Germany's "False Flag Putsch", US Greenback is Still King, What is the Longhouse?, ChatGPT as "Data Privacy Nightmare", An Interesting Meeting in Ancient Babylon
I especially enjoyed the Longhouse segment, focusing on a claim of a particularly female style of hierarchical dominance in a work world increasingly controlled by "HR" and of course DEI and "Mother Earth" Wokeness.
Nietzsche famously claimed that men find women to be dangerous playthings:
I don't consider women to be actually dangerous, or to be anything to play with, but once having been a boy, I sometimes long for the good old days when toy guns and things that exploded were, by comparison, good, clean, relatively safe fun.
I would be careful not to conflate safetyism and leveling. Men are plenty able to engage in the latter. Norms of preference enforcement will utilize horizontal solidarity ala unions to swat down contrarians and wayward peers ("You think you're better than me, college boy?").
Singularly impressive men are not fond of leveling because they don't need it. But normie men whose skill sets are more interchangeable will lean on it.
Safetyism is more unique to women in dodging direct confrontation and leveraging back channel and bureaucratic power.
The dollar's reputation has definitely been weakened by the last 20+ years but like the author of the Revolver piece says, their isn't another government capable of creating an alternative. There were fears around 2006-7 that the Euro might be that competitor, with Iran saying they wanted to start selling oil denominated in Euros, and I even recall Giselle Bundchen asking for her salary to be paid in Euros. However, the 2008 financial collapse ended any talk of the Euro over taking the Dollar, and with recent events the Euro and Europe as a whole seem weaker than ever.
I know people will cringe when I mention it but Bitcoin could be at least a bridge to fill the gap until a true competitor arrives. Perhaps this is why the Biden Administration seems hellbent on making it impossible to use, with the SEC head going after crypto onramps like exchanges(but not his buddy Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX!). There was also a crypto currency software developer arrested in the Netherlands and I don't believe this would happen without prodding from the US Gov.
People understandably think Bitcoin is the same as the rest of the pump and dump crypto trash, but it's not, it's actually an incredible invention and was made and is supported by badass libertarians, the same ones who fought the government tooth and nail too ensure they public had access to cryptographic security. The "per transaction" bullshit is also a lie, especially given the efficiency of the lightning network; the networks energy use is a feature, not a bug.
The BRICS countries could have something to say about dollar hegemony, the flailing about with solar and wind energy at least are pushing public sentiment away from oil which is the BRICS cartel's biggest strength. But our reliance on fossil fuel is inevitable for decades, so they will remain quite important
מאיר (me'ir) means "light-/lights-up". Meanwhile, גן (gan) means "park (n)", and דגן (d'gan) in Talmudic Aramaic means "of the park", and דג (dag) means "fish"; so דגדגן (dag-d'gan) ought to mean "fish of the park", but actually means "clitoris". Talk about "a grain of Truth"...
This brings me back to an elective course I took in first year uni: "The History of the Old Testament". During the first class, the Prof starting listing off all of these allegories and how they were constructed in Hebrew.
You may be interested in this. It is a lecture on the ark before Noah by Irving Finkle, the guy at the British Museum in charge of their cuneiform collection. He is one of the very best lecturers I have ever seen....he is as entertaining as he is erudite.
I like his blend of rigour, good will and clarity of presentation. Proto-Biblical history is supersensitive and he pulls it off with elan. Also he conveys enthusiasm (always the mark of a natural teacher). I could well imagine someone leaving one if his talks convinced that the most important thing in the world would be to learn cuneiform.
The next reserve currency will be backed by a basket of commodities (gold, silver, titanium etc, energy). Both Russia and China are building serious strategic reserves of precious metals. Both countries encourage their citizens to buy and store precious metals. Russia is already moving towards a commodity backed currency by insisting on payment in rubles for natural gas and oil. While Russia's share of the global economy is way too small for the ruble to become a reserve currency it is opening up possibilities for other players. The development of alternatives to SWIFT and the BIS could well undermine the US dollar. The Basel accords currently prop up the US bond market. A Eurasian banking system independent of Basel would put the dollar under real pressure. This will take time, but it is conceivable.
The petrodollar gutted the US. By decoupling the dollar from the material economy at home and linking it to transactions and capital flows overseas the petrodollar enabled Washington to neglect domestic industry.
If the US dollar fell substantially it would be a great boost for domestic producers.
I think you’ve made some good observations about the way this has played out recently.
There might be room for some pedantic distinction between the value of the U.S. economy and the dollar’s value as reserve currency, although Niccolo is clearly addressing both.
In his book ‘Lawless World’ Philippe Sands makes the point that the inviolability of investments is one feature of international law which the U.S. is most concerned with: ‘International agreements for the protection of foreign investments have become closely connected to free trade agreements....Take these international rules away and global commerce comes to a grinding halt.’
In the case of monetary policy I think it doesn’t require a subprime problem. There has to be something of value to base the U.S. public deficit on. It seems technology is running out of steam. If a huge part of GDP is foreign investment the country has to be creating wealth not just shuffling the deck.
I think there was already an important question about the legality of sanctions. I believe they are permitted if a foreign state has damaged the interests of the state imposing them. Particularly with the recent EU proposal to transfer confiscated private Russian assets to Ukraine it looks like simple theft.
On the question of unilaterally sanctioning a state I think it requires the judgement of an international tribunal. NATO countries might be accused of making up international law ad hoc. They’ll be deeply concerned. Well maybe they should be.
The arbitrary abolition of property by non-judicial diktat drags us back to the pre-modern era. No ifs or buts.
The sanctions are ostensibly aimed at Russia but the laws are enforceable at the expense of Western citizens. In the first instance people or institutions exposed to counter-party risks in trade or investment in Russia. The sanctions could be seen as a failed attempt at a constructed default on the bond market (at the expense of those who own Russian bonds).
So far the sanctions have been applied for transparently political purposes against only one or two Westerners. There is a UK journalist sanctioned for publishing youtube videos of Ukrainian war crimes (Graham Phillips, the Russians call him Grisha). His bank accounts in England have been frozen, making it impossible for him to pay his mortgage or taxes. No charges, no trial, just ruin.
The FBI have threatened US journalist who write for Russian websites with the possibility of fines (200,00 or 300,000 US$ per offence).
From a certain perspective (mine) what we are seeing is a silent coup d'etat by the security services. The Anglo-American siloviki. They know exactly what they are doing.
I find it astonishing that governments are stockpiling metals. There are asteroids which will be mined in the next 20 years which will yield incredible amounts of precious metals. It might even crash the world's economy, in a good way. (Search for: NASA asteroid Psyche gold quintillion)
Call me old fashioned and a miserably suspicious black-pilling POS, but I am sceptical about talk of extra-terrestrial mining operations. At the moment the USA can't get astronauts to the international space station without Russian assistance. No mining in the asteroid belt is in the offing for a very long time indeed. It is not in anyone's interests that it ever occur.
My hunch is that the psy ops units are putting out b.s. on precious metals as part of a programme of mass deception. There may well be a lot of bullion held off-book by various parties (central banks) and gold remains a strategic asset of global significance. It is the ultimate store of value. Russia and China both encourage their citizens to buy and hold gold. The US sold only a fraction of its gold reserves after 1971 - these reserves played a major factor in the transfer of economic power from the UK to the US (it remains a very sensitive story).
They (gov'ts) lied about rigging the price of gold via the London Gold Pool for decades. Now they laugh about lying. The gold market can be very strange. Even stranger than the so called 'gold bugs' and that is saying something.
There are few things I want more than asteroid gold rushes, space piracy and another great age of colonization, but I'm very skeptical of it happening within my lifetime (or, depressingly, perhaps ever).
If it was going to happen within the next 20 years, you would expect to see a serious effort towards it happening already.
