As someone who was a low level grunt working on Neural networks with several others, I can say with confidence that this stuff is “shiny sexy scientific secular utopia”-porn for the materialist types.
How so? Put simply- most of these entities are just great recursive mirrors that are just higher level “Narcissus is enamoured by his reflection”-boxtraps. It is actually a very sinister thing if you pause and think about it.
The pursuit of them by whole societies and civilizations would be akin to (say) how an individual mindlessly scrolls through social media for hours on end, using up what little time, energy and attention (the only true non-Renewable resources we possess) on fiction about “who he is and what people are like”. It corrupts without end.
The end result is thus far worse than “cold machines replacing a unique soulful humanity”. Rather, what you really get is said soulful humanity rejecting its innate disposition towards matters of the heart and spirit and trapping themselves in said boxtrap; which ultimately generates the posthuman hellhole of “toss out all value and pursue mere pains and pleasures”.
The false “AI god” will never come to be. We however will falsely think that he has arrived and will ritually cannibalize, necrophilize, etc to satiate his alleged whims. Think ritually sacrificing to Baal v2.0 except burnt offerings on the altar to clay and stone idols… that’s too “primitive”. Us modern posthumans will outperform every facet of that vile brutality.
I've often thought that we might get "Superhuman AI" not because the computers become smarter, but because humans shed their interiority and become stupider and more like machines.
That is basically the conclusion I came to once I realized that the entire industry is nothing more than materialists trying to “hopespeak” life into the cold, dead silicon and germanium. No such “life” actually exists; the humans merely project their own abilities onto it.
Nothing much has changed since ancient times. Children (daughters especially) were brutalized to appease idols of clay and stone back then. In modern times, this has already begun once more.
It’s the same nonsense: they worship those things which they themselves created with their own two hands; even though said things have no causal powers themselves. Rather, they only *appear to* once you mirror and surrender your own ability to make choices to them.
I am most definitely in the lower right of your plane. I personally think this life is the Creator letting free willed agents choose whether to be worthy of higher duties. I will be writing on this in depth
in the future.
If AI is programmable, we have the problem of conflicting commands. Jack Williamson explored this in his Humanoids stories. The movie version of "I, Robot" owes more to Jack Williamson than it does to Isaac Asimov.
If AI is conscious, then creating AI is Slavery Version 2. Don't do that!
On the other hand, my experience with modern AI is that we are just doing curve fitting, albeit in a really high dimensional space. Curve fitting can be adequate for interpolating, but can blow up spectacularly for extrapolation. (My last day job involved working with Tensor Flow and other AI algorithms. including some I developed.)
On the gripping hand, fuzzy logic holds the promise of human programmed [pseudo] AI which doesn't go into a smoke producing loop like in an old Star Trek episode. But you still need the opaque
curve fitting stuff to turn data into concepts which can be subjected to fuzzy logic.
----
I side with the original writers of Star Trek as well as Niven and Pournelle when they wrote "The Mote in God's Eye". Too much automation is bad for humanity. Indeed, this is a problem with pure capitalism, a problem which the young Marx appreciated: disconnecting humans from their needs
produces alienation. Too much specialization, or too much automation, is bad. Better to do some meaningful work. (The Unabomber
manifesto is also worth reading in this regard.)
I have been writing computer code for over four decades. The initial thrill and challenge of computers was that they did *exactly what you told them to do". I utterly despise "smart" phones. I smashed one with large blunt objects as a stress relieving just the other week. I hated Wolfram Alpha upon first exposure . I am still clinging to Windows 7. I drive a quarter century old car because its computer is dumb. I cling to an older TV because it is not "smart."
The prospect of a neurolink with computers is terrifying to me. Yes, it could be a boon for quadriplegics, but it could be the ultimate torture device as well. (A young Jack Vance wrote on this.)
Computers aren't going away. So I am frantically working on evil-robot free computing. This means manual controls that are simple enough for the average human who is willing to put in some overhead. Our current manual controls are poorly designed. The QWERTY keyboard is a screaming example. These make evil robots, voice activation, and neuro links look tempting. Fix some legacy
bad design decisions and maybe we can convince humans to stay in charge.
Yep, appliances are way better when served dumb—but necessarily well-designed. We increasingly have it backwards. Too many fruits on the tree of woe... Doesn't it mean they ain't gonna ripen? 😇
On the other hand, my experience with modern AI is that we are just doing curve fitting, albeit in a really high dimensional space.
You nailed it. The term "artificial intelligence" is deliberately misleading. There is nothing intelligent about AI. It simply spits back the inputs it is given. It lacks the two cognitive operations necessary for genuine intelligence -- reassociation (the ability to move the brackets around to see familiar data in a new way) and substitution (plugging in an equivalent expression to open up new possibilities).
Unfortunately, people have watched Terminator too many times, so AI will continue to be the boogeyman.
I wonder, if any of these people who (say) they believe that, 'Mind' is only a by-product of, 'Brain', have children, how they explain this to their kids. "Well, offspring, because of Evolution, my programming dictates that I procreate. You are a chemical result of my chemical reactions. I must perform what appear to be loving actions to preserve my genome. Now, One story then time for bed."
People SAY all kinds of stupid shit that they only think that they believe.
If we *could* create 'A.I.' in the general sense, I am reasonably sure it has already happened. Just not publicly. In 2012 I took a course with a History Professor who specialized in the Dark Underbelly of U.S. History. He claimed to have a contact who was a retired NSA Agent, who worked from the late 1950's through the 1980's. This man said that in 1965, the NSA already had desk-sized computers with a clock speed of 650Mhz. Given that, publicly, the first 'Supercomputer' was built in 1969 & only had a speed of 36.4Mhz, that's nearly 20x the speed, 4 years earlier. We Schlubs didn't get that fast until 1999 & Intel's Pentium III CPU. So on a rough estimate, the Black World is using computers we wouldn't have until 2058.
In the, 'Art Imitating Life', vein, I would not be surprised that the 1966 Sci-Fi book, "Colossus", about a Scientist who creates a massive computer system in the 1990's that becomes intelligent, is essentially, a fictionalized account of something that has already been done. If so, then the primary purpose of the Internet (and all public A.I. systems) is for data collection and processing of human beings. They are the 'Eyes and Ears' of that Overlord system that already exists. We are like the American Indians, given shiny beads (smartphones) by the Europeans in exchange for Land, when the Tribes dealt with had no conception of Land Ownership. We have been given something of very dubious value in trade for something we didn't even know *Could* be traded.
