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Why is it that every legitimate concern or downside pointed out about AI is met with the same tired, low signal, rebuttal of FOMO.

It's become the "no u r" argument of the AI age... :/


Because the AI apologists cannot deal with the much studied and proven placebo effect of perceived increased productivity, so they have to try and make themselves feel better by claiming that others are lagging behind in a race no one else is really interesting in running.

A snake oil scheme if ever saw one.


This has to be intentional.

Drug dealer getting the kids hooked early is priority #1.

Give just enough "parental control" to lure parents in.

Make it just annoying enough that the parents eventually give up and the kid is the one pushing the drug the entire time.


Customers keep buying those trucks though. Why wouldn't you sell a product to a market that continues to purchase?

There are smaller, cheaper trucks, suvs, sedans, etc. $100k trucks make a lot of money, so Ford keeps building them.


Ford could sell 15k EVs, they just choose not to.

Why should ford be protected from Chinese car manufacturers who can make better and cheaper cars.


A 143 kWh battery pack alone costs around $10k. I don’t think they can realistically sell $15k EV trucks.


Insta-banned in the US for "national security", not because it's a better car than anything the US can produce. /s


In principle, you are right. Cheaper than coal renewables are winning. Don't forget though, that fighter jets can't operate on batteries.


Every mile you drive in an f150 steals fuel that should be going to American planes

Patriotic red blooded Americans use renewable energy


> fighter jets can't operate on batteries

Gas turbines can run on a variety of fuels, natural, synthetic or a mixture of both. It’s actually one of the reasons that a turbine was chosen for the M1.


Yeah but gas turbines by definitions run on "gas" kerosene based fuel. If you're talking about a battery powered fan or prop that's very different.


Kerosene is a mundane chemical.

It is made with from water, carbon dioxide and energy. Use green energy and atmospheric CO2, and it is carbon neutral.


They don’t contribute enough to matter


And using more electrics powered transport in other sectors frees up fossil fuels for other sectors.


That’s a red herring. It’s not worth mentioning.


Except for the industries where it does matter. Trivializing the needs of complex and energy hungry supply chains, is bad faith. They are one of the many reasons fossil fuels are so widely used.


It's not really bad faith when we could make enormous progress in an enormous number of industries, and this in no way stops any of that progress in those economies.

It's specifically bad faith to say it as if it does somehow matter in the grand conversation, when the actual fallout is extremely small. Pretty much nobody is saying we must remove 100 PER CENT OF ALL FOSSIL FUEL USAGE EVERYWHERE FOREVER, just that we need to move off it.


In the end, the industries that cannot run on biofuels are rare to non-existant. It's not fuel which is the problem, but fossil fuel!

You totally can fly on biofuel, but it is not cheap compared to fossil fuel without externalized costs.


If we stop using fossil fuels for the >90% of usage where fossil fuels are easy to replace, it'll make it much easier & cheaper for the <10% where it's difficult.


So we won't be able to fight air wars over the last remaining pieces of arable land.

I'm convinced.


Many proudly and loudly claim the US is a "republic".


Is it not?


Thank you for taking the time to write this.


Thanks. I just thought, wouldn't it be interesting if the singularity didn't fix the 2038 problem.

It's 3pm instead of 3am since I figure AI military drone swarms wouldn't care about timezones, and you can guess from the place names that the survivors are somewhere in Kamchatka at +12.


I can't imagine that the authors of the Constitution predicted always on, AI enabled facial and license plate recognition on every street corner in America.

If this is what they thought was possible, why write the 4th Amendment?

Unreasonable search and overbearing government was one of the key issues of the American Revolution.


> I can't imagine that the authors of the Constitution predicted always on, AI enabled facial and license plate recognition on every street corner in America.

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety - Ben Frank

Iirc he was a founder


I know this is supposed to be some kind of "gotcha", but I'm legitimately curious: what essential liberty is someone giving up being surveilled in public?


public surveillance cameras erode personal privacy because there were no cameras with ID and tracking before. Widespread camera networks with tracking, ID and record keeping in a networked environment that is accessed by many varied agencies (e.g. federal immigration related) constitute new government surveillance. The US Constitution's Fourth Amendment provides explicit protection against unwarranted searches and seizures. Socially, constant monitoring creates a chilling effect on free behavior in public spaces, undermining individual liberty. For example, three teenagers dress oddly on Saturday night in association with a music culture. Authority officers show up with weapons, bright lights and harsh questions? That happens more than once. Is that "chilling" ?

Mission creep and abuse are major concerns. Examples are documented where systems introduced for limited purposes — like traffic enforcement or terrorism prevention — expand into broader, unchecked surveillance by multiple agencies, commercially and maybe gray or black markets, too. Imagine cameras initially deployed in work zones may later be used citywide, enabling mass tracking of individuals without probable cause.

Lack of oversight and due process further fuels opposition. Automated systems, such as those issuing speeding tickets without human review, deny individuals fair recourse. The absence of judicial warrants and transparency in deployment is seen as enabling government overreach and hidden revenue generation, disproportionately impacting low-income communities. Long-term record keeping may contain errors, omissions and misjudgements that remain uncorrected.

Financial and civil costs are real. Surveillance systems are expensive, yet studies show limited effectiveness in actually preventing crime or terrorism. Civil libertarians argue that resources should instead support community-based safety solutions that respect constitutional freedoms.

Ultimately, strict legal limits or outright bans on public video surveillance are in effect right now in many places, and those cases can be discussed among an informed voting public.


> Socially, constant monitoring creates a chilling effect on free behavior in public spaces, undermining individual liberty.

I was skeptical from the first sentence, but I stopped here.

This "chilling effect" is a favorite of privacy advocates, but it's purely a hypothetical. I have asked for and received no evidence of its practical effect in the real world, and can find plenty of evidence to the contrary.

New York City, for example, is one of the most highly-surveilled cities in the US, and yet turnout for things like protests is seemingly unaffected.

This is one of the centerpieces of your entire argument, yet is literally taken on faith.


> I was skeptical from the first sentence, but I stopped here.

aren't you declaring that you did not even read the whole post?


I am! If the rest of your post is predicated on an unsupported point, it means it's unsupported, by definition. That which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence[1].

I agree that the hypothetical "chilling effect", as presented, is plausible and reasonable, but it lacks evidence. As such, I saved myself the effort of reading what might be a plausible argument until such time as it becomes supported by evidence.

I went back and read it, and you supported it with more hypotheticals, not evidence. So congratulations, you made me waste a couple minutes of my life! But this just tells me I once again made the right judgement call in not reading it the first time, and doesn't really help further your cause, or convince me I'm mistaken in this regard.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitchens%27s_razor


Sorry, which part of the facial recognition cameras is liberty?


The part where you have the liberty to deploy your own network of them


Just like how it's equally illegal for the rich or poor to sleep under a bridge


Was the Flock guy rich before he did Flock?


1. Deploy ICE agents wearing milsim gear to key Dem voting locations.

2. Allow the crowd to yell at them.

3. Use the crowd agitation as an opportunity to escalate and go "hands on".

4. Cause a ruckus.

5. Use the ruckus as justification for closing the polling location for the rest of the day.

6. Count the Republican votes, discard the Dem votes.

7. Declare landslide victory.

8. Ignore calls for extended voting or recounts.


I thought the same thing about myself until I read Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg. Changed my mental model for what habits really are and how to engineer habitual change. I immediately started flossing and haven't quit in the three years since reading. It's very worth reading because there are concrete, research backed frameworks for rewiring habits.


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