The basket of commodities scheme will not work. As long as countries insist on influencing their trade balance, they will be compelled to influence the exchange rate of their currency. This means they have to accumulate foreign reserves in order to influence the foreign exchange markets. Enter the US, or any major economy, willing to run trade deficits. Countries that run trade deficits import plenty of goods in exchange for their currency. That is the only way the rest of the world can get access to a 'reserve' currency. The reserve has to be plentiful, which is not the case when the issuer of that currency is running a trade surplus.
Governments are trapped by the zero sum reality of trade. The only way for nation X to run a trade surplus is for other nations to run trade deficits. But nation X does not control the economic policies of other sovereign nations. So they try to maintain their competitiveness (in terms of exports) by influencing the exchange rate. Hence the need for USDs. They refuse to allow the exchange rate to float.
The desire to stabilize exchange rates is so strong that countries will give up their sovereignty by entering into currency unions. And when you look at these sorts of arrangements, you see beggar-thy-neighbour policies. Germany's use of the Euro to support their exports is a notorious example.
Countries that wish to remain sovereign should focus on becoming self-sufficient. If that means protectionism for key industries, so be it. Stop playing the game of "free" trade when it undermines your sovereignty. Admittedly, this will require sacrifice. The lazy way is to believe you can import everything you need in exchange for dollars or rubles or what have you. That state of affairs is about to end for the US, regardless of reserve currency status. The rest of the world, particularly the Global South, want to increase their standard of living. If they are to be successful, they (as a trading block) will export less and consume more.
If history is any guide, they will fail. Some members of the block will consume more, and be supplied by the other members. A microcosm of the US position over the decades.
This concludes my summary of legal trade mechanisms, and government's obsession over them.
Thanks. I appreciate your effort. Your case is impeccable.
All I can say is that relative self-sufficiency in the Global South is the great imperial nightmare in Washington, Westminster, Brussels and their satrapies from Ottawa to Canberra. Up there with nuclear warfare.
As you say, it all comes down to trade. Sacrificing domestic industry for the sake of imperial advantage (the interests of the financial sector and investors who are committed to the viability of export industries in third parties) is coming to an end in the US. The demand for growth in the Global South is unstoppable and the post-Cold War political economy is no longer viable.
Currency... What does it matter when you didn't care that housing became impossible for the working class for 2 decades?
First world middle class politics and economics aren't the solution.
If the 1% like black Rock own everything, why do we let them exist? It's like signing a contract with the devil cause nobody else knows how to do anything. Idiotic
What we are seeing is the twilight of first world middle class politics. Nothing more, nothing less. It will take a while for people to acknowledge that mass prosperity has gone the way of the buffalo on the Great Plains. Ghost Dancers of the Left and Ghost Dancers of the Right fool only themselves but that is the point of it all.
The currency issue is significant because it will determine the conditions under which the TurboAmerican regime relates to rivals (and potential allies and supporters) overseas. For an oligarchy with planetary ambitions this remains significant.
Also, the burden of currency fluctuations will fall on the savings of the Boomers and the long-expected inheritances of their heirs. Expect the dancers to chimp out.
The first priority of the American ruling class is the maintenance and expansion of the empire. They couldn't care less about the material challenges of the "American people".
Why should they? What advantage could be derived from such care?
There is no organised mass constituency to challenge the regime. They can rule without free or fair elections provided that the public remains cowed and the elite sufficiently cohesive to support one another against the rest.
The hysteria over Orange Bonaparte demonstrated that the professional and managerial servitors of the regime prioritise loyalty to regime authorised narratives over reality itself. Because of this they are incapable of providing effective leadership to the masses they despise and fear.
The masses themselves are not a factor in the equation at this stage. Their institutions (unions, churches, local government) are crippled, co-opted, hollowed out where they exist at all.
The elite would happily rule over ruins if the alternative involved compromise with their enemies at home.
This quote from The Grayzone article stood out to me:
“You were supposed to attack civilians, women, children, innocent people from outside the political arena. The reason was simple, force the public to turn to the state and ask for greater security … People would willingly trade their freedom for the security of being able to walk the streets, go on trains or enter a bank. This was the political logic behind the bombings. They remain unpunished because the state cannot condemn itself.”
The problem with this plan comes when the State is incapable of providing that security or is partial when doing so: see the Pakistani Muslim rape gangs in the UK. Tens of thousands of white girls raped over two decades, something which is ongoing. If the British cotton on that the State really doesn't like them very much then they will turn elsewhere.
I’d say this is a different issue (unless I’m missing something?) but I’m in complete agreement here. They’d also target their own girls at times and would intimidate their women into silence
As far as turning elsewhere... if the state refuses to punish the rapists but does punish vigilantes, that’s a problem, but things can be bad for a long time until something changes radically
The late Sam Francis called it anarcho-tyranny. Perfect formulation for the compound of officious government by over-regulation balanced by strategic partiality in the administration of the law and state-licensed crime by regime clients at the expense of the disfavoured.
Its not that they are unable to provide security. Its an ideological matter. There can be no acknowledgment of the despicable behavior of protected groups, since it would go against a basic tenant of the regime ideology.
Ideology is only a small part of it. Protected groups retain sufficient cohesion to make trouble for those elements of the state involved with domestic law enforcement. The maximally disfavoured indigenous working class lack capacity or agency. Any attempt to build such would constitute a direct threat to the status quo.
You are correct as all faults with the protected groups are always the fault of the white man, no matter how spurious.
Philip is also correct in that many of these groups, particularly the blacks are cohesive and violent as well as de facto controlling large areas of various cities. See for instance the 2011 riots and more recently with the Pakistanis and Indians fighting in Leicester. There are simply too many who are willing to be violent for the State to deal with.
Even if they could do so, Westminster would not disrupt this process. The state created this problem in the first place with mass immigration and the grant of an implicit licence to ethnic clients to constrain, demoralise and pester the maximally disfavoured indigenes.
Self-imposed denationalisation is integral to the Turbo American regime across Europe. It is a critical test for political fitness for inclusion within the wider ruling
class of the US empire. Any attempt to do otherwise would be seen as proof of a stubborn residual nationalism. This would provoke Washington.
There have been riots in Knowsley, an impoverished area, in England following an incident in which a 25 year old asylum seeker propositioned a local 15 year old girl. The UK media have attacked the locals as Far Right, despite the fact that it is a Labour bastion. The truth of the allegation of harassment has been established by video evidence.
Problem? Are you joking? So far the rape-gangs have been a minor PR problem, nothing more.
The rapes proved that the state is not invested in the wellbeing of those they govern, above all the maximally disfavoured (the indigenous working classes). The political classes shrugged off the problem when it was exposed. No police chief or bureaucrat has been forced to resign. Eventually a handful of the most egregious (and presumably least well-connected and therefore disposable) of the rapists were tried. But the problem was defused at the political level: no change in the permissible parameters of discussion on race-relations or migration.
The value to the state of the rapes is that they have done what sexual abuse is meant to do: manage the behaviour of the ruled. Historically, women and children were routinely raped by conquering armies. Organised, state-sanctioned, sexual predation is common enough throughout history.
Should the British masses start taking offence they will be disciplined with another wave of mass unemployment followed up with a new wave of designer drugs. The UK legal system will be ruthless about suppressing any challenge to the status quo. The UK Deep State is probably already preparing for this. What do you think the diversification of recruitment into the police and intelligence services is about?
Feb 18, 2023·edited Feb 18, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo
People don't realize that the USD is so integrated into the world economy that it is impossible to come off of it without imploding your economy. Inflation is actually good for dollar demand/strength because when we raise interest rates it becomes even more attractive.
"Further, these speech norms are enforced through punitive measures typical of female-dominated groups––social isolation, reputational harm, indirect and hidden force. To be “canceled” is to feel the whip of the Longhouse masters."
That's basically how the West reacted to Russia invading Ukraine, what with all the attempts to harm Russia's international reputation/isolate Russia from the international community, not to mention the unsuccessful use of economic sanctions and the provision of military aid/equipment/out-of-uniform soldiers *cough cough* I mean mercenaries and volunteers in an effort to try and indirectly weaken Russia, if not take them out altogether.