However, "Deceiving and Being Deceived', the situation isn't what the Elites believe it to be. Mankind will never be able to create life, digital or otherwise. In a pre-computer Era, C.S. Lewis nailed it with the 3rd volume of his Space Trilogy, "That Hideous Strength" (1945). Where an elite group of scientists, philosophers & religious leaders believe that they have brought the Head of a Genius back to life & this Reanimated Person now rules over them.
But (Spoilers!) they are being lied to & the 'Head' is being controlled by Fallen Angels. Perhaps we will, or already have, created a machine that appears to us to be Sentient and a New Order of Life. It is, as with most things in this 'Schoolhouse Rock' version of reality we live in, a complete and total lie.
Meh. Or maybe I'm just Overmedicated. Perhaps Undermedicated, that would be more fun.
I rather doubt the government is as far ahead of civilian tech as it was in the 1960s. Silicon Valley got its start serving the government. But once prices dropped down to the point where personal computers became a real thing, making video games was the real driver for performance. Modern AI systems run on plus sized video cards in order to do the matrix math quickly.
I cannot speak for the secret side, but the not quite secret side of the government was woefully behind consumer tech in the early 90s. The GPS system was run on an obsolete mainframe that was far slower than a 486 laptop. The FAA's Wide Area Augmentation System was being designed for IBM Power workstations which were already a generation behind when the coding began.
All of the 'Good Stuff' went private decades ago, to prevent even the appearance of Congressional Oversight.
On a broader note than just A.I. It became obvious to me over a decade ago that *other* than computery stuff, our technological advancement has all but stagnated for decades. It is most apparent in Air Travel. Sub-Orbital Commercial Spaceplanes should be a mature technology now. Instead, we are still flying in the same Big, Slow, Tubby Buses that we have had for the last 60 years.
SIXTY YEARS. To say that a mild improvement in economy and better avionics (again, due to our shiny beads) accounts for that time span is laughable. The world air speed record still supposedly belongs to the SR-71, set in 1976. Then, of course, has not been surpassed for 47 years. Puhleeze.
Which I'm sure to the 'Desperate Shortage of Natural Resources' crowd (Kissing Cousins to the 'Humanity is a Virus' Cohort) only justifies their position.
But like we touched on earlier, by now, most of our power *should* be coming from Nuclear Reactors. (Even if only Fission, it's still superior to anything else we have.)
And just FYI, please don't think I'm being antagonistic to you, Fabius. I just wish that we weren't so locked into what 'The Experts' decree from on High.
LOL Oh, and like I mentioned to Alex a few days ago, on a lark I decided to rewatch 'Seaquest-DSV', as I hadn't seen it since 1997. The show first aired in 1993, the 1st season takes place in 2018, compared to shows & films like '2001' & 'Space- 1999' it's terribly conservative in its portrayal of the future & even with that, most of the technologies portrayed are STILL Sci-Fi. :-/
Given the choice between Smartphones infested with Social Media & 1,000ft long Super-Subs, I know which I would pick.
Hey! We have the skintight body suits like in "UFO." (And purple haired women as well.) Unfortunately, the body suits are wrapped on bodies that are better suited to mumus.
___
Space travel has definitely been a disappointment, though SpaceX does seem to be getting us back on track .
---
No argument on fission. Indeed, I recently argued that it is laughably easier for someone on the Right to be greener than Al Gore: just call for more fission reactors and for making cities safe enough to be bike and pedestrian friendly.
That reminds me, speaking of Nuclear Fission- Now this is not 'Conspiracy Theory' (a term which is used to stop serious consideration in any event), the U.S. Army itself released a film documenting the project. In 1960 they created a small town under the ice of Greenland. It was powered by a *Portable* Nuclear Generator. It was somewhat bigger than a Full-Sized Van, but still, POR-TA-BLE. Sixty-Three Years ago. Sigh...
Well done piece...got me to subscribe. (Yes, we saw your subscription note, since you asked us to mention it in the comments.)
As a long time researcher in this space, we are a long, long ways away from real artificial intelligence...we have not yet really achieved artificial stupidity. These are more elegant parlor tricks than Eliza had half a century ago...but still the same parlor tricks. ChatGPT/Bard are easy to fool, easy to get to lie -- they are language engines who have no fundamental knowledge other than crowdsourcing which is often wrong. The code they write is (while sometimes operative) awful. But the face is pretty so there is that.
GPT is trained on the internet. Thus if you're a prolific writer, much of your corpus was likely included in its training data. Thus when you talk to GPT, it will end up regurgitating your position back at you. As a result GPT is really good at convincing prolific writers that it's really smart.
I've got a problem with this "computational" view of human reasoning and ALL it's adherents. These scary, scary people don't believe in "emotions" because emotions are a glitch within nominal, optimal entity communication. A glitch to be "filtered, deleted, discontinued as sub optimal".
This INCLUDES any "wasteful" sub optimal misdirection of resources to non-entities ie animals. As in pets, who can not have any "feelings" or indeed, can't REALLY feel pain or emotional distress. 😢 So, it IS OK for Bigpharma to torture animals on a scale only mirrored in Hell.
Have we cross - referenced the uptick in teen suicides etc yet, to Smartphone intro?
Just like abortions. Nobody can be classed as human unless they have had 20 State sanctioned injections, otherwise...subhuman - delete.
I have been a Dog owner all my life. My Wife & I currently have Four. In 2009, one of our older dogs who has since passed was attacked by our Neighbor's Pit Bull. When his Fangs tore into her throat, she let out a scream I can only describe as a 'Yelp of the Damned'. It was the cry of a creature that knew it was about to die. I ended up attacking the Pit with my bare hands to save her life, but that's another story.
For the rest of the time we lived there, our Dog barked and growled at the Pit's owner, whenever he was near, when she had never barked before. Not only did she never forget the event, she also knew that HE was responsible for that other Dog.
The book that came out a few years ago, "Chaser- The Story of the Dog that knows a Thousand Words." is one of the greatest works in history on what Dogs are capable of. I can well understand why Scientists like that prefer to ignore such works.
Oh, and since I just had to go through my daily dose of 'Dog Trauma Control', I may as well put it up.
