A group of very mentally ill, insecure people with a lot of material wealth control the internet and media.
They get to write the narrative.
We can analyze just one small tool in the belt of narrative control: censoring. If you've been warned or banned on Reddit, you can imagine how this works. If you've said something against the mold of what they allow, you will get censored. With so many people commenting, some subset of people will always say what you want to see. You censor or derank opinions you don't want, and boost opinions you want. This is a defensible form of writing a narrative without actually having to artificially write anything.
Of course with AI, you can now just write anything and seed ideas.
Give such sick people the reigns, and you get a false reality has little connection to what's really happening.
OK, but applying the idea from critical legal theory that "the purpose of the law is the protect status quo power" to mental health to infer that diagnoses must similarly reinforce archetypes with social/economic/political utility for the system - how does that gel with the idea that people capable of aquiring great wealth (a measure of 'system utility') are highly mentally ill?
Aside from that, I'm not saying you're wrong or right about that theory, I'm just wondering how it falls down around that idea.
On this topic of interenet behavior, maybe I'm not really sure or maybe I am, but my view is it's less about some sort of diempowering imposition of external/elite evil upon a innocent and good mass population, but rather about the medium itself enabling latent negativities in the populus to surface. Which doesn't mean the population is itself not good and innocent - it is also multifaceted. Thus, such dynamics might operate in a "Stanford Prison Experiment" kind of "cover and permission" way.
My view of many of these dynamics are its more about emergent self-regulating properties of a system than it is about top-down control. In a sense, that's a lot more liberating and empowering for people, because then they are not cast as victims of some evil from on high, they are the architects of their experience, for good or bad.
The view you espouse, while seeming to empower the downtrodden by taking aim at hidden sources of evil power, I feel in fact disempowers by playing up the fake victim narratives that disempower and confuse people. In other words, your idea, while seemingly edgy and incisive, may in fact be what any such extant "evil elites" would want you to think, if they hope to have control! Haha :)
Anyway, I'm not trying to cut down your idea here in this topic - personally I believe people are very much in charge of their experiences, that's what I've found in my life - but in this kind of mass topic, who knows? Anywa, thanks for responding. Just some food for thought and maybe discussion. Have a good one :)
> diagnoses must similarly reinforce archetypes with social/economic/political utility for the system
Unless extreme wealth is part of the diagnostic criteria, this model says the diagnostic criteria would be designed to reinforce archetypes in the general populace, and that the status quo powerful would simply not receive such diagnoses. That doesn't stop other people from reviewing the checklists and drawing their own conclusions. (I, myself, haven't done this, so I'm not sure whether the "powerful people are diagnosable as mentally ill" conclusion is valid.)
> Thus, such dynamics might operate in a "Stanford Prison Experiment" kind of "cover and permission" way.
The Stanford Prison Experiment is actually a good example: Philip Zimbardo had his thumb very firmly on the scales, and excluded that information from his write-up. The claim that "people are just like that" has been fabricated enough times that I'm deeply suspicious of it.
Fair enough, because it wouldn't apply (as part of the power of the system in this very model), to the powerful themselves, means the criteria would only need to shape the rest, not reinforce the elite traits, such as they may be. In other words it could serve its purpose of protecting their power and hierarchy even if it was only ever applied to everyone but them. Makes sense. Thanks.
Re your point about the SPE, I'm not saying I disbelieve you -- but I don't know -- (seems plausible that a big ticket "objective experiment" was infact non-scientifically reproducible or even used as a psyop to gaslight people into accepting their "original sin" - or whatever) but can you show some evidence of this?
Highly functioning sociopaths. And this diagnosis never goes alone in otherwise perfectly balanced individuals, does it. Most of them have missing/broken father figure syndrome which manifests in various bad and rather unfixable personality traits.
