To put it very simply, I and other Americans I discuss this with have absolutely zero faith that all of the promises being made around AI will lead to a better life.
For one, if AI stands to threaten our jobs, these jobs are critical to our very survival in this country that has done everything within its power to remove safety nets and programs that benefit those experiencing hard times.
The state of the American system is so poor when it comes to supporting anyone who is not wealthy, that it is fully expected that we would be placed into a category of "Undesirables" where more effort will be placed into purging or removing us than helping us get back on our feet.
Additionally, Americans are very technologically astitute in comparison to other countries, we were first adopters for AI.
I think at this point its been proven that AI is underperforming all expectations, and thus we are starting to resent the sentitment that more and more of our economy needs to be directed towards this technology that still remains a pipedream rather than a reality.
I see this as a downstream issue of a greater issue needing to be solved.
Many American's risk homelessness and violence outside of the corporate world. The control over money used for housing and healthcare lies entirely within the hands of corporate intrests driven by these executives.
Until a viable alternative can be discovered for addressing housing and healthcare issues, no reasonable resistance amongst tech workers can be organized.
Many within the tech world, would love to build and produce technology that competes with the corporate interests you described, but lack secure housing or healthcare to do so.
Please note, that this does not require a 'solution' to the problem, but rather an alternative.
ICE has more funding now as a domestic law-enforcement agency than almost every military on the planet.
If we need to fund the "arrest of illigal immigrants" to such an amount as this, can you please explain to me how other countries, as you mention in your comment, can successfully do this with nowhere near that amount of funding?
Its pretty clear that ICE is being used as a means of forming an industry similar to that of the Military Industrial complex, but focused on law-enforcement and domestic action.
What alarms me here is that once a certain level of investment and industry is built, it will necessitate a means of self-sustaining itself and will attempt to find this through political investment.
I fully expect a domestic version of the "perpetual foreign wars" concept to appear within my lifetime where we go from one domestic emergency requiring huge policing resources to another, ensuring the industry gets funding.
SA was essentially a militia which functioned manly as the NSDAP's non-governmental terror group. As soon as NSDAP took power, Hitler used the SS to take control of the SA and assume its functions. The transition was bloody, the top commander of the SA was executed by Hitler and its leadership purged or killed, see the Night of the Long Knives.
The SA was never a government entity with any significant functions or budget.
It's actually about white supremacy and turning the US into a Christofascist ethnostate but y'all aren't ready to take that conversation seriously. The militarization of domestic policing and surveillance is just a means to an end.
Most of these people will keep showing up to their cushy jobs at Google and FB while the data they spent decades harvesting is used to oppress their neighbors.
I see the Christofascism as more a flavor of the month than a serious unifying ideology.
Religion has always been a tool used by those in power to gain favorability with people at scale. But history tells us it is easily manipulated and twisted to serve the needs of the powerful. (Crusades, Colonialism, Slavery, Conservatism)
Whatever Christofascism is today, will be boiled down to its fundamental components the moment it no longer serves the powerful so that it can be remade into whatever they need it to be. Think of it more as the rotting of one religion giving way to the fertile ground of new relgion.
> I see the Christofascism as more a flavor of the month than a serious unifying ideology.
I’ve joked occasionally we should just hand the zealots power as they’d quickly go back to just killing each other over theology.
Wouldn’t you know it all the smug religious revival accounts from unemployed zoomers that have recently flooded my social media seem
more interested in attacking different Christian sects. My Facebook has been looking like the 30 years war recently.
It has roots going all the way back to the founding of the country. The core of American culture and of many of its issues has always been the tension between the conflicting desires for a Puritan theocracy with a strict racial hierarchy and a secular progressive Republic.
Slavery was justified by Christian principles, and manifest destiny. Hitler was inspired by America's genocide of native Americans, racial segregation and eugenics (all of which were justified by Christianity.) And after the war, the US carried the torch of Nazism's racist ideas after the rest of the world tried to move beyond it.
Many conservative ideals are backed by Christian belief. They hate feminism because it undermines the tradition Christian ideal of gender hierarchy. They hate homosexuality because they believe the Bible says it's a sin. They hate communists because communism is atheist. And most of all they believe the US was founded as an explicitly Christian nation and should be governed only by Christian principles.
9/11 happens and Bush declares a new "Crusade" against the evildoers. That language wasn't accidental. The connections between the American military industrial complex and Evangelical Christianity run deep.
And now we have Trump, whom a significant number of Americans believe to have literally been sent by God to wage spiritual warfare against demonic forces within the government, citing Christianity explicitly as justification for his militarism.
And it's absolutely not a coincidence that we reached this inflection point and acceleration after electing a Black president. That broke America in ways that I don't think that it can ever recover from. It certainly isn't a flavor of the month. If anything it's the only truly unifying ideology America has ever had.