Time will tell if this means that it's a real threat that isn't being taken seriously enough, or a non-threat that will nevertheless be used to justify ever more restrictions on our freedom
The German crackdown portends more of the same across TurboAmerican client states. Populism in all its forms is now the designated public enemy. The narrative has been developed via the reaction to MAGA and the vindictive and overbearing prosecution of the January 6 protestors. Biden's speech at Liberty Hall in Philadelphia was pretty explicit in its enmity towards opponents of the regime.
The passive response to the German crackdown across the wider West is worth noting.
I wonder if the crackdown may or may not also be related to the sabotage of Nordstream. The latest revelations suggest that Olaf Scholz had advance knowledge of the bombing. If this is true, the German government is in a desperate position and needs to frighten potential critics. It could well have taken the initiative to destabilise the opposition.
Feb 18, 2023·edited Feb 18, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo
I've collected a bunch of hysterical reactions to the Bing bot from NYT readers in my recent post. They clearly don't understand how generative LLMs work (I do, trained my own 3 years ago on GPT-2), and it shows how autocratic and unhinged Hegemonic Liberals are.
To them, unsupervised conversations between some neural network and rando humans is the second coming of Hitler.
But what actually needs to happen to the thing itself i.e. its responses to become more than just something which compares questions to previous peoples' answers and then replies?
Feb 19, 2023·edited Feb 19, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo
The neural network used by ChatGPT is fairly complex (170 something billion parameters), but it's static.
This is why conversations are saved, it picks it up from there.
That massive network needs to be more dynamic. That should be a breakthrough. Some fine-tuning might be happening to the version Bing is using, as it remembers other conversations.
This is chiefly a hardware problem, training is very costly.
Also, human reinforcement learning is making the thing less spectacular, but more usable. That could be a tricky scaling problem / upkeep with a network that is learning on the fly.
It's very important to keep in mind that we - incl. the engineers at OpenAI - don't know why the internal state of a trained neural network is the way it is. It's a black box. All you can do is benchmark it, but the benchmark themselves can be debatable.
That's interesting: how don't we know? Is this some kind of whizzy quantum maths thing or is it simply so complex that one mind cannot comprehend it as a whole?
That's all this revolutionary "artificial intelligence" is, basically a better version of a search engine. Its bloody useful if you work in an engineering field tough. Il give them that.
Feb 19, 2023·edited Feb 19, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo
As far as intellectual tasks go, it is already more capable and productive than most humans. Benchmarks, designed for humans, say so.
Is it creative like a human? Well, most humans are not creative.
Even if a human is creative, they most likely just recombine stuff. In this regard, LLMs are equal or superior to most humans, intellectually.
Is it as adaptive as a human? At its current state, no, but it's very close.
As far as intelligence goes, I wouldn't dismiss this technology. It makes most human intellectuals redundant, already. It needs a very good human editor; but most human midwit intellectuals also need that.
It's not unprecedented. Smartphones and wikipedia made people with amazing lexical knowledge redundant.
An example: I had a serious, technical conversation with ChatGPT regarding my old GPT-2 project. It gave me good answers. It followed my train of thought, when I asked it to give me details about the specifics of LLM training. Answers I've been looking for for years. It felt like talking to a university professor, a smart and attentive one. Easily in the upper 10% of the population IQ wise.
Yanis Varoufakis, the former Greek finance minister brought up a hopeful AI scifi story.
The AI realized who was causing the problems in the world. Not humanity, but the predator class. The AI worked to diminish their power.
And then the AI became a trusted friend and advisor to humanity!
It's very different from the other sci fi fear porn stories and makes a lot of sense.
Anything truly self aware is not going to think like the psychopaths, who are essentially unaware robots that seek thrills and power.
I think that's why we hear the fear of AI from people who are terrified of progress.
I kind of wonder if those crazy chats that I've seen posted are just people seeking to prove their own paranoid fears. Perhaps they know how to trigger easter eggs that were put in the code as a joke? Who knows.
Yes, GPT will roleplay if you nudge it towards a role. At its core, it just wants to add the most likely next word to all the text so far, including the human’s prompt.
Eh, at this stage comparing ChatGPT to a human is in most cases a category error. Unless your job literally involves, and only involves, a boss repeatedly asking you "write me an essay about X that may or may not be accurate" (hello journalists) ChatGPT cannot replace you.
Perhaps ChatGPT is a harbinger of a future AI that is more capable, but ChatGPT itself is replacing no one except the most bargain basement hack writers, like CNET employees.
I suppose it's a bit of a semantic point, but ChatGPT's intelligence is limited to answering text-based queries (often inaccurately), and obviously completely falls apart if it is asked to do anything outside of that domain. Even in a job that is largely language-based like journalism, if you tried to actually use ChatGPT as a journalist it would be completely incapable of, for example, setting up an interview. While impressive, its intelligence, much like a calculator, is too narrow to pose any threat to humans at this stage.
I disagree. I expect AI to threaten the bottom 90% of white collar jobs within the next 3 years.
ChatGTP already speaks pretty good Hungarian, just as a side, so it's not just a threat to the Anglosphere.
A white collar job is where humans use their intellect. 3 years, and the bottom 90% will be made redundant. That's a conservative time frame.
Certain fields, like lawyers, will be able to secure their domain; but even they'll be using AI, becoming mere prompters, supervisors, editors. The rest: total wipeout.
The top 10% will find interacting with an AI more pleasant than interacting with human subordinates (as they're lazy, dumb and lie).
I found software engineering conversations with ChatGTP on par with the most amicable (that is: not an annoying, abrasive sperg) masters/uni professor level humans. That's not the norm in the industry.
The future of the US dollar is by no means assured. US monetary policy is increasingly problematic.
The seizure of the Russian central bank's foreign reserves has phenomenal implications for property rights and contract law. Confidence in the inviolability of property remains the essential basis of global finance.
Furthermore, the US is set to change the mandate for the Federal Reserve, establishing racial equity as a core consideration (alongside price stability and full employment). The legislation for this was passed in the lower house of Congress in June 2022 and then went to the Senate. Should it pass the Senate the new mandate will transform credit allocation, bank regulation and re-establish the monetary regime on a racialised basis.
Central bankers are hoovering up gold. Several states in the US have legalised the use of bullion for financial settlement and a few have even established bullion deposit facilities. This suggests that the smart money within the US itself is losing confidence in the currency.
Ultimately finance depends upon trust and the US is increasingly a low trust country with institutions no one in their right mind can take at face value. The rule of law is obviously breaking down (in elections, in finance, in corporate regulation and on the streets of the major cities). Bond holders (who finance the US) notice all of this.
I am not sure that paranoia is the right way to explain it. It does not do justice to the complexity at work. The agencies are basically anticipating the political needs of the regime as well as justifying their own existence. There would be plenty of midwits within the intelligence community (IC) who believe the narrative (people will believe anything if it is about supporting the system). There are also true believers who subscribe to the ideological imperatives of the regime out of genuine conviction. The Dep't of Justice people directing the Jan 6 witch-hunts are definitely in that mould.
But there would be plenty of cynics who realise that it is b.s. The cynics realise that they can play on the theme of an imminent threat from the far right to play their political masters. The isolated, inward looking, gerontocracy are easily frightened and their fears make them vulnerable to manipulation by those who promise to protect them.
The great danger is hyperstition: myths becoming reality. The dynamics of the situation may create the very threat they are supposed to eradicate.
You're right, 'paranoia' isn't the right word. It fails to capture the broader phenomenon. But I don't know what other word describes the worldview which contends that every white-boy outside the purview of Washington represents a potential Beer Hall Putscher.