Our oldest current Dog is an absolutely gorgeous (and Creepiliy Smart) Collie/Belgian Tureven, we named, 'Bucky'. Bucky is a rescue, as almost all of our Dogs tend to be & was, by far, the most difficult Dog we've ever had. I say this already having raised an abused Husky Puppy. So we know what 'Crazy, Neglected Dog' is. But Bucky wasn't abused, he was just born in the wild, not domesticated in the slightest.
Somehow, his Mom kept 4 Puppies alive & reasonably well-fed in an absolute desert wasteland. However, my Wife & I suspect that Bucky still lost a Sibling or Two to Coyotes. As when Bucky smells them, or God Forbid, *Sees* them, he goes absolutely berserk. Every Time.
But that's not the problem. The problem, is that Bucky also lost his 'Grandma-Dog', Maya, the Husky I mentioned, and his 'Big SIster', Ivy, a Terrier. Ivy died at 6 of Brain Cancer, Maya, a year & a half later, at age 10, of Liver Disease. From his perspective, they just got into a car one day...
...and never came back.
So now that Bucky has a 'Younger Brother', another terrier named, Repairman Jack ('Jack' for short), every single day that my Wife takes Jack out for his morning Walkies, Bucky sits by the window and cries. Turevens tend to bond with one person & that's my Wife, so my ability to comfort him is limited. Should the unfortunate occurrence of *any* animal passing by our front window happen while Jack is out? Bucky is absolutely inconsolable. He doesn't cry, he *SCREAMS*. It is crystal clear that he is *Terrified* that Jack is in danger.
As I said, this happens every day. Every. Day. Going on Three Years now.
Why don't I just solve the problem by taking Bucky *with* Jack? Well... I am almost totally disabled (Inoperable Spinal Damage), so no dice on that one. Why doesn't my Wife just take them both at the same time? Well, because she's a Tiny Little Thing & Bucky is 110lbs & Jack is about 70. Together, they take HER wherever they wish to go. ^_^
Not only do Dogs obviously have emotions, they can also be emotionally damaged. Such is the tragedy with our Beautiful, Brilliant, but Broken, Bucky.
There's a plethora of neo-Aristotelian and phenomenological philosophers who, some in tandem with the cognitive sciences, are strongly opposed to computational theories of mind and the trajectory of present AI research.
It's a shame they aren't being paid more attention. The likes of Yudkowsky and Bostrom are waving their hands at what seems to me a distraction from the real threats posed by this technology.
Edward Feser's book *Aristotle's Revenge* contains one of the better and more accessible summations of neo-Aristotelian objections, albeit from a Catholic perspective. Ed's blog has quite a few posts that give a taste of the reasoning:
Ed's a partisan Catholic and scholastic philosopher, but he's generally fair and gives a broad overview of what most neo-Aristotelians would say about AI and its assumptions.
The phenomenologist's position is probably best introduced in Dreyfus's *What Computers Can't Do*, which draws on certain of Heidegger's ideas to criticize the computational and cognitivist positions. (Heidegger himself is a rich source of arguments for and against AI, though he's all but inaccessible to non-specialists.)
From there, there is a good range of work on the "4Es" of cognition -- extended, embedded, embodied, enactive -- that takes a negative stance against computationalism and endorses its own rival account. Much of this work is cross-disciplinary, some of it drawing heavily on Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, some of stemming from other traditions in psychology and cog-sci.
Varela's *The Embodied Mind* is a generally good book to start with. Others good on this are Dan Hutto, Tony Chemero, Shaun Gallagher, Alva Noe, and Andy Clark. This is a big topic right now, so there's a lot to read and it's difficult to summarize, but the Stanford Encyclopedia entry and its bibliography is a good place to get oriented:
Much of this will dovetail with the general sort of objection found in Searle and Thomas Nagel, though they're approaching it from different angles and with stress on different objections.
Thank you! I have, but haven't yet read, Aristotle's Revenge. I've read several of Feser's prior works and find him consistently interesting. I have very strong Neo-Aristotelian sympathies. My knowledge of Dreyfuss, Heidegger, Chemero, Hutto, Noe, and Clark is effectively non-existent. Searle and Nagel I have read. I appreciate you taking the time to write 'em up.
I am sure it’s just because I am a stupid hick, but this is always hilarious: “As humans, our brains need the capacity to pretend that we could choose different things, so that we can imagine the outcomes, and pick effectively.”
Yeah pal. Pile enough words on top of “choose” and maybe I won’t notice that you keep sneaking it back into your argument that it can’t exist.
I gotta say, Yudkowsky sounds like the kind of person who had just enough education to get his head all the way up his ass.
If Free Will is an illusion, then literally nothing matters, including the opinions of Yudkowsky, who -according to himself- is also programmed to say what he says.
Well, what's the worst an unaligned AI could do? Realistically it could not break anything with human decision-makers in the loop--so no mischievous launches of nuclear missiles or release of pathogens. Plausibly, it could break the whole internet. I'm not sure that would be too big of a loss. It would ruin me and millions of others financially, but humanity would probably be in a better place afterwards.
I'm not gonna panic, anyway. ChatGPT is just a stupid toy. The demonic possession threat is real but it will only be able to operate on the souls of those who believe the AI is really talking to them--so spreading panic is counter-productive, as it increases the perception that machine sentience is possible.
My biggest issue with Calvin, is that he fundamentally misunderstood how God perceives reality. Since his followers dare not question The Master, we have had the Calvinist Sect that continues that serious flaw.
What I'm referring to specifically, is that God does not 'Know the Future'. To Him, everything is an Eternal Now. To have a Past is to lose something, to have a Future is to change and (hopefully) gain something. But the Ancient of Days has always been and always will be.
Though we are finite, limited beings, we still have a sense of the eternal. Broken and Clouded, but that's why change can be so jarring. We don't live our lives in Seconds, Minutes or Hours. We don't live by the Clock or the Calendar. We live our lives in *Moments*, and to God, EVERYTHING is That Moment. So He does not 'predict' our actions. He SEES US DOING THEM. And obviously, to observe someone acting is not the same as making them act.
This understanding even helps with seemingly thorny problems like God 'Hardening the Heart' of Pharoah. Did he manipulate that man like a Puppet with no free will? Or is it that because Pharoah *chose* Evil, God gave him what he wanted and removed the natural gifts he was given? As the giver of all Good, God can sovereignly remove such things, without it being a violation of our free will. Pharoah hated Moses & the Hebrews, so God effectively said, 'As you wish.' Leaving Pharoah with the Mean Little Rock that is all we really can call, 'Ours'.
