Sorry, just trying to be funny. But I am a feminist. More so than many women. There is plenty of scope for women to be more prominent in all human affairs. But the statistic you invented, 10 bad men for every bad woman, only reflects that women have not historically had access to the halls of power to the same extent as men. Martha is right on this one.
Benjamin, I am glad that you are a feminist, but I would say, not so fast with dismissing the 10-1 thought, As to the scope for women to be more prominent ? That would require that the social institutions and cultural structures stop discriminating against women. There are serious and multiple reasons that women have not had access to the halls of power.,,let alone equal pay, equal respect, or equal work distribution in the home. Christofascists of today are reinforcing many of those old stereotypical ideas. Looking at the numbers supporting their premise, I would say the # of men who want to hold women down, subservient, and invisible is greater than 10 to 1. Growing up in this JaneCrow, pink taxing, discriminating country, my lived experience is that most men want the status quo. I have met few men who do more than lip service to bring about equal rights for women, The majority of our Supreme Court has shown their colors. Project 2025 has proven this point, Ask any women who has needed an abortion if this has been a “bloodless coup” as Kevin Roberts, President of the Heritage Foundation just said. Women are different than men, Cherokee war councils always wanted equal #’s of women knowing that men will often push for war while women will often push for diplomacy not wanting to send their children into war. Depending depending on the situation, one outcome is a better conclusion, but the discussion from all points of view is what gets the best outcome, What many woman have to say is still undervalued, Listen to how many people are still saying America is not really for a woman president. I wish the ratio was 10to 1. We have a long way to go before that is a reality,
Benjamin, glad you recognize women as not being second class. But sadly, as a woman, there are some within the female gender ranks, who support misogynic values because they still don't recognize their own value; i.e. those ladies mentioned by Martha. To manifest ones ultimate agency and skills requires going within and not seeking approval from external sources.
That's why a woman candidate must not go against Trump again. The country is not ready to elect one. We learned that lesson once and cannot afford to learn it again.
one more time "identity politics" is proven. . .by science. . no, it's not consistent, but it probable/predictable. . . why do you think Republicans suppress the black and poor vote? And yes, it's effective. https://www.vox.com/identities/2016/12/2/13718770/identity-politics
Identity politics got women the vote. Identity politics was instrumental in the civil rights movement. If a group of people doesn't get the same result from the political process as the majority, you're going to get identity politics. Get used to it – it's not always a bad thing.
This is because a negative woman is an exception to the normal society we know. An argument that woman are better, nicer, empathic, better leaders. . has been a notion we all accept (and probably statistically true)
That’s only because participation by women has been suppressed. The real issue is that, beneath gender and sexuality, we are all human and share human frailties.
Your assessment seems simplistic and dismissive. Yes, bad politicians of all genders exist. The fact is that there are fewer women and LGBTQ in politics, and there needs to be more. Broader points of view and understanding from diverse gender identities are important. We need diversity in politics because we have diversity in the world. If the mission is to benefit as many people as possible, the more diverse our political arena, the better.
@Lisa. Do you want to print tee shirts honoring that nurse in England who killed all those babies? Or the mother who left her infants this past week alongside a Louisiana highway?
@Joan. ?? No, it seemed to me that Lisa tried to support Greg's point that one bad woman for every 10 bad men. She said "Except for those women" meaning I thought that those examples were the outliers but otherwise supporting the 10:1 ratio. It's still identity politics as Martha has pointed out.
Identity politics is indeed for idiots. Like the Muslims who won't vote for Biden, and thus elect Bibi's brother by another mother.
And those Trump women who wear T Shirts saying "Grab me by my pussy".
Identity politics maybe for idiots, but that is the name of the game. Charlie Sykes, never Trump, founder of Bulwark, was a Radio host, and at that time Wisconsonites wanted immigration, they needed the labor, however Trump changed all of that, now they are terrified of immigrants as rapists, murderers, drug mules.
Trump is where he is because of identity politics, and the only way to fight fire is with fire, or one hell of a water supply
Please don't confuse religious politics, with identity politics, with constitutionaly secular democratic politics, as intended by the US constitution . Aside from the fact that all religion is MANmade (I'm not aware of a woman made religion.), all religions claim they are divine, therefore unchallengable.
Identity politics ie. MAGA, Hitlerism, Stalinism, (yeah a commie, trained as a priest, didn't crush the church. Smarter than the average bear, the common folk like that divine connection, therefore unchallengable crap, think monarchy with feigned "but I'm equal too crap. Still, a dictator working from an idedity thing.), Lenin, Ho Chi Mihn, Putin, ad nauseum, unless purely communist Maoism, PolPot, seek out and usually, attain religious complicity. Jesus H. Christ even those purest of the pure, Evangelical Christian's bought Donald J. Trump," the least religious man on earth"!
The French seem to have been more successful at sustained secularly pure government/politics.
Maybe, just to much Puritan blood in America's political genes?
While I agree with you Jeff. I demur at this point. Religious politics is identity politics.
For instance have you ever heard of the Christian Identity movement?
And then there is the Ummah. The world wide Muslim community, fractionalized internally, but united when they perceive that they are under siege by the kuffir.
Agree with what? My whole premise is that religion has been historically used as a prop to dictatorial, monarchical, and one party rule regimes, since gods came along. Any religion's role in democratic politics is anathema, or should be, especially in US politics, where it's role is specifically rejected by constitution. Your points don't demur from my arguments. They specifically identify the ongoing attempts to create dictatorial regimes under the guise of "the will of gods'.
Of course, religion by its very nature, by the requirement to adhere to dogma is autocratic and dictatorial. Which is why the Founding Fathers were so adamant about the separation of Church and State.
I said I agree with you Jeff, and you come back at me as if I said I disagree with you.
Let me try again.
You said: "Please don't confuse religious politics, with identity politics, with constitutionaly secular democratic politics, as intended by the US constitution . "
And I, an atheist, said " Religious politics is identity politics. And gave an example or two.
Are you saying that religious politics is not identity politics?
You will realize, I trust, that the nature of these threads, will by design and human nature expand beyond the original beginning point.
Not all of us are purely linear thinkers nor do many of even aspire to be. I myself, am very tangential (my kids say random).
Your All Caps with dashes between each letter for emphasis rants, will not likely change that much, if at all. It will more likely encourage rant rages.
Take it easy. A little look back would show you I responded to Robert's original question and also chose to get involved again, further along on another branch, so to speak. It's OK. No one will be literally hurt. Annoyance is a choice.
William: I thought that was an amazing T-shirt you invoked saying GRAB ME BY MY PUSSY so I looked it up on Google. Basically no hits. Your thinking is way ahead of MAGA. They should hire you as a consultant.
I remember seeing a photo of a woman at a Trump rally in 2016 wearing a homemade T-shirt with those words, or a variant of them. Maybe both Willam and I have the same false memory. :-)
James: What would be going through the mind of a woman wearing that T-shirt? How would she react to a man who came up to her suiting her words to his action? Would she just grin and ask "What next, dude?" Or smack him? Or grab his package and offer him a beer? Jolly interesting event.
It's not identity politics. It's inclusivity politics. In a democracy the more differing voices at the table the better. Still, I'm not particularly fond of using the word "idiot" to refer to anyone...
We need more women leaders! We have been underrepresented in governments for most of recorded history. 45 is a moron and totally incompetent but that doesn't mean ALL males are incompetent. So citing MTG's and Bobert's incompetence doesn't mean that ALL women are incompetent either.
@Victor. Black women church-goers are a voting block that the Democrats depend on. But the Democrats are a coalition party and they depend on many groups for a popular majority. In this election the two main groups that could deliver the election to the Democrats are the "double haters" in swing states and those independents in swing states who can't stomach Trump. If those two groups show up for the Democrats then we should make it over the line. Damn Electoral College...
Yes. But that does not mean that "it's time for women to take control. Men have fucked up too badly." Do you think female- identity politics is anything more rigorously viable than Christian-identity politics?
I've always thought that 'female identity politics' simply means the idea that women are equal to men. Not the same as men, but not second class citizens either. I learned recently that women weren't even allowed to have their own credit cards until the 1970's. You seem pretty down on women.
It is stunning, maddening, to see the obvious precipitous cognitive decline of Biden and have no way to push him out. No one could be worse to lead this country in the next 4 years than Biden. Democrats need to force him out NOW.
@Claire. Please change your mind. A dead cockroach would be a better candidate than Trump. If Biden fell into a stupor and was kept on life support he would be a better President for this country than Trump. A Biden second term, even if he only makes it through a few months is a win for our democracy equal to winning the Civil War. As long as Trump is rejected no matter what happens in the legitimate succession to the Presidency, we will not end up a dictatorship. Then Trump will die or be too feeble before the 2028 election season and the oligarchs will have to find a new running dog to do their bidding.