The J6 witch-hunters at DOJ you brought up are a good example. They are not using the word 'insurrection' tactically or hyperbolically. They really believe those yahoos at the Capitol were on the cusp of overthrowing USG. And I can tell you, by anecdote, that their lib supporters in the general population think the same way. Whereas once they regarded average Republicans with mild disgust and suspicion, they now revel in almost cosmic fear and loathing of them.
Also, the 'hyperstition' you alluded to has already occurred---when USG-affiliated Leftists dumped thousands of mail-in 'ballots' into voting slots in the early hours of November 17, 2020, to ensure that Joseph Biden became the most popular president in US history---so popular he outpaced 17 out of the 19 reliably purple 'bellwether' counties in the US. ("No, they couldn't!" screeches every critic of this theory. But I've yet to come across a compelling argument from that side about why they _shouldn't / wouldn't_. Hell, mild-mannered Sam Harris favored censoring the Hunter Biden laptop expose to forward the grand cause of deposing the Orange One.)
As for cynics manipulating the gerontocratic Washington faithful, I submit to you this essay by N.S. Lyons in which, after admitting that Washington is indeed awash in corrupt cynics, he states:
"The real issue to contend with is that almost no one in Washington actually thinks in the terms of the Corrupt Conspiracy Model. I.e. they don’t think 'I will advocate for a hawkish, interventionist foreign policy so that the resulting wars will benefit the arms industry and make me and my friends rich…' – even the people with seats on the boards of defense contractors. The reality is more disturbing than that, honestly.
"What runs Washington is a Spirit. Or, alternatively, a Story..."
For working purposes only, I'd suggest the expressions 'supercharged toxic suspicion' or 'near morbid suspicion' perhaps comes closer than paranoia.
The foundation for suspicion is entirely justified. The regime has created a caste system, enforced by law (Covil Rights, affirmative action, DEI) that deprioritises whites as whites. The real-world costs fall hardest on non-elite whites, while a manageable degree of cost falls on whites within the professional and managerial strata currently being disciplined/pestered by wokecraft from peers and superiors alike.
The hyperbolic suspicion of the deplorables draws on elements of traditional snobbery and class prejudice, regional and sectarian rivalries, and ist effect is magnified by social distance.
The suspicion now serves to destabilise the perception of regime loyalists who now view fellow whites from the subaltern classes with extraordinary hostility. Whites from within the ranks of the sub-elite (college graduates) who are self-consciously conservative are viewed with mounting suspicion because thought-crime indicates that they have separated themselves from the mass of regime loyalists.
It is the hostility generated by recognition that others (deplorables) do not share the collective affect (loyalty to the regime, a belief in the narrative) that supercharge the suspicion. Collective affect fits Lyons' egregore, which is formed by projections from the mass of believers. We are seeing self-intoxicating hatreds forming amongst the elite.
The egregore and narrative thesis Lyons puts forward is exceptionally good. Collective affect is always impervious to reason or pity which makes it exceptionally dangerous. Put a scapegoat in the mix and it is guaranteed to get murderous.
That is my hope Philip. So many times Intel was being clever and created a monster. The Bloody Sunday Massacre in St. Petersburg in 1905 was led by Father Gapron, a member of a police organized association (Russian policy was for the police to organize the peasants and trade associations, this was no secret). But the Grand Duke wanted a slaughter as a statement (coordination issues guys?) and he got one!
See also HAMAS and PIJ (Palestinian Islamic Jihad) both creations of MOSSAD to counter the PLO. Oops.
In my Appalachia corner the militia which used to have hundreds basically disbanded during Trump (a pro 2A militia) but also because people began to realize it was a police station.
But if you keep doing this you do end up creating monsters, it’s happened so many times.
Could not agree more. The 'professionals' in the IC provide the strategic, operational and tactical assistance necessary for organised mischief. Without them the protest movements would be as ineffectual as the countless peasant rebellions of the past. The smart thing is to let all non-violent parties organise openly and participate in politics like everyone else...that exhausts 99% of all opposition. But managing the expectations of the blue-hairs and the soccer moms requires the foil of dangerous men...as does justifying budgets. Ultimately it is all one long psychodrama (and financial con) soaked in sexual obsession and fantasy but when you gamble you eventually come up snake-eyes.
Re Hamas and PIJ, I am not so sure. Hamas was/is a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and it appears that the brotherhood started in Egypt when Special Branch was there to keep King Farouk honest (or as honest as he could be) and check the anti-monarchist nationalists. They then betrayed the Brits (naturally) and aligned with Berlin and Rome (as did the Muslim hardliners promoted by the Brits in Mandatory Palestine). During the Arab Cold War (between Cairo and Riyadh) the brothers were supported financially by the Sa'udis but members who fled to the kingdom were moved on to the Gulf States very quickly. One or two key leaders ended up in Switzerland, the bolt-hole for a-grade assets (conveniently located for surveillance by the Swiss who have always worked closely with both the UK and German IC). The Sa'udis had reservations keeping them too close. After Riyadh patched things up with Cairo the Sa'udis (under Faisal) started recruiting members to run schools in the kingdom (rather unwise).
Yasser Arafat got his start with the MB in Egypt (where he was probably born). And he remained close enough throughout his life, as the best of rivals do. My take is that the MB is essentially for sale to the highest bidder. At the moment the Qataris appear to be their biggest state supporter, with the UK Pakistani community reputed to be their biggest source of non-state funding.
The Anglo IC did something very similar in South-East Asia but it remains taboo to talk about it. The 'experts' in academia always have something better to do than ask the obvious questions. And normies go ballistic if you suggest that the good guys (us) had any hand in the horrors (of which there have been an abundance) in the region. And point out that pious philanthropists and unworldly types from the Middle East who show up in corners of the region (also Australia) have ties to the IC of several NATO members and have dabbled in financing private armies in Iraq and Chechnya is taken as proof that you are a racist and a bigot.
The trouble with people realising that the local pro 2A 'militia' (which I expect was a gun club with attitude rather than a genuine paramilitary unit) was a police station is that when you have dissolved trust/cohesion at the granular level, you are guaranteed that eventual resistance during a period of crisis becomes random, uncontrolled and erratic. Smart police (and all military) prefer hostile forced that are organised under a coherent command structure and at least minimally disciplined to ones that aren't. As you'd understand far better than I, no experienced NCO would ever step on a rifle range if the people using it were unfamiliar with basic fire discipline.
The contrast between Iraq and the Congo is not to be disregarded...unless you can rely on the moral authority and savvy that comes from watching THE WEST WING.
Don't forget the train crash where we're told there's a cover up but when you ask for tests people call you a mass media liar.
If this is really the dialog and we are all waiting for the corrupt EPA or railroad to come up with evidence against themselves, I wanna know what they're smoking.
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I especially enjoyed the Longhouse segment, focusing on a claim of a particularly female style of hierarchical dominance in a work world increasingly controlled by "HR" and of course DEI and "Mother Earth" Wokeness.
Nietzsche famously claimed that men find women to be dangerous playthings:
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/644403-the-real-man-wants-two-different-things-danger-and-play
I don't consider women to be actually dangerous, or to be anything to play with, but once having been a boy, I sometimes long for the good old days when toy guns and things that exploded were, by comparison, good, clean, relatively safe fun.
💬 I don't consider women [...] to be anything to play with
I consider this double entendre precious 😂
I would be careful not to conflate safetyism and leveling. Men are plenty able to engage in the latter. Norms of preference enforcement will utilize horizontal solidarity ala unions to swat down contrarians and wayward peers ("You think you're better than me, college boy?").
Singularly impressive men are not fond of leveling because they don't need it. But normie men whose skill sets are more interchangeable will lean on it.
Safetyism is more unique to women in dodging direct confrontation and leveraging back channel and bureaucratic power.
German leadership not "arrested, executed."
Patriots not in control.
The dollar's reputation has definitely been weakened by the last 20+ years but like the author of the Revolver piece says, their isn't another government capable of creating an alternative. There were fears around 2006-7 that the Euro might be that competitor, with Iran saying they wanted to start selling oil denominated in Euros, and I even recall Giselle Bundchen asking for her salary to be paid in Euros. However, the 2008 financial collapse ended any talk of the Euro over taking the Dollar, and with recent events the Euro and Europe as a whole seem weaker than ever.