LOL That's why we call them, 'Nominal' (Which isn't a bad thing.)
That's why I'm a lonely old Sheepdog, high on the Hill.
EVERY Sect, Group, Denomination, has some flaws. None of us are perfect. Many moons ago I read a flyer for a Lutheran Church that a friend went to. They actually had the Cajones to say- 'Our Understand of Scripture is Perfect & so you should be careful in having fellowship with others.'
Something else I wanted to add- I understand these experiences are not proof for anyone else but me (and in one example, the other person who was there), but it is still of anecdotal worth on the topic of, 'Does the Mind exist apart from the Brain?'
In 1997 while spending a night with my (now Ex) Fiancee', the Holy Spirit took me out of my Body to witness a watershed moment in her life. I did not just witness it, our Spirits were tied together and I experienced it with her.
From my Ex's perspective, it was as if I had died. My Body went cold, I wasn't breathing, my eyes had that 'flat' look that we see in dead people. She said this went on for no less than a minute, but no more than two. She was about to call 9/11 when I came back to myself.
In December of 2016, I nearly died when my Foot went septic. It was touch and go for a number of days, apparently. Those days I don't remember. But the next 3 I do and they were as strange as any DMT experience. For brevity's sake I won't go into the specifics, my main point is that as the link between my Mind & Body grew more tenuous, I became aware of things I could not normally perceive. As my health improved, those perceptions faded, but I am convinced what I saw was very real.
Lastly and perhaps Ironically (At least American Conservative Christians might think it ironic), I absolutely agree with those scientists that say the Brain is a 'Meat Computer'.
Yet despite being true, it's also incredibly derogatory. Each of our bodies contains trillions of cells. Each cell is a Micro-Miniaturized Automated Chemical Factory, more advanced than our best Automated Factories. Despite all the things that can go wrong with us, when you consider HOW MANY of those little factories have to work together, for life to exist for any length of time?
Life is a staggeringly statistical impossibility.
I'm not surprised as time has gone on that Materialists have continued to expand their canvas to make 'life-from nothing' more plausible. Going from an Earth of Thousands, to Millions, to Billions of years old, adding Panspermia, because Billions wasn't enough! Then the final load of Monkies on Typewriters- An Infinite Multiverse. I mean, in an infinite amount of universes, each with Billions of Galaxies, each with Billions of stars, with planets orbiting them, life HAD to come about by chance on ONE, right? Right?
I don't ascribe to the Samuel Clemens definition of 'Faith', but it certainly applies to that.
I believe all the pertinent questions brought up by AI fearmongers have been addressed by daily life. In short, nothing new. The current pseudo intellectual navel gazing from the usual suspects is so offensive and unoriginal I'm surprised they didn't get Neil DeGrasse to sign on.
Can humans be programmed? Yes. The vax has proven some far more than others. Television is called 'programming', the false flag events do inspire action. Anyone who owns a cat or dog can attest to even a dumb beast prompting humans to mechanistic action via simple growls and mewls. It's fundamentally the act of 'learning', which no one disputes we can do, detached from truth whether by lies or accident.
Do people have free will? Yes. All these LessThanWrong 'altruistic' money stealer cheerleaders (see that recent money embezzling from Sam Bankman) certainly act as if they do when the rubber hits the road. They opine all day about free will but then go ahead and run away from crimes, do damage control for their others, and give no sign of emotional detachment from their material reality. No Buddhist discipline or indifference here, just running away from responsibility for their actions by the erudite ''I dindu nuffin'... because free will is an illusion".
Can AI kill people? Yes. Liberals accept that other technologies, guns, can kill people. Runaway trains just killed people in Ohio. In China escalators have eaten possibly more people than have died in US school shootings. Buildings fall on people. It's quite marvelous of humanity that we manage to avoid short and brutish lives when we do.
Can AI be aligned against humans? Absolutely. Anyone who has worked for a baby boomer corporate beurocracy knows a system can be aligned against all it's members despite them all hating it.
You don't need 'consent' to make a bad system much like you don't need consent to make a shitty supply chain that fails when you declare war on China. Edward Deming proved that we are always making and managing systems that are aligned against us, out of sheer stupidity and ignorance, despite 'best intentions'.
I know it's a side-issue, but ah... China. I LOVE how the Gubbamint wants us to see them as the enemy, when we have spent over THIRTY YEARS allowing Corporations to turn them into the Dragon that we are now supposed to fear.
Back in 1989, when I was 18, I followed the Tienanmen Square incident as closely as I could. That event was a watershed moment for me, as I saw my Peers over there, valiantly risking their lives so that they could live in a free nation. (Like America is, supposedly). When they started dying by the thousands, I thought we might gear up for a war. I was a stupid teenager, it wasn't the dumbest thing I ever thought.
We did punish China though. Oh my yes we did. We 'Punished' them by giving them, 'Most Favored Nation' Trading Status.
Are you capable of thinking for yourself, or can you only react to what the "Gubbamint" says?
China is a totalitarians state, we saw that most dramatically in their response to COVID. The more its prestige rises on the international stage, the more other countries, including our own, will try to imitate it.
Are you capable of reading what I actually WROTE? Of *Course* China is a totalitarian state, but it wouldn't be nearly as dangerous as it is if the Federal Gubbamint hadn't encouraged our Corporations to go there & build up the massive industrial base they now enjoy.
Too optimistic, not enough Woe!
As someone who was a low level grunt working on Neural networks with several others, I can say with confidence that this stuff is “shiny sexy scientific secular utopia”-porn for the materialist types.
How so? Put simply- most of these entities are just great recursive mirrors that are just higher level “Narcissus is enamoured by his reflection”-boxtraps. It is actually a very sinister thing if you pause and think about it.
The pursuit of them by whole societies and civilizations would be akin to (say) how an individual mindlessly scrolls through social media for hours on end, using up what little time, energy and attention (the only true non-Renewable resources we possess) on fiction about “who he is and what people are like”. It corrupts without end.
The end result is thus far worse than “cold machines replacing a unique soulful humanity”. Rather, what you really get is said soulful humanity rejecting its innate disposition towards matters of the heart and spirit and trapping themselves in said boxtrap; which ultimately generates the posthuman hellhole of “toss out all value and pursue mere pains and pleasures”.