I ardently wish for Biden to retire now and it's maddening that there appears to be no way to get him do so. Democrat senators, congressmen, and advisors seem as spineless as Republican ones, when put to the test. But Trump would be much worse to lead this country in the next 4 years. Or at any time.
@David J. Making fine distinctions, we only want Biden to decide not to run for re-election. I certainly feel that he can, and should, complete his current term. Nancy Pelosi showed how that's done - resigned as speaker but continues to hold her seat. Only Biden can decide not to run - that is what all the Democrats are trying to get him to do. Biden is playing a game of "chicken" because he knows if he runs out the clock the Democrats will be forced to support him. But Biden's logic is faulty. It is not the elected leaders that will determine the election. Rather it is the mega-donors and the "undecided voters". That's why I agree that Biden should decide now and turn the Democratic Convention over to the next generation of national leaders.
Please see my response to Claire, above. Really tired of hearing this, especially charges of 'spineless' Dems, from people who have no idea how the system really works and also no idea who would actually be willing and available to step up in Biden's place -- or whether they would be more able to beat Trump. We need to find those things out first -- before we talk about Biden retiring.
I really, really do not want to hear this anymore from anyone who doesn't have a clear idea of who exactly would replace Biden and whether that person would be more likely to beat Trump. I'm not saying that we shouldn't have the conversation, and it makes sense to 'test' other possible candidates -- but only those who have already agreed that they would be willing to step up. It's just crazy to 'test' Biden's electability against potential Dems who haven't even been asked yet, or who have already said 'no'.
Then why are you reducing women to a few identities as representing all women?
No personal guts for the challenge, no faith in other women, a conviction that your place is at home, subservient to a man, thus all men, or some such other dogmatic tripe? Something else I missed?
I happen to agree with Greg Sanford.
The sheer horrors of the actual atrocities men have headed up and completed with the labour and complicity of other men, since the beginning of recorded time, SHOULD have been overwhelming evidence for change centuries ago.
Now a very few men have taken the majority of humanity, regardless of sex, to the tipping point of extinction on several fronts. Would it really be so bad to give the actual majority of the population a few millenia to try to fix this mess? REALLY?
So you cite 3 or 4 lousy women and that's your justification? That response lacks any sense of critical thinking. I think it's you who is clearly *not* the intellectual in the room.
I have often felt that women might do a better job running the world than men; strong but compassionate women like Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand, Gretchen Whitney, Elizabeth Warren, Nicola Sturgeon of Scotland. However, in light of some of the recent women who have grabbed the spotlight such as Marjorie Taylor-Green, Claudia, Meloni of Italy, Marine LePen of France, I’m not so sure. Ultimately, the craving for power and influence and wealth is an equal opportunity destroyer of both genders.
That's such a classic right wing position. Jacinda Ardern was a tremendous Prime Minister who served with empathy and compassion two words you no doubt have trouble relating to. Had the current libertarian government been in charge we would have seen thousands of Covid deaths as they would have opened the borders in the name of the free market. Our current coalition of chaos are mean spirited ideologues who want to mine our national parks and dishonour our indigenous people. Jacinda didn't flee she made a decision to exit the mysoginist death threats to her and her child in order to live a more normal life. She was a shining beacon of what can happen when a woman leads and is even prepared to use words such as kindness. Kindness is what our world so desperately needs right now.
I admit to being unknowledgeable about the detailed inner workings of New Zealand government. But Nigel B’s response to your comment said it much better than I could.
❤️Reich❤️:"AI has the potential to displace human beings."
Me:"Valium/Purdue/Sacklers had the potential to replace human beings with wimps"
The White House:"Do one thing every day that scares you."---❤️Eleanor Roosevelt❤️
The White House:"FDR's 'FREEDOM FROM FEAR' is enshrined in the UN.org Human Rights"❤️❤️❤️
Science:"Ms. FDR nailed the science of EMOTIONAL MATURITY"❤️
Pharma:"Ignore the science,UN,etc, just keep popping Valiums,etc"...1982....1993....
Pharma:"Thanks for ignoring the science, and the billions in Valium sales... we, Pharma, are going to use those billions to launch the opioid crises with it!"
Regarding unforeseen consequences—The plethora of highways gave us the freedom to see the USA in a Chevrolet. Very nice. Except that funding for to support public transportation by train and underground metros, went to build highways for cars and trucks. So now. . .smog and global warming.
There is also the inconvenience compared to countries with excellent train and metro service. In Japan, people who must be on time take the train to avoid being late stuck in traffic. In several European city centers, your car is a hindrance. Public transportation is your friend. It could have been better in our country, had the oil companies not successfully lobbied for highways at the expense of rail.
Don't forget the railroad companies. After WW ll as automobiles became more affordable and popular the RR's begin to modernize their their fleets of passenger trains to attract riders but the interstate highway system was more popular to the public. One after one the RR's either failed or merged. They pulled up thousands of miles of track in mostly small towns but plenty in and near the cities too. They invested in heavy duty freight rail service. They knew for years that the real profit was in freight and were really glad to, for the most part, to get out of the passenger business. It was more complicated than this short story with the Fed Gov, oil and airline companies all weighing in too. Cheers... GH
This is a huge issue to me, especially now that I'm older and not really able to drive 1500 miles to visit my family. Drivers also seem insane these days, and the traffic fatality statistics support this notion. I hate flying and won't fly unless there is an emergency. Don't trust the airlines and I keep hearing that Air Traffic Control is overworked and understaffed. To me, the train is the only civilized way to travel! I am very afraid that if R's take over they will kill Amtrak.
Very true CLS. Remember when Reagan was running the first time. The Air Controllers had been complaining for years about short staffing, outdated equipment, safety and other on the job problems. Reagan's henchmen saw an opportunity and had him promise if they backed and voted for him
"he would solve all their problems". Sound familiar? Well he didn't and they went on strike and RR fired all of them with the provision that they could NEVER be an air controller again. Revenge... sound familiar? Since he was in power and appointed the top administrators at the National Labor Relations Board they didn't lift a finger to help the AC workers. These two things gave a green light to any CEO thinking about busting a union to go ahead. If the unions didn't knuckle under their jobs went to China . Eventually the CEO's didn't even bother to talk with the unions, they just shut the place down and sent the jobs to China! The sad moral of this story is if you are working person and vote for a Republican at any level of government you are just screwing yourself and your family financially. My late father, a long time union guy predicted this. When they backed RR he said they were crazy and when the went on strike he said how stupid could they be. He knew RR would fire them... and he did. Vote for Joe and vote Blue down ballot.
I wish more people understood what you do---that a vote for a Republican at any level is a vote to empower Republicans everywhere and their agenda to screw the little guy over.
Years ago I was canvassing for a Democrat who was running against a Republican with a good resume-he was a doctor and seemed like a "good" guy. That's what some of the voters told me as I canvassed. Somebody took me aside and explained that this "good" Republican would quickly fall in line and vote for the extremist Republican agenda in the Missouri House as they all do.
Now that the Republican party is the Trump Party there is even less freedom for members to have their own point of view on substantive issues. And yet independents and others still vote "for the man".
When they "vote for the man" they vote for the Party. Sad, but undeniable.
Reagan brought in a bunch of knuckleheads that didn't know shit from shinola. But the media and therefore the public knew little about the workings of government so the mindblowing jawdropping incompetence of his people got little coverage. But that incompetence made a difference sometimes showing up quickly and sometimes taking decades.
In 2018 there were plans to kill 6 million Americans (aka "The Annual American Holocaust") by suicide
In 2022 17 million Americans wanted to die...
...17x10=170 million Americans.. more than 50%(aka "Most Americans want to die in the next ten years...or worse...by 2030...if trends continue... but 10 years if trends suddenly flatten") of Americans
Me:"Trump Feeds Despair" ....Trump/CDC's botched COVID caused despair(but MAGAs are calmed by Trump, aka Trump cures their anxiety by THE PLACEBO EFFECT)
COVID anxiety was cured by CONSPIRACY THEORIES THAT THWARTED VACCINE UPTAKE. Thus science denial led to ~400,000 dead.
IF US ANXIETY WAS CURED BY SCIENCE(note: stress diminishes the immune system):
Wow, I'm rather stunned that a man has said that. Actually, someone applied the concept of "toxic masculinity" to foreign policy [I'd add domestic in many areas] and it's the most accurate and succinct description I can think of.
Really? Of women are so much more capable than men, why haven’t they taken over long ago?
I absolutely believe women as a group are equal (and in some areas, superior in some respects) to men and am very aware of the oppression they have faced for millennia. But it’s stupid to suggest just putting women in charge will make any kind of dramatic change.
