Mastodawn

Aral Balkan Apr 1

Folks to me a decade ago: Aral, what’s all this tinfoil-hat stuff about Silicon Valley? You’re being alarmist! What’s the worst that could happen? Etc., etc.

Meanwhile, a Silicon Valley billionaire:

> Some people are like “oh, but isn’t it terrible to celebrate the power of weapons?” and I say, you know what, societies have always needed a warrior class that is enthused and excited about enacting violence on others in pursuit of good aims. I think that it’s reasonable for philosophers to degrade those people and whine about how they’re sick in the head. But society needs them. Even if I’m sick in the head. We need people who are willing to fight for our country—and I’m not doing that directly, my life’s not on the line. But you need people like me who are sick in that way and don’t lose any sleep making tools of violence

https://web.archive.org/web/20260401060004/https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/palmer-luckey-is-our-most-terrifyingly-deranged-billionaire

#SiliconValley #deathCult #BigTech #capitalism #fascism #PalmerLuckey

Palmer Luckey Is Our Most Terrifyingly Deranged Billionaire

The Silicon Valley “war king” thinks an uncontrolled arms race is the route to peace. He is so, so wrong.

Aral Balkan Apr 1

“[With Oculus] I was just trying to build toys that delighted people. There was no vengeance, there was no malice, there was no killer instinct involved. I think I didn’t develop that obsession or framing until I felt I was stabbed in the back by a lot of people who should have treated me better.”

If the most successful people in your system are out there writing their own supervillain origin stories maybe your system is a stinking pile of shit.

https://web.archive.org/web/20260401060004/https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/palmer-luckey-is-our-most-terrifyingly-deranged-billionaire

#capitalism #fascism #USA #SiliconValley #PalmerLuckey

Palmer Luckey Is Our Most Terrifyingly Deranged Billionaire

The Silicon Valley “war king” thinks an uncontrolled arms race is the route to peace. He is so, so wrong.

You want to understand who liberals are and why they’re not an alternative to fascism? Here’s them giving this son of a bitch a standing ovation after inviting him to present at one of their most sacred events.

(Yes, that’s Palmer Luckey getting a standing ovation after his TED talk.)

#capitalism #liberals #fascism #SiliconValley #TEDTalks #TED #PalmerLuckey

Aral Balkan Apr 1

Seriously, watch the fucking Q&A (unless you have high blood pressure)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?si=w2-KESR90FsLVjV5&t=637&v=ooMXEwl7N8Y&feature=youtu.be

Assholes, the whole lot of ’em.

#capitalism #liberals #fascism #SiliconValley #TEDTalks #TED #PalmerLuckey

The AI Arsenal That Could Stop World War III | Palmer Luckey | TED

YouTube

Jonathan Schofield Apr 1

@aral the stupid is completely unmoored. It will crash and burn and find a lower materiality of stupid. Just impossible to know when or how many millions of lives it will take with it

@aral "Is this ethical?"

Oh boy. The whole goddamn industry is unethical and people like him talking about "better results" are responsible for countless deaths that he'd no doubt rather treat as metrics than humans. He talks about ethics but he's fully in the arms industry mindset.

Talks about humans using tools to separate the people making the weapons from the deaths they cause, like that's a *good thing* wow.

@aral If you're in such a business you probably need a way of convincing yourself that what you're doing is not responsible for the bad outcomes that you inevitably see. That you're not responsible; other people are. That lets people like him carry on doing what they're doing, killing people without thinking of the consequences.

Fitting then, that he proposed the exact same thing when it comes to blow by blow warfare; dilute responsibility, nobody think about their own ethical involvement.

@aral What could *possibly* go wrong?

There's something of the banality of evil in this video.

Walrus 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿Apr 1

I read this, and I am truly impressed by how utterly vile he is.

https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/palmer-luckey-is-our-most-terrifyingly-deranged-billionaire

Palmer Luckey Is Our Most Terrifyingly Deranged Billionaire

The Silicon Valley “war king” thinks an uncontrolled arms race is the route to peace. He is so, so wrong.

Juan Per¢ent,🇲🇽 🍉,🇻🇪Apr 1

@aral He describes himself as a "Radical Zionist"...

Aral Balkan Apr 1

@dacig This is my surprised face (not).

Dan Hatton Apr 1

I mean... I consider myself a liberal, but I thought we liberals had decided some time around 1909 that our values were more compatible with those of democratic socialists than with those of nazis, fascists, or indeed "normal" conservatives. I'm still not sure when or why that decision came unstuck.

@only_ohm I don't know if the definition has changed over time or if there's always been something of this problem in liberalism, but my dad (in his late 60s) would call himself a liberal too and he's very much in the mould of what you describe. He would never applaud this guy. I think in current terms I'd call him a "Leftie" (I'm more LeftIST) but he calls himself liberal.

I think as times get more extreme, being politically "mild" becomes more and more like collaboration if you aren't careful

Pine Affinity Apr 1

Liberalism is tied to capitalism and capitalism dictates that political movements will always regress to fascism when the going gets tough.
@only_ohm @aral

Dan Hatton Apr 1

@Pine_Affinity @aral

I like to think capitalism is a tool, rather than something I'm tied to. The aim, for me, is to promote individual liberty in a Rawlsian maximin sense. If an industry in the private sector is obstructing that aim, I'm happy to consider nationalizing it; and if an industry in the public sector is obstructing that aim, I'm happy to consider privatizing it. Right now in my country (UK), there's a lot more of the former than of the latter. 1/2

Dan Hatton Apr 1

@Pine_Affinity @aral

It's also clear to me that effective pursuit of that aim, in general, requires significant state intervention to redistribute wealth. 2/2

No Exceptions Apr 1

@only_ohm @Pine_Affinity @aral In the States, Rawls would be in prison now.

In the States, we don't have neither distributive justice nor just institutions with equal opportunity for all. (We have no just institutions at all.) I believe this is because we don't have Rawls' first principle, either, far from it, and since the principle of liberty is lexically first, we're just shit out of luck on all counts.

And we can't even have just savings because the majority of Americans are, by our own government standards, impoverished.

I cut my teeth on Rawls. I wish more people would read him. A Theory of Justice isn't that hard.

Dan Hatton Apr 1

@Pine_Affinity @Bartok @aral

Trying to work out the mechanism by which Rawls would be likely to have been imprisoned...

No Exceptions Apr 1

@only_ohm @Pine_Affinity @aral It's kind of a saying we have here regarding people considered radical. Rawls defended a constitutional democracy with property ownership (of a discretionary sort). We don't have this, and the Trump Government doesn't want it. and frankly by today's standards, Rawls is an enemy of the state.

So it goes. Rounding up academics and intellectuals who don't promote Trump-think isn't that far off, given the probability of a rigged election.

It's bad here (and in the UK, too, though I'm not competent to speak on it).

David Culley Apr 1

@aral And liberals will just be like "We gotta vote harder!!1 We gotta have more 'No Kings' marches!!" And then cheer on Gavin Newsom.