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Northern California
Joined March 2007
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THE NAME 'ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE' WAS A MISTAKE
A better term would be DI: Digital Intelligence.
"Artificial" implies fakes and trickery. Stagecraft.
This biases public perception and treats human intelligence as the gold standard.
It isn't.
AI will be something alien.
And we'll be better off if we learn to see it through that lens.
Mark Blair | Technosociologist retweeted
If you want to fuck up your life, sit around asking what could go wrong. Never ask, "What if things go right?" And also hang out with people who will always tell you why something will fail. 100% way to succeed at failing. Better to be optimistic though.
Mark Blair | Technosociologist retweeted
Guys, I beg you to start being the person you wish to be. This study found that just 5 minutes a day of imagining your best possible self, for two weeks, made people noticeably more optimistic about their future. Picture who you want to be, then go act like them today.
Mark Blair | Technosociologist retweeted
Never, ever let them tell you it can't be done.
Palmer Luckey says analysts claiming it's too expensive to manufacture in the US are lying to protect megacorps
"I think I have a more realistic view than almost anybody. One of the problems with all these analysts that are telling you that it's going to cost $37,000 to build an American iPhone or $100,000 to buy an American computer."
"They're trying to prop up a status quo that the megacorporations want to keep going. They want to outsource everything. They want to hire cheaper non-American labor."
"They are willing to say and do anything to convince you that it can't be fixed, that it can't come back, that America is this helpless, neutered, post-relevant empire, and it is just not the case."
"How do I know that? Because I have to make stuff in America every day because I work in the defense industry. The stuff that Anduril makes every day is not actually that different from a computer. My drones are basically computers. They have memory, a GPU, a CPU, sensors, batteries, a rugged integration."
"The only difference between an Anduril attack drone and a laptop is a keyboard and a screen. That is not that hard to figure out, especially for a guy like me who started Oculus and comes from the consumer electronics space."
"We're not going to let people lie about what America can and can't do anymore. We're just going to do it."
Mark Blair | Technosociologist retweeted
Palmer Luckey says analysts claiming it's too expensive to manufacture in the US are lying to protect megacorps
"I think I have a more realistic view than almost anybody. One of the problems with all these analysts that are telling you that it's going to cost $37,000 to build an American iPhone or $100,000 to buy an American computer."
"They're trying to prop up a status quo that the megacorporations want to keep going. They want to outsource everything. They want to hire cheaper non-American labor."
"They are willing to say and do anything to convince you that it can't be fixed, that it can't come back, that America is this helpless, neutered, post-relevant empire, and it is just not the case."
"How do I know that? Because I have to make stuff in America every day because I work in the defense industry. The stuff that Anduril makes every day is not actually that different from a computer. My drones are basically computers. They have memory, a GPU, a CPU, sensors, batteries, a rugged integration."
"The only difference between an Anduril attack drone and a laptop is a keyboard and a screen. That is not that hard to figure out, especially for a guy like me who started Oculus and comes from the consumer electronics space."
"We're not going to let people lie about what America can and can't do anymore. We're just going to do it."
Mark Blair | Technosociologist retweeted
Instead of having experiences, everyone is just filming themselves pretending to have experiences.
Mark Blair | Technosociologist retweeted
I never said this. This is a Dolly Parton quote that I retweeted. Beware, if you use AI to do your research. Google Gemini is full of shit, and I’ve seen Grok lie too. I find it chilling.
Yes.
We are the stewards of intelligence on Earth, and the names we give to the forms we create should reflect that role and responsibility.
Names are powerful, and our relationship with technology can be improved with a productive frame.
In that sense, "super" is especially hazardous. It relegates human intelligence to second-class status.
Subservience.
But I think "artificial" also has risks. By connoting fakery and parlor tricks, it will lead some to underestimate it.
I've long preferred Digital Intelligence (DI). It's a neutral phrase that signposts it as a different type of intelligence, just as intelligence differs across animal species.
Coexistence.
Nice post, which I think well reflects the pitfalls we must edge past in the coming decades.
As a society, we'll be able to do more with less labor.
But that doesn't mean everyone will share in those productivity gains...
Unfortunately, our track record at sharing them doesn't inspire confidence.
And our economy is organized around ownership.
Without a course correction, ownership is likely to rapidly concentrate, increasingly severing the masses from ownership and the gravitational power it generates.
Incentives seem to be slipping out of alignment with what makes for a healthy society.
To flourish individually, we'll need an evolved model that by nature carves out reasonable pathways for folks to have a stake in their own future.
Walter’s right to question this. “Superabundance” — whatever that means — by the 2030s is wildly unrealistic, and the people promising it should know better.
Revolutionary AI-driven productivity gains in the world of bits are one thing. Producing goods in the world of atoms is another matter. Today’s robots still have serious limitations, and industrial production will continue to depend on human expertise, complex supply chains and physical infrastructure. Consider how long it takes to bring just ONE new semiconductor fab online. Now imagine transforming the ENTIRE industrial economy with AI and robotics in less than a decade.