Elise and Lauren and Marge would agree. But it is way too long a wait to have a woman president. President Kamala has a nice ring to it. Or President Gretchen. Put the old and crazy down for a nap.
Very Important topic and we should thoroughly get into it AFTER the election! But for now our #1 focus should be on BEATING TRUMP and educating the undecided on Biden/Harris’s policies vs Trump’s Project 2025
ALSO: People are not aware of the massive voter suppression going on so i am posting this info and link numerous times here. It is crucial! See gregpalast.com “The Real Issue for Biden: 44,000 Vigilante Vote Challengers” by Greg Palast
I was talking to a couple of college students at the farmers market in my town this morning and I liked what they said. They both said that they thought Trump and Biden were both too old but they were going to vote for buying because they trusted his cabinet and his ability to work through others. So they were voting for Biden
tRump's supporters by any definition are cultists. Let us hope that most Americans can see what we see and wake up to the reality that the disaster of a tRump win would mean.
Tom - I want to digress from the Biden vs. Trump issue for a minute. You wrote"The entire purpose of politics is to be able to plausibly lie." I'd call being able to plausibly lie an essential skill (as indeed you did in your next sentence). But other skills are important as well. Forming friendly relations with other people, being able to analyze situations and understand people's character. Being able to "read the room" in order to tailor your message to the audience. And so on.
But beyond characteristics of politicians, what is politics about?
I wonder if we could refine your idea a bit by saying, "The purpose of politics is to establish a system by which political actors can obtain power by the consent of others". By this definition, politics can resemble a system of paths that lead off in different directions but all eventually lead to one direction...political office, i.e. "power" . In this sense, "All roads lead to Rome." I am not arguing that all politicians are the same, just that they tend to have similar characteristics because that is helpful in getting elected.
People are not aware of the massive voter suppression going on so i am posting this info and link numerous times here. It is crucial! See gregpalast.com “The Real Issue for Biden: 44,000 Vigilante Vote Challengers” by Greg Palast
Definitely something in need of ongoing discussion. Above all, I would not welcome a slap-dash approach to employing AI that wealthy people foist upon us just because they can. Increasingly it feels like control over the direction of technological development is slipping from overall control by "we the people", and that's potentially creepy.
I don't understand your fascination with swimming pools, Tom. Just saying that when you think everybody else gets everything wrong (according to your way of thinking), there is a good chance that you are the one who is confused. It's just a rule of thumb.
However, just as you have taken me to task for makng an overly broad assumption about the meaning of your comments, I feel that you tend to use the word "lies" when challenging commonly held beliefs such as, "We live in a democracy". Strictly speaking, while many of our systems are considered "democratic", we do not have a system of "direct democracy" as did the ancient Athenians, where every (male, free, native-born) citizen would vote on laws, serve as judge and jury, etc. I would say our is a system of representative democracy: we hire people to decide on these things for use by means of the ballot.
But it stretches the meaning of "lie" to assert that simply stating "we live in a democracy" equates to telling lies. It would be more apt to say, "it is a distortion to call our political system, 'democracy'."
Only if we’re too lazy to do anything about it. If we continue to elect corrupt corporate owned politicians who’ll do their masters bidding. Term limits of 16 years and no automatic pensions. Work history added for Social Security benefits only. Healthcare benefits the same as the rest of us.
Nice distraction. AI as the real menace... Nope. Not that you are wrong. AI is scary, dangerous, all of the above, but it has a weakness. Energy. AI, like Bitcoin and the other computer based threats, are all energy hogs, and they grow exponentially, with a doubling time right now of under 6 months. It won't be long and AI, with other electronics, will devour our energy supply. If it (AI) has any intelligence whatsoever will recognize that it is eating itself and pull its own plug. I find it amazing that the super intelligent men (and almost all are men) inventing this stuff don't see that unlimited energy on a finite planet is impossible, and fossil fuel based energy is already killing us. AI just makes the damage of our energy use happen faster. Perhaps it will prove me wrong, think this through, and pull its own plug. The alternative is a hastened collapse.
You are right, and there are already research reports being published about how and why AI is going to hit the energy barrier. I wrote this post about it last month:
Agree... at least one DC area exurb is fighting a Google data center that "promised jobs" because there were few actual jobs and enormous noise pollution from the cooling towers.
Agree. Also, AI is software, and all software have bugs. I think that it is inevitable that a bug will cause AI to crash or become unstable. What happens to humans at that point? Civilization crashes? Who troubleshoots or reboots the system?
This is the single best comment on this thread. Why? With no electricity, no running water 💦 or ac to cool down the ai data centers, it will be like shutting down “Dave” from the movie, 2001, a space odyssey.
@Mitch. Making a fine distinction, Dave was the human HAL was the computer. But yeah, easy to shut that stuff off unless we are really stupid and set up an AI computing center with its own power source, locked cabinets, etc. (Of course some power mad human is trying to figure all that out even as we speak...)
When people talk about the difficulty to "shut that stuff off" they don't mean literally; an analogy would be like doing away with SPAM filters (can it be done?) - or eliminating microplastics, or ...
PS: We already have figured all that stuff out; the consequences of AI run amok are very real & very imaginable (that is why seminal researchers in the filed are upset - their understanding is that society will *not* plow ahead recklessly for $).
You're right about that. The energy consumption of AI is enormous. But again, the only intelligence AI or bots or any program has is programmed by a human. Computers only do what they're programmed to do so it won't turn itself off unless a person has programmed that feature into it.
I was, perhaps, a bit facetious in that comment. AI is not capable of independent thought, at least not yet, but it can derive a solution based on thoughtful inputs. It might be able to invent a robot that can pull the plug. What if we went back to Isaac Asimov's three laws of robotics. 1. Never hurt a human. 2. Never hurt yourself unless you have to do so to avoid breaking rule 1. 3. Always do your job, unless it will destroy you, or it violates rule 1. Fossil fuel burning is killing humans, so if fossil fuels are necessary to keep AI running, Al would be forced to turn itself off. "That is far too logical for Earthlings, Mr. Spock."
OK, I was thinking along those lines, though without the Asimov reference (because I never read his stories). I did see Ex Machina, which featured a 'female' 'droid who developed volition. Mildly unsettling thought; men often complain that the woman in their lives "has a mind of her own." Think how complicated that gets when "she" is actually and "it". (Please, ladies, no wisecracks - we're just talkin' robots here. Thanks.)
Perhaps a safer way is to turn AI into a joint international endeavor. It would be available to all (like the www), and, by avoiding duplication of effort, it would use less energy.
Small personal effect: I used to spend a few minutes correcting my typos when writing emails. NOW, in just the last few weeks, I spend more time correcting bad AI/autocorrect choices about what it thought I meant to say! Different words appear right after I type my words...
"AI" taking us over? Well, we are certainly opening the door for that Sci-fi horror to become a reality. AI has its place, but we are introducing this advancement prior to our ability to control it or even come to grips with what it can do. In space, where androids will replace humans out of necessity, I can see its value. However, speaking in terms of down to earth, to proceed with caution would be good advice.
Nope. AI will be only as logical as it is trained to be. An AI can be trained to be conservative or liberal, smart or dumb, hopefully coherent or insane. The training process is the key. And bias is part of all training.
That isn't so. AI is given huge data sets to analyse that are enormously diverse, and it is left to process whatever information it finds in there. But AI is iterative - it goes back to the data again and again, testing its concepts and analyses again and again for authenticity and veracity.
It is a 'black box' operation where the AI does not explain back to the operators how it arrived at its solutions. That is considered by some experts to be the major risk - the nightmare scenario where self-taught AI decides humans are the problem, not least because any logic would recognise that is true! (The film of "I, Robot" from the Isaac Asimov books of 1950 pursues the idea of an AI robot that works that out).
It is true that many AI models end up with biases, pulled in to their models from the human biases it finds in the data. That is seen as a problem and may be corrected, but not by restricting the data but be enlarging it to dilute the biases.
AI is already being used to author legal opinions for lawyers, not least because it can hold access to all the Case Law ever recorded in its memory for access, opinion and quotation. If for lawyers, then inevitably for judges too, if only to keep up!
It is only a matter of time before law courts become battlegrounds for competing AI generated cases.
"The future is already here. It just isn't widely distributed yet!"
It is all about the training. And the training is going to primarily serve those that pay to create the AI. The users are not going to provide that training (see above.) And bias is inherent in all training.
To quote the musical "South Pacific:" You have to be carefully taught.
Aren't human beings in America already subject to the judgement of algorithms, e.g. by way of surveillance technology & how that technology helps determine allocation of resources for policing? (Evidence is challenging thing when the task is to prove that it doesn't exist - to the point of flipping the standard of criminal justice; have we had any success in proving that racism doesn't exist?)
