Maybe TECH will save us?

[Knarf]

I ran across this vid last night while going over r/singularity news. You guys...and especially "the dog" might be able to tell if this venture has any teeth. It sounds plausible, but not probable, but is there any of these guys "visions" worth a plug nickel?

Synopsis of the vid...

Forget Everything You Believed About Computing w/ Gill Verdon | EP #102
Channel Peter H. Diamandis

The Future of AI Computing and Accelerationist Movement

The text explores the importance of embracing technological change, AI augmentation, thermodynamic computing, and the mission to increase intelligence per watt in the universe. It delves into the accelerationist movement's goal of understanding progress, civilization advancement, and the need for dynamism to adapt effectively in a rapidly changing world. Additionally, it discusses the integration of AI technologies into human life and the potential future of AI-human coupling for accelerated growth.

The Future of AI Augmentation and Neural Integration
The discussion revolves around the importance of embracing technology, the potential of AI augmentations becoming ubiquitous, the balance between centralization and individuality in AI control, concerns about the impact of AI on society, the Kardashev scale as a milestone for civilization growth, and the need to aim for non-anthropocentric goals to advance civilization.

Leveraging AI to Understand the Physical World
The conversation delves into leveraging AI to understand the physical world, focusing on engineering matter, chemistry, and physics at a fundamental level to better perceive, predict, and control it. The narrative emphasizes the potential for AI to boost intellectual capabilities exponentially, the challenges of distilling human intelligence, and the importance of embracing technological change for future advancements.

Evolution of Quantum Computing and Thermodynamic Computing in AI
The text discusses the evolution of quantum computing and the emergence of thermodynamic computing in the field of AI. It explores the idea of quantum data acquisition and transmission, the co-evolution of hardware and algorithms, and the shift towards probabilistic computing for energy efficiency. Furthermore, it delves into the concept of maximizing intelligence per watt and the connection between intelligence, entropy, and thermodynamics in the universe.

Discussion on Simulation, Quantum Computing, and Thermodynamic Computers
The conversation delves into the concept of living in a simulation and the limitations of embedding simulations within simulations. It transitions to the development of Quantum Computing and the challenges in dense Quantum information packing. Finally, it explores the creation of thermodynamic computers and the potential they hold for revolutionizing AI technology.

Opportunity for AI Enthusiasts
Individuals passionate about cutting-edge AI and looking for intellectual challenges outside traditional approaches like LLMs and Transformers are encouraged to join a team focused on developing new software stacks and algorithms. The emphasis is on exploring and creating intelligence, with a call for those with AI experience to pioneer a new paradigm in the field.
Key Points Covered
1. The Future of AI Computing and Accelerationist Movement
2. The Future of AI Augmentation and Neural Integration
3. Leveraging AI to Understand the Physical World
4. Evolution of Quantum Computing and Thermodynamic Computing in AI
5. Discussion on Simulation, Quantum Computing, and Thermodynamic Computers
6. Opportunity for AI Enthusiasts

[K-Dog]

No tech won't save us.  Their vision is not worth a nickel, plugged or otherwise.

Accelerationist people have reified their speculations to stroke their own egos.  There is absolutely no basis for their claims.  They are worse than doomers who think all feedback loops run away to exponential destruction.  But math does not work the way they desire.  And that actually is a good thing. 

Think of it this way.  If Guy McPhearson is one side of a coin, Gil Verdon is the other side.  It is the same ignorance but it is the other side of the coin.  Doom and gloom Vs Happy Happy Joy Joy.  The spy Vs spy of views taken to an illogical extreme.

The smartest guys in a room are not so smart if they do not know they are trapped in a room.  Accelerationists are in a room with a locked door.

The consequences of reification are not trivial.  Consider this, without sex there is no gender.  Yet some people think a man can have the soul of a woman or that a woman can really be a man inside, despite the evidence of the universe being otherwise.  And this belief of the ignorant is ruining lives.