The societies we humans build always allow such persons to rise to the top - it doesn't matter if market democracy or brutal communism, fascism etc. The last type that didn't work well was some sort of feudal kingdom style where power was shared among elite across generations, inherited and rarely claimed by more competent, ambitious and vicious folks from lower ranks. But this is also how we got most of the progress in past 150 years, so its a double-edged sword. I wish I had a solution, maybe some Deus Ex-style of neutral AGI, but who would build such an AGI when everybody competent wants more power and manipulate others to their favor.
Heck, we often celebrate them by looking at their achievements, conveniently ignoring what utter piece of shit they are as humans (Ford is a prime example - a great inspiration for Hitler among others, and musk doesn't go far and look how uncritically he was celebrated also here for a long time and often still is... but the list is very long, basically almost all billionaires and high power folks).
With great power comes great impact even if they don't try, and who doesn't like some ego boost. People imitate them, follow them, subconsciously accept their values more easily. They literally imprint their values on rest of the world and we allow it due to our laziness, convenience and inherent sheepish mentality of masses which we are part of whether we like it or not - just look at how most folks need some form of a role model.
Intresting. I'm not saying (to pick some well-known execs/founders/leaders at random) Jobs, Musk, Zuck, Bezos, Huang, Trump, Xi are "high functioning sociopaths" but Jobs and Bezos both had missing biological fathers. Musk had a violent one. Zuck, not sure - but something seems weird with the dad, it's never spoken of tho. Huang was raised without parents present (only communicating via casette tape shipped on boat - wow!), living overseas from age 9, in a violent type of environment. Trump's dad was a disciplinarian tough on his brother, but Trump found ways to stand up to him. Xi's father was purged/rehabilitated by the Communists and they had to live in caves, farming dust and being bitten by lice, etc for years. I don't know any of them personally and I'm not speaking to their actual stories, as I don't know.
All this tho -- can the mother have no impact? I don't think so. Children are raised by their mothers. Why put the blame on dads, if solely? Seems not fair. A bifurcation in blame in society that can only cause a fracture that leads to greater wrongs later.
Also, while such questions are intriguing -- much of this talk of what's wrong with the internet, points the blame at a few rich people. This seems misguided, and misses the point that the internet is largely "us" - all of us. If we are doing something "wrong" but deflect, we're never going to get better. Even if some bad people are trying to push buttons, we're the ones that have to take responsibility for how we act and to do good.
When I'm chatting online, I'm sure as hell not talking with Bezos - he can't text that much, least of all in the hot-tub. I'm talking with some random. And we each have to take resopnsibility for our behavior. If the rando I'm talking with says, "Why am I bad? Because Jeff Bezos made me this way." It sounds totally ridiculous. And it is, of course. I think the hijacking of a question about "why is the internet negative sometimes" into a 2-minutes-hate on rich-elite is the wrong approach to solutions and understanding.
Most people have significantly less than what we are spoon fed by media and the internet at large.
Just as in history we learn of emperors and kings instead of the common person, most digital content is about the modern day lords, barons, emperors, and kings. They call them billionaires, presidents, CEOs, prime ministers, etc now, but they are the exact same as they always have been.
If you turn the screen off and take a walk, start talking with real people that actually provide value to society, the world is much kinder than we've all been made to believe.
The real people are a good people, as they long have been. Their stories may not be written, but the Earth itself carries their memories.
No, it couldn't have unless these ideas were sandwiched between other ideas that it could interpolate between.
You have to approach genai as a high-dimensional interpolation machine. It can perform extrapolation when you, the user, provide enough information to operate on. It can interpolate between what you provide and what it knows as well.
With these constraints, it is still pretty powerful, and I am generalizing of course. But in my experience, it is terrible at truly novel implementations of anything. It makes countless mistakes, because it continually attempts to fit to patterns found in existing code.
So you can really see the weaknesses at the frontier. I would encourage experimenting there to confirm what I am saying.
They are against AI code now as well. AI anything is toxic to the general pop, which is why some companies are asking not to be forced to reveal their use of it.
The real issue is that people's livelihoods are being automated. This can be fixed with sensible policies and things like universal healthcare and universal basic income.