The false “AI god” will never come to be. We however will falsely think that he has arrived and will ritually cannibalize, necrophilize, etc to satiate his alleged whims. Think ritually sacrificing to Baal v2.0 except burnt offerings on the altar to clay and stone idols… that’s too “primitive”. Us modern posthumans will outperform every facet of that vile brutality.
I've often thought that we might get "Superhuman AI" not because the computers become smarter, but because humans shed their interiority and become stupider and more like machines.
That is basically the conclusion I came to once I realized that the entire industry is nothing more than materialists trying to “hopespeak” life into the cold, dead silicon and germanium. No such “life” actually exists; the humans merely project their own abilities onto it.
Nothing much has changed since ancient times. Children (daughters especially) were brutalized to appease idols of clay and stone back then. In modern times, this has already begun once more.
It’s the same nonsense: they worship those things which they themselves created with their own two hands; even though said things have no causal powers themselves. Rather, they only *appear to* once you mirror and surrender your own ability to make choices to them.
Woo boy! That's a lot to contemplate!
I am most definitely in the lower right of your plane. I personally think this life is the Creator letting free willed agents choose whether to be worthy of higher duties. I will be writing on this in depth
in the future.
If AI is programmable, we have the problem of conflicting commands. Jack Williamson explored this in his Humanoids stories. The movie version of "I, Robot" owes more to Jack Williamson than it does to Isaac Asimov.
If AI is conscious, then creating AI is Slavery Version 2. Don't do that!
On the other hand, my experience with modern AI is that we are just doing curve fitting, albeit in a really high dimensional space. Curve fitting can be adequate for interpolating, but can blow up spectacularly for extrapolation. (My last day job involved working with Tensor Flow and other AI algorithms. including some I developed.)
On the gripping hand, fuzzy logic holds the promise of human programmed [pseudo] AI which doesn't go into a smoke producing loop like in an old Star Trek episode. But you still need the opaque
curve fitting stuff to turn data into concepts which can be subjected to fuzzy logic.
----
I side with the original writers of Star Trek as well as Niven and Pournelle when they wrote "The Mote in God's Eye". Too much automation is bad for humanity. Indeed, this is a problem with pure capitalism, a problem which the young Marx appreciated: disconnecting humans from their needs
produces alienation. Too much specialization, or too much automation, is bad. Better to do some meaningful work. (The Unabomber
manifesto is also worth reading in this regard.)
I have been writing computer code for over four decades. The initial thrill and challenge of computers was that they did *exactly what you told them to do". I utterly despise "smart" phones. I smashed one with large blunt objects as a stress relieving just the other week. I hated Wolfram Alpha upon first exposure . I am still clinging to Windows 7. I drive a quarter century old car because its computer is dumb. I cling to an older TV because it is not "smart."
The prospect of a neurolink with computers is terrifying to me. Yes, it could be a boon for quadriplegics, but it could be the ultimate torture device as well. (A young Jack Vance wrote on this.)
Computers aren't going away. So I am frantically working on evil-robot free computing. This means manual controls that are simple enough for the average human who is willing to put in some overhead. Our current manual controls are poorly designed. The QWERTY keyboard is a screaming example. These make evil robots, voice activation, and neuro links look tempting. Fix some legacy
bad design decisions and maybe we can convince humans to stay in charge.
PM me for details if you want to know more.
Yep, appliances are way better when served dumb—but necessarily well-designed. We increasingly have it backwards. Too many fruits on the tree of woe... Doesn't it mean they ain't gonna ripen? 😇
On the other hand, my experience with modern AI is that we are just doing curve fitting, albeit in a really high dimensional space.
You nailed it. The term "artificial intelligence" is deliberately misleading. There is nothing intelligent about AI. It simply spits back the inputs it is given. It lacks the two cognitive operations necessary for genuine intelligence -- reassociation (the ability to move the brackets around to see familiar data in a new way) and substitution (plugging in an equivalent expression to open up new possibilities).
Unfortunately, people have watched Terminator too many times, so AI will continue to be the boogeyman.
I wonder, if any of these people who (say) they believe that, 'Mind' is only a by-product of, 'Brain', have children, how they explain this to their kids. "Well, offspring, because of Evolution, my programming dictates that I procreate. You are a chemical result of my chemical reactions. I must perform what appear to be loving actions to preserve my genome. Now, One story then time for bed."
People SAY all kinds of stupid shit that they only think that they believe.
If we *could* create 'A.I.' in the general sense, I am reasonably sure it has already happened. Just not publicly. In 2012 I took a course with a History Professor who specialized in the Dark Underbelly of U.S. History. He claimed to have a contact who was a retired NSA Agent, who worked from the late 1950's through the 1980's. This man said that in 1965, the NSA already had desk-sized computers with a clock speed of 650Mhz. Given that, publicly, the first 'Supercomputer' was built in 1969 & only had a speed of 36.4Mhz, that's nearly 20x the speed, 4 years earlier. We Schlubs didn't get that fast until 1999 & Intel's Pentium III CPU. So on a rough estimate, the Black World is using computers we wouldn't have until 2058.
In the, 'Art Imitating Life', vein, I would not be surprised that the 1966 Sci-Fi book, "Colossus", about a Scientist who creates a massive computer system in the 1990's that becomes intelligent, is essentially, a fictionalized account of something that has already been done. If so, then the primary purpose of the Internet (and all public A.I. systems) is for data collection and processing of human beings. They are the 'Eyes and Ears' of that Overlord system that already exists. We are like the American Indians, given shiny beads (smartphones) by the Europeans in exchange for Land, when the Tribes dealt with had no conception of Land Ownership. We have been given something of very dubious value in trade for something we didn't even know *Could* be traded.
However, "Deceiving and Being Deceived', the situation isn't what the Elites believe it to be. Mankind will never be able to create life, digital or otherwise. In a pre-computer Era, C.S. Lewis nailed it with the 3rd volume of his Space Trilogy, "That Hideous Strength" (1945). Where an elite group of scientists, philosophers & religious leaders believe that they have brought the Head of a Genius back to life & this Reanimated Person now rules over them.
But (Spoilers!) they are being lied to & the 'Head' is being controlled by Fallen Angels. Perhaps we will, or already have, created a machine that appears to us to be Sentient and a New Order of Life. It is, as with most things in this 'Schoolhouse Rock' version of reality we live in, a complete and total lie.
Meh. Or maybe I'm just Overmedicated. Perhaps Undermedicated, that would be more fun.