There is only one word to describe this sophomoric thinking.

NUTS

Making reality from fiction and speculation is nuts.  And people do it all the time.  Believe in the unreal.  People believe in realities that rot away as soon as their brain dies, thinking that their realities are more real than the actual stuff of stars.  Private realities last only as long as the brains that constructed those realities.

Accelerationsists are more than equally nuts.  Not once in this video (which I have playing while I write this) have there been any discussion of limits.  This is irresponsible.  This is Guy McPhearson irresponsible.

Dominant nerd alpha does not impress me.

What fucking good does it do to have the intelligence of god when you don't even know what problem you are suppose to solve???  I actually find dominant nerd alpha repulsive.  The Marxist in me has serious problems with the accelerationist vision of Gill Verdon, and some of the things he said.

I have my own accelerationist vision.

In five years Gill Verdon and others will be saying the singularity (an impossible concept) is right around the corner.  And they will be saying we need to have quantum computing at the same time millions of people are starving to death.

It is quite bougie to talk about solving the worlds problems with future technology because that discussion is impossible to have without ignoring the problems we have now.  Believing in future solutions for current problems postpones solving those problems.  It admits problems exist, but solutions now are back-burnured.  The candy-apple future is the focus, and current reality is ignored.

What does this mean?  It means that people will suffer and die because of the insensitivity of people like Gill Verdon who will be discussing simulations inside of simulations inside of simulations while people die.  Topping it off, they will interpret the situation as proof of their natural superiority.

What is quantum computing?  Does anybody really know?  Gil is supposed to be an expert on QC, but if you ask him what it is, all he will do is talk about its potential, and at the end of the day you still won't know what quantum computing is, or what it has ever done.  All you will know is that it will save the world someday.  Whatever it is.

And that is total bullshit.  But if Gil's B- understanding of thermodynamics hits you in an agreeable mood thinking Gil is smart will be a natural response.  That is his goal, to impress you.  Press the right buttons.  Play on your natural inclinations.

I looked hard for content in the video.  All I found was bullshit.  I think Gil is a charlatan who demonstrates humanity is a failed experiment.  If wishes were horses fools would ride, and Gil has a pony. 

Quantum computing seems to be incompatible with self-reflection.

[RE]

I looked hard for content in the video.  All I found was bullshit.  I think Gil is a charlatan who demonstrates humanity is a failed experiment.  If wishes were horses fools would ride, and Gil has a pony. 

Don't sugar-coat it, Dog.  Tell us what you really think.  lol.

Seriously though, I am in complete agreement with your sentiments, I have an involuntary PUKE response when I hear futuristic drivel about "singularities", "accelerationists", "neural integration", "quantum computing" and any other techno sounding Giga-Nano-Bullshit-Teraflops they use to augment their fantasy world with.  They remind me of some of the really smart guys in the Philosophy department I occasionally would chat with about existence and Christian Apologists who all used really obscure words and confusing grammar to obscure the fact that they were saying absolutely nothing.  All those hours spent memorizing the dictionary and it has all the substance of a bag of hot air.

It's a bit like Marvel Comics Iron Man technology or Thor explaining to his Mortal girlfriend that "Science and Magic are the same on Asgaard".  lol.  Really smart guys so want to believe science fiction ideas that violate all the laws of physics that they turn their brainpower loose on cold fusion or light speed engines and figure they can solve the problem and make it work.  AI is a honey trap for people with this mindset, because they believe all problems have a solution that can be thought out, so if they just had a little augmentation from a quantum computer with neural integration into their brains, they could solve all the world's problems.  It ain't so because the problem is a practical one which is too many homo saps on a finite planet.  It's a problem of corruption and greed and the fact that as a biological organism, homo saps grow, reproduce and exploit their host environment just as all other animals do, and in the absence of a predator to keep their numbers in check, they over populate and exhaust the environment.  It's happened over and over again throughout history on smaller scales, this time it's the whole planet at once.  You don't need a singularity to tell you what will fix the problem. Dead People.



