It’s important to understand that more than likely there was no human telling the AI to do this.
Considering the events elicit a strong emotional response in the public (ie: they constitute ragebait), it is more likely a human (possibly, but not necessarily, the author himself) came up with the idea, and guided an AI to carry them out.
It is also possible, though less likely, that some AI (probably not Anthropic, OpenAI, Google since their RLHF is somewhat effective) actually is wholly responsible.
@SamPatt Good post, including the clip of grandma's anecdote.
It would be a good idea to add a final step of burning the videos to M-disc. SSDs and spinning platter drives aren't reliable for long-term storage. You could use a tape drive if the file sizes are too large, but M-disc lasts longer and doesn't require pro hardware to read.
I use M-disc and I am sure the discs will stay safe for a long time. What I worry about are the drives! It seems the business of making drives is not profitable. So companies exit or reduce.
This is one reason I'd like to see a fully Open Source hardware+firmware optical drive. Probably best to start with CD-ROM, but DVD might also be possible. The optical and mechanical parts seem relatively simple, especially when you're not optimizing for minimum cost or minimum size (meaning you could use the original Philips-style swing-arm mechanism). From what I can tell, the most complicated part is the signal processing, and with modern hardware that looks practical to do in software. I'm not sure how far you could get with home-scale DIY construction, but CDs worked with late 70s technology, so at least that far should be possible.
That's better than nothing. Personally, I wouldn't consider it archival storage, so much as the possibility that 20 years from now Cloudflare (or a holding company) pays me $100 compensation for my lost data!
Locally, I would create a second user account on my machine specifically for demos. If I were creating a demo for a web service, hopefully I also would have a test environment with fake data.
It would make me nervous to use a production local account or production server for a demo. The human eye is terrible at catching random bits of text somewhere on the screen.
If you put a question to the electorate like 'should we tax only people whose last name begins with an X, Y or Z?', it's liable to pass.
Nobody really advocates for Direct Democracy. It isn't viable: 'tyranny of the majority' etc.
Most Western governments are Liberal Democracies - where some issues aren't subject to a vote - partly so that the mob can't persecute outnumbered subgroups.
That is highly unlikely. People may seem stupid when acting as a larger group, but I think part of that is that our current democracy doesn't require much engagement. If we moved to direct democracy then imo we'd get some bad policies that would quickly be reverted once the effects become apparent, and then voters are going to be a bit more careful. For example, "only taxing people whose last name begins with X, Y, Z", I don't think voters would currently be that dumb, but if they were then how many weeks of zero tax money would it take to get that undone?
I can't muster the enthusiasm to debate this. There are centuries of literature on this topic involving people smarter and more eloquent than me. The following wikipedia entry has examples you may find more persuasive than mine:
If majority of people in a country want to persecute an outnumbered subgroup, then what prevents the majority of delegates wanting the same as well?
You have an implicit assumption that the delegates are going to be smarter and better people that are going to lie to the majority to get elected and then will valiantly protect the subgroup.
But that have not happened anywhere. In fact in every case it is the delegates who organize persecution of various subgroups, even in situations when the share of population truly wanting to persecute subgroup is far from being a majority.
I refuse to believe that anyone reading this is incapable of remembering at least five historical examples in which the public was happy to treat an unpopular group unjustly.
There is no foolproof system that can guard against it, however declaring 'rights' and delegating the responsibility to protect them to the judiciary at least is a mitigation.
Direct voting does not replace judiciary or even senate, it only augments the house of congress.
If that is the Direct Democracy you had in mind, than we have no disagreement.
What I originally commented on was this:
So do you believe in democracy or not?
I take issue with the implication that it's all or nothing. If we characterize anything less than a direct vote on every issue as anti-democratic, then the only people left standing will be kooks.
I hope you will agree that the overall goal is maximizing freedom and autonomy, that is allowing every person or group to pursue happiness the way they want make mistakes or good choices and bear the consequences.
The representative democracy has a problem with delegates not faithfully representing the people they are supposed to represent. It allows politician to be elected by campaigning for issue X which is popular with majority, then do Y and Z that almost no one wants, and then campaign again on other party undoing X, leaving people no way to communicate that they want X and not Y Z.
Social media have greatly increased the impact of this instability, the only way to improve situation is adding some elements of direct voting that would improve efficiency of communication between people and the government.
No one in this thread have suggested to completely replace everything with direct voting, and yet many people vehemently argue against that. Meanwhile there is a much more interesting discussion: how to make cooperation between people more efficient using the new technologies that we have.
No one in this thread have suggested to completely replace everything with direct voting
I take the original comment to imply exactly that, since it positions someone taking issue with any direct vote as being against Democracy wholesale. If I missed something, @terminalshort can reply to clarify.
the only way to improve situation is adding some elements of direct voting that would improve efficiency of communication between people and the government.