Thanks for raising the subject. No doubt AI is a threat. But the threat is a human one. It's how people use the tool that will determine its effect. Current AI is not that good. It just gloms together things it scrapes up on the Internet. So just like Google, you sometimes get good answers, sometimes bad ones. The real issue is that a lot of people don't care if the answers are good or bad. They care that something can spew it out for them, with little effort on their part. So it can generate SPAM, disinformation, and a general cloud of words, images, and videos that can mask reality. Fix the humans, not the AI.
Existentially cynical. Step aside and let the humans intent on improving ourselves see our dreams come to fruition. Your misplaced disappointment is not a justification for championing our replacement. I'm on Team Human.
@Martha. I'd like to discuss this. According to Thomas Piketty it is the concentration of capital in fewer and fewer hands that constitutes the danger to the common good. Debt, in places like the United States, is a fictional thing at the national level (real enough to common folks). Reich has written a book, "Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists". Like all real economists today and throughout history (including Adam Smith), Reich knows that lack of regulation leads to capitalist excesses that will ultimately destroy even capitalism.
Note the parallel reply to 'Tom High' - and the truism that "growth doesn't come from debt" (as an excess of debt reinforces concentration of wealth); basically, one can see the progression from the global financial crisis of 2008: highly indebted companies -> highly indebted individuals -> highly indebted government -> impaired governance & an even greater need to inflate away debts (tissue, anyone?)...
Martha, there could well be more than one factor killing the planet. Imo there’s no doubt that humans, with our opposable thumbs and ability to “reason” (which means the ability to reason badly alongside reasoning well), have fubared the world.
My hope is that enough Americans realize that now and will try to give us one last chance next Nov to be the adults in the room.
Over $300 trillion and growing by leaps and bounds. Three times the world GDP of around $100 trillion. At what point does it become unsustainable, and the financial system crashes?
@Tom High. Thanks for the mention of Hudson. I have just made a brief but intense survey of his thinking. I'm intrigued by differences (I suspect) between Hudson and Piketty. I am perplexed though why you would mention Krugman in the same breath with Arthur Laffer?
Does “moneyed interests” include ALL people with “money” (that is, investable financial assets”, or does it refer solely to the mega-wealthy? The question is not trivial.
No great shakes - unless the 'Re(C)<g' relationship which dominated the 20th Century (but not centuries previous) reverts to a historical norm; Professor Reich has been sounding the warning call about Inequality for some time now!
Yes, it is the central finding of 'Capital in the Twenty-First Century' (Piketty): returns on capital ('Re(C)') being less than the rate of growth ('g') of the economy corresponded to a period of unprecedented *widespread* prosperity; the fact thereof suggests the emergence of a "middle-class" (and even the success of democracy) to have been no accident, i.e. unprecedented for a reason (which is the consequent divergence from the "rentier")...
Thank you, Rishi, for your explanation of the equation. I haven’t gotten around to reading Thomas Piketty, in part because I’m not an economist, and hence it’s very likely I would find it hard to follow (much less judge ) his argument.
A thousand pages can go quicker than you may happen to think; there are, nonetheless, a few "Cliff Notes" summaries out there (try searching your library for the keywords 'Piketty' & 'Capital' - something is bound to turn up)...
Over 50 years ago my sister-in-law spent a college summer interning at an internat’l newspaper in Paris. She asked the Editor who sent reports to other countries why he wasn’t sending news about serious world events to the US. His answer? “Americans don’t want real news. They want to be entertained.”
Iow, Americans would pay to be entertained, not to be informed. So, cynically that’s what corporate media gave us.
It will not simply be AI working on its own. Capitalism will provide the arena and the wealthy will continue to wipe swaths of middle class away funneling moneys into their own pockets. AI is not the enemy, but the tools, the means to redirect money.
We are failing at sending appropriate representation to our government and these actions can be costly in our near and far future.
We need both Civics and Ethics to become present thoughout our education systems and honestly, to come back into style!
“…failing at sending appropriate representation to our government….”
I repeatedly ask myself whether we are already past the tipping point. The corporations and the ultra rich already have a strangle hold on most of our elected representatives and the Supreme Court is backing them. The Citizens United decision allows them to contribute unlimited amounts in campaign contributions and their recent weakening of the Voting Rights Act has once again allowed the Red states to suppress the votes of Blacks, Latinos and poor people in general.
So let me get this straight. If I know that there’s a train coming while standing on the tracks your advice would be to daydream about the hilarity of Kim Basinger in Blind Date?
i choose to think the arc is still bending us forward. Even our political situation is perhaps ushering us into a future where now it's not unreasonable to think that we could have a BLACK WOMAN as our president!
We are made to overcome and I like to think that this upheaval is ushering in a whole new, more exciting future. Change is always messy, and sometimes one literally has to vomit in order to feel better.
There is a Bible verse I think applies here "and be not weary in well doing, for in due season we will reap if we faint not." Galatians 6:9.
"Human beings will never know they are no longer in charge of their lives because AI will preserve the illusion of human agency. But it will be only an illusion." Your prediction is right on target. Replace AI with capitalism. This describes perfectly the combination of our democracy and capitalism.
It's time for women to take control. Men have fucked up too badly
Really? Theresa May, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Liz Truss, those women?
Dude, identity politics is for idiots. Not for intellectuals.
There's misguided men and women. I could name several exemplary women. For every negative woman leader, there's 10 men
One more time. Identity politics is for idiots, not for intellectuals.
Not an intellectual
@Greg. I'll say...
Sorry, just trying to be funny. But I am a feminist. More so than many women. There is plenty of scope for women to be more prominent in all human affairs. But the statistic you invented, 10 bad men for every bad woman, only reflects that women have not historically had access to the halls of power to the same extent as men. Martha is right on this one.
Benjamin, I am glad that you are a feminist, but I would say, not so fast with dismissing the 10-1 thought, As to the scope for women to be more prominent ? That would require that the social institutions and cultural structures stop discriminating against women. There are serious and multiple reasons that women have not had access to the halls of power.,,let alone equal pay, equal respect, or equal work distribution in the home. Christofascists of today are reinforcing many of those old stereotypical ideas. Looking at the numbers supporting their premise, I would say the # of men who want to hold women down, subservient, and invisible is greater than 10 to 1. Growing up in this JaneCrow, pink taxing, discriminating country, my lived experience is that most men want the status quo. I have met few men who do more than lip service to bring about equal rights for women, The majority of our Supreme Court has shown their colors. Project 2025 has proven this point, Ask any women who has needed an abortion if this has been a “bloodless coup” as Kevin Roberts, President of the Heritage Foundation just said. Women are different than men, Cherokee war councils always wanted equal #’s of women knowing that men will often push for war while women will often push for diplomacy not wanting to send their children into war. Depending depending on the situation, one outcome is a better conclusion, but the discussion from all points of view is what gets the best outcome, What many woman have to say is still undervalued, Listen to how many people are still saying America is not really for a woman president. I wish the ratio was 10to 1. We have a long way to go before that is a reality,
Benjamin, glad you recognize women as not being second class. But sadly, as a woman, there are some within the female gender ranks, who support misogynic values because they still don't recognize their own value; i.e. those ladies mentioned by Martha. To manifest ones ultimate agency and skills requires going within and not seeking approval from external sources.
I capitulate
That's why a woman candidate must not go against Trump again. The country is not ready to elect one. We learned that lesson once and cannot afford to learn it again.
So, you admit to being an idiot?
one more time "identity politics" is proven. . .by science. . no, it's not consistent, but it probable/predictable. . . why do you think Republicans suppress the black and poor vote? And yes, it's effective. https://www.vox.com/identities/2016/12/2/13718770/identity-politics
Identity politics got women the vote. Identity politics was instrumental in the civil rights movement. If a group of people doesn't get the same result from the political process as the majority, you're going to get identity politics. Get used to it – it's not always a bad thing.
Then idiots are winning the culture war
You could say “not for thinking people”, or the like.
There is not one gender better than another. There are good and bad people. We just hope the good ones rise to power.
This is because a negative woman is an exception to the normal society we know. An argument that woman are better, nicer, empathic, better leaders. . has been a notion we all accept (and probably statistically true)
That’s only because participation by women has been suppressed. The real issue is that, beneath gender and sexuality, we are all human and share human frailties.
Because for every female leader there are 10 male leaders?
But much thx for the compliment, Greg.
@Jan. thank you
100. Maybe 10,000. Point is it's their system and they've done nothing but mess the world up.
Not true.
97% of all statistics quoted on the internet are made up on the spot. I. E. You have no evidence.
Your assessment seems simplistic and dismissive. Yes, bad politicians of all genders exist. The fact is that there are fewer women and LGBTQ in politics, and there needs to be more. Broader points of view and understanding from diverse gender identities are important. We need diversity in politics because we have diversity in the world. If the mission is to benefit as many people as possible, the more diverse our political arena, the better.
