I remember this was very closely Trump’s response to the COVID-19 outbreak. No, we’re fine. It’s not happening.
Then John Hopkins said The virus is infectious within the community
And Trump had a tantrum while Dr. Fauci said time to wear masks. Cloth ones if you don’t have an n95
And Trump ordered all the PPE seized to be given to his friends.
Does anyone else remember this?
Courtesy of XKCD, long before we have to contend with unfriendly AI (we have committees of AI-techs working on this problem already) we’ll have to contend with someone like Musk or Bezos determined to own everything and capable of creating an AI-controlled army of killer robots.
We’re not sure how rogue AI is going to manifest. We are sure rogue power-seeking humans exist all the time, and positions of power are commonly filled by them. (That’s the primary argument for election by sortition, or by lottery.)
We’ve just shown in November that Americans can be made to elect a literal Hitler, knowing what he intends to do. And even though the Democrats made some mistakes, they did run a solid campaign. Their losses in the battleground states were by razor thin margins.
One factor is the giant far-right propaganda machine.
The other, as noted by the boring British economist guy (looking… Richard J. Murphy) is that too many people live in precarity for the status quo party (the neoliberal party in whatever country – Democrats here in US, Labor in UK) to draw voters. Essentially, when you’re going to starve under King Log, then King Heron starts looking good.
And we saw this in the elections near November 2024, far-right parties were advancing in the EU. They started going the other way after Trump and MAGA were in power in the US, mask-off and painting a ghastly picture of what a King Heron reign looks like.
The cure for the latter is to go way progressive (e.g. FDR’s New Deal). In this case, go far more progressive than the likes of AOC or Bernie Sanders are offering (the rest of the Democratic party doesn’t like them much).
But the cure for the former is unknown. Not known to me, anyway, and not discussed even on far left media (e.g. Breadtube) possibly because they don’t have answers either. Mind control does work, even if it’s not as beamy and instant as it is in sci-fi. And if we can’t counter it, we’ll have to discover through suffering and death why we don’t use it. And that assumes we have time before one of the other imminent great filters proves unnavigable.
My wife and I separated shortly after Trump won, November 2024.
I’m still in the same psychotic break. (She and I are still trying to work things out.)
WTF world?
Whatever made that crater was an ELE. Bigger than Chicxulub.
We have plenty of great filters to navigate:
We end war, or we die.
We restore the atmosphere and rebuild global ecology, or we die.
We end stratified society and power disparity, or we die.
Where are all the aliens? Fermi asked. The first question is, how do we navigate our way to becoming a space-faring, world colonizing species, ourselves? It’s turning out to be pretty difficult for the common hominid.
It ain’t me! It ain’t me!
I ain’t no president’s son
We still need to have that conversation, specifically the influence of the massive propaganda machine that control nearly half the media-watching eyeballs (viewership).
We’ve seen our own relatives get radicalized, to no end that serves the public (or their social relationships). So what do we do to counter this wealth fueled monster?
Another descriptive term is wagging the dog (referring to the tail having disproportionate leverage over the beast) which is a (not uncommon) presidential tactic of taking a serious military action in order to distract from other scandals.
News media, including classic liberal media will allow other stories to die to report on attacks or invasions (or when you can get it, attacks on the US by foreign units).
George W.Bush used this method, but also blitzing the public with countless scandals. (George H. W. Bush did too) So Trump’s kitchen cabinet was likely informed by history when considering becoming Bibi’s personal B.
Never let the assailant take you to the secondary location.
Urban self defense classes have been teaching this since the 1970s, at least.
That is a good assessment. Yes.
In fact, the race between capitalist interests to bypass safety and get operational AGI soonest is entirely about getting that power to be able to use it to hold everyone else hostage.