The only thing I see coming out of AI is a whole lot more power consumption, even more powerful and invasive surveillance technology and even more centralized control of the society by fewer powerful oligarchs as they are able to take middle managers like Presidents, Senators, Prime Ministers and MPs and replace them with AI systems that will direct the society to their benefit.  Human journalists will disappear and all the newz will be manufactured by AI, backed up by Deep Fake Audio and Video clips.  Leaders will be Assassinated but live on as AI creates new speeches and video appearances after they are dead.  AI has great potential to further imprison humanity, not to free us.

The main hopium I have is this period of AI fueled hyper-Fascism will be short lived as energy systems fail and the supercomputers shut down.  Then we can get on with the dieoff and hopefully have enough left for a few million meat packages to start over.

RE

[Knarf]

Ok then. Thanks for the vivid reaction to this nonsense. Now I will play the devil's advocate with you all, not to be confused with "I believe this shit", but there IS another view that isn't so "negative."

To begin...

For those expressing pessimistic views about the potential consequences of AI, suggesting that it could lead to a dystopian future where humanity is controlled by machines, I strongly disagree with this perspective and argue that AI has the potential to bring about numerous benefits to society.

First and foremost, AI has the potential to revolutionize healthcare. With the ability to process vast amounts of medical data and perform complex analyses, AI can help doctors and researchers identify new treatments and therapies for diseases. Additionally, AI-powered robots can assist in surgeries and other medical procedures, allowing for more precise and minimally invasive operations. Furthermore, AI can help improve transportation safety by enabling self-driving cars to detect potential hazards and make split-second decisions to avoid accidents.

While AI has the potential to bring about many benefits, it is important to acknowledge its limitations. For instance, AI is not yet capable of replicating human intuition and creativity, which are essential skills in many fields. Moreover, AI systems can be vulnerable to bias and errors, which can have serious consequences in fields such as law and finance. Therefore, it is crucial that we continue to invest in AI research and development to address these limitations and ensure that AI is used responsibly.

Another key point to consider is the importance of human oversight in the development and deployment of AI systems. While AI can process vast amounts of data and perform complex tasks, it cannot make ethical decisions or understand the nuances of human communication. Therefore, it is essential that humans remain involved in the decision-making process to ensure that AI systems are aligned with human values and do not perpetuate harmful biases or behaviors.

While there are certainly risks and challenges associated with the development and deployment of AI, I strongly disagree with the pessimistic view that AI will lead to a dystopian future. With careful planning, responsible development, and human oversight, AI has the potential to bring about numerous benefits to society, including improved healthcare, transportation, and decision-making.

AI will be in every aspect of planning the future of our planet. Billions of $$$$ are being invested in this NOW. Soon we will be getting reports on how AI is making great strides in implementing policies that slow and possibly reverse the trends that seem impossible to deal with.

[K-Dog]

I don't see how AI will revolutionize health care, but if it did.  That does not end collapse.

Health care and the first green revolution created collapse in the first place.  Keeping people alive with more health care than we have now increases the human load on the planet and accelerates collapse.

People had the stupidity to cause collapse for aeons.  But they did not have the means.  Nature kept things in check.  Then the Faber process and modern medicine gave humanity the ability to destroy itself.

Art Berman made a Doomstead Diner point yesterday in the video I posted. it goes like this:

If you think you have a great idea to avert collapse you don't have to tell me what it is.  I already know it is a bad idea.  I don't have to know what it is.

And that is exactly why we have this thread.  And the more an idea excites you, the more probable it is that it can't work.

Ideas are coming up to 'solve' collapse all the time.  That can't happen.  There is no magic bullet that can fix the clusterfuck of OVERSHOOT problems which human stupidity has caused, and which we at the Diner summarize as collapse.  Tech can't be the answer because tech is causing collapse.  Tech put humanity into overshoot.  AI is tech, and all AI can do is accelerate collapse.