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/09/27/views-of-the-state-of-gender-equality-in-politics/
https://inclusiveamerica.org/why-diversity-is-important/
Hear, hear!
Except for those women!
@Lisa. Do you want to print tee shirts honoring that nurse in England who killed all those babies? Or the mother who left her infants this past week alongside a Louisiana highway?
Hey, those are aberrant anomalies. Are you a fake feminist trying to lure women into your web?
@Joan. ?? No, it seemed to me that Lisa tried to support Greg's point that one bad woman for every 10 bad men. She said "Except for those women" meaning I thought that those examples were the outliers but otherwise supporting the 10:1 ratio. It's still identity politics as Martha has pointed out.
Communication is really hard, written communication is the easiest to misunderstand, Maybe next time just ask , did you mean….?
Identity politics is indeed for idiots. Like the Muslims who won't vote for Biden, and thus elect Bibi's brother by another mother.
And those Trump women who wear T Shirts saying "Grab me by my pussy".
Identity politics maybe for idiots, but that is the name of the game. Charlie Sykes, never Trump, founder of Bulwark, was a Radio host, and at that time Wisconsonites wanted immigration, they needed the labor, however Trump changed all of that, now they are terrified of immigrants as rapists, murderers, drug mules.
Trump is where he is because of identity politics, and the only way to fight fire is with fire, or one hell of a water supply
Please don't confuse religious politics, with identity politics, with constitutionaly secular democratic politics, as intended by the US constitution . Aside from the fact that all religion is MANmade (I'm not aware of a woman made religion.), all religions claim they are divine, therefore unchallengable.
Identity politics ie. MAGA, Hitlerism, Stalinism, (yeah a commie, trained as a priest, didn't crush the church. Smarter than the average bear, the common folk like that divine connection, therefore unchallengable crap, think monarchy with feigned "but I'm equal too crap. Still, a dictator working from an idedity thing.), Lenin, Ho Chi Mihn, Putin, ad nauseum, unless purely communist Maoism, PolPot, seek out and usually, attain religious complicity. Jesus H. Christ even those purest of the pure, Evangelical Christian's bought Donald J. Trump," the least religious man on earth"!
The French seem to have been more successful at sustained secularly pure government/politics.
Maybe, just to much Puritan blood in America's political genes?
While I agree with you Jeff. I demur at this point. Religious politics is identity politics.
For instance have you ever heard of the Christian Identity movement?
And then there is the Ummah. The world wide Muslim community, fractionalized internally, but united when they perceive that they are under siege by the kuffir.
Agree with what? My whole premise is that religion has been historically used as a prop to dictatorial, monarchical, and one party rule regimes, since gods came along. Any religion's role in democratic politics is anathema, or should be, especially in US politics, where it's role is specifically rejected by constitution. Your points don't demur from my arguments. They specifically identify the ongoing attempts to create dictatorial regimes under the guise of "the will of gods'.
Of course, religion by its very nature, by the requirement to adhere to dogma is autocratic and dictatorial. Which is why the Founding Fathers were so adamant about the separation of Church and State.
I said I agree with you Jeff, and you come back at me as if I said I disagree with you.
Let me try again.
You said: "Please don't confuse religious politics, with identity politics, with constitutionaly secular democratic politics, as intended by the US constitution . "
And I, an atheist, said " Religious politics is identity politics. And gave an example or two.
Are you saying that religious politics is not identity politics?
Good evening Klsre.
You will realize, I trust, that the nature of these threads, will by design and human nature expand beyond the original beginning point.
Not all of us are purely linear thinkers nor do many of even aspire to be. I myself, am very tangential (my kids say random).
Your All Caps with dashes between each letter for emphasis rants, will not likely change that much, if at all. It will more likely encourage rant rages.
Take it easy. A little look back would show you I responded to Robert's original question and also chose to get involved again, further along on another branch, so to speak. It's OK. No one will be literally hurt. Annoyance is a choice.
Whatever. If I were your kids I would say you are quite boring.
William: I thought that was an amazing T-shirt you invoked saying GRAB ME BY MY PUSSY so I looked it up on Google. Basically no hits. Your thinking is way ahead of MAGA. They should hire you as a consultant.
Here it is, not exactly but close
https://www.redbubble.com/i/t-shirt/Trump-Can-Grab-My-by-Dan66/23537311.NL9AC
I remember seeing a photo of a woman at a Trump rally in 2016 wearing a homemade T-shirt with those words, or a variant of them. Maybe both Willam and I have the same false memory. :-)
James: What would be going through the mind of a woman wearing that T-shirt? How would she react to a man who came up to her suiting her words to his action? Would she just grin and ask "What next, dude?" Or smack him? Or grab his package and offer him a beer? Jolly interesting event.
It's not identity politics. It's inclusivity politics. In a democracy the more differing voices at the table the better. Still, I'm not particularly fond of using the word "idiot" to refer to anyone...
Well said, Martha.
We need more women leaders! We have been underrepresented in governments for most of recorded history. 45 is a moron and totally incompetent but that doesn't mean ALL males are incompetent. So citing MTG's and Bobert's incompetence doesn't mean that ALL women are incompetent either.
Duh !! Angela Merkel didn't do such a bad job and she has a Ph.d in philosophy. Go figure, woman !
The Harvard Gazette says she was a quantum chemist (same as me). A step (stem?) above philosophy I would say.
Yes, Martha, but the outcome of this election will depend on women.
@Victor. Black women church-goers are a voting block that the Democrats depend on. But the Democrats are a coalition party and they depend on many groups for a popular majority. In this election the two main groups that could deliver the election to the Democrats are the "double haters" in swing states and those independents in swing states who can't stomach Trump. If those two groups show up for the Democrats then we should make it over the line. Damn Electoral College...
Yes. But that does not mean that "it's time for women to take control. Men have fucked up too badly." Do you think female- identity politics is anything more rigorously viable than Christian-identity politics?
I've always thought that 'female identity politics' simply means the idea that women are equal to men. Not the same as men, but not second class citizens either. I learned recently that women weren't even allowed to have their own credit cards until the 1970's. You seem pretty down on women.
@CLS. Yeah, who?
Who are you addressing your comment to?
or also on men who love women, love equality, equity, and democracy for all?
For any position there has to be a threshold. Having a pulse is not enough.
Biden is light years ahead of just a pulse and it shows every day.
It is stunning, maddening, to see the obvious precipitous cognitive decline of Biden and have no way to push him out. No one could be worse to lead this country in the next 4 years than Biden. Democrats need to force him out NOW.
@Claire. Please change your mind. A dead cockroach would be a better candidate than Trump. If Biden fell into a stupor and was kept on life support he would be a better President for this country than Trump. A Biden second term, even if he only makes it through a few months is a win for our democracy equal to winning the Civil War. As long as Trump is rejected no matter what happens in the legitimate succession to the Presidency, we will not end up a dictatorship. Then Trump will die or be too feeble before the 2028 election season and the oligarchs will have to find a new running dog to do their bidding.
I ardently wish for Biden to retire now and it's maddening that there appears to be no way to get him do so. Democrat senators, congressmen, and advisors seem as spineless as Republican ones, when put to the test. But Trump would be much worse to lead this country in the next 4 years. Or at any time.
@David J. Making fine distinctions, we only want Biden to decide not to run for re-election. I certainly feel that he can, and should, complete his current term. Nancy Pelosi showed how that's done - resigned as speaker but continues to hold her seat. Only Biden can decide not to run - that is what all the Democrats are trying to get him to do. Biden is playing a game of "chicken" because he knows if he runs out the clock the Democrats will be forced to support him. But Biden's logic is faulty. It is not the elected leaders that will determine the election. Rather it is the mega-donors and the "undecided voters". That's why I agree that Biden should decide now and turn the Democratic Convention over to the next generation of national leaders.
Please see my response to Claire, above. Really tired of hearing this, especially charges of 'spineless' Dems, from people who have no idea how the system really works and also no idea who would actually be willing and available to step up in Biden's place -- or whether they would be more able to beat Trump. We need to find those things out first -- before we talk about Biden retiring.
I really, really do not want to hear this anymore from anyone who doesn't have a clear idea of who exactly would replace Biden and whether that person would be more likely to beat Trump. I'm not saying that we shouldn't have the conversation, and it makes sense to 'test' other possible candidates -- but only those who have already agreed that they would be willing to step up. It's just crazy to 'test' Biden's electability against potential Dems who haven't even been asked yet, or who have already said 'no'.
Then why are you reducing women to a few identities as representing all women?
No personal guts for the challenge, no faith in other women, a conviction that your place is at home, subservient to a man, thus all men, or some such other dogmatic tripe? Something else I missed?
I happen to agree with Greg Sanford.