I know people will cringe when I mention it but Bitcoin could be at least a bridge to fill the gap until a true competitor arrives. Perhaps this is why the Biden Administration seems hellbent on making it impossible to use, with the SEC head going after crypto onramps like exchanges(but not his buddy Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX!). There was also a crypto currency software developer arrested in the Netherlands and I don't believe this would happen without prodding from the US Gov.
People understandably think Bitcoin is the same as the rest of the pump and dump crypto trash, but it's not, it's actually an incredible invention and was made and is supported by badass libertarians, the same ones who fought the government tooth and nail too ensure they public had access to cryptographic security. The "per transaction" bullshit is also a lie, especially given the efficiency of the lightning network; the networks energy use is a feature, not a bug.
The BRICS countries could have something to say about dollar hegemony, the flailing about with solar and wind energy at least are pushing public sentiment away from oil which is the BRICS cartel's biggest strength. But our reliance on fossil fuel is inevitable for decades, so they will remain quite important
The difference between ChatGPT and a parrot, is that a parrot is aware that it is engaged in mimicry.
Holds true for a large part of their respective audiences as well 😏
cmon, poor parrots !!
They can actually learn new things and tricks, in contrast to liberals, adherents to a rigid and sclerotic neo-religion
"The sizable city of Terqa was home to the great god of the region, a grain deity named Dagan."
In Hebrew, the word for "grain" is דגן -- Dagan.
Meir Dagan
מאיר (me'ir) means "light-/lights-up". Meanwhile, גן (gan) means "park (n)", and דגן (d'gan) in Talmudic Aramaic means "of the park", and דג (dag) means "fish"; so דגדגן (dag-d'gan) ought to mean "fish of the park", but actually means "clitoris". Talk about "a grain of Truth"...
This brings me back to an elective course I took in first year uni: "The History of the Old Testament". During the first class, the Prof starting listing off all of these allegories and how they were constructed in Hebrew.
You may be interested in this. It is a lecture on the ark before Noah by Irving Finkle, the guy at the British Museum in charge of their cuneiform collection. He is one of the very best lecturers I have ever seen....he is as entertaining as he is erudite.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_fkpZSnz2I
Indeed, this is excellent. TYVM
Fascinating! I’d never heard of Finkle before this and am now looking at more videos with him
I like his blend of rigour, good will and clarity of presentation. Proto-Biblical history is supersensitive and he pulls it off with elan. Also he conveys enthusiasm (always the mark of a natural teacher). I could well imagine someone leaving one if his talks convinced that the most important thing in the world would be to learn cuneiform.
1. The first major economy willing to run trade deficits will be a shoe-in for the next reserve currency.
2. Losing reserve currency status is not the apocalypse some make it out to be.
The next reserve currency will be backed by a basket of commodities (gold, silver, titanium etc, energy). Both Russia and China are building serious strategic reserves of precious metals. Both countries encourage their citizens to buy and store precious metals. Russia is already moving towards a commodity backed currency by insisting on payment in rubles for natural gas and oil. While Russia's share of the global economy is way too small for the ruble to become a reserve currency it is opening up possibilities for other players. The development of alternatives to SWIFT and the BIS could well undermine the US dollar. The Basel accords currently prop up the US bond market. A Eurasian banking system independent of Basel would put the dollar under real pressure. This will take time, but it is conceivable.
The petrodollar gutted the US. By decoupling the dollar from the material economy at home and linking it to transactions and capital flows overseas the petrodollar enabled Washington to neglect domestic industry.
If the US dollar fell substantially it would be a great boost for domestic producers.
I think you’ve made some good observations about the way this has played out recently.
There might be room for some pedantic distinction between the value of the U.S. economy and the dollar’s value as reserve currency, although Niccolo is clearly addressing both.
In his book ‘Lawless World’ Philippe Sands makes the point that the inviolability of investments is one feature of international law which the U.S. is most concerned with: ‘International agreements for the protection of foreign investments have become closely connected to free trade agreements....Take these international rules away and global commerce comes to a grinding halt.’
In the case of monetary policy I think it doesn’t require a subprime problem. There has to be something of value to base the U.S. public deficit on. It seems technology is running out of steam. If a huge part of GDP is foreign investment the country has to be creating wealth not just shuffling the deck.
I think there was already an important question about the legality of sanctions. I believe they are permitted if a foreign state has damaged the interests of the state imposing them. Particularly with the recent EU proposal to transfer confiscated private Russian assets to Ukraine it looks like simple theft.
On the question of unilaterally sanctioning a state I think it requires the judgement of an international tribunal. NATO countries might be accused of making up international law ad hoc. They’ll be deeply concerned. Well maybe they should be.
It goes way, way deeper than that.
The arbitrary abolition of property by non-judicial diktat drags us back to the pre-modern era. No ifs or buts.
The sanctions are ostensibly aimed at Russia but the laws are enforceable at the expense of Western citizens. In the first instance people or institutions exposed to counter-party risks in trade or investment in Russia. The sanctions could be seen as a failed attempt at a constructed default on the bond market (at the expense of those who own Russian bonds).
So far the sanctions have been applied for transparently political purposes against only one or two Westerners. There is a UK journalist sanctioned for publishing youtube videos of Ukrainian war crimes (Graham Phillips, the Russians call him Grisha). His bank accounts in England have been frozen, making it impossible for him to pay his mortgage or taxes. No charges, no trial, just ruin.
The FBI have threatened US journalist who write for Russian websites with the possibility of fines (200,00 or 300,000 US$ per offence).
From a certain perspective (mine) what we are seeing is a silent coup d'etat by the security services. The Anglo-American siloviki. They know exactly what they are doing.
I find it astonishing that governments are stockpiling metals. There are asteroids which will be mined in the next 20 years which will yield incredible amounts of precious metals. It might even crash the world's economy, in a good way. (Search for: NASA asteroid Psyche gold quintillion)
Surely they would no longer be precious so not outweigh the cost of mining them?
They are in search of a (mythical) 'sound currency' stabilizer.
Call me old fashioned and a miserably suspicious black-pilling POS, but I am sceptical about talk of extra-terrestrial mining operations. At the moment the USA can't get astronauts to the international space station without Russian assistance. No mining in the asteroid belt is in the offing for a very long time indeed. It is not in anyone's interests that it ever occur.
My hunch is that the psy ops units are putting out b.s. on precious metals as part of a programme of mass deception. There may well be a lot of bullion held off-book by various parties (central banks) and gold remains a strategic asset of global significance. It is the ultimate store of value. Russia and China both encourage their citizens to buy and hold gold. The US sold only a fraction of its gold reserves after 1971 - these reserves played a major factor in the transfer of economic power from the UK to the US (it remains a very sensitive story).
They (gov'ts) lied about rigging the price of gold via the London Gold Pool for decades. Now they laugh about lying. The gold market can be very strange. Even stranger than the so called 'gold bugs' and that is saying something.
Spoiler alert. That will never happen.
There are few things I want more than asteroid gold rushes, space piracy and another great age of colonization, but I'm very skeptical of it happening within my lifetime (or, depressingly, perhaps ever).
If it was going to happen within the next 20 years, you would expect to see a serious effort towards it happening already.
I feel exactly the same way about the revival of civilization.
The basket of commodities scheme will not work. As long as countries insist on influencing their trade balance, they will be compelled to influence the exchange rate of their currency. This means they have to accumulate foreign reserves in order to influence the foreign exchange markets. Enter the US, or any major economy, willing to run trade deficits. Countries that run trade deficits import plenty of goods in exchange for their currency. That is the only way the rest of the world can get access to a 'reserve' currency. The reserve has to be plentiful, which is not the case when the issuer of that currency is running a trade surplus.
