The claims that they were built by the slaves or voluntary labor are both wrong. They were built by levied labor. Think a military draft, but you're performing general labor for the state instead of fighting. Yes, those on the work gangs were fed, housed, and paid while there. But they weren't building pyramids of their own free will either. It was still conscripted and forced labor. After their term of service, the workers got to go home. But it was still forced labor.

Nah. We'll go more primitive. We'll do all our voltage and AC/DC conversions...mechanically! Do what they did to power DC subway systems back at the start of the 20th century. Just have a big AC motor directly coupled to a big DC generator! And we can use gearing to convert voltages! Let's bring a needlessly complex and steampunk aesthetic to our electric grid!

I say we indict Sam Altman for both securities fraud and 8 billion counts of reckless endangerment. Him and other AI boosters are running around shouting that AGI is just around the corner, OpenAI is creating it, and that there is a very good chance we won't be able to control it and that it will kill us all. Well, the way I see it, there are only two possibilities:

1. He's right. In which case, OpenAI is literally endangering all of humanity by its very operation. In that case, the logical thing to do would be for the rest of us to arrest everyone at OpenAI, shove them in deep hole and never let them see the light of day again, and burn all their research and work to ashes. When someone says, "superintelligent AI cannot be stopped!" I say, "you sure about that? Because it's humans that are making it. And humans aren't bullet-proof."

2. He's lying. This is much more likely. In that case, he is guilty of fraud. He's falsely making claims his company has no ability to achieve, and he is taking in billions in investor money based on these lies.

He's either a conman, or a man so dangerous he should literally be thrown in the darkest hole we can find for the rest of his life.

And no, I REALLY don't buy the argument that if the tech allows it, that superintelligent AI is just some inevitable thing we can't choose to stop. The proposed methods to create it all rely on giant data centers that consume gigawatts of energy to run. You're not hiding that kind of infrastructure. If it turns out superintelligence really is possible, we pass a global treaty to ban it, and simply shoot anyone that attempts to create it. I'm sorry, but if you legitimately are threatening the survival of the entire species, I have zero qualms about putting you in the ground. We don't let people build nuclear reactors in their basement. And if this tech really is that capable and that dangerous, it should be regulated as strongly as nuclear weapons. If OpenAI really is trying to build a super-AGI, they should be treated no differently than a terrorist group attempting to build their own nuclear weapon.

But anyway, I say we just indict him on both charges. Charge Sam Altman with both securities fraud and 8 billion counts of reckless endangerment. Let the courts figure out which one he is guilty of, because it's definitely one or the other.

Meanwhile, in a dark and forgotten corner of my PC, I STILL have several thousand MP3s I downloaded from Kazaa back in the day.

Anyone who shows up to a school board meeting to complain about bathrooms should automatically have the police sent to look at their hard drive. If you're that concerned about the bathroom habits of young children, the cops really need to look at your internet history and the contents of your hard drive.

I would make it even more explicit. I would put those two dates but label them, "best if used by" and "dangerous if used after."

We should pass a law that defines a minimum amount a blood donor must be paid for a unit of blood. That minimum payment should be equal to 1/4 the average cost of what hospitals bill patients for the cost of a transfusion of 1 liter of blood. Each year we survey the medical billing system and find the average cost of a 1 unit blood transfusion. For the next year, 1/4 of that figure will be the minimum amount a blood donor must be paid.

Or hell, we could make it more direct. Everything is digitally tracked now for the sake of disease mitigation. Often you can even get notifications that your particular blood donation was given to a person at a hospital in a particular city. So we could pass a law that says that hospitals literally have to cut a check for 1/4 of whatever they charge a patient or their insurance for the very unit of blood you donate.

It's not that I don't mind donating blood without compensation. I myself do it regularly. But the real galling thing is to compare this to what hospitals charge for all their services. I could give a unit of blood today, and not be paid anything for it, based on vague platitudes about "the gift of life." Then tomorrow I could get in an accident, need a blood transfusion myself, and then be charged thousands of dollars to receive a blood transfusion. Suddenly all the talk of "life is priceless" goes right out the window. What the medical industry is really saying by its actions isn't that the efforts of blood donors are priceless. They are actually saying that the efforts of blood donors are worthless.