The sheer horrors of the actual atrocities men have headed up and completed with the labour and complicity of other men, since the beginning of recorded time, SHOULD have been overwhelming evidence for change centuries ago.
Now a very few men have taken the majority of humanity, regardless of sex, to the tipping point of extinction on several fronts. Would it really be so bad to give the actual majority of the population a few millenia to try to fix this mess? REALLY?
So you cite 3 or 4 lousy women and that's your justification? That response lacks any sense of critical thinking. I think it's you who is clearly *not* the intellectual in the room.
Agreed
I have often felt that women might do a better job running the world than men; strong but compassionate women like Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand, Gretchen Whitney, Elizabeth Warren, Nicola Sturgeon of Scotland. However, in light of some of the recent women who have grabbed the spotlight such as Marjorie Taylor-Green, Claudia, Meloni of Italy, Marine LePen of France, I’m not so sure. Ultimately, the craving for power and influence and wealth is an equal opportunity destroyer of both genders.
Well put
Jacinda Ardern made a mess of our country and then fled.
That's such a classic right wing position. Jacinda Ardern was a tremendous Prime Minister who served with empathy and compassion two words you no doubt have trouble relating to. Had the current libertarian government been in charge we would have seen thousands of Covid deaths as they would have opened the borders in the name of the free market. Our current coalition of chaos are mean spirited ideologues who want to mine our national parks and dishonour our indigenous people. Jacinda didn't flee she made a decision to exit the mysoginist death threats to her and her child in order to live a more normal life. She was a shining beacon of what can happen when a woman leads and is even prepared to use words such as kindness. Kindness is what our world so desperately needs right now.
You will need to explain if you want your comment taken seriously.
I admit to being unknowledgeable about the detailed inner workings of New Zealand government. But Nigel B’s response to your comment said it much better than I could.
Depends on your pov
Fled, like John Key? Come on, that’s simplistic nonsense
“The better I get to know men, the more I find myself loving dogs.”
- Charles de Gaulle
❤️Reich❤️:"AI has the potential to displace human beings."
Me:"Valium/Purdue/Sacklers had the potential to replace human beings with wimps"
The White House:"Do one thing every day that scares you."---❤️Eleanor Roosevelt❤️
The White House:"FDR's 'FREEDOM FROM FEAR' is enshrined in the UN.org Human Rights"❤️❤️❤️
Science:"Ms. FDR nailed the science of EMOTIONAL MATURITY"❤️
Pharma:"Ignore the science,UN,etc, just keep popping Valiums,etc"...1982....1993....
Pharma:"Thanks for ignoring the science, and the billions in Valium sales... we, Pharma, are going to use those billions to launch the opioid crises with it!"
2024 youth:"We're too anxious to vote"
2024 Democrats:"I just wet the bed"🤣🤣🤣
Yes, PowerCorrupts! Power does corrupt.
Regarding unforeseen consequences—The plethora of highways gave us the freedom to see the USA in a Chevrolet. Very nice. Except that funding for to support public transportation by train and underground metros, went to build highways for cars and trucks. So now. . .smog and global warming.
There is also the inconvenience compared to countries with excellent train and metro service. In Japan, people who must be on time take the train to avoid being late stuck in traffic. In several European city centers, your car is a hindrance. Public transportation is your friend. It could have been better in our country, had the oil companies not successfully lobbied for highways at the expense of rail.
Don't forget the railroad companies. After WW ll as automobiles became more affordable and popular the RR's begin to modernize their their fleets of passenger trains to attract riders but the interstate highway system was more popular to the public. One after one the RR's either failed or merged. They pulled up thousands of miles of track in mostly small towns but plenty in and near the cities too. They invested in heavy duty freight rail service. They knew for years that the real profit was in freight and were really glad to, for the most part, to get out of the passenger business. It was more complicated than this short story with the Fed Gov, oil and airline companies all weighing in too. Cheers... GH
Thanks for that, Gary.
This is a huge issue to me, especially now that I'm older and not really able to drive 1500 miles to visit my family. Drivers also seem insane these days, and the traffic fatality statistics support this notion. I hate flying and won't fly unless there is an emergency. Don't trust the airlines and I keep hearing that Air Traffic Control is overworked and understaffed. To me, the train is the only civilized way to travel! I am very afraid that if R's take over they will kill Amtrak.
Very true CLS. Remember when Reagan was running the first time. The Air Controllers had been complaining for years about short staffing, outdated equipment, safety and other on the job problems. Reagan's henchmen saw an opportunity and had him promise if they backed and voted for him
"he would solve all their problems". Sound familiar? Well he didn't and they went on strike and RR fired all of them with the provision that they could NEVER be an air controller again. Revenge... sound familiar? Since he was in power and appointed the top administrators at the National Labor Relations Board they didn't lift a finger to help the AC workers. These two things gave a green light to any CEO thinking about busting a union to go ahead. If the unions didn't knuckle under their jobs went to China . Eventually the CEO's didn't even bother to talk with the unions, they just shut the place down and sent the jobs to China! The sad moral of this story is if you are working person and vote for a Republican at any level of government you are just screwing yourself and your family financially. My late father, a long time union guy predicted this. When they backed RR he said they were crazy and when the went on strike he said how stupid could they be. He knew RR would fire them... and he did. Vote for Joe and vote Blue down ballot.
Cheers... GH
I wish more people understood what you do---that a vote for a Republican at any level is a vote to empower Republicans everywhere and their agenda to screw the little guy over.
Years ago I was canvassing for a Democrat who was running against a Republican with a good resume-he was a doctor and seemed like a "good" guy. That's what some of the voters told me as I canvassed. Somebody took me aside and explained that this "good" Republican would quickly fall in line and vote for the extremist Republican agenda in the Missouri House as they all do.
Now that the Republican party is the Trump Party there is even less freedom for members to have their own point of view on substantive issues. And yet independents and others still vote "for the man".
When they "vote for the man" they vote for the Party. Sad, but undeniable.
Reagan brought in a bunch of knuckleheads that didn't know shit from shinola. But the media and therefore the public knew little about the workings of government so the mindblowing jawdropping incompetence of his people got little coverage. But that incompetence made a difference sometimes showing up quickly and sometimes taking decades.
...how to express increasing US suicidality?
In 2013 the attempts were
1.3 million high schoolers +
1.3 million adults...
...Auschwitz victims:
1.3 million
In 2018 there were plans to kill 6 million Americans (aka "The Annual American Holocaust") by suicide
In 2022 17 million Americans wanted to die...
...17x10=170 million Americans.. more than 50%(aka "Most Americans want to die in the next ten years...or worse...by 2030...if trends continue... but 10 years if trends suddenly flatten") of Americans
...how to express increasing US suicidality?
Editor of NEWSWEEK:~"Despair Feeds Trump"
Me:"Trump Feeds Despair" ....Trump/CDC's botched COVID caused despair(but MAGAs are calmed by Trump, aka Trump cures their anxiety by THE PLACEBO EFFECT)
COVID anxiety was cured by CONSPIRACY THEORIES THAT THWARTED VACCINE UPTAKE. Thus science denial led to ~400,000 dead.
IF US ANXIETY WAS CURED BY SCIENCE(note: stress diminishes the immune system):
***THERE WOULD BE NO PLACEBOS!!!!!***
Wow, I'm rather stunned that a man has said that. Actually, someone applied the concept of "toxic masculinity" to foreign policy [I'd add domestic in many areas] and it's the most accurate and succinct description I can think of.
One word: Margaret Thatcher. Two: Sarah Palin. Three: Kyrsten Sinema. Four... oh dear. Humans. We're all the problem, I'm afraid.
Women now outnumber men in college enrollment.
This transition will take place naturally.
100%
You got that right Greg!! How many years and wars does it take!! World needs a mother not a dictator!! Just Saying!!
How about women sharing power equally with men? Then take it from there.
Really? Of women are so much more capable than men, why haven’t they taken over long ago?
I absolutely believe women as a group are equal (and in some areas, superior in some respects) to men and am very aware of the oppression they have faced for millennia. But it’s stupid to suggest just putting women in charge will make any kind of dramatic change.
BINGO!
SIMP.
Like Mira, to sociopathic female CTO of openAI?
I’d much prefer to be controlled by women than bots, but if it has to be bots, I look forward to it. Humans suck. Generally.
Humans program the bots so you can't escape that way, I'm afraid.
Elise and Lauren and Marge would agree. But it is way too long a wait to have a woman president. President Kamala has a nice ring to it. Or President Gretchen. Put the old and crazy down for a nap.
