Cabel Sasserthis graduation speech moment is notable, and her amazed shock at having failed to read the room feels instructive.
when you’re inside the bubble, you think everybody else is. but everybody isn’t.
myrmepropagandistI can't imagine "the internet" getting boo'd like that in 2001 Grads would have cheered along for "internet"
Or even like bitcoin in say 2010, lots of people were skeptical but would not have just boo'd
This is remarkably unpopular.
Landa 
@futurebird
Proponents are always comparing it to the industrial revolution, but maybe it's better compared to the likes of leaded gasoline, CFC aerosol cans, or asbestos anything.
Maybe some of us have learned to spot a pattern.
@cabel
Rob WilliamsonI think the industrial revolution comparison is fair. The industrial revolution impoverished millions over generations, globally destroyed a class of artisan specialists, and most (India & China notably) have barely caught up to their relative standard of living before it.
IMO, the IR gets an undeservedly good reputation because of the labour movement's victories in spreading the benefits of industry to the general population in the 20th century west.
Dieu@eswag @Landa @futurebird @cabel that's a great point. But at least the steam engine and the machines it enabled did what they were supposed to do well and reliably instead of randomly exploding or running backwards or whatever. One can hardly count AI among "means of production" with a straight face.
@hllizi @Landa @futurebird @cabel
I think there were more steam and other explosions than one would want, but I take your point.
The machines also enabled mass production of high quality weapons, so anyone who looked like they might not want to deconstruct their local industries and send all their wealth to the owners of UK sweatshops would soon find their capitals being randomly deconstructed by mass produced explosive shells.
Models enable the deconstruction of common experience?
@hllizi @Landa @futurebird @cabel
I think we're seeing the supercharging of the old trick that Nye Bevan characterized so well:
LLMs and associated slop ducts have persuaded people dying of covid to support the people whose recklessness got them infected. I'm not sure what people down the rabbit hole *wouldn't* vote for at this point. They're so hacked.
@hllizi @Landa @futurebird @cabel
I remember reading Tom Paine's Rights of Man during Brexit, & chuckling despairingly when he claimed that (paraphrased badly), just as all city dwellers pitch in to help with the harvest, so no person will vote against their own interests.
I read that at a time when British crops were rotting in the fields because no bugger wanted to pick them, a year or so after a vote to prevent the poor sods who did want to pick them from being welcomed into the country.
@hllizi @Landa @futurebird @cabel
A note of encouragement is that reality continues to be real.
It's taken a lot to drag the masses out of their cocoons of wealth, but it's happening. People in the US are seeing each other get shot in the face by government thugs, Brits working 2 jobs are sleeping rough. It's difficult to believe the bullshit on your phone when the rest of your body tells you you're cold, hungry and unsafe.