Bezos also has a rocket company. Plus there's Richard Branson. And others.. And then you have private jet travel, massive mega yachts, and countless other extravagances. For a certain class of billionaire, having a private rocket company is a vanity project. These rocket companies are vanity projects by rich sci fi nerds. Yes, they've done some really good technical work, but they're only possible because their founders were willing to sink billions into them even without any proof they'll make a profit.

What you are missing is that as people's wealth increases, their resource use just keeps going up and up and up. To the point where when people are wealthy enough, they're using orders of magnitude more energy and resources than the average citizen of even developed countries. Billionaires have enough wealth that they can fly rockets just because they think they're cool, even if they have no real path to profitability.

And no, the hypothetical of the robot skyscrapers is not "meaningless." You just have a poor imagination. To have that type of world we only need one thing - a robot that can build a copy of itself from raw materials, or a series of robots that can collectively reproduce themselves from raw materials gathered in the environment. Once you have self-replicating robots, it becomes very easy to scale up to that kind of consumption on a broad scale. If you have self-replicating robots, the only real limit to the total number you can have on the planet is the total amount of sunlight available to power all of them.

The real point isn't the specific examples I gave. The point, which you are missing entirely, is that total resource use is a function of wealth and technological capability. Raw population has very little impact on it. If our automation gets a lot better, or something else makes us much wealthier, we would see vast increases in total resource use even if our population was cut in half.

The problem is too many people. If standard of living is to increase then the resource requirement is due to massive unsustainable population growth.

They're both important. And crucially, people in developed countries use a lot more resources than those in undeveloped countries. Just look at the resource utilization of our richest people. We have billionaires operating private rocket companies! If somehow, say due to really really good automation, orbital rockets could be made cheap enough for the average person to afford, we would have average middle class people regularly launching rockets into space and taking private trips to the Moon. Just staggering levels of resource use. If we could build and maintain homes very cheaply due to advanced robotics, the average person would live in a private skyscraper if they could afford it. Imagine the average suburban lot, except with a tower built on it 100 stories tall. If it was cheap enough to build and maintain that sort of thing, that absolutely would become the norm.

They've already tried to send all the jobs they can to India or South America. It ultimately didn't work. They can send some, but the language and cultural barriers, plus the difficulty of assessing quality candidates just doesn't make it viable at scale. They've already tried that game and it failed. Everything that can be outsourced to India already has been outsourced to India.

You confuse cities for Cities. Take a look at this graphic Again, NYC is a universe unto itself. Nowhere else even comes close.

Yes, the vast majority of the US lives in cities, but most live in sprawling low-density suburbs, which are a type of city. And even for those who live in central cities, even those are mostly composed of low-density neighborhoods. 3/4 of Americans commute by car. And while I cite commute, realize it goes far beyond this. The vast, vast majority of Americans who live in cities live in neighborhoods that physically look nothing like the neighborhoods of NYC. Walking to work and picking up the ingredients for dinner at your local corner bodega is not a normal experience for the vast majority of Americans.

NYC is absolutely a statistical outlier when it comes to the rest of the country. It is a nation within a nation.

The real issue isn't that being mayor of NYC isn't a serious and respectable position; it obviously is. The real issue is that being mayor of NYC is a political dead-end, especially for a Democrat. NYC is fundamentally very different from the rest of the country; it's unique. Nowhere else in the country is anywhere near as urban as NYC. Nowhere else in the country has a greater share of its population that commutes via walking and public transit. Nowhere else in the country has such a large share of the population living in multifamily housing.

Comparing it to entire states or other nations isn't just about economics. It very much is a world unto itself. Its boroughs have their own unique cultures and even dialects! NYC has such a unique identity; it is a nation within a nation. If NYC broke off from the US, it could absolutely be perfectly viable as a city-state like Singapore. No other place in the country could as easily pull that off as NYC could. The lifestyle, the culture, the history, and even the language of NYC is markedly different from everywhere else in the country. It is part of America while being a part from America.