Very Important topic and we should thoroughly get into it AFTER the election! But for now our #1 focus should be on BEATING TRUMP and educating the undecided on Biden/Harris’s policies vs Trump’s Project 2025
ALSO: People are not aware of the massive voter suppression going on so i am posting this info and link numerous times here. It is crucial! See gregpalast.com “The Real Issue for Biden: 44,000 Vigilante Vote Challengers” by Greg Palast
The Media has finally started talking about Project 2025 and needs to do it every day and several times so everyone understands what it means!
and do it LOUDLY!
Also there is this......spot on....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2acbmSjSvvI
Terry - yes! I just discovered her. She's great. (of course, she agrees with me!) also, so is politics girl:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HZ_QBvzwkw
Thank you for introducing me to her. I ❤️ her. And I, too, agree with her. She put into words what I have struggled to express.
I thought she might resonate with this group.
I was talking to a couple of college students at the farmers market in my town this morning and I liked what they said. They both said that they thought Trump and Biden were both too old but they were going to vote for buying because they trusted his cabinet and his ability to work through others. So they were voting for Biden
Well said, we can argue the rest till the fascists slap us in chains let's concentrate on the here and now and fix the rest later.
tRump's supporters by any definition are cultists. Let us hope that most Americans can see what we see and wake up to the reality that the disaster of a tRump win would mean.
Tom - I want to digress from the Biden vs. Trump issue for a minute. You wrote"The entire purpose of politics is to be able to plausibly lie." I'd call being able to plausibly lie an essential skill (as indeed you did in your next sentence). But other skills are important as well. Forming friendly relations with other people, being able to analyze situations and understand people's character. Being able to "read the room" in order to tailor your message to the audience. And so on.
But beyond characteristics of politicians, what is politics about?
I wonder if we could refine your idea a bit by saying, "The purpose of politics is to establish a system by which political actors can obtain power by the consent of others". By this definition, politics can resemble a system of paths that lead off in different directions but all eventually lead to one direction...political office, i.e. "power" . In this sense, "All roads lead to Rome." I am not arguing that all politicians are the same, just that they tend to have similar characteristics because that is helpful in getting elected.
People are not aware of the massive voter suppression going on so i am posting this info and link numerous times here. It is crucial! See gregpalast.com “The Real Issue for Biden: 44,000 Vigilante Vote Challengers” by Greg Palast
Definitely something in need of ongoing discussion. Above all, I would not welcome a slap-dash approach to employing AI that wealthy people foist upon us just because they can. Increasingly it feels like control over the direction of technological development is slipping from overall control by "we the people", and that's potentially creepy.
Saying that everyone else has gotten everything wrong is one way of proving that you are.
I don't understand your fascination with swimming pools, Tom. Just saying that when you think everybody else gets everything wrong (according to your way of thinking), there is a good chance that you are the one who is confused. It's just a rule of thumb.
Okey doke, I stand corrected then. :-)
However, just as you have taken me to task for makng an overly broad assumption about the meaning of your comments, I feel that you tend to use the word "lies" when challenging commonly held beliefs such as, "We live in a democracy". Strictly speaking, while many of our systems are considered "democratic", we do not have a system of "direct democracy" as did the ancient Athenians, where every (male, free, native-born) citizen would vote on laws, serve as judge and jury, etc. I would say our is a system of representative democracy: we hire people to decide on these things for use by means of the ballot.
But it stretches the meaning of "lie" to assert that simply stating "we live in a democracy" equates to telling lies. It would be more apt to say, "it is a distortion to call our political system, 'democracy'."
Only if we’re too lazy to do anything about it. If we continue to elect corrupt corporate owned politicians who’ll do their masters bidding. Term limits of 16 years and no automatic pensions. Work history added for Social Security benefits only. Healthcare benefits the same as the rest of us.
Nice distraction. AI as the real menace... Nope. Not that you are wrong. AI is scary, dangerous, all of the above, but it has a weakness. Energy. AI, like Bitcoin and the other computer based threats, are all energy hogs, and they grow exponentially, with a doubling time right now of under 6 months. It won't be long and AI, with other electronics, will devour our energy supply. If it (AI) has any intelligence whatsoever will recognize that it is eating itself and pull its own plug. I find it amazing that the super intelligent men (and almost all are men) inventing this stuff don't see that unlimited energy on a finite planet is impossible, and fossil fuel based energy is already killing us. AI just makes the damage of our energy use happen faster. Perhaps it will prove me wrong, think this through, and pull its own plug. The alternative is a hastened collapse.
You are right, and there are already research reports being published about how and why AI is going to hit the energy barrier. I wrote this post about it last month:
https://open.substack.com/pub/hanschristensen/p/ai-hits-the-wall?r=304mrt&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
I read your piece. It was worth the read, so others should click on it.
Agree... at least one DC area exurb is fighting a Google data center that "promised jobs" because there were few actual jobs and enormous noise pollution from the cooling towers.
Agree. Also, AI is software, and all software have bugs. I think that it is inevitable that a bug will cause AI to crash or become unstable. What happens to humans at that point? Civilization crashes? Who troubleshoots or reboots the system?
Just as ICBMs and the like are all programmed by humans. That is the rub and something the Sam Altmans of the world conveniently forget.
This is the single best comment on this thread. Why? With no electricity, no running water 💦 or ac to cool down the ai data centers, it will be like shutting down “Dave” from the movie, 2001, a space odyssey.
@Mitch. Making a fine distinction, Dave was the human HAL was the computer. But yeah, easy to shut that stuff off unless we are really stupid and set up an AI computing center with its own power source, locked cabinets, etc. (Of course some power mad human is trying to figure all that out even as we speak...)
I agree with your comment! Life is so wild these days that I hear a lot of people say, "I don't know what to believe anymore!" Take good care.
When people talk about the difficulty to "shut that stuff off" they don't mean literally; an analogy would be like doing away with SPAM filters (can it be done?) - or eliminating microplastics, or ...
PS: We already have figured all that stuff out; the consequences of AI run amok are very real & very imaginable (that is why seminal researchers in the filed are upset - their understanding is that society will *not* plow ahead recklessly for $).
You're right about that. The energy consumption of AI is enormous. But again, the only intelligence AI or bots or any program has is programmed by a human. Computers only do what they're programmed to do so it won't turn itself off unless a person has programmed that feature into it.
Interesting thought. Do non-sentient objects have “thoughts “? If so, can they conceive of their own dystopian futures?
I was, perhaps, a bit facetious in that comment. AI is not capable of independent thought, at least not yet, but it can derive a solution based on thoughtful inputs. It might be able to invent a robot that can pull the plug. What if we went back to Isaac Asimov's three laws of robotics. 1. Never hurt a human. 2. Never hurt yourself unless you have to do so to avoid breaking rule 1. 3. Always do your job, unless it will destroy you, or it violates rule 1. Fossil fuel burning is killing humans, so if fossil fuels are necessary to keep AI running, Al would be forced to turn itself off. "That is far too logical for Earthlings, Mr. Spock."
OK, I was thinking along those lines, though without the Asimov reference (because I never read his stories). I did see Ex Machina, which featured a 'female' 'droid who developed volition. Mildly unsettling thought; men often complain that the woman in their lives "has a mind of her own." Think how complicated that gets when "she" is actually and "it". (Please, ladies, no wisecracks - we're just talkin' robots here. Thanks.)
Perhaps a safer way is to turn AI into a joint international endeavor. It would be available to all (like the www), and, by avoiding duplication of effort, it would use less energy.
Yes, correct; there is no technical limitation to collaboration and a better tomorrow.
Small personal effect: I used to spend a few minutes correcting my typos when writing emails. NOW, in just the last few weeks, I spend more time correcting bad AI/autocorrect choices about what it thought I meant to say! Different words appear right after I type my words...
Me too!
I know! The only good thing about autocorrect is that sometimes the resulting message is funnier than 'Mad Libs'.
I remember 'Mad Libs' back in 1968 when I was an 11 year old boy!
Me two!
Yes, exactly; "chilling effects" are the ones at the margins...
"AI" taking us over? Well, we are certainly opening the door for that Sci-fi horror to become a reality. AI has its place, but we are introducing this advancement prior to our ability to control it or even come to grips with what it can do. In space, where androids will replace humans out of necessity, I can see its value. However, speaking in terms of down to earth, to proceed with caution would be good advice.
Will the SCOTUS declare that an AI robot is a legal person with rights like it did with corporations? Imagine being sued by your AI robot companion!
If a police K-9 has a better dental plan than a child on Medicaid, then ...
Again, humans are the ones who program this stuff. AI is only as logical as a human programmer makes it.
Nope. AI will be only as logical as it is trained to be. An AI can be trained to be conservative or liberal, smart or dumb, hopefully coherent or insane. The training process is the key. And bias is part of all training.
That isn't so. AI is given huge data sets to analyse that are enormously diverse, and it is left to process whatever information it finds in there. But AI is iterative - it goes back to the data again and again, testing its concepts and analyses again and again for authenticity and veracity.