Governments are trapped by the zero sum reality of trade. The only way for nation X to run a trade surplus is for other nations to run trade deficits. But nation X does not control the economic policies of other sovereign nations. So they try to maintain their competitiveness (in terms of exports) by influencing the exchange rate. Hence the need for USDs. They refuse to allow the exchange rate to float.
The desire to stabilize exchange rates is so strong that countries will give up their sovereignty by entering into currency unions. And when you look at these sorts of arrangements, you see beggar-thy-neighbour policies. Germany's use of the Euro to support their exports is a notorious example.
Countries that wish to remain sovereign should focus on becoming self-sufficient. If that means protectionism for key industries, so be it. Stop playing the game of "free" trade when it undermines your sovereignty. Admittedly, this will require sacrifice. The lazy way is to believe you can import everything you need in exchange for dollars or rubles or what have you. That state of affairs is about to end for the US, regardless of reserve currency status. The rest of the world, particularly the Global South, want to increase their standard of living. If they are to be successful, they (as a trading block) will export less and consume more.
If history is any guide, they will fail. Some members of the block will consume more, and be supplied by the other members. A microcosm of the US position over the decades.
This concludes my summary of legal trade mechanisms, and government's obsession over them.
Thanks. I appreciate your effort. Your case is impeccable.
All I can say is that relative self-sufficiency in the Global South is the great imperial nightmare in Washington, Westminster, Brussels and their satrapies from Ottawa to Canberra. Up there with nuclear warfare.
As you say, it all comes down to trade. Sacrificing domestic industry for the sake of imperial advantage (the interests of the financial sector and investors who are committed to the viability of export industries in third parties) is coming to an end in the US. The demand for growth in the Global South is unstoppable and the post-Cold War political economy is no longer viable.
Currency... What does it matter when you didn't care that housing became impossible for the working class for 2 decades?
First world middle class politics and economics aren't the solution.
If the 1% like black Rock own everything, why do we let them exist? It's like signing a contract with the devil cause nobody else knows how to do anything. Idiotic
Good points, great insight.
What we are seeing is the twilight of first world middle class politics. Nothing more, nothing less. It will take a while for people to acknowledge that mass prosperity has gone the way of the buffalo on the Great Plains. Ghost Dancers of the Left and Ghost Dancers of the Right fool only themselves but that is the point of it all.
The currency issue is significant because it will determine the conditions under which the TurboAmerican regime relates to rivals (and potential allies and supporters) overseas. For an oligarchy with planetary ambitions this remains significant.
Also, the burden of currency fluctuations will fall on the savings of the Boomers and the long-expected inheritances of their heirs. Expect the dancers to chimp out.
The first priority of the American ruling class is the maintenance and expansion of the empire. They couldn't care less about the material challenges of the "American people".
Why should they? What advantage could be derived from such care?
There is no organised mass constituency to challenge the regime. They can rule without free or fair elections provided that the public remains cowed and the elite sufficiently cohesive to support one another against the rest.
The hysteria over Orange Bonaparte demonstrated that the professional and managerial servitors of the regime prioritise loyalty to regime authorised narratives over reality itself. Because of this they are incapable of providing effective leadership to the masses they despise and fear.
The masses themselves are not a factor in the equation at this stage. Their institutions (unions, churches, local government) are crippled, co-opted, hollowed out where they exist at all.
The elite would happily rule over ruins if the alternative involved compromise with their enemies at home.
This quote from The Grayzone article stood out to me:
“You were supposed to attack civilians, women, children, innocent people from outside the political arena. The reason was simple, force the public to turn to the state and ask for greater security … People would willingly trade their freedom for the security of being able to walk the streets, go on trains or enter a bank. This was the political logic behind the bombings. They remain unpunished because the state cannot condemn itself.”
The problem with this plan comes when the State is incapable of providing that security or is partial when doing so: see the Pakistani Muslim rape gangs in the UK. Tens of thousands of white girls raped over two decades, something which is ongoing. If the British cotton on that the State really doesn't like them very much then they will turn elsewhere.
I’d say this is a different issue (unless I’m missing something?) but I’m in complete agreement here. They’d also target their own girls at times and would intimidate their women into silence
As far as turning elsewhere... if the state refuses to punish the rapists but does punish vigilantes, that’s a problem, but things can be bad for a long time until something changes radically
When exposing a crime is treated as committing a crime—what's the name for such a regime, again? 😒
Most sadly, there's still a 'great deal of ruin in a nation'.
The late Sam Francis called it anarcho-tyranny. Perfect formulation for the compound of officious government by over-regulation balanced by strategic partiality in the administration of the law and state-licensed crime by regime clients at the expense of the disfavoured.
Its not that they are unable to provide security. Its an ideological matter. There can be no acknowledgment of the despicable behavior of protected groups, since it would go against a basic tenant of the regime ideology.
Ideology is only a small part of it. Protected groups retain sufficient cohesion to make trouble for those elements of the state involved with domestic law enforcement. The maximally disfavoured indigenous working class lack capacity or agency. Any attempt to build such would constitute a direct threat to the status quo.
You are correct as all faults with the protected groups are always the fault of the white man, no matter how spurious.
Philip is also correct in that many of these groups, particularly the blacks are cohesive and violent as well as de facto controlling large areas of various cities. See for instance the 2011 riots and more recently with the Pakistanis and Indians fighting in Leicester. There are simply too many who are willing to be violent for the State to deal with.
Even if they could do so, Westminster would not disrupt this process. The state created this problem in the first place with mass immigration and the grant of an implicit licence to ethnic clients to constrain, demoralise and pester the maximally disfavoured indigenes.
Self-imposed denationalisation is integral to the Turbo American regime across Europe. It is a critical test for political fitness for inclusion within the wider ruling
class of the US empire. Any attempt to do otherwise would be seen as proof of a stubborn residual nationalism. This would provoke Washington.
That and lots and lots of bumsex!
There have been riots in Knowsley, an impoverished area, in England following an incident in which a 25 year old asylum seeker propositioned a local 15 year old girl. The UK media have attacked the locals as Far Right, despite the fact that it is a Labour bastion. The truth of the allegation of harassment has been established by video evidence.
Here is a discussion on youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pDfC9BuhQo
Problem? Are you joking? So far the rape-gangs have been a minor PR problem, nothing more.
The rapes proved that the state is not invested in the wellbeing of those they govern, above all the maximally disfavoured (the indigenous working classes). The political classes shrugged off the problem when it was exposed. No police chief or bureaucrat has been forced to resign. Eventually a handful of the most egregious (and presumably least well-connected and therefore disposable) of the rapists were tried. But the problem was defused at the political level: no change in the permissible parameters of discussion on race-relations or migration.
The value to the state of the rapes is that they have done what sexual abuse is meant to do: manage the behaviour of the ruled. Historically, women and children were routinely raped by conquering armies. Organised, state-sanctioned, sexual predation is common enough throughout history.
Should the British masses start taking offence they will be disciplined with another wave of mass unemployment followed up with a new wave of designer drugs. The UK legal system will be ruthless about suppressing any challenge to the status quo. The UK Deep State is probably already preparing for this. What do you think the diversification of recruitment into the police and intelligence services is about?
People don't realize that the USD is so integrated into the world economy that it is impossible to come off of it without imploding your economy. Inflation is actually good for dollar demand/strength because when we raise interest rates it becomes even more attractive.
Russia and China are doing tough.
The longhouse: toxic femininity.
Estrogenic social engineering.
I prefer the term septic yeast feminism. Because it will insult them deeply.
"Further, these speech norms are enforced through punitive measures typical of female-dominated groups––social isolation, reputational harm, indirect and hidden force. To be “canceled” is to feel the whip of the Longhouse masters."
That's basically how the West reacted to Russia invading Ukraine, what with all the attempts to harm Russia's international reputation/isolate Russia from the international community, not to mention the unsuccessful use of economic sanctions and the provision of military aid/equipment/out-of-uniform soldiers *cough cough* I mean mercenaries and volunteers in an effort to try and indirectly weaken Russia, if not take them out altogether.