There are some additional policies I'd like involving AI automation gains compensating workers losing their jobs to AI, and laws making all AI open-source due to their nature of being trained on public data.
With those policies, it wouldn't hurt so much to lose your job to AI. I would think there would be leas hostility at that point.
I must say it is all very confusing to me. If someone likes a game, why does the origin of assets matter? It is the same thing I see with crypto. It is just code and data. People putting value on it doesn't change what it is. Yet now there are all these regulations because enough people assigned enough value so the code suddenly becomes regulated.
AI is just code and data. It doesn't make sense how offended people are by it. No one is being for to use AI. Sure, it is changing how our society functions, but this isn't the fault of AI, it is the fault of bad systems. We have bad economic systems, bad political systems, bad leaders across the board, and bad distribution of ownership. AI isn't causing these problems, it is just amplifying them.
Except it isn't a free market. It is a heavily regulated market that favors corporations. The regulatory bodies have been corporate captured. In addition, the corporate bodies collude on things like rent, and have a near infinite runway to leave units empty.
With the collusion of corporate entities setting prices, it raises the overall market prices of properties. As small-time landlords observe the markets, they naturally also raise their prices to increase prices.
Additionally, because of corporate capture and collusion in other markets, prices broadly increase for owning property. This forces everyone who keeps rent lower to raise rents.
The way to fix this is simple. Stop the corporate collusion by making laws that make it functionally impossible.
This can be done by the following:
- tax the hell out of corporate ownership of residential properties
- an increasingly expensive multi-home tax. First home is tax free. Second has yearly taxes and those taxes exponentially increase for each additional home.
- a vacant home tax. On top of any second home taxation, for homes besides your 1 home, there should be a vacant home tax. If a home does not have a resident in it, it should be taxed. That tax should be around what it would cost to rent the unit out.
There are some other additional factors such as penalizing foreign non-resident owners, but this covers the bulk.
Being a landlord should not be easily profitable. It should be a job that you work your ass off at.
Then and only then will the free market begin to function and optimize.
I think your attitude (landlords are the problem; we must make life harder for landlords) is a big reason housing is so expensive because it creates a situation in which not enough people with money or access to credit want to become landlords.
You say that the landlord industry has captured its regulators, but you give no example of any action or ruling by an regulator that benefits landlords at the expense of tenants.
Collusion on rent is a relatively new phenomenon around RealPage and is being banned. Meanwhile, regulations like rent stabilization in NYC benefit existing tenants, not landlords.
And the taxes you describe having nothing to do with collusion. Collusion is fought using anti-collusion laws. What could possibly lead you to believe that multi-home taxes would reduce corporate collusion?
Yes, obviously RealPage should be banned everywhere. But corporate capture is not the underlying economic issue at all behind high prices. Lack of supply is.
Anti-collusion laws are ineffective. Legislation that targets easier to enforce vectors with desirable side effects makes more sense.
Whether my theory on what is occurring is true or not, the proposed solution would solve it along with countless other issues, while have very little downside for anyone but a tiny group of lazy parasites.
I don't know where you're getting your ideas. None of what you say is true. You're taking some kind of bizarre ideological stance ("tiny group of lazy parasites"?) that isn't supported by any kind of evidence. You can look up the great success of many anti-collusion laws, and your solution would be economically harmful and inefficient in a large number of ways. All I can say is, I think you need to study economics more. Landlords provide a valuable service (making rental properties available to people who prefer to rent rather than buy), and they're not making extraordinary profits relative to other industries. Remember that as demand goes up, so too does the price they have to pay to acquire their properties, and therefore the mortgages they are paying to banks. If landlords made extraordinary profits relative to other businesses or investments, everybody would be rushing to become a landlord. But they aren't, because it's hard work and involves significant financial risk.
If people able to live in a home they own harms the economy, sign me up.
Houses are not investment instruments. They are spaces where people can freely exist as they are. A domain that they have full dominion in to authentically explore who they are, who they want to become, and what they want to share with others. A place to raise a family, to rest without a mask, and to be safe as they are.