It is a 'black box' operation where the AI does not explain back to the operators how it arrived at its solutions. That is considered by some experts to be the major risk - the nightmare scenario where self-taught AI decides humans are the problem, not least because any logic would recognise that is true! (The film of "I, Robot" from the Isaac Asimov books of 1950 pursues the idea of an AI robot that works that out).
It is true that many AI models end up with biases, pulled in to their models from the human biases it finds in the data. That is seen as a problem and may be corrected, but not by restricting the data but be enlarging it to dilute the biases.
AI is already being used to author legal opinions for lawyers, not least because it can hold access to all the Case Law ever recorded in its memory for access, opinion and quotation. If for lawyers, then inevitably for judges too, if only to keep up!
It is only a matter of time before law courts become battlegrounds for competing AI generated cases.
"The future is already here. It just isn't widely distributed yet!"
So who then selects the training data that "dilutes" the bias?
There are also attorneys that have been fired for using AI to write legal opinions. See:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13367897/Colorado-attorney-suspended-bar-fired-chatgpt-ai.html
AI chatbots that accept interative training from users have been turned racist in less than a day. See:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/microsoft-shuts-down-ai-chatbot-after-it-turned-into-racist-nazi/
It is all about the training. And the training is going to primarily serve those that pay to create the AI. The users are not going to provide that training (see above.) And bias is inherent in all training.
To quote the musical "South Pacific:" You have to be carefully taught.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You%27ve_Got_to_Be_Carefully_Taught
Aren't human beings in America already subject to the judgement of algorithms, e.g. by way of surveillance technology & how that technology helps determine allocation of resources for policing? (Evidence is challenging thing when the task is to prove that it doesn't exist - to the point of flipping the standard of criminal justice; have we had any success in proving that racism doesn't exist?)
Thanks for raising the subject. No doubt AI is a threat. But the threat is a human one. It's how people use the tool that will determine its effect. Current AI is not that good. It just gloms together things it scrapes up on the Internet. So just like Google, you sometimes get good answers, sometimes bad ones. The real issue is that a lot of people don't care if the answers are good or bad. They care that something can spew it out for them, with little effort on their part. So it can generate SPAM, disinformation, and a general cloud of words, images, and videos that can mask reality. Fix the humans, not the AI.
I hope AI does a better job at being human than we did.
That must be what my friends & family meant when they told me to get off my computer & get a girlfriend in college...
They probably meant that man doth not commune with silicon alone.
They just couldn't see as far into the future...
= D
I don't speak emoticon but I think you got the yoke.
I needed that laugh. Thanks.
Nerds (that don't have to take themselves so seriously) rule-
= )
Indeed.
Ditto!
Existentially cynical. Step aside and let the humans intent on improving ourselves see our dreams come to fruition. Your misplaced disappointment is not a justification for championing our replacement. I'm on Team Human.
well good for you. that makes one of us.
I think it's debt, not AI, that's killing the planet. See, for example, Vulture Capitalism.
@Martha. I'd like to discuss this. According to Thomas Piketty it is the concentration of capital in fewer and fewer hands that constitutes the danger to the common good. Debt, in places like the United States, is a fictional thing at the national level (real enough to common folks). Reich has written a book, "Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists". Like all real economists today and throughout history (including Adam Smith), Reich knows that lack of regulation leads to capitalist excesses that will ultimately destroy even capitalism.
Note the parallel reply to 'Tom High' - and the truism that "growth doesn't come from debt" (as an excess of debt reinforces concentration of wealth); basically, one can see the progression from the global financial crisis of 2008: highly indebted companies -> highly indebted individuals -> highly indebted government -> impaired governance & an even greater need to inflate away debts (tissue, anyone?)...
Martha, there could well be more than one factor killing the planet. Imo there’s no doubt that humans, with our opposable thumbs and ability to “reason” (which means the ability to reason badly alongside reasoning well), have fubared the world.
My hope is that enough Americans realize that now and will try to give us one last chance next Nov to be the adults in the room.
There are several sustainability equations available on line. This one is about debt: https://www.ut.edu/uploadedFiles/Academics/Business/DebtSustainability-MathematicalAppendix.pdf. But with regard to the planet, this article might be an easy start.https://populationconnection.org/blog/earth-overshoot-how-can-we-achieve-true-sustainability/
Over $300 trillion and growing by leaps and bounds. Three times the world GDP of around $100 trillion. At what point does it become unsustainable, and the financial system crashes?
@Tom High. Thanks for the mention of Hudson. I have just made a brief but intense survey of his thinking. I'm intrigued by differences (I suspect) between Hudson and Piketty. I am perplexed though why you would mention Krugman in the same breath with Arthur Laffer?
I think it's too many people, overloading the planet's systems.
But when AI works that out for itself, then we are all in deep shit!
Does “moneyed interests” include ALL people with “money” (that is, investable financial assets”, or does it refer solely to the mega-wealthy? The question is not trivial.
I agree.
No great shakes - unless the 'Re(C)<g' relationship which dominated the 20th Century (but not centuries previous) reverts to a historical norm; Professor Reich has been sounding the warning call about Inequality for some time now!
Rishi C - Could you please render the equation into English? Thanks.
Yes, it is the central finding of 'Capital in the Twenty-First Century' (Piketty): returns on capital ('Re(C)') being less than the rate of growth ('g') of the economy corresponded to a period of unprecedented *widespread* prosperity; the fact thereof suggests the emergence of a "middle-class" (and even the success of democracy) to have been no accident, i.e. unprecedented for a reason (which is the consequent divergence from the "rentier")...
Thank you, Rishi, for your explanation of the equation. I haven’t gotten around to reading Thomas Piketty, in part because I’m not an economist, and hence it’s very likely I would find it hard to follow (much less judge ) his argument.
A thousand pages can go quicker than you may happen to think; there are, nonetheless, a few "Cliff Notes" summaries out there (try searching your library for the keywords 'Piketty' & 'Capital' - something is bound to turn up)...
= )
Maybe it will replace company executives. Think of all the money the companies would save.
I'd give you 1,000 likes for this comment, but the algorithm only allows one...
Thanks!
An educated population is necessary for a democracy. We do not have that and it shows
Entertainment is to education what junk food is to nutrition. We have been entertained out of our wits.
Over 50 years ago my sister-in-law spent a college summer interning at an internat’l newspaper in Paris. She asked the Editor who sent reports to other countries why he wasn’t sending news about serious world events to the US. His answer? “Americans don’t want real news. They want to be entertained.”
Iow, Americans would pay to be entertained, not to be informed. So, cynically that’s what corporate media gave us.
To wit, I hope to be entertained one day - but the Royal Court is *highly* selective in whom they choose to receive as an audience...
= D
("I never want to be a part of a club that would have me as a member!")
And AI won’t help re-educate people. Imo it will do the opposite.
I can’t even think about long term future problems right now, when the little bit of democracy we have seems precarious.
It will not simply be AI working on its own. Capitalism will provide the arena and the wealthy will continue to wipe swaths of middle class away funneling moneys into their own pockets. AI is not the enemy, but the tools, the means to redirect money.
We are failing at sending appropriate representation to our government and these actions can be costly in our near and far future.
We need both Civics and Ethics to become present thoughout our education systems and honestly, to come back into style!
“…failing at sending appropriate representation to our government….”
I repeatedly ask myself whether we are already past the tipping point. The corporations and the ultra rich already have a strangle hold on most of our elected representatives and the Supreme Court is backing them. The Citizens United decision allows them to contribute unlimited amounts in campaign contributions and their recent weakening of the Voting Rights Act has once again allowed the Red states to suppress the votes of Blacks, Latinos and poor people in general.
So how do we reverse this situation?
You could be right, have to drink a bourbon on that one.
An even scarier thought. Ai from the future could be guiding Ai in the present.
I hope that notion remains science fiction for a long time going forward. Maybe try watching some rom-coms to balance your viewing interests.
So let me get this straight. If I know that there’s a train coming while standing on the tracks your advice would be to daydream about the hilarity of Kim Basinger in Blind Date?
Oh, dear, you are pessimistic today.
i choose to think the arc is still bending us forward. Even our political situation is perhaps ushering us into a future where now it's not unreasonable to think that we could have a BLACK WOMAN as our president!
We are made to overcome and I like to think that this upheaval is ushering in a whole new, more exciting future. Change is always messy, and sometimes one literally has to vomit in order to feel better.
There is a Bible verse I think applies here "and be not weary in well doing, for in due season we will reap if we faint not." Galatians 6:9.
"Human beings will never know they are no longer in charge of their lives because AI will preserve the illusion of human agency. But it will be only an illusion." Your prediction is right on target. Replace AI with capitalism. This describes perfectly the combination of our democracy and capitalism.
AI IS Capitalism!