having the highest incarceration rate is not enough. The US needs to become one big prison colony. They’ll be places that are highly concentrated in amounts of people and have tents or something maybe. We’ll call them… concentration camps. No wait, not that.”

The ruthless exposure of the private lives of public figures drives far too much talent away from government service. The public arena—and the shallow and petty assaults against those who dare to do something other than enrich themselves—has become so unforgiving that the republic is left with a significant roster of ineffectual, empty vessels whose ambition one would forgive if there were any genuine belief structure lurking within.

“They keep criticizing Elon Musk!!! When will it end?!?”

The caution in public life that we unwittingly encourage is corrosive. Those who say nothing wrong often say nothing much at all.

“When will we get to say racist things with impunity again?”

The pervasive intolerance of religious belief in certain circles must be resisted. The elite’s intolerance of religious belief is perhaps one of the most telling signs that its political project constitutes a less open intellectual movement than many within it would claim.

“Make America Christian Again”

Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive. All cultures are now equal. Criticism and value judgments are forbidden. Yet this new dogma glosses over the fact that certain cultures and indeed subcultures . . . have produced wonders. Others have proven middling, and worse, regressive and harmful.

“Stop trying to criticize colonialism. We’re still using it!”

We must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism. We, in America and more broadly the West, have for the past half century resisted defining national cultures in the name of inclusivity. But inclusion into what?

“Allowing non-whites into the mix might dilute our racism framework.”

Tbh, though I appreciate your effort to explain how to make it clearer (it’s a solid breakdown on language use), I tend to be of the view that unless you really know your audience (ex: you’re speaking to a close friend who you can trust knows you and knows your tells for joking and serious) it’s almost always better to say outright whether you’re joking.

One point made in this thread is that not doing so makes it more difficult for people on the autism spectrum. But it’s not only that. There’s a reason Poe’s law become an adage on the internet:

The observation that, on the Internet, without a clear indication of the author’s intent, it is impossible to tell the difference between sincere extremism and a parody of extremism.

In particular, in ideological spaces, there’s real risk that parody of reactionary views can be used as a means of laundering real reactionary views through irony poisoning:

Irony poisoning is the process or altered state wherein one has a diminished capacity for distinguishing between one’s own genuine beliefs and ironic beliefs through an overuse of irony. This can manifest in either an inability to state one’s beliefs in a genuine way or genuinely echoing provocative sentiments they once held only ironically.

Or through a process like that of what is sometimes called “Schrodinger’s douchebag”:

Someone who is a jerk and decides whether they were joking or not based on how people reacted.

I’ve been wanting to write a longer post on this subject for some time, but never quite got around to it. In general, it seems to me that the common western view on parody and satire, that it’s somehow more clever/valuable/compelling if it is not explicitly and openly called attention to as such, is rooted in elitism rather than effectiveness (e.g. the idea is that there are the ones who are “clever enough of mind” to get it and the ones who aren’t, and the ones who aren’t are supposed to be left out - otherwise, why not say what it is?). Sans elitism, the “why not specify” could have some validity in theory. For example, I could imagine a scenario where speech is so criminalized that using satire to speak in code may have some value. However, that’s generally not what people are dealing with on the western English-speaking internet; either speech is not criminalized to such a degree or when it is, satire doesn’t help as “code” because of how easily it can be mistaken for the real thing and the anonymity means you won’t generally speaking to people who know you in order to decipher your true meaning.

Also tagging @Bronstein_Tardigrade@lemmygrad.ml because I think it’s worth you considering this perspective on the subject.

So McCarthyism but instead of blacklisting you for being commie, it’s for opposing genocide.

🤣

It’s a great example of how Zionism doesn’t care about Judaism when it comes down to it. It just uses it as a vessel for colonization.

It’s so ridiculous. They basically grab-bag from whoever is currently in the crosshairs of imperialism and say, like… not literally this, but in the spirit of it: “some amalgamation of [peoples we hate right now] have developed the ability to teleport and are simultaneously present everywhere and nowhere, so I guess we just have to imprison and/or kill whoever we feel like until we decide they’re dead.”

The claims are so unhinged from any kind of demonstrable, material reality.

It reminds me of when a US cop will murder a black person and then suddenly it’s “they had a criminal record”. All these mass murderers know is killing and justifying the killing with shoddy claims of the victim being a violent threat, before it’s done, after, or both.

“I want a home.”

“I can offer you some 67.”

“Six… seven… like that’s the cost of the home? $67,000?”

“Rizz fanum tax rolls, blunt your way to the polls.”

“Are you having a stroke?”

For some reason my brain read this in the voice of Will Forte playing the guy in the I Think You Should Leave plane sketch. Something like: “I gave orders for other people to invent a delivery robot! whining And it didn’t even run anyone over!” Random brain associations to things remembered in pop culture is really something.

Now I’m curious how that kind of thing worked in, like, USSR or how it tends to go in modern China. Like sort of a “to each according to their contribution.” Like if merit has a different connotation in a society where people are largely taken care of on a basic level, even if they aren’t the “most meritous.”

Merit as a way of determining who is qualified for higher positions seems sensible to me in a vacuum, but when we start getting into things like “higher position pays significantly more and has more societal privileges”, then it’s not just about expertise being placed where it belongs, it’s saying that the experts are inherently deserving of more benefits in society. And in a stratified society, what determines who goes on to become an expert can be manipulated through barriers like education and social connections. Kind of like how IQ is a measurement of how someone has been educated, rather than a measurement of inherent “intelligence.”

useless horrorific nonsense

“AI sucks because it’s shitty art” is really not a strong argument for people to go for.

For one, it appears to be largely based on the misconception of AI as only being low effort output from already dated models. Like someone put in “hot girl” and it gave them a generic samey picture like thousands of others. But models are already getting to the point where it’s harder to tell at a glance whether it’s AI, if the person put in even a little effort into prompting.

For another, it indirectly puts down less skilled artists. Those who are doing their best, but have a lot to learn and get better at (which is probably most people who draw). It implies the issue is that the output doesn’t look good enough, but most illustrators will have flaws in what they draw, sometimes even as a conscious stylistic effect if they are skilled enough to be looping back around to manipulating style in that way. The notable difference with AI generated images is a mismatch in effort and choices made; for example, images that are super detailed, yet make basic anatomy errors.

Lastly, it has a fatal problem, which is that if AI tech gets good enough to fool most people at a glance (and some of it is arguably already getting there), then all you need to do is not disclose that AI was used and people will accept it as legitimate “art”.