I think I would update my position here to say that AI is different from manufacturing, in that you can have small scale manufacturing operations (like 3D printing as username2 mentioned), that satisfy some niche market, whereas I sort of doubt that there are any niche markets in AI.

I've noticed this a lot with "data science" and AI startups - in what way is their product unique? Usually its not. It's usually a team of highly talented AI researchers and engineers who need to showcase their skills until they get aqui-hired, or they develop a tool that gets really popular for a while and then it also gets bought. You really just don't see "disruption" (in the sense that Peter Thiel defines it) in the AI vertical. And you don't see niches.

I, for one, welcome our new paperclip Overlord.

Gods, Eugine, you're boring. You've been banned from LW, you can't accept that, and the best way you can think of to handle this situation is to keep posting the same fucking comments again and again and again and again because ... what? What good outcome do you expect from doing this? Literally the only thing you are doing is adding a bit of annoyance to the lives of people who never did you any harm.

Perhaps it makes you feel like you're outsmarting the moderators or something. I do hope not. Because any idiot can copy and paste things, and anyone a step or two above idiocy can write a script to do it.

Get a life and leave us in peace.

The American revolution seems to have been a pretty middle-class affair. The Czech(oslovakian) "Velvet Revolution" and the Estonian "Singing Revolution" too, I think. [EDITED to add:] In so far as there can be said to be a middle class in a communist state.

Well, obviously first we'd need land. What land we get will determine who is legally allowed to build a dormpartment building, and what techniques and materials they're allowed to use.

That said, if it was up to me, I'd probably want to build something out in the Arizona desert, probably near Snowflake, and I'd want to use cinderblock construction. The great thing about that is that you're basically making giant lego-houses out of hollow concrete blocks and mortar.

So step one would be getting a bulldozer to level the land, then a cement truck and a shitload of cement to make a foundation (highly recommended we get a construction company to do that part, rather than doing it ourselves), then build up from there. A backhoe to dig out large water tanks and a septic system will be necessary, assuming this will be somewhere off-grid.

The great thing is that solar is actually doable these days, so we could get REAAAALLY cheap off-grid land, build a big-ass solar farm, and then our only issue is potable water, which is doable with a reverse osmosis system and a large enough catchment tank, if you don't care about living too close to a major city.

This amounts to saying, "the probability that matters is the probability that I will get cancer, given that I have the lesion" or "the probability that matters it the probability that I will get cancer, given that I do not have the lesion."

That's what I'm denying. What matters is the probability that you will get cancer, period.

Um. Not in economics where it is well-defined. Capital is resources needed for production of value.

While capital is resources needed for production of value, it's a bit misleading to imply that that's how it's "well-defined" "in economics", since the reader is likely to come away with the impression that capital = resources needed to produce value, even though not all resources needed for production of value are capital. Economics also defines labour & land* as resources needed for production of value.

* And sometimes "entrepreneurship", but that's always struck me as a pretty bogus "factor of production" — as economists tacitly admit by omitting it as a variable from their production functions, even though it's as free to vary as labour.

When the proles have nothing to lose but their chains, they get restless :-/

Is this empirically true? I am not an expert, but seems to me that many revolutions are caused not by consistent suffering -- which makes people adjust to the "new normal" -- but rather by situations where the quality of life increases a bit -- which gives people expectations of improvement -- and then either fails to increase further, or even falls back a bit. That is when people explode.

A child doesn't throw a tantrum because she never had a chocolate, but she will if you give her one piece and then take away the remaining ones.

Resistance on whose part to what?

Resistance of those without resources against those with amassed resources. We can call them rich vs. poor, leaders vs. followers, advantaged vs. disadvantaged. the advantaged groups tend to be characteristically small, the disadvantaged large.

Revolutions haven't been very kind to leaders, too -- that's the point. When the proles have nothing to lose but their chains, they get restless :-/

Restlessness is useless when it is condensed and exploited to empower those chaining them. For example, rebellion is an easily bought commercial product, a socially/tribally recognized garb you can wear. You'd be hard-pressed more to look the part of a revolutionary than to actually do anything that could potentially defy the oppressive regime you might be a part of. There are other examples, which leads me to my next point.

...absolution?

It would be in the best interest for leaders to optimize for a situation where rebellion cannot ever arise, that is the single threat any self-interested leader with the goal of continuing their reign needs to worry about. Whether it involves mass surveillance, economic manipulation, or simply despotic control is largely irrelevant, the idea behind them is what counts. Now when you bring up the subject of technology, any smart leader with a stake in their reign time will immediately seize any opportunity to extend it. Set a situation up to create technology that necessarily mitigates the potential for rebellion to arise, and you get to rule longer.

This is a theoretical scenario. It is a scary one, and the prevalence of conspiracy theories arising from such a theory simply plays to biases founded in fear. And of course, with bias comes the inevitable rationalist backlash to such idea. But I'm not interested in this political discourse, I just want to highlight something.

The scenario establishes an optimization process. Optimization for control. It is always more advantageous for a leader to worry more about their reign and extend it than to be benevolent, a sort of tragedy of the commons for leaders. The natural in-system solution for this optimization problem is to eliminate all potential sources of competition. The out-system solution for this optimization problem is mutual cooperation and control-sharing to meet certain needs and goals.

There currently exists no out-system incentive that I am currently aware of. Rationality doesn't count, since it still leads to in-system outcomes (benevolent leaders).

EDIT: I just thought of an ironic situation. The current solution to the tragedy of the commons most prevalent is through the use of government regulation. This is only a Band-Aid, since you get a recursion issue of figuring out who's gonna govern the government.

Does this site have a report button?