The point is that NYC is insular and unique. And to most of the country, NYC is a very alien world. The places where the vast majority of Americans live look nothing like NYC. And if you serve as the mayor of NYC, you will be forever linked to that alien place. To most Americans, NYC means the biggest of big cities, and all the political realities that entails. If you are a mayor of NYC, you will forever be seen as not really representing and understanding the way the vast majority of Americans live. You'll be forever linked to old money, old-school big city Democratic machine politics. There's often talk of "real America," and NYC is the polar opposite of that. And that just is never going to be popular in the places that you need to win over in order to win the Electoral College.

The one exception to this is if you are running as a Republican. A Republican, by nature, seems to be antithetical to big-city Democratic politics. You're not as tainted by it. This is why Giuliani actually had a not-completely ridiculous shot at being president for awhile (but even that required being mayor during 9/11.)

Being mayor of NYC is a noble thing. But in terms of national politics, it is a political dead-end. You could probably run for a US Senate seat from New York after being mayor of NYC. But if you serve as the mayor of New York, your chance of ever being president is essentially zero. NYC is simply seen as far too alien by the rest of the country to elect a mayor of that place as president.

A a politician, run for mayor of NYC if you wish. But do so knowing that if you win, you will have to forever write off the chance of being president of the United States.

9/11 era Giuliani was more coherent. The man is losing it.

Chronic alcoholism finally caught up with him.

Let's imagine a best case scenario for Democrats. Let's imagine Trump is defeated in a landslide in November. And instead of reforming their ways, the national Republican party instead takes the path of the Republican party in states like California - continuing to double-down on losing policies. In other words, barring election losses, here is a path I could see for Democratic candidates:
2024: Harris/Walz
2028: Harris/Walz
2032: Walz/AOC
2036: Walz/AOC
2040: AOC/?

Walz is currently 60. If he won in 2032 and 2036, he would be 76 when his second term ended in 2040. That's a perfectly viable age to be president. And a seasoned Walz would balance nicely with a younger AOC. Meanwhile, AOC will be 50 in 2040, still quite young by presidential standards. And by then, she would have 8 years as VP to shake off the sense that she is too young and inexperienced.

This assumes Dems manage to win in 2024, 2028, 2032, and 2036. And that would be quite unusual by historical standards. However, considering the Republicans' unprecedented efforts to destroy democracy, it's not impossible. As long as they continue to champion destroying democracy, sane people, regardless of political beliefs, will recognize that they simply cannot be allowed into power until they reform their ways.

However, If there is a loss prior to 2040, I would just move AOC to the forefront. Does Harris/Walz win in 2024 and then lose in 2028? Assuming we still have real elections at that point, I would put AOC at the top of the ticket in 2032.

That's what they said about Obama.

SOL INVICTUS!

Nah, it will be worse. Tesla will start selling a hybrid model with a generator onboard that can charge the battery as you go. That generator will be designed to be fueled by ground-up burning tires, unrecycleable plastic, and human hair. .

Sure. But those many works have affected the discipline of AI development. There's an entire field of study on AI ethics and alignment. But those are affected by the combined effects of many works and authors. Planet of the Apes really is unique in that it is really the sole example anyone would bring up of why you shouldn't experiment on apes to try to make them more intelligent.

And to my knowledge, no one has attempted to engineer apes to be more intelligent. Obviously there is simply less economic drive to do so; it's easier to be concerned about ethics when there's not a ready path to profitability. But if some geneticist tomorrow puts out a paper proposing that we tinker with chimp DNA to make smarter chimps, I can guarantee you every single headline will reference Planet of the Apes. It's similar to how you can't right an article about resurrecting the woolly mammoth without throwing in a reference to Jurassic Park. Some singular works of fiction really do have a substantial effect on how the public understands an entire field of research.

To my knowledge, no one has ever actually tried to engineer smarter chimps, though I assume there might actually be a lot to be gained in terms of scientific knowledge by doing so. We could probably learn quite a lot about the evolution of language and human evolution in general by trying to experiment with engineering smarter apes. But to my knowledge, no one has ever done so. The lack of profit is obviously a big factor, but I guarantee you, accidentally creating Planet of the Apes would be on the mind of anyone seriously contemplating that sort of scientific endeavor.

That's why it's c/showerthoughts on c/academiccriticcalhistoricalanalyses

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