I rather doubt the government is as far ahead of civilian tech as it was in the 1960s. Silicon Valley got its start serving the government. But once prices dropped down to the point where personal computers became a real thing, making video games was the real driver for performance. Modern AI systems run on plus sized video cards in order to do the matrix math quickly.
I cannot speak for the secret side, but the not quite secret side of the government was woefully behind consumer tech in the early 90s. The GPS system was run on an obsolete mainframe that was far slower than a 486 laptop. The FAA's Wide Area Augmentation System was being designed for IBM Power workstations which were already a generation behind when the coding began.
All of the 'Good Stuff' went private decades ago, to prevent even the appearance of Congressional Oversight.
On a broader note than just A.I. It became obvious to me over a decade ago that *other* than computery stuff, our technological advancement has all but stagnated for decades. It is most apparent in Air Travel. Sub-Orbital Commercial Spaceplanes should be a mature technology now. Instead, we are still flying in the same Big, Slow, Tubby Buses that we have had for the last 60 years.
SIXTY YEARS. To say that a mild improvement in economy and better avionics (again, due to our shiny beads) accounts for that time span is laughable. The world air speed record still supposedly belongs to the SR-71, set in 1976. Then, of course, has not been surpassed for 47 years. Puhleeze.
Petroleum extraction has advanced significantly. The US is is producing 30% more than during the era of Hubbert's Peak.
Which I'm sure to the 'Desperate Shortage of Natural Resources' crowd (Kissing Cousins to the 'Humanity is a Virus' Cohort) only justifies their position.
But like we touched on earlier, by now, most of our power *should* be coming from Nuclear Reactors. (Even if only Fission, it's still superior to anything else we have.)
And just FYI, please don't think I'm being antagonistic to you, Fabius. I just wish that we weren't so locked into what 'The Experts' decree from on High.
LOL Oh, and like I mentioned to Alex a few days ago, on a lark I decided to rewatch 'Seaquest-DSV', as I hadn't seen it since 1997. The show first aired in 1993, the 1st season takes place in 2018, compared to shows & films like '2001' & 'Space- 1999' it's terribly conservative in its portrayal of the future & even with that, most of the technologies portrayed are STILL Sci-Fi. :-/
Given the choice between Smartphones infested with Social Media & 1,000ft long Super-Subs, I know which I would pick.
Hey! We have the skintight body suits like in "UFO." (And purple haired women as well.) Unfortunately, the body suits are wrapped on bodies that are better suited to mumus.
___
Space travel has definitely been a disappointment, though SpaceX does seem to be getting us back on track .
---
No argument on fission. Indeed, I recently argued that it is laughably easier for someone on the Right to be greener than Al Gore: just call for more fission reactors and for making cities safe enough to be bike and pedestrian friendly.
https://rulesforreactionaries.substack.com/p/the-fourth-political-dimension/comments
Such a program would lose votes in West Virginia. But it could put California back in play.
Tough call.
That reminds me, speaking of Nuclear Fission- Now this is not 'Conspiracy Theory' (a term which is used to stop serious consideration in any event), the U.S. Army itself released a film documenting the project. In 1960 they created a small town under the ice of Greenland. It was powered by a *Portable* Nuclear Generator. It was somewhat bigger than a Full-Sized Van, but still, POR-TA-BLE. Sixty-Three Years ago. Sigh...
Well done piece...got me to subscribe. (Yes, we saw your subscription note, since you asked us to mention it in the comments.)
As a long time researcher in this space, we are a long, long ways away from real artificial intelligence...we have not yet really achieved artificial stupidity. These are more elegant parlor tricks than Eliza had half a century ago...but still the same parlor tricks. ChatGPT/Bard are easy to fool, easy to get to lie -- they are language engines who have no fundamental knowledge other than crowdsourcing which is often wrong. The code they write is (while sometimes operative) awful. But the face is pretty so there is that.
I have a mouth and I am not screaming...
Thanks for subscribing! And for letting me know you read the comment :-)
GPT is trained on the internet. Thus if you're a prolific writer, much of your corpus was likely included in its training data. Thus when you talk to GPT, it will end up regurgitating your position back at you. As a result GPT is really good at convincing prolific writers that it's really smart.
I've got a problem with this "computational" view of human reasoning and ALL it's adherents. These scary, scary people don't believe in "emotions" because emotions are a glitch within nominal, optimal entity communication. A glitch to be "filtered, deleted, discontinued as sub optimal".
This INCLUDES any "wasteful" sub optimal misdirection of resources to non-entities ie animals. As in pets, who can not have any "feelings" or indeed, can't REALLY feel pain or emotional distress. 😢 So, it IS OK for Bigpharma to torture animals on a scale only mirrored in Hell.
Have we cross - referenced the uptick in teen suicides etc yet, to Smartphone intro?
Just like abortions. Nobody can be classed as human unless they have had 20 State sanctioned injections, otherwise...subhuman - delete.
I'm with you. I just treat the advocates of that view as if they are color blind.
If someone who is color blind tells me he doesn't see color, I believe him.
If someone who is color blind tells me *I* don't see color, I know he is wrong because I do.
Likewise, if someone tells me he is a meat robot who doesn't have free will, I believe him.
If someone tells me *I* am a meat robot who doesn't have free will, I don't believe them because I do.
I have been a Dog owner all my life. My Wife & I currently have Four. In 2009, one of our older dogs who has since passed was attacked by our Neighbor's Pit Bull. When his Fangs tore into her throat, she let out a scream I can only describe as a 'Yelp of the Damned'. It was the cry of a creature that knew it was about to die. I ended up attacking the Pit with my bare hands to save her life, but that's another story.
For the rest of the time we lived there, our Dog barked and growled at the Pit's owner, whenever he was near, when she had never barked before. Not only did she never forget the event, she also knew that HE was responsible for that other Dog.
The book that came out a few years ago, "Chaser- The Story of the Dog that knows a Thousand Words." is one of the greatest works in history on what Dogs are capable of. I can well understand why Scientists like that prefer to ignore such works.
Oh, and since I just had to go through my daily dose of 'Dog Trauma Control', I may as well put it up.
Our oldest current Dog is an absolutely gorgeous (and Creepiliy Smart) Collie/Belgian Tureven, we named, 'Bucky'. Bucky is a rescue, as almost all of our Dogs tend to be & was, by far, the most difficult Dog we've ever had. I say this already having raised an abused Husky Puppy. So we know what 'Crazy, Neglected Dog' is. But Bucky wasn't abused, he was just born in the wild, not domesticated in the slightest.
