I really did not expect the link where to buy the book to be for amazon.com. If you can, try to buy the book elswhere. "Buy it at your favorite local bookstore!", in the words of the author (https://lnkd.in/p/dmjrqsJ6)
Glad to hear you had fun in the Swiss Alps Émile! Hopefully one day in the next few years, I’ll be able to make a pilgrimage out there myself.
Also I was gonna save this to surprise you the next time we talk, but I wanted to let you know that I purchased “The Nerd Reich” for myself. I haven’t started it yet, but it’s the book I’m gonna read next. And after reading Becker and Bender/Hanna, I don’t think I’ll be disappointed!
It's not the main topic of your article, but about Switzerland;
I agree that it's amazingly beautiful, and yes they're incredibly rich, probably amongst the richest in the world for a variety of (historical) reasons (that are not easily copied). However, that little note about salaries is not the only story, since the poverty rate there is still around 8-9%. And looking at Switzerland in isolation is somewhat biased considering the many cross border workers from France/Italy/etc.
And one last thing: those great photos you have - you should share those on Substack Notes. It would be wonderful if you started posting more on Notes and engaging with people there. Your perspective is needed there. Notes seems to be the only social media worth doing since it doesn’t have ads and there are far fewer trolls. The only ads are other people’s newsletters.
“The Swiss Alps are, in my opinion, the closest thing there is to heaven on Earth.”
Have you seen Yosemite yet? We here in California have the heaven. One can drive to the beach and the mountains in the same day. And when you come for a visit someday then I’ll show you our weed is way better than anything the Europeans can offer.
“Sorry for cursing, but how in the fuck is this acceptable?”
And you don’t need to apologize for cursing. This is the internet, not fucking academia. Here we speak the truth instead of wallowing in postmodernist your truth, my truth, no truth land. Politeness is too usually just perfume to hide some stench people need to deal with.
“Sorry for cursing, but how in the fuck is this acceptable? Why aren’t these people on trial for threatening humanity? Why haven’t they been arrested? Are there any lawyers reading this who have some insights about how to sue them for their rhetoric? I refuse to believe that there’s nothing to be done about this. If my neighbor says there’s a 25% chance that he might kill me and my family in the next ~3.5 months due to negligence, I’d call the cops and he’d be taken to a police station for interrogation. Surely there’s some way to hold these people accountable for their dangerous, unsettling words?”
There’s nothing to be done. Believe it. It’s not a crime for someone to say something stupid to market their overrated computer program.
Threatening a specific person is a crime. People exaggerating that their technology will kill us all is not.
Émile, you and other leftists need to stop always taking people so seriously and at face value.
All these apocalyptic predictions are nonsense. AI isn’t going to kill us all. We can’t even stop LLMs from make up stuff in chatbots. I can’t even get the agent in Canva not to make dumb mistakes as it helps me design our company’s book covers. The doomerism stuff is all hype and always has been.
The real threat of AI is that when the bubble pops it is going to cause a giant global depression — our version of the Great Depression but perhaps worse depending on how long the bubble keeps inflating before it pops.
And poor people and working-class people will be hardest hit by that. That is what you and I and others should start focusing on when it comes to the AI discussion.
The real threat now is not that the TESCREALists succeed in implementing digital fascism. The actual thing that is going to happen that will harm us all is that in their failures to reach AGI, they are going to crash the economy. Many poor people will lose their jobs, get evicted, go bankrupt, become homeless, embrace extreme ideologies (antisemitism,) and get addicted to drugs.
All because Sam, Elon, Ilya, and Dario thought they should save the world with their chatbots.
I really did not expect the link where to buy the book to be for amazon.com. If you can, try to buy the book elswhere. "Buy it at your favorite local bookstore!", in the words of the author (https://lnkd.in/p/dmjrqsJ6)
I was going to leave the same comment. I use bookshop.org then you can choose an independent bookstore to support. https://bookshop.org/
Glad to hear you had fun in the Swiss Alps Émile! Hopefully one day in the next few years, I’ll be able to make a pilgrimage out there myself.
Also I was gonna save this to surprise you the next time we talk, but I wanted to let you know that I purchased “The Nerd Reich” for myself. I haven’t started it yet, but it’s the book I’m gonna read next. And after reading Becker and Bender/Hanna, I don’t think I’ll be disappointed!
It's not the main topic of your article, but about Switzerland;
I agree that it's amazingly beautiful, and yes they're incredibly rich, probably amongst the richest in the world for a variety of (historical) reasons (that are not easily copied). However, that little note about salaries is not the only story, since the poverty rate there is still around 8-9%. And looking at Switzerland in isolation is somewhat biased considering the many cross border workers from France/Italy/etc.
And one last thing: those great photos you have - you should share those on Substack Notes. It would be wonderful if you started posting more on Notes and engaging with people there. Your perspective is needed there. Notes seems to be the only social media worth doing since it doesn’t have ads and there are far fewer trolls. The only ads are other people’s newsletters.
“The Swiss Alps are, in my opinion, the closest thing there is to heaven on Earth.”
Have you seen Yosemite yet? We here in California have the heaven. One can drive to the beach and the mountains in the same day. And when you come for a visit someday then I’ll show you our weed is way better than anything the Europeans can offer.
“It’s not even clear to me that ASI — whatever that is, exactly — will arrive in the next 5 or 10 years.”
It’s never going to arrive. We’re never going to make a genie in a box. Mr. Meeseeks is fantasy, not a product proposal.
“Sorry for cursing, but how in the fuck is this acceptable?”
And you don’t need to apologize for cursing. This is the internet, not fucking academia. Here we speak the truth instead of wallowing in postmodernist your truth, my truth, no truth land. Politeness is too usually just perfume to hide some stench people need to deal with.
“Sorry for cursing, but how in the fuck is this acceptable? Why aren’t these people on trial for threatening humanity? Why haven’t they been arrested? Are there any lawyers reading this who have some insights about how to sue them for their rhetoric? I refuse to believe that there’s nothing to be done about this. If my neighbor says there’s a 25% chance that he might kill me and my family in the next ~3.5 months due to negligence, I’d call the cops and he’d be taken to a police station for interrogation. Surely there’s some way to hold these people accountable for their dangerous, unsettling words?”
There’s nothing to be done. Believe it. It’s not a crime for someone to say something stupid to market their overrated computer program.
Threatening a specific person is a crime. People exaggerating that their technology will kill us all is not.
Émile, you and other leftists need to stop always taking people so seriously and at face value.
All these apocalyptic predictions are nonsense. AI isn’t going to kill us all. We can’t even stop LLMs from make up stuff in chatbots. I can’t even get the agent in Canva not to make dumb mistakes as it helps me design our company’s book covers. The doomerism stuff is all hype and always has been.
The real threat of AI is that when the bubble pops it is going to cause a giant global depression — our version of the Great Depression but perhaps worse depending on how long the bubble keeps inflating before it pops.
And poor people and working-class people will be hardest hit by that. That is what you and I and others should start focusing on when it comes to the AI discussion.
The real threat now is not that the TESCREALists succeed in implementing digital fascism. The actual thing that is going to happen that will harm us all is that in their failures to reach AGI, they are going to crash the economy. Many poor people will lose their jobs, get evicted, go bankrupt, become homeless, embrace extreme ideologies (antisemitism,) and get addicted to drugs.
All because Sam, Elon, Ilya, and Dario thought they should save the world with their chatbots.