Notice how I didn't mention economics at all?
Just because you have a house / houses doesn't mean others don't. Do you have any idea what it feels like to be homeless? I dare you to try it. Do you have any idea what it feels like to be a renter under the thumb of a landlord with no hope of ever having your own home?
My "policies" originate from empathy for real people. The majority of people, actually. It does not give a single shit about economics only benefiting the rich.
But that said, if you give most people the ability to have a true home, the economy will explode in activity. Instead of spending money on rent, people would spend on goods and services. They'd be happier, so they would spend money on having fun.
Making housing affordable is a no brainer.
The nice thing is, we already know what the alternative is. The economy is collapsing right now, in no small part due to the housing crisis that has been going on for a long time.
Since my policies won't be occurring now or ever, let's both sit back and enjoy the lack of these policies, and see how wonderful a world that is.
No. Execs are not "just humans." They are enormously privileged, often not due to skill but due to proximity / birth, and there is no excuse for this kind of behavior.
You want to make buckets loads of money and tell other people what to do? Then you need some empathy for workers who aren't stakeholders making peanuts compared to you. That is the most basic of basic requirement to be in such a position of privilege.
It isn't "just human" to be a slave driver. It is criminally inhumane. I can only hope these people will face some kind of karmic justice for their gross inhumane negligence.
A long time ago now, the short of it is that instead of pulling the trigger, I put the gun down and smoked DMT.
I went somewhere. Hard to explain where, but it was more real than here. I remembered this life, but I also remembered an innumerable amount more. The time was different there. I don't remember many specifics but when I came back, I remembered that I want to be here on a level that transcends this life. That ending my life here would not be what I want on some other level that is more real than here. And that this lifetime is but a spark amidst an endless flame.
I was once a big proponent for people having DMT experiences but then I learned it works very differently for different people.
Now, I believe it is an acute intervention drug for the suicidal.
It behaved very differently for me in that context. Soon after repeated treatment with it, my entire state changed. I was lifted out of poverty into well compensated employment. I bought my first house. My software skills leveled up and I shifted from being fixated on game dev to more impactful fields. I can't describe the number of changes, but I attribute it all to DMT.
It flipped a switch in my mind and I know that I am alive today only because of that.
I hope that someday, we recognize it as what it was for me: a powerful spiritual medicine.
Something I always say to people who claim these things are all just hallucinations: if a hallucination teaches you how to be a better person, gives you a reason to live, and allows you to be more open and loving, was it really a hallucination? Something to think about.
This is potentially exactly what I was looking for, thank you for putting it together.
When running a bunch of parallel agents locally, they can step on each other's shoes a bit. The ideal setup is to give them isolated workspaces, have them pull code in, do work, then push code back upstream.
When they do work, they sometimes go off the rails. They'll delete files they don't understand or think are irrelevant, explore other parts of the FS and get confused once their context is contaminated. By giving them a sterile workspace, it allows near risk-free multi-agent operations.
Containers offer most of this, but I was concerned about the security boundaries if it really goes haywire. For example, if I have an agent working at a very low level, it might start messing with the OS in a way that can damage things in a difficult way to reverse. They get confused easily.
Anyway, bookmarked. I will check it out in more detail when I get to that portion of my workflow. Thanks again.
Agreed, but this is also a male-dominated space with a lot of men with relationship issues, so objectivity goes out the window when it comes to women here.
I enjoy all the technical discourse here but the views on women are alarming to say the least.
>I enjoy all the technical discourse here but the views on women are alarming to say the least.
You are gell-mann amnesia'ing. The takes on technology or anything else are just as buttfuck stupid and off.
The other day HN was full of people insisting that there would be some "unforseen downside" of dropping the penny and making stores round purchase amounts to the nickle.
Meanwhile, the first cash registers were only able to operate on 5 cent increments because in the early 1900s pennies were "inconvenient"!