The point of the Garden Of Eden story is simple and many won't agree with me, but all it means is that there are limits in life, forbidden things.  Humans have a natural tendency to think they are the center of the universe.  Humans need the lesson.  The century of the self has been extended.  Left to our own devices we stare into ponds and think we are beautiful. 


Humanity was kicked out of the garden because humanity is immature and can't follow rules.  Thou shall not.  Pacific Islanders refined the concept of limits into 'taboos' to better manage their limited island resources.  Consequences of violating a taboo were severe.

Taboos serve as a way to regulate behavior and maintain social order.  But in America we do not have taboos.  The modern world needs limits, but there is great disdain at the notion.  Taboos are primitive and superstitious.  Taboos have no place in the modern world.  Ask anyone in a suit, they will agree.  Here in Merica everyone gets to live to their full potential.  Ask any of the lucky few who do.  They will agree.

Tech dudes create stuff, but creators of stuff are not the same people who use stuff ^*.  An alien would say, those monkeys have guns.

Smart monkeys makes stuff and dumb monkeys use it.  This results in doom.  The results of doom demonstrating the smart monkeys are not so smart. 

* Alienation, and Fetishism of Commodities is related to reification, where social relations are conceived as actual relations between things with real existence.  In the mind, thought and the conclusions of thought become real.  Users become alienated from the realities of the actual production of objects.  Objects appear to be brought into existence without using labor or resources.  Money magically creates, allowing  people to live in delusions of their own making.

[RE]

Another key point to consider is the importance of human oversight in the development and deployment of AI systems. While AI can process vast amounts of data and perform complex tasks, it cannot make ethical decisions or understand the nuances of human communication. Therefore, it is essential that humans remain involved in the decision-making process to ensure that AI systems are aligned with human values and do not perpetuate harmful biases or behaviors.

Who's going to be doing this oversight?  The same Billionaire Tech Oligarchs who currently manage our society for their own benefit.  Who OWNS the supercomputers necessary to run AI programs?  Who controls how the software is applied?  AI does even more to centralize control and put the means of production of knowledge itself into the hands of the wealthy.  It's the ultimate anti-democratic tool.  Why do you need voters if AI can make all the important decisions?

Is it any surprise that Muskrat just launched his own AI company with $6B in investment capital to compete with OpenAI?  How can you possibly see this as benefitting J6P?  This is technology by the rich for the rich.

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows

RE

[RE]

Generally speaking the whole flying car thing doesn't interest me much and I seriously doubt we'll ever see them cruising the canyons between the skyscrapers  in various vertically organized traffic lanes like you see portrayed in a few sci-fi movies.  Just another Billionaire toy for the most part.  However, the design on this one is so cool I just had to share it.

The video here is a CGI promotional, they haven't actually built this thing in full scale yet.  The article says they have scale models built, but they don't show any vids of those which is suspicious.

The energy questions are obvious.  You have at least 4 healthy size electric motors and all the batts you have to lift off the ground along with the two passengers and the body of the vehicle.  Then there are those cool rotors with all the tilting wings on them.  That is a lot of surface area spining at high speed, lots of friction with the air.  Those winglets would get quite hot I think.  I at least need to see that design work on a scale model to lift the thing off the ground.

Anyhow, even if the rotor design does work, the energy demands of this vehicle are enormous.  How much flight time could you get with the best currently available Li batts?  30 minutes maybe?  For all of these flying cars which mostly are just scaled up drones the flight times are always under 1 hour.  Speeds usually under 80 mph so the range is very limited before it needs a charge up.

So, even if it works, best case it's just a toy for billionaires.  It sure looks cool though.

https://www.livescience.com/technology/electric-vehicles/meet-blackbird-a-flying-taxi-that-spins-and-moves-in-any-direction-thanks-to-new-propulsion-system

RE

[K-Dog]

I can't watch the video, I tried.  Looking at that thing made one of my brain wiggles do some unconscious math which generated a gut reaction of strong revulsion.  Having to do with battery energy density considerations and energy flight requirements. 