There are two issues:
1) What are a good set of rules for the system.
2) If the existing system can no longer self-correct, how can one implement a good set of rules.
'Direct vote' might address the second issue. It's not the only way, but it's better than a violent revolution.
I'm not opposed to all direct voting, but it does have inherent problems. The most obvious is that the world is far too complicated for a majority of citizens to research all the issues that affect them. In a well-functioning representative democracy, a politician would have the resources and time to understand the issues. Granted, that seldom is the case in reality.
That is the same argument proponents of planned economy use. It doesn't work in reality because no one knows what other people need and no one cares. Representatives care about being reelected, but they have a very hard time figuring out what people want of them because vote ones in 4 years, or angry people on social media is too unreliable channel of communication.
The monetary system under capitalism is not the same as direct democracy.
A planned economy under direct democracy would be at least as bad as a planned economy under a representative democracy because the average voter has even less knowledge about economics and business than a government planner.
The best thing about direct democracy is that, unlike representative democracy, we don't have it and therefore cannot instantly think of its flaws.
The average person reads under a sixth grade level, cannot perform long division, and quite possibly couldn't tell you how many years have passed since Jesus was born.
Whether a direct vote is appropriate for an issue depends on which is a greater danger: the corruption of a politician, or the ignorance and flakiness of the average voter.
Youtube has reached the terminal stage of enshittification:
• the good stuff is VHS-quality TV content that somebody pirated
• the ads, once nonexistent, are typically disreputable and now incessant
• the few 'creators' worth watching are lost in an ocean of audience-captured, brain-dead garbage "hey guys... [product placement disguised as organic content]... misinformation... remember to like and subscribe... [product placement disguised as organic content]"
• access becomes increasingly arcane due to ad-blocking measures
• one of the lowest quality comments sections - largely inorganic, rogue state-sponsored - on the internet
• increasingly just AI slop
The day I can't scrape videos via yt-dlp is last day I permit youtube domains on my network. Personally, I would prefer to eat a rotten cat carcass than pay a single cent to Youtube.
In a better world, youtube would be some kind of a protocol, not a mediocre company serving as a middleman.
Nobody cared because nobody knew what an mp3 was in 1995. Most people - everyone but a minority of tech-minded audio producers - considered digital audio on a computer just a novelty. It took another four years until the public started to associate a music collection with the computer (ie: 1999, when Napster came out).
everyone [...] considered digital audio on a computer just a novelty
Personal computers, in 1995, did not have the juice to play high quality audio and video. Media formats used less efficient compression and harddisks were smaller (most couldn't fit a whole CD of PCM audio).
And, in 1995, there were no portable device options - as far as I know - to play audio files, on-the-go. For high-quality digital audio, it was pretty much either DAT cassettes, or CDs (recordable CDs were too new for normal people to own).
On the internet, a few sites, such as radio stations, streamed audio using 'realaudio'. The sound quality was abysmal.
At the same time, the tech industry was in the midst of a 'multimedia' bubble. 'Multimedia' essentially referred to programs on CD-ROMs that could play postage-stamp sized videos and short snippets, or low-quality snippets, of audio.
The music environment became closer to today's in 1999 - with Napster - when the public discovered mp3s, and closer still in 2001 - with Apple's introduction of the iPod - when the public discovered portable music players.
I found this article while researching Lorillard tobacco company. Nicolas Darvas mentions the company in a book he published in 1960:
While most Wall Street stocks drifted or dropped, I continued my dancing tour of the world. In November 1957 I was appearing at the “Arc En Ciel” in Saigon when I noticed in Barron’s a stock unknown to me called LORILLARD.
I did not know then that they were the manufacturers of a particular brand of filter-tip cigarettes and the filter-tip craze was about to sweep America, causing their production to leap up astronomically. Out in Saigon, all I knew was that LORILLARD began to emerge from the swamp of sinking stocks like a beacon. In spite of the bad market, it rose from 17 until, in the first week of October, it established itself in the narrow box 24/27. Its volume for that week was 126,700 shares, which sharply contrasted with its usual 10,000 shares earlier in the year.
The steady rise in price and the high volume indicated to me that there was a tremendous interest in this stock. As for its fundamentals, I was satisfied as soon as I found out about the wide acceptance of their “Kent” and “Old Gold” cigarettes. I decided that if it showed signs of going above 27 I would buy it.
I asked my broker to cable me daily quotes. It soon became clear from these quotes that certain knowledgeable people were trying to get into this stock in spite of the general state of the market. Few people at that time had the faintest indication that LORILLARD was to make Wall Street history, that it was to shoot up to a most astounding high in a relatively short time, watched by the amazed and gasping financial community.
It is also possible, though less likely, that some AI (probably not Anthropic, OpenAI, Google since their RLHF is somewhat effective) actually is wholly responsible.
reply