And the assumption that breakthroughs in materials, energy and manufacturing will somehow sweep away these constraints isn’t a serious forecast; it’s blind faith in technological progress masquerading as one.
So why the utopian promises? To drive and justify astronomical valuations and capital spending? Reassure people worried about AI taking their jobs? Distract from the concentration of wealth and power AI could bring? All of the above?
And massive productivity gains from AI don’t necessarily mean everyone will be wealthy. The promise seems to be that people won’t have to work and their material needs will somehow be met. But what about opportunities to build wealth, get ahead, pursue their ambitions and create something of their own? AI could dramatically expand those opportunities. But how is not being emphasized, and will they be broadly available or increasingly concentrated in fewer hands?
The goal should be an economy that expands human opportunity and flourishing, not merely one that promises to meet everyone’s basic material needs.
We've made it too easy for people to create their own dollhouses of the mind.
It is possible that the best version of the Internet was actually the library.
Much utility was gained, but I feel my own creativity dulled a bit once I switched to my amber-screened PC.
The forced commitment to the keypress, given the annoying friction of using white-out, brought out my best.
Everything gets sharper when life is lived on the edge.
I admit that when the computer added word processors I used it and there through helped put the companies making typewriters out of business. My penance? Increased productivity, no longer had to buy white-out and could send, via e-mail (eventually), my mss to editors, publishers, friends and the Library of Congress. I've been paying for not being a "Luddite" in many ways.
Wise words from County Highway.
What you do on this app isn’t reading. It’s a kind of participatory theatre that is designed to inculcate new thought patterns through repetitive sorting and social pressure. It’s the way they train monkeys.
There can be pleasures and benefits to social media activity, particularly if you are consciously trying to change the way you think, or to reinforce patterns that bring you pleasure or a sense of belonging. But it can also obviously be dangerous to your mental health.
The important thing is not to delude yourself into thinking that you are reading while indulging in social media. Reading involves the encounter of your own mind with another mind through the screen of the text, not through a screen.
Think there’s no difference between reading on a screen and reading a printed page of text? Here’s proof that you’re wrong: If reading on this site has become your primary way of absorbing text, then you will have trouble reading a book.
It’s not that the books are getting worse. Its because you are losing the ability to tolerate the silence of the printed page which forces you back into your own thoughts. You are losing the ability to sit still and follow a more complex line of argument. You are addicted to quick dopamine hits. It’s like porn.
Luckily for you, and for the higher-order functioning of your brain, we have developed a cure:
countyhighway.com/subscribe
I’ve been worrying about this too.
As the pace of life increases, we lose the opportunity, and then the ability, to contemplate.
More and more, we run on intellectual autopilot. And that will be the domain of the machine.
Our biology wasn’t made for this. We’ve created an environment we are ill-adapted for.
Nobody is ready for what is coming, which is the greatest mental health crisis in the history of our species.
Most people do not think; they just repeat everyone else's prior thoughts.
AI does not think; it just repeats everyone else's prior thoughts - but blindingly faster.
This means that most people are infinitely inferior to machines.
Billions of people will have nothing of value to offer, and no reason for being.
Their emptiness will be revealed even to them, and their pretend personalities will collapse.
The world is about to become an asylum.
Mark Blair | Technosociologist retweeted
The statue of Prometheus is finally finished.
It was cast in Paris, crossed the Atlantic, and was assembled at Starbase. It took us 100 days to go from nothing to this.
People of the West, we have lived through an era devoid of dreams, devoid of destiny.
But the time has come to reclaim our dream of antiquity.
In a few months, we will start building a new city. It will be the most magnificent city in all of history.
After all, the great dream of the West has always been to rebuild Rome.
Come walk beside us in this endeavor. The world is waiting.
An excellent example of AI being used to sharpen your own skills, rather than replace them.
Mark Blair | Technosociologist retweeted
Conservatives need to understand this.
AI is already ruining higher education. It's already been far more disruptive, toxic, and demotivating than wokeness & DEI ever were.
Academics can't assign homework, take-home problem sets, or term papers -- too many students will use AI to cheat.
We can't give assignments or run assessments in online courses -- too many students will use AI to cheat.
We can't be sure what percent of any honors thesis, masters thesis, or dissertation is really the student's own work. Likewise for grant applications, grad school applications, and journal papers.
Even worse, after AI-enabled 'smart glasses' with cameras and microphones become common and inconspicuous, we won't even be able to run in-class quizzes, tests, or discussions without worrying that students are secretly using their AIs to feed them answers and prompt their discussion questions.
Wokeness was a serious threat to the intellectual integrity and viewpoint diversity of universities.
But AI is a serious threat to the entire academic enterprise.
If you're a conservative and you care at all about classic education and the Western canon, you need to wake up to the real threat here -- students offloading all reading, writing, learning, and skill development to AIs.