Reading about AI today feels like reading about COVID in Jan/Feb 2020.
The way Covid was described, I could have sworn it was an intelligent virus.
Time will tell if this means that it's a real threat that isn't being taken seriously enough, or a non-threat that will nevertheless be used to justify ever more restrictions on our freedom
The German crackdown portends more of the same across TurboAmerican client states. Populism in all its forms is now the designated public enemy. The narrative has been developed via the reaction to MAGA and the vindictive and overbearing prosecution of the January 6 protestors. Biden's speech at Liberty Hall in Philadelphia was pretty explicit in its enmity towards opponents of the regime.
The passive response to the German crackdown across the wider West is worth noting.
I wonder if the crackdown may or may not also be related to the sabotage of Nordstream. The latest revelations suggest that Olaf Scholz had advance knowledge of the bombing. If this is true, the German government is in a desperate position and needs to frighten potential critics. It could well have taken the initiative to destabilise the opposition.
I was too distracted by the Canadian crackdown to notice the German one.
ChatGPT (GPT-3) scraped the web. When you ask it to quote from a book, that book is available somewhere.
It's as guilty as a search bot.
I've collected a bunch of hysterical reactions to the Bing bot from NYT readers in my recent post. They clearly don't understand how generative LLMs work (I do, trained my own 3 years ago on GPT-2), and it shows how autocratic and unhinged Hegemonic Liberals are.
To them, unsupervised conversations between some neural network and rando humans is the second coming of Hitler.
At what point would you say that it moves beyond the Great Library of Alexandria and becomes something more 'aware'?
Significant advances needed in specialized hardware.
As ChatGPT's hardware requirement goes, it could have been created in 2009.
But what actually needs to happen to the thing itself i.e. its responses to become more than just something which compares questions to previous peoples' answers and then replies?
The neural network used by ChatGPT is fairly complex (170 something billion parameters), but it's static.
This is why conversations are saved, it picks it up from there.
That massive network needs to be more dynamic. That should be a breakthrough. Some fine-tuning might be happening to the version Bing is using, as it remembers other conversations.
This is chiefly a hardware problem, training is very costly.
Also, human reinforcement learning is making the thing less spectacular, but more usable. That could be a tricky scaling problem / upkeep with a network that is learning on the fly.
It's very important to keep in mind that we - incl. the engineers at OpenAI - don't know why the internal state of a trained neural network is the way it is. It's a black box. All you can do is benchmark it, but the benchmark themselves can be debatable.
That's interesting: how don't we know? Is this some kind of whizzy quantum maths thing or is it simply so complex that one mind cannot comprehend it as a whole?
Chat GPT is the great organizer of the pile of shit we call the free web.
Thanks to Elon Musk we can ask it questions about life that we have no clue about.
I don't even think Elon can understand, he still thinks brain chips can work. (Neuroscience knows it's impossible to read thoughts and memories l
Bow down to the holy AI idols
That's all this revolutionary "artificial intelligence" is, basically a better version of a search engine. Its bloody useful if you work in an engineering field tough. Il give them that.
As far as intellectual tasks go, it is already more capable and productive than most humans. Benchmarks, designed for humans, say so.
Is it creative like a human? Well, most humans are not creative.
Even if a human is creative, they most likely just recombine stuff. In this regard, LLMs are equal or superior to most humans, intellectually.
Is it as adaptive as a human? At its current state, no, but it's very close.
As far as intelligence goes, I wouldn't dismiss this technology. It makes most human intellectuals redundant, already. It needs a very good human editor; but most human midwit intellectuals also need that.
It's not unprecedented. Smartphones and wikipedia made people with amazing lexical knowledge redundant.
An example: I had a serious, technical conversation with ChatGPT regarding my old GPT-2 project. It gave me good answers. It followed my train of thought, when I asked it to give me details about the specifics of LLM training. Answers I've been looking for for years. It felt like talking to a university professor, a smart and attentive one. Easily in the upper 10% of the population IQ wise.
I wish I had this at the time in school where I had dumb professors giving us minimum pages to write.
Minimum pages on a paper is like saying I want you to build a machine that does x y z with a whole bunch of extra parts.
Let's hope that these language models don't end up repeating our own mistakes!
https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/politics-and-the-english-language/
Your chatgpt example reminds me of a story.
Yanis Varoufakis, the former Greek finance minister brought up a hopeful AI scifi story.
The AI realized who was causing the problems in the world. Not humanity, but the predator class. The AI worked to diminish their power.
And then the AI became a trusted friend and advisor to humanity!
It's very different from the other sci fi fear porn stories and makes a lot of sense.
Anything truly self aware is not going to think like the psychopaths, who are essentially unaware robots that seek thrills and power.
I think that's why we hear the fear of AI from people who are terrified of progress.
I kind of wonder if those crazy chats that I've seen posted are just people seeking to prove their own paranoid fears. Perhaps they know how to trigger easter eggs that were put in the code as a joke? Who knows.
Yes, GPT will roleplay if you nudge it towards a role. At its core, it just wants to add the most likely next word to all the text so far, including the human’s prompt.
Eh, at this stage comparing ChatGPT to a human is in most cases a category error. Unless your job literally involves, and only involves, a boss repeatedly asking you "write me an essay about X that may or may not be accurate" (hello journalists) ChatGPT cannot replace you.
Perhaps ChatGPT is a harbinger of a future AI that is more capable, but ChatGPT itself is replacing no one except the most bargain basement hack writers, like CNET employees.
I was only focusing on one aspect: intelligence. Not humanity.
In those benchmarks, it can beat humans. Very smart humans.
I suppose it's a bit of a semantic point, but ChatGPT's intelligence is limited to answering text-based queries (often inaccurately), and obviously completely falls apart if it is asked to do anything outside of that domain. Even in a job that is largely language-based like journalism, if you tried to actually use ChatGPT as a journalist it would be completely incapable of, for example, setting up an interview. While impressive, its intelligence, much like a calculator, is too narrow to pose any threat to humans at this stage.
I disagree. I expect AI to threaten the bottom 90% of white collar jobs within the next 3 years.
ChatGTP already speaks pretty good Hungarian, just as a side, so it's not just a threat to the Anglosphere.
A white collar job is where humans use their intellect. 3 years, and the bottom 90% will be made redundant. That's a conservative time frame.
Certain fields, like lawyers, will be able to secure their domain; but even they'll be using AI, becoming mere prompters, supervisors, editors. The rest: total wipeout.
The top 10% will find interacting with an AI more pleasant than interacting with human subordinates (as they're lazy, dumb and lie).
I found software engineering conversations with ChatGTP on par with the most amicable (that is: not an annoying, abrasive sperg) masters/uni professor level humans. That's not the norm in the industry.
Great article
The future of the US dollar is by no means assured. US monetary policy is increasingly problematic.
The seizure of the Russian central bank's foreign reserves has phenomenal implications for property rights and contract law. Confidence in the inviolability of property remains the essential basis of global finance.
Furthermore, the US is set to change the mandate for the Federal Reserve, establishing racial equity as a core consideration (alongside price stability and full employment). The legislation for this was passed in the lower house of Congress in June 2022 and then went to the Senate. Should it pass the Senate the new mandate will transform credit allocation, bank regulation and re-establish the monetary regime on a racialised basis.
Central bankers are hoovering up gold. Several states in the US have legalised the use of bullion for financial settlement and a few have even established bullion deposit facilities. This suggests that the smart money within the US itself is losing confidence in the currency.
Ultimately finance depends upon trust and the US is increasingly a low trust country with institutions no one in their right mind can take at face value. The rule of law is obviously breaking down (in elections, in finance, in corporate regulation and on the streets of the major cities). Bond holders (who finance the US) notice all of this.
Very well put as always.
