@TinyTimmyTokyo Amphetamine (and related stimulant) psychosis is a well-characterized syndrome.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stimulant_psychosis

@YourNetworkIsHaunted @sneerclub Paris did that with almost all of its cemeteries as part of its late 18th century renewal. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catacombs_of_Paris

@istewart @sneerclub One thing Andreessen, Thiel, et al. have shown a real skill for is finding ways to use a LOT of computing power. Even if only as effective debtors-in-possession, I’m sure they’ll figure something out.

@friend_of_satan ChatGPT is a response engine. It is no more conscious than Galvani’s frogs legs were alive. It is entirely reactive, not creative. Its “behavior” is wholly deterministic.

As best we can tell, no living thing uses a digital — much less binary— logical model in its fundamental neurological unit. It’s all analog goo. Until we figure out how to build that sort of computer, we won’t have life-like computer entities.

Assuming otherwise is a fundamental error.

@self @sneerclub Are we expecting something sneer-worthy?

@Soyweiser @sneerclub It is not possible to understand neuroscience using a “hardware/software” paradigm. That is a model created by humans to make building working computers possible. Brains develop without any such abstraction constraining the process.

@dgerard I have a strong recollection that Keith Henson had intimate involvement with a cryonics project and actual published a rather harrowing account. Should be searchable.

@V0ldek @sneerclub For both Facebook and Netflix, the interesting technical challenges are secondary to scale.

@billseitz @froztbyte @V0ldek But F is obsolete.
It’s now MAGA.

Oh, wait: G is obsolete too
MAAA

@henfredemars Indeed, it is often associated with hydrocephalus, a condition rarely conducive to cognitive performance.

@V0ldek @sneerclub The people who decided that they liked 18th & 19th century “liberals” a whole lot more than the modern ones. Basically Libertarians.

@V0ldek @sneerclub It happened when rich people realized that their individual liberty in a world of mostly poor people would intrinsically be constrained by proper democracy.

A government dedicated to maximizing the broadest possible freedom will, if allowed, redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor, to provide the poor more opportunities & limit the dangerous “freedoms” of the ultra-wealthy to impose their own control over others.

@V0ldek @sneerclub There was definitely a proto-capitalist class in late Republican & Imperial Rome.
The pervasive existence of slavery made the economic systems very different from ours, and even different from our most recent flavors of slavery. One could argue that EVERY slaveholder was a de facto capitalist.

@Soyweiser Not as a primary focus, but as a background fact, e.g. Trantor in Foundation.

@Soyweiser It was a bigger theme earlier: 50s/60s. Asimov, Bradbury, and I think Heinlein all used it.

@Amoeba_Girl @sneerclub Is that why it is so repetitive, wandering, and tedious?

@Starseeder @sneerclub That article is a powerful argument for professional editing.
(I do not mean that its topical content makes any such argument.)

@Varyk Kurzweil thought we’d all be quasi-cyborgs on 2 wheels by now.

@skillissuer I have no idea how they could have been *needed* against Ukrainian tanks. My impression was that they didn’t have any tanks with active defense until they got EU/NATO models, but I could be wrong.

@skillissuer Used in Ukraine. Possibly because they were running out of basic antiweapons.