Somehow, his Mom kept 4 Puppies alive & reasonably well-fed in an absolute desert wasteland. However, my Wife & I suspect that Bucky still lost a Sibling or Two to Coyotes. As when Bucky smells them, or God Forbid, *Sees* them, he goes absolutely berserk. Every Time.
But that's not the problem. The problem, is that Bucky also lost his 'Grandma-Dog', Maya, the Husky I mentioned, and his 'Big SIster', Ivy, a Terrier. Ivy died at 6 of Brain Cancer, Maya, a year & a half later, at age 10, of Liver Disease. From his perspective, they just got into a car one day...
...and never came back.
So now that Bucky has a 'Younger Brother', another terrier named, Repairman Jack ('Jack' for short), every single day that my Wife takes Jack out for his morning Walkies, Bucky sits by the window and cries. Turevens tend to bond with one person & that's my Wife, so my ability to comfort him is limited. Should the unfortunate occurrence of *any* animal passing by our front window happen while Jack is out? Bucky is absolutely inconsolable. He doesn't cry, he *SCREAMS*. It is crystal clear that he is *Terrified* that Jack is in danger.
As I said, this happens every day. Every. Day. Going on Three Years now.
Why don't I just solve the problem by taking Bucky *with* Jack? Well... I am almost totally disabled (Inoperable Spinal Damage), so no dice on that one. Why doesn't my Wife just take them both at the same time? Well, because she's a Tiny Little Thing & Bucky is 110lbs & Jack is about 70. Together, they take HER wherever they wish to go. ^_^
Not only do Dogs obviously have emotions, they can also be emotionally damaged. Such is the tragedy with our Beautiful, Brilliant, but Broken, Bucky.
There's a plethora of neo-Aristotelian and phenomenological philosophers who, some in tandem with the cognitive sciences, are strongly opposed to computational theories of mind and the trajectory of present AI research.
It's a shame they aren't being paid more attention. The likes of Yudkowsky and Bostrom are waving their hands at what seems to me a distraction from the real threats posed by this technology.
Do you have any reading recommendations in that regard?
Edward Feser's book *Aristotle's Revenge* contains one of the better and more accessible summations of neo-Aristotelian objections, albeit from a Catholic perspective. Ed's blog has quite a few posts that give a taste of the reasoning:
- https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2012/05/kripke-contra-computationalism.html
- https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2017/01/immaterial-thought-and-embodied.html
- https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2019/03/artificial-intelligence-and-magical.html
- https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2022/09/chomsky-on-consciousness.html
Ed's a partisan Catholic and scholastic philosopher, but he's generally fair and gives a broad overview of what most neo-Aristotelians would say about AI and its assumptions.
The phenomenologist's position is probably best introduced in Dreyfus's *What Computers Can't Do*, which draws on certain of Heidegger's ideas to criticize the computational and cognitivist positions. (Heidegger himself is a rich source of arguments for and against AI, though he's all but inaccessible to non-specialists.)
From there, there is a good range of work on the "4Es" of cognition -- extended, embedded, embodied, enactive -- that takes a negative stance against computationalism and endorses its own rival account. Much of this work is cross-disciplinary, some of it drawing heavily on Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, some of stemming from other traditions in psychology and cog-sci.
Varela's *The Embodied Mind* is a generally good book to start with. Others good on this are Dan Hutto, Tony Chemero, Shaun Gallagher, Alva Noe, and Andy Clark. This is a big topic right now, so there's a lot to read and it's difficult to summarize, but the Stanford Encyclopedia entry and its bibliography is a good place to get oriented:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/embodied-cognition/
Much of this will dovetail with the general sort of objection found in Searle and Thomas Nagel, though they're approaching it from different angles and with stress on different objections.
Thank you! I have, but haven't yet read, Aristotle's Revenge. I've read several of Feser's prior works and find him consistently interesting. I have very strong Neo-Aristotelian sympathies. My knowledge of Dreyfuss, Heidegger, Chemero, Hutto, Noe, and Clark is effectively non-existent. Searle and Nagel I have read. I appreciate you taking the time to write 'em up.
If I ask Chat GPT 4 what I should have for breakfast and it replies Remdesivir, should I be worried?
Trust the science!
Rundeadisnear
I am sure it’s just because I am a stupid hick, but this is always hilarious: “As humans, our brains need the capacity to pretend that we could choose different things, so that we can imagine the outcomes, and pick effectively.”
Yeah pal. Pile enough words on top of “choose” and maybe I won’t notice that you keep sneaking it back into your argument that it can’t exist.
I gotta say, Yudkowsky sounds like the kind of person who had just enough education to get his head all the way up his ass.
If Free Will is an illusion, then literally nothing matters, including the opinions of Yudkowsky, who -according to himself- is also programmed to say what he says.
Dumbass.
Well, what's the worst an unaligned AI could do? Realistically it could not break anything with human decision-makers in the loop--so no mischievous launches of nuclear missiles or release of pathogens. Plausibly, it could break the whole internet. I'm not sure that would be too big of a loss. It would ruin me and millions of others financially, but humanity would probably be in a better place afterwards.
I'm not gonna panic, anyway. ChatGPT is just a stupid toy. The demonic possession threat is real but it will only be able to operate on the souls of those who believe the AI is really talking to them--so spreading panic is counter-productive, as it increases the perception that machine sentience is possible.
If someone creates the Evil AI, you might want to be one of the first to die. Consider Harlan Ellison’s _I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream_.
Good point. I may be deluded in my optimism for a late death.
Calvinists absolutely fall into that box.
My biggest issue with Calvin, is that he fundamentally misunderstood how God perceives reality. Since his followers dare not question The Master, we have had the Calvinist Sect that continues that serious flaw.
What I'm referring to specifically, is that God does not 'Know the Future'. To Him, everything is an Eternal Now. To have a Past is to lose something, to have a Future is to change and (hopefully) gain something. But the Ancient of Days has always been and always will be.
Though we are finite, limited beings, we still have a sense of the eternal. Broken and Clouded, but that's why change can be so jarring. We don't live our lives in Seconds, Minutes or Hours. We don't live by the Clock or the Calendar. We live our lives in *Moments*, and to God, EVERYTHING is That Moment. So He does not 'predict' our actions. He SEES US DOING THEM. And obviously, to observe someone acting is not the same as making them act.