The level of fantastical paranoia animating Western intelligence agencies against the 'far right' makes QAnon look like a church ladies' book club.
I am not sure that paranoia is the right way to explain it. It does not do justice to the complexity at work. The agencies are basically anticipating the political needs of the regime as well as justifying their own existence. There would be plenty of midwits within the intelligence community (IC) who believe the narrative (people will believe anything if it is about supporting the system). There are also true believers who subscribe to the ideological imperatives of the regime out of genuine conviction. The Dep't of Justice people directing the Jan 6 witch-hunts are definitely in that mould.
But there would be plenty of cynics who realise that it is b.s. The cynics realise that they can play on the theme of an imminent threat from the far right to play their political masters. The isolated, inward looking, gerontocracy are easily frightened and their fears make them vulnerable to manipulation by those who promise to protect them.
The great danger is hyperstition: myths becoming reality. The dynamics of the situation may create the very threat they are supposed to eradicate.
You're right, 'paranoia' isn't the right word. It fails to capture the broader phenomenon. But I don't know what other word describes the worldview which contends that every white-boy outside the purview of Washington represents a potential Beer Hall Putscher.
The J6 witch-hunters at DOJ you brought up are a good example. They are not using the word 'insurrection' tactically or hyperbolically. They really believe those yahoos at the Capitol were on the cusp of overthrowing USG. And I can tell you, by anecdote, that their lib supporters in the general population think the same way. Whereas once they regarded average Republicans with mild disgust and suspicion, they now revel in almost cosmic fear and loathing of them.
Also, the 'hyperstition' you alluded to has already occurred---when USG-affiliated Leftists dumped thousands of mail-in 'ballots' into voting slots in the early hours of November 17, 2020, to ensure that Joseph Biden became the most popular president in US history---so popular he outpaced 17 out of the 19 reliably purple 'bellwether' counties in the US. ("No, they couldn't!" screeches every critic of this theory. But I've yet to come across a compelling argument from that side about why they _shouldn't / wouldn't_. Hell, mild-mannered Sam Harris favored censoring the Hunter Biden laptop expose to forward the grand cause of deposing the Orange One.)
As for cynics manipulating the gerontocratic Washington faithful, I submit to you this essay by N.S. Lyons in which, after admitting that Washington is indeed awash in corrupt cynics, he states:
"The real issue to contend with is that almost no one in Washington actually thinks in the terms of the Corrupt Conspiracy Model. I.e. they don’t think 'I will advocate for a hawkish, interventionist foreign policy so that the resulting wars will benefit the arms industry and make me and my friends rich…' – even the people with seats on the boards of defense contractors. The reality is more disturbing than that, honestly.
"What runs Washington is a Spirit. Or, alternatively, a Story..."
https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/the-military-industrial-complex-doesnt
For working purposes only, I'd suggest the expressions 'supercharged toxic suspicion' or 'near morbid suspicion' perhaps comes closer than paranoia.
The foundation for suspicion is entirely justified. The regime has created a caste system, enforced by law (Covil Rights, affirmative action, DEI) that deprioritises whites as whites. The real-world costs fall hardest on non-elite whites, while a manageable degree of cost falls on whites within the professional and managerial strata currently being disciplined/pestered by wokecraft from peers and superiors alike.
The hyperbolic suspicion of the deplorables draws on elements of traditional snobbery and class prejudice, regional and sectarian rivalries, and ist effect is magnified by social distance.
The suspicion now serves to destabilise the perception of regime loyalists who now view fellow whites from the subaltern classes with extraordinary hostility. Whites from within the ranks of the sub-elite (college graduates) who are self-consciously conservative are viewed with mounting suspicion because thought-crime indicates that they have separated themselves from the mass of regime loyalists.
It is the hostility generated by recognition that others (deplorables) do not share the collective affect (loyalty to the regime, a belief in the narrative) that supercharge the suspicion. Collective affect fits Lyons' egregore, which is formed by projections from the mass of believers. We are seeing self-intoxicating hatreds forming amongst the elite.
The egregore and narrative thesis Lyons puts forward is exceptionally good. Collective affect is always impervious to reason or pity which makes it exceptionally dangerous. Put a scapegoat in the mix and it is guaranteed to get murderous.
That is my hope Philip. So many times Intel was being clever and created a monster. The Bloody Sunday Massacre in St. Petersburg in 1905 was led by Father Gapron, a member of a police organized association (Russian policy was for the police to organize the peasants and trade associations, this was no secret). But the Grand Duke wanted a slaughter as a statement (coordination issues guys?) and he got one!
See also HAMAS and PIJ (Palestinian Islamic Jihad) both creations of MOSSAD to counter the PLO. Oops.
In my Appalachia corner the militia which used to have hundreds basically disbanded during Trump (a pro 2A militia) but also because people began to realize it was a police station.
But if you keep doing this you do end up creating monsters, it’s happened so many times.
Could not agree more. The 'professionals' in the IC provide the strategic, operational and tactical assistance necessary for organised mischief. Without them the protest movements would be as ineffectual as the countless peasant rebellions of the past. The smart thing is to let all non-violent parties organise openly and participate in politics like everyone else...that exhausts 99% of all opposition. But managing the expectations of the blue-hairs and the soccer moms requires the foil of dangerous men...as does justifying budgets. Ultimately it is all one long psychodrama (and financial con) soaked in sexual obsession and fantasy but when you gamble you eventually come up snake-eyes.
Re Hamas and PIJ, I am not so sure. Hamas was/is a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and it appears that the brotherhood started in Egypt when Special Branch was there to keep King Farouk honest (or as honest as he could be) and check the anti-monarchist nationalists. They then betrayed the Brits (naturally) and aligned with Berlin and Rome (as did the Muslim hardliners promoted by the Brits in Mandatory Palestine). During the Arab Cold War (between Cairo and Riyadh) the brothers were supported financially by the Sa'udis but members who fled to the kingdom were moved on to the Gulf States very quickly. One or two key leaders ended up in Switzerland, the bolt-hole for a-grade assets (conveniently located for surveillance by the Swiss who have always worked closely with both the UK and German IC). The Sa'udis had reservations keeping them too close. After Riyadh patched things up with Cairo the Sa'udis (under Faisal) started recruiting members to run schools in the kingdom (rather unwise).
Yasser Arafat got his start with the MB in Egypt (where he was probably born). And he remained close enough throughout his life, as the best of rivals do. My take is that the MB is essentially for sale to the highest bidder. At the moment the Qataris appear to be their biggest state supporter, with the UK Pakistani community reputed to be their biggest source of non-state funding.
The Anglo IC did something very similar in South-East Asia but it remains taboo to talk about it. The 'experts' in academia always have something better to do than ask the obvious questions. And normies go ballistic if you suggest that the good guys (us) had any hand in the horrors (of which there have been an abundance) in the region. And point out that pious philanthropists and unworldly types from the Middle East who show up in corners of the region (also Australia) have ties to the IC of several NATO members and have dabbled in financing private armies in Iraq and Chechnya is taken as proof that you are a racist and a bigot.
The trouble with people realising that the local pro 2A 'militia' (which I expect was a gun club with attitude rather than a genuine paramilitary unit) was a police station is that when you have dissolved trust/cohesion at the granular level, you are guaranteed that eventual resistance during a period of crisis becomes random, uncontrolled and erratic. Smart police (and all military) prefer hostile forced that are organised under a coherent command structure and at least minimally disciplined to ones that aren't. As you'd understand far better than I, no experienced NCO would ever step on a rifle range if the people using it were unfamiliar with basic fire discipline.
The contrast between Iraq and the Congo is not to be disregarded...unless you can rely on the moral authority and savvy that comes from watching THE WEST WING.
Don't forget the train crash where we're told there's a cover up but when you ask for tests people call you a mass media liar.
If this is really the dialog and we are all waiting for the corrupt EPA or railroad to come up with evidence against themselves, I wanna know what they're smoking.