Tag: politics

Rise of the trollbot

trolling will soon be automated, and in the case of gamergate may have already happened: Welcome to 2018 or so. Half your social media friends are probably robots – and they’re probably the half that you like the most. Every so often one of the remaining humans gets driven off the Internet thanks to a furious 24/7 Twitter assault that might be a zeitgeist moment, or might just be a bot assault. And you can’t even tell if what you think is the zeitgeist is entirely manufactured by one guy with an overheating graphics card and a Mission.

2023-02-03: Scott Alexander considers these rampant fears and concludes that they won’t be a big deal

Overall I think it will happen to a very limited degree or not at all:

  1. There Are Already Plenty Of Social Anti-Bot Filters
  2. …And Technological Anti-Bot Filters
  3. Fear Of Backlash Will Limit Adoption
  4. Propagandabots Spreading Disinformation Is Probably The Opposite Of What You Should Worry About
  5. Realistically This Will All Be Crypto Scams
  6. I Do Think This Might Decrease Serendipitous Friendship, Though
  7. You Can Solve For The Equilibrium

Cleveland protests

the city didn’t put the bid for this equipment out until March. Even if the equipment does turn up in time for the convention (unlikely), there won’t be any time to train with it. This degree of organizational incompetence is more than sufficient to guarantee a bad outcome for a convention city in a good year. However, this year’s convention won’t be a normal protest. It will be something altogether different.

Transhumanist platform

if you are looking for 21st century, as opposed to 19th or 20th century political platforms.

The Transhumanist Party and Zoltan Istvan’s US Presidential campaign is politically-
centric. It aims to support voters with future-inspired policies that will enrich America and
the world. We believe science and technology can solve most of the world’s problems.

  1. Implement a Transhumanist Bill of Rights mandating government support of longer lifespans via science and technology
  2. Spread a pro-science culture by emphasizing reason and secular values
  3. Create stronger government policies to protect against existential risk (including artificial intelligence, plagues, asteroids, climate change, and nuclear warfare and disaster)
  4. Provide free education at every level; advocate for mandatory preschool and college education in the age of longer lifespans
  5. Create a flat tax for everyone
  6. Advocate for morphological freedom (the right to do anything to your body so long as it doesn’t harm others)
  7. Advocate for real-time democracy using available new technologies
  8. End costly drug war and legalize mild recreational drugs like marijuana
  9. Create government where all politician’s original professions are represented equally (the government should not be run by 40% lawyers when lawyers represent only 10% of the country’s jobs)
  10. Significantly lessen massive incarcerated population in America by using innovative technologies to monitor criminals outside of prison
  11. Strongly emphasize green tech solutions to make planet healthier
  12. Support and draft logistics for a Universal Basic Income
  13. Reboot the space program with significantly increased government resources
  14. Develop international consortium to create a “Transhumanist Olympics”
  15. Develop and support usage of a cranial trauma alert chip that notifies emergency crews of extreme trauma (this will significantly reduce domestic violence, crime, and tragedy in America)
  16. Work to use science and technology to be able to eliminate all disabilities in humans
  17. Insist on campaign finance reform, limit lobbyist’s power, and include 3rd political parties in government
  18. Create a scientific and educational industrial complex in America instead of a military industrial complex. Spend money on wars against cancer, heart disease, and diabetes—not on wars in far-off countries

Malheur terrorists

It was clear to me, though, that somebody would die. Such certitude as these men and women possess demands blood sacrifice to justify itself. There were too many armed people in, and circling, the occupation, with too many varying levels of sanity and too many varying motivations for being there. “You can’t not give an cm and be assured of a peaceful outcome. If it came down to a violent showdown, we’re willing to pay the price.” Walking around the refuge parking lot and buildings, I saw a lot of gray beards and “We the People” caps and camo watch caps covering thinning hair or bald pates. The weapons and the tactical vests lent a seriousness to men disappearing into the irrelevance of late middle age. Guns, for as long as we have had them, have given undue impetus to arguments that lack merit or reason, given credence to delusional rants.

The art of the deal

hilarious and insightful.

But Trump of the book is more a-intellectual, in the same way some people are amoral or asexual. The world is taken as a given. It contains deals. Some people make the deals well, and they are winners. Other people make the deals poorly, and they are losers. Trump does not need more than this. There will be no civilization of philosopher-Trumps asking where the first deal came from, or whether a deal is a deal only by virtue of its participation in some primordial deal beyond material existence.

long lost, recently rediscovered at a yard sale: the art of the deal, the movie