This understanding even helps with seemingly thorny problems like God 'Hardening the Heart' of Pharoah. Did he manipulate that man like a Puppet with no free will? Or is it that because Pharoah *chose* Evil, God gave him what he wanted and removed the natural gifts he was given? As the giver of all Good, God can sovereignly remove such things, without it being a violation of our free will. Pharoah hated Moses & the Hebrews, so God effectively said, 'As you wish.' Leaving Pharoah with the Mean Little Rock that is all we really can call, 'Ours'.
I mean, what you’ve described there is approximately what a lot of nominal Calvinists believe anyway.
LOL That's why we call them, 'Nominal' (Which isn't a bad thing.)
That's why I'm a lonely old Sheepdog, high on the Hill.
EVERY Sect, Group, Denomination, has some flaws. None of us are perfect. Many moons ago I read a flyer for a Lutheran Church that a friend went to. They actually had the Cajones to say- 'Our Understand of Scripture is Perfect & so you should be careful in having fellowship with others.'
Wow. Just... Wow.
The Amish may outlast us all, and that is beautiful.
The Amish are absolute pacifists. When it hits the fan, they're so done for.
Really, ToW? I like to PUNCH THEM IN THE FACE 🤜🙈🤛 because, hey! They can't feel a thing. 🤗 FIGJAM.
I am crucified on a tree, I don't have a free hand to punch anybody
I will bite them if they come close though
🗨 What are you gonna do, bleed on me? 🤭
Something else I wanted to add- I understand these experiences are not proof for anyone else but me (and in one example, the other person who was there), but it is still of anecdotal worth on the topic of, 'Does the Mind exist apart from the Brain?'
In 1997 while spending a night with my (now Ex) Fiancee', the Holy Spirit took me out of my Body to witness a watershed moment in her life. I did not just witness it, our Spirits were tied together and I experienced it with her.
From my Ex's perspective, it was as if I had died. My Body went cold, I wasn't breathing, my eyes had that 'flat' look that we see in dead people. She said this went on for no less than a minute, but no more than two. She was about to call 9/11 when I came back to myself.
In December of 2016, I nearly died when my Foot went septic. It was touch and go for a number of days, apparently. Those days I don't remember. But the next 3 I do and they were as strange as any DMT experience. For brevity's sake I won't go into the specifics, my main point is that as the link between my Mind & Body grew more tenuous, I became aware of things I could not normally perceive. As my health improved, those perceptions faded, but I am convinced what I saw was very real.
Lastly and perhaps Ironically (At least American Conservative Christians might think it ironic), I absolutely agree with those scientists that say the Brain is a 'Meat Computer'.
Yet despite being true, it's also incredibly derogatory. Each of our bodies contains trillions of cells. Each cell is a Micro-Miniaturized Automated Chemical Factory, more advanced than our best Automated Factories. Despite all the things that can go wrong with us, when you consider HOW MANY of those little factories have to work together, for life to exist for any length of time?
Life is a staggeringly statistical impossibility.
I'm not surprised as time has gone on that Materialists have continued to expand their canvas to make 'life-from nothing' more plausible. Going from an Earth of Thousands, to Millions, to Billions of years old, adding Panspermia, because Billions wasn't enough! Then the final load of Monkies on Typewriters- An Infinite Multiverse. I mean, in an infinite amount of universes, each with Billions of Galaxies, each with Billions of stars, with planets orbiting them, life HAD to come about by chance on ONE, right? Right?
I don't ascribe to the Samuel Clemens definition of 'Faith', but it certainly applies to that.
I believe all the pertinent questions brought up by AI fearmongers have been addressed by daily life. In short, nothing new. The current pseudo intellectual navel gazing from the usual suspects is so offensive and unoriginal I'm surprised they didn't get Neil DeGrasse to sign on.
Can humans be programmed? Yes. The vax has proven some far more than others. Television is called 'programming', the false flag events do inspire action. Anyone who owns a cat or dog can attest to even a dumb beast prompting humans to mechanistic action via simple growls and mewls. It's fundamentally the act of 'learning', which no one disputes we can do, detached from truth whether by lies or accident.
Do people have free will? Yes. All these LessThanWrong 'altruistic' money stealer cheerleaders (see that recent money embezzling from Sam Bankman) certainly act as if they do when the rubber hits the road. They opine all day about free will but then go ahead and run away from crimes, do damage control for their others, and give no sign of emotional detachment from their material reality. No Buddhist discipline or indifference here, just running away from responsibility for their actions by the erudite ''I dindu nuffin'... because free will is an illusion".
Can AI kill people? Yes. Liberals accept that other technologies, guns, can kill people. Runaway trains just killed people in Ohio. In China escalators have eaten possibly more people than have died in US school shootings. Buildings fall on people. It's quite marvelous of humanity that we manage to avoid short and brutish lives when we do.
Can AI be aligned against humans? Absolutely. Anyone who has worked for a baby boomer corporate beurocracy knows a system can be aligned against all it's members despite them all hating it.
You don't need 'consent' to make a bad system much like you don't need consent to make a shitty supply chain that fails when you declare war on China. Edward Deming proved that we are always making and managing systems that are aligned against us, out of sheer stupidity and ignorance, despite 'best intentions'.
I know it's a side-issue, but ah... China. I LOVE how the Gubbamint wants us to see them as the enemy, when we have spent over THIRTY YEARS allowing Corporations to turn them into the Dragon that we are now supposed to fear.
Back in 1989, when I was 18, I followed the Tienanmen Square incident as closely as I could. That event was a watershed moment for me, as I saw my Peers over there, valiantly risking their lives so that they could live in a free nation. (Like America is, supposedly). When they started dying by the thousands, I thought we might gear up for a war. I was a stupid teenager, it wasn't the dumbest thing I ever thought.
We did punish China though. Oh my yes we did. We 'Punished' them by giving them, 'Most Favored Nation' Trading Status.
Are you capable of thinking for yourself, or can you only react to what the "Gubbamint" says?
China is a totalitarians state, we saw that most dramatically in their response to COVID. The more its prestige rises on the international stage, the more other countries, including our own, will try to imitate it.
Are you capable of reading what I actually WROTE? Of *Course* China is a totalitarian state, but it wouldn't be nearly as dangerous as it is if the Federal Gubbamint hadn't encouraged our Corporations to go there & build up the massive industrial base they now enjoy.