Similarly, it's extremely common for people here to insist that "sales tax in the US is complicated" but it just isn't. The entry level cash register from the 90s supports "US, Canada, and VAT" tax schemes and supports 4 custom tax regimes and that is treated as fully expected functionality and was the norm in earlier systems as well.
Nonsense. Chimpanzees and Bonobos are our distant ancestors. Have a look at how they operate.
From what I can tell, men have cause significant damage to women's psyche. Men that turn women into a commodity plaything instead of a fellow human being.
Women are human beings just like men, they aren't some alien species. Trauma hurts their psyche, not pleasure. If women were in a safe, supportive, mature society, some would be monogamous, some would be poly, some would be non-committal (but honest), and some would be totally loose. Just like men. In every case they would be safe to be who they are without abuse.
Instead, and this is where men and women deviate, it is not safe. Men will often kill or crush women, physically, professionally, and often at random. Women are not allowed to walk around at night because some men having a bad day or a wild night may not be able to control themselves, and most of society is just okay with this. Police in large swaths of the world do not help make anything safer, in fact they make it more dangerous.
The only reason women who are more monogamous can seem better off is because society does not make room for those who aren't that way. And there are many who aren't that way. There are many who are forced to mask as that way because it is often dangerous otherwise. At large, a prison for women has been created. I think that people may even enjoy how dangerous it is, in order to force women to seek the safety of a man.
Most of society doesn't make room for liberated women and it is heartbreaking. I will dream of a future where I can meet women as total equals, in all walks of life, without disproportionate power, where all of us as humans are free to be who we are in totality.
If you read journalism about why women are frustrated with dating today, one of the number-one complaints is that the men they are meeting are “flaky”, women can’t trust that the man will be there for her. Your depiction that “women don’t really need men” completely misses the current trend that this thread is about.
> complaints is that the men they are meeting are “flaky”, women can’t trust that the man will be there for her.
No, that's not a complaint that the "modern" man isn't some sort of 1950s provider, it's a complaint that he does not text back. Everyone on the apps suffers from ghosting. It's exhausting because you have to be "On" in 100% of your interactions and texts but there's only like a 2% chance it will continue in any shape no matter what you do.
Even the "tradwife" trend is not actually harkening back to the 50s and a strong provider man, and instead lionizes a reality that never existed and is much more about wanting to check out of the rat race that harms us all. These women do not want to be a 1950s homemaker, they just want to focus on their hobbies and not worry about money.
I never said women don't need men, did I? Let me read what I said again.
No, I never said that. I said women need safety, and society is largely not safe for them.
Human beings are social creatures. Women need men. Women need women. Men need women. Men need men. We all need each other.
The system patterns of online dating cultivate undesirable traits in both men and women which result in side effects that no one would want. "Flakiness" is one such side effect.
Online dating dynamics create high abundance, low commitment environments that systematically produce “flakiness,” so the issue isn’t about women needing men or not, but that both sexes operate in a degraded safety/trust landscape shaped by platform incentives rather than by real world social cues. Restore actual interpersonal safety and the entire pattern shifts positive, with less defensive behavior, less attrition, less pain, and more ethical orgasms.
All people, regardless of gender, should cultivate a safety in both society and in themselves. This safety is liberating. Instead of controlling people, you free them. Instead of binding, you uplift. Instead of harming, you heal. This is the basis of safety.
Perhaps one of the problems with modern dating is that women expect a man to provide safety, but many men don’t want to be viewed as a source of safety? Me, I am only interested in relationship for companionship, someone with whom I can share interesting experiences, because joy is not complete unless it is shared. But when it comes to safety and security, a partner is on her own. That’s not to say that I wouldn’t do this or that for a partner, but it would be supererogatory. My male friends have a similar complaint, this isn’t just a HN thing.
Again, this is probably an outcome of modernity. I likely wouldn’t think this way as a man, if I didn’t grow up in a modern age hearing that women are strong, they can take care of themselves and no longer depend on men.