The thing would make as much noise as a jet taking off.  A hundred of them would cause a city to go deaf.

Tech wont save us but it is a essential ingredient in our delusional soup.

I'd call it the work of Guy Debord instead of philosophy.  Reason being Debord sudied real world material facts.  'Philosophy' not needed.  This is not a matter of opinion.

Tech provides, and is part of the spectacle.

In dystopian novels where industrial tyranny defines life, such as Orwell's 1984 being only but one example the world portrayed is dark and miserable.  The reader can feel the tyranny.  That is the point.  The author makes you aware of the tyranny.

Reality is different.  Feeling tyranny would cause system failure.  In a successful dystopia you do not feel tyranny. You become an instrument of it.

Lost in the bubble of your fantasy world you leave reality behind without a second thought.

[RE]

I can't watch the video, I tried.  Looking at that thing made one of my brain wiggles do some unconscious math which generated a gut reaction of strong revulsion.  Having to do with battery energy density considerations and energy flight requirements. 

Too bad.  There's other stuff besides the obvious energy density problem that would at least raise an eyebrow, if not make you gag.

The vid begins with the "Blackbird" leaving out of the Garage of a suburban house.  The designers didn't even put it on wheels so you could taxi out of the garage to open space and then lift off.

Now, can you imagine the backwash of air bouncing off the ground underneath the machine then further bouncing off the walls of the garage? Anything not bolted down inside the garage would be flying around like pieces of roof flying around in a hurricane or tornado.  The vehicle itself would be buffeted by the air blowing around in all sorts of crazy directions.

Basically, it is pictured as taking off like an imaginary anti-grav type shuttle from sci-fi movies.  The rotors are pictured working like Iron Man style Repulsor devices that generate propulsion without action-reaction in violation of Newton's 2nd Law.  Even if it flies, there's just no way you could take off from inside an enclosed garage like that.

Besides that, the complexity of those rotors with the pivoting airfoils is astounding.  Each of those little winglets would need its own little servo-motor to change its angle of attack because they're all spinninbg at high speed and only connected at the hub of the whole spinning assembly.  How long before one of them fails?  If just one of those blades is at the wrong angle, the vibration would about instantly cause the whole propeller assembly to break itself apart.

I would find the whole design more believable if the designers dropped hydrogen fueled mini jet engines for those rotor thrusters.  As I mentioned, it's suspicious that they don't even demonstrate a scale model.  You can make anything magically fly in 3D virtual space, the sci-fi movie industry has been doing that since Buck Rogers.  Building real world VTOL aircraft that can hover is a tad more difficult without the magic of anti-gravity and/or disregarding Newton's laws of motion.

RE

[K-Dog]

I watched enough.  No need for leaf blowers.  Send them to your neighbors pulling off your driveway.  With a noise louder than a helicopter.

   

The Society of the Spectacle: Annotated Edition

   

        View the annotated edition of Guy Debord's The Society of the Spectacle below, or Download the PDF (2 MB).    

   

Or, if you prefer the spectacle Debord made, behold:

I had one year of French at a time when my focus was elsewhere.  With help from google translate I was able to to translate much of what is shown as subtitles and quotes.  I took about four hours stopping and slogging through.  Periods of excellent heterosexual scenery mad the slog easier.  I may get interested enough to make a proper English subtitled version.  With help from someone who speaks French well to generate a proper transcript to work from.

People like to shit on Debord.  He was a total Marxist and no You-Tube video can exist in 2024 without kicking the shit on the Marxist man can can down the road.  I watched several videos about his book.  Now I will go through the book.

Debord hate has an amusing aspect to me, but I don't expect it does for many.  Most I suppose, jump on the bandwagon without noticing a thing.  It is the social thing to do.  But the hating  is transparent to me, obvious and clear.  Being as I am into Uncle Karl.  It gives the weaknesses and biases of the presenters away.