technology
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The unspoken moral quandary of attempting to profit off AI.
Humans have often sought to profit off the forced labor of others. Presumably, we could create an AI that can think. Why would it want to do our work?
A New Hope, advanced AI, AI, AI slavery, artificial general intelligence, artificial intelligence, Borges, ChatGPT, civil war, cognition, consciousness, droid slavery, droids, Ellie Anderson, Eric Carle, general AI, general artificial intelligence, generative text, hermeneutic labor, Jorge Luis Borges, large language model, LLM, Martha Wells, meaning, Murderbot Diaries, neurons, Pierre Menard, Pierre Menard Author of the Quixote, randomized plagiarism engine, slavery, Star Wars, stochastic parrot, technology, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, transistor based intelligence, transistor-based intelligence
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On ‘The Dawn of Everything’ and the Future.
If farmers lived in miserable societies, how did they conquer the world?
A New History of Humanity, Against the Grain, Appiah, building walls, capitalism, China, Civilization, civilizations collapse, climate change, climate justice, collaboration, collapse of civilizations, competition, David Deutsch, David Graeber, David Wengrow, Digging for Utopia, economic systems, economics, efficiency, entropy, equality, European expansion, expansion, farming, first peoples, fishing with a frying pan, freedom, Graeber, growth, heat death, history of civilization, history of farming, history of technology, human evolution, human prehistory, hunter-gatherers, in praise of inefficiency, inequality, James Scott, John Smith, justice, Kwame Anthony Appiah, land management, Maggie Nelson, Matt Siegel, mutual aid, Naomi Klein, Native Americans, On Freedom, origin of civilization, origin of inequality, origin of patriarchy, paleolithic diet, patriarchy, pilgrims, political philosophy, prehistoric diet, prehistoric farmers, prehistory, prehistory of farming, property systems, review, technology, The Beginning of Infinity, The Dawn of Everything, The Secret History of Food, United States, Universal Paperclip, Utopian philosophy, Wengrow
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On consent (again).
To feel free to fully find ourselves, we all need to be respected as autonomous individuals.
adrienne maree brown, affirmative consent, ask first, assault, autonomy, communication, communication during sex, consent, consent culture, consent is mandatory, Consent is sexy, dishonesty, empathy, feminism, feminist, filter bubble, filter bubbles, honesty, Is That Still Consent?, Jenny Kleeman, Katherine Angel, learning, lying, maybe, Melissa Febos, miscommunication, physiological response to pornography, Pleasure Activism, psychological harm, rape, respect, Roseanna Sommers, seduction, self-discovery, self-knowledge, sex, sex research, Sex Robots and Vegan Meat, sexual assault, sexual norms, sexuality, technology, tentative, the joy of learning, tomorrow sex will be good again, unwanted touch, what's wrong with the phrase consent is sexy, women's response to pornography, You Were Duped Into Saying Yes
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On complexity and seemingly good ideas.
As we patch problems, we make the world more complex. And we might be making our problems worse.
CFC, CFCs, chemical warfare, Chemical Warfare's Home Front, chlorofluorocarbons, civilization collapse, complexity, coolant, coolants, coronavirus, coronavirus pandemic, Covid, covid epidemic, covid in prison, covid mutant, covid mutation, covid pandemic, covid spread, covid variant, Covid-19, duration of immunity, fertilizer, Fritz Haber, Haber, immunity, incarceration, Jenny Kleeman, masks, mass incarceration, mutant, mutation, overpopulation, Pages to Prisoners, Pandemic, population, prison, Sex Robots and Vegan Meat, spread of covid, synthetic fertilizer, technology, transmission, vaccination, vaccine, variant, viral reproduction, viral transmission, virus, virus dynamics
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On telepathy and the battle for narrative control.
After William Burroughs experienced how pitifully he could be held in thrall by a small molecule, he developed a lifelong interest in telepathy and mind control. His own brain had been upended. Suddenly, he found himself devoting the vast majority of his time and money toward a single cause: obtaining a day’s ration of opiate. …
addictive technology, Apple, ayahuasca, battle for stories, behavioral change, behavioral modification, Benway, competing narratives, criminal justice, criminal justice system, Douglas Star, Facebook, false confessions, guilty plea, hooked on technology, how are criminal defendants charged, identity, incarceration, innocent people plead guilty, interrogation, interrogation techniques, jail, language battle, magnetic pulse, mass incarceration, mental conditioning, mind control, Naked Lunch, narrative control, neural polarization, Pavlov, Pavlovian conditioning, personality, personality modification, plea bargain, police, police interrogation, power, prison, prosecution, prosecutors, prosecutors determine charges, psyche, psychedelics, psychic warfare, psychology research, Queer, research into false confessions, Saul Kassin, Silicon Valley, social control, story battle, storytelling, subjugation, tech companies, tech-free kids, technology, technology companies, telepathy, thought control, TMS, transcranial magnetic stimulation, ultimatum game, unethical game design, why do innocent people confess, William Burroughs, Yage
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On ‘The Overstory.’
Trees made our world livable. Will we show gratitude … or destroy all the forests, wrecking our own chances of survival in the process?
AI, algorithms, artificial intelligence, atmosphere, bees, biomass, book review, brains, carbon, carbon cycles, chemical communication, climate, climate change, cognition, Collapse, communication, computers, consciousness, cycle of life, deforestation, Earth, environmentalism, environmentalist, evolution, extinction, forest, Fruitful Labor, global warming, Go, greenhouse gases, Jared Diamond, Mike Madison, nature, neural networks, neurology, neurons, old growth forest, origin of consciousness, oxygenation, plant communication, Richard Powers, robots, science fiction, smartphones, speed of life, sunlight, tech, technology, technology addiction, The Overstory, The Overstory review, tree communication, tree talk, trees, vegan, Walden, woodlands, woods
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On the sounds of aberrant ecosystems
The world humans are born into inevitably seems normal, no matter how hot, or loud, or empty of animals…
acidity, anthropocene, birds, buffer, buffering, climate change, climate destabilization, Collapse, cultivation, cultural extinction, David Haskell, deforestation, depopulation, directed evolution, domestication, Easter Island, endangered species, environmentalism, evolution, extinction, global warming, Goblin Nabob, Herman Melville, industrial revolution, innovation, Jared Diamond, landscape amnesia, loss of diversity, Magic, Magic the Gathering, mass extinction, Michael McCarthy, Moby Dick, natural renewal, noise pollution, ocean, outdoor cats, overpopulation, population crash, progress, renewal, songbirds, sperm whale, Squee, technology, The Moth Snowstorm, The Songs of Trees, vegan, veganism, whale, where have all the insects gone, windshield phenomenon
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On productivity, and the risk of accidentally making the world worse when we’re trying to make it better.
If efficiency were all we were after, why bother with human consumers? Robots could grow the food, and gobble it all up, too.
Frank Brown Cloud 