Safety doesn't mean you're a provider. It means you are safe to be authentic with. Safe to share truth with.
That safety takes many forms.
You cannot have depth without that safety. It is physical, it is also emotional and intellectual.
For instance, without safety a partner would never join you on many interesting experiences. If you want those experiences, they need to be able to trust you.
Now extend that idea of safety to a broad society context, and that is approaching what I was speaking to.
The safety I have heard demanded directly from women to me as a partner – or from female friends about the man they seek – is the safety of being a provider, giving them a feeling of security that they can’t manage to achieve on their own. It’s not just about a man being safe to be with. Again, you are speaking about something I haven’t heard from actual women, and I think I’ll trust the latter (and reportage matching it) over a HN stranger for forming my assumption of what women want from relationships.
And again, maybe part of why women might be having problems with dating is that many men today don’t want to be seen as a big emotional support for a partner either. That’s draining and time-consuming. This might bother you, but my whole point is that the social pressures are no longer there to compel men (or women) to act a certain way, and that is impacting dating.
> from women to me as a partner – or from female friends about the man they seek
How many people are you talking about here? Like if you had to rephrase this point using numbers would you say “I’ve heard half a dozen women say this”?
That aside, can you elaborate on safety as a demand? I’ve never had a partner or friend demand safety from me, ever. The only times in my life that I have seen someone demand safety from another is when the latter is acting violent or reckless to the point that their behavior poses a threat.
I fear our friend we're replying to here may have never had a deep relationship with the opposite sex.
This is unfortunately the reality of countless men, often going their entire lives like this, with bitterness and resentment growing outwardly instead of reflection inwardly.
Hijacking this response now for some advice / thoughts.
So for the lurking straight men: women are simply human beings trapped in a form you desire. The game here is simple. Don't try and control women as objects. Instead, try and control your desire.
I can promise with certainty, if you control your desire, everything you've ever dreamed and more will appear. This is not an easy game to play. But it is the only way to win.
Don't pursue women as romantic interests. Ever. Leave them alone. Instead, connect with them only as friends, and only as they initiate. This is the first step to escape the brainwashing we've all been subjected to.
This means you will be going through a withdrawal. It is difficult. Take a hike. Pour yourself into work. Take on new hobbies. Grow yourself.
Friends will appear. It doesn't matter what sex they are, they are friends, treat them with the same respect and kindness as you would anyone. This is your first test. This could appear in months, it could appear in years, it all depends on you.
We need to start seeing the light in each other, beyond the skin. Every single person, regardless of how you view them, has a universe in them. Help them become their universe. Don't trap them in yours.
I would wish we existed in a world where these things are lived by, and need not be said. But I know that someday, it will be this way. We will all see each other's humanity. We will inspire each other, enabling the maximum in creative output for everyone, regardless of our lineage and forms. We won't desire vengeance towards nor suffering for anyone any longer because the vastness of the ever expanding cosmos is so much larger than the finite histories of our pain.
It is from that place I try to share some thoughts. I wouldn't think I'd have to say "women are people too" from that place, but it has broad applicability and seems to be necessary in today's world.
You just proved my point. Men are undoubtedly stronger than women. Men are evolved to "spread their seed". Some men will take advantage of women whenever possible. Therefore a woman walking alone at night is not safe. Therefore a woman needs the protection of a man. You cannot change the behavior of every man. You can change some of them, even most of them. At the end, some men will keep being violent. Therefore a woman without a man's protection will never be safe. And this is already burned into their psyche.
They get to write the narrative.
We can analyze just one small tool in the belt of narrative control: censoring. If you've been warned or banned on Reddit, you can imagine how this works. If you've said something against the mold of what they allow, you will get censored. With so many people commenting, some subset of people will always say what you want to see. You censor or derank opinions you don't want, and boost opinions you want. This is a defensible form of writing a narrative without actually having to artificially write anything.
Of course with AI, you can now just write anything and seed ideas.
Give such sick people the reigns, and you get a false reality has little connection to what's really happening.
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