[ExI] ai is the easy road

[spike at rainier66.com]

From: Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> 
…Subject: Re: [ExI] ai is the easy road

 

…

On the contrary.  But we stretch it too far when we try to apply it to our very prosperous now.

 

>…You and I and the other people on this list are relatively prosperous, but that is not uniformly spread over the US or to all subgroups. You just visited parts of the country that are relatively poor. I wonder if you looked into how much of their food is homegrown or local? Because if they depend on outside food, the rise of prices is going to make them poorer. Enough to cause social unrest? Don't know, should be modeled…

 

I visited some of the poorest areas of the country, if measured in dollars.  But even in their poverty, they have a lot of room.  A lot of their food is homegrown, and they produce more than they consume.  So if food prices go up, so does the value of their crops.  Their quality of life is better than their urban counterparts who make twice as much money.  

 

In those poor rural areas there is a mixture of agriculture and coal mining.  The demand for coal is rising and has a very bright future.  We need to make triple the amount of electric power as we do now.  That means tripling every energy source, if possible.  Falling water cannot be tripled.  That one is already maxed out.  But the other sources can be tripled.  I expect coal production to more than triple.

 

Around 2010, the federal government was busy making rules that shut down coal mines.  When asked what the unemployed miners should do, they were told to learn to code.  Now AI is shutting down a lot of what coders used to do, but fortunately they can now learn to mine coal.

 

I found the morale of the populace in those impoverished areas to be very good.  Their optimism for the future is much higher than ours here.  Granted they know nothing of the singularity or malign AI, never heard of it.  In the more rural areas, they don’t have internet (oh it is a pain in the ass to communicate with them) they don’t have cell phones, they don’t have cable TV.  They do have radio and land lines.  Their lives and their outlook on life is far different from ours.

>>…Mob lynchings went away.  EP works.

>…Mob lynching are out iof favor _at the moment_.

 

Ja.  Modern day lynchings require the victim to hire the mob.

 >>…The error is in equating the current POTUS with Hitler.  …

>…The racial elements are the same…Keith

 

Ja, no.  We struggle too hard to explain why an unpopular guy won two of the last three elections by equating him with Hitler, when an easier explanation suffices: his opposition is divided against itself.  This is having a bigger impact than the opposition party wishes to admit.  But it is a coalition of increasingly incompatible elements.  EP works fine.  But the modern republic party literally isn’t Nazism.  It hasn’t changed much from what it has been for a long time.  Its mainstream opposition party has changed significantly in the past twenty years: it has divided itself into two incompatible parties which still carry the same name.

 

spike  

 

 

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