I think you're correct that religion can be used as a tool by the powerful, but the typical cynical assumption that no one in power actually believes any of it is I think a mistake. Maybe not Trump, I suspect he's too much of a narcissist to believe in anything but himself and is an example of what you're referring to, but I think the people around him whispering in his ear and many of his supporters are true believers.
> They hate communists because communism is atheist.
A few years ago before the election, a friend and I often joked that you could probably sell a sizable portion of American right on something of a “five year plan”
The MAGA communism meme was going around at the time too. Traditional Cold War era “better dead than red” conservatives I knew were suddenly posting about nationalizing companies that weren’t playing ball with Trump.
The other day, I saw an account rambling about “Anglo-Saxon victory over Judeo-Bolshevik Materialism”. I found that a bit odd. I’ve heard the “Judeo-Bolshevik” schtick, and there’s certainly endless negative aspects of communism, but materialism certainly is not one of them.
But your connection with Atheism ties things together in a way that makes sense.
Incredible power, weld somehow by basement dwelling otaku NEETs. Are their claims to possess mystic wizard powers real, or perhaps are you falling for their own aggrandizing propaganda?
For every of those, there are a thousand more Trump voters who don't have anything to do with them. (Also, AFAIK the Proud Boys were started by an ex founder of Vice, and had little if anything to do with 4chan.)
4chan likes to take credit for everything that happens but they don't have any real power.
Trump is just a miserable narcissistic racist (and rapist) consumed with a bitter desire for vengeance against the left, and thus an easily manipulated tool for the people actually setting this up. Anyone with half a brain has been watching the normalization of white nationalism and right-wing extremism escalate and accelerate since 2016 and can see that it isn't entirely about Trump.
While indeed a positive outlook, I think alot of Americans are beginning to wonder what the benefit will be to them.
The isolationist and xenophobic rhetoric of recent years is mostly a reaction to a growing sense that increasingly few Americans are benefiting from global goodwill and development. While I dont agree with the sentiment, its not entirely incorrect to describe such relationships are parasitic more then symbiotic when they become increasingly one-sided.
Why should Americans be exporting PHDs to other countries when they dont seem to be reaping the benefits?
Germany has taxpayer-subsidized education even for foreign students. They may stay, the may leave. One of its views is that the time the student spent in the country helps foster cultural ties and understanding, and generates goodwill towards the country...
I suppose "goodwill" is hard to translate to cold hard cash, so America doesn't really like it ;-)
Given that most PhD students pay for their earlier education and then do underpaid grunt work as part of their program, the US should already be reaping the benefits. It's only failing to reap them in the sense that more could be gained if they stayed, and that a citizen would be more likely to stay.
Having a fraction of US PhD leave might be a good thing for cross-pollination. The fact that they've left doesn't mean their contacts and relationships vaporize. This could help America stay abreast and integrated with foreign research.
> isolationist and xenophobic rhetoric of recent years is mostly a reaction to a growing sense that increasingly few Americans are benefiting from global goodwill and development
I think the rhetoric is the cause, not the response to that sense (besides the obvious feedback loop). Internationalism created a world of unprecendented - literally in human history - freedom, peace and prosperity. You can see what things look like with even the beginnings of nationalism.
I would implore you to empathize with the American working class, who have seen their living standards continuously deteriorate over multiple generations.
I know the hackernews audience skews more affluent and wealthy, with demographics pulling from more developed coastal cities, but the vast majority of citizens do not exist in such living conditions. Focusing entirely on the development an prosperity of only a handful of our cities is what has created the perfect fertile soil for Xenophobia to grow.
I dont see the rhetoric as the cause, just the motions of opportunists taking advantage of a situation that we are all at fault for.
Despite all the freedom, peace, and prosperity, its so unevenly distributed that many citizens live in squalor rivaling some destitute underdeveloped nations.
The American working class doesn't like to acknowledge its own existence or assert its self-worth. There's no real self identity for that class in America.
In fact, a huge number of the people that are in that class would resent you for classifying them in this way. And the same is true for those in the upper middle class, or elites.
Secondly, trying to scope the xenophobia problem to just the working class is itself a bit of a misdirection. Plenty of that comes from the swaths of upper middle class white collar folks. And plenty of it comes from second gen immigrants who are eager to be counted among the natives.
The xenophobia _is_ the substitute American culture provides as a filler for the vacuum left by the lack of any sort of class identity. Everybody falls over themselves demonstrating how they can be "more American" in one way or the other. Who is a "real" American, what their qualities are, whether this particular thing or that particular thing is more or less American, etc. etc.
It's an alternate focus to direct all that shame the culture demands from the poor.
The US is not "exporting" anything. PhDs are people, they pay for their education and they leave.
Nevertheless responding to your question:
>Contrary to common perceptions, US technology benefits from these graduates' work even if they leave: though the US share of global patent citations to graduates' science drops from 70% to 50% after migrating, it remains five times larger than the destination country share
So let me see: a person from another country receives a service that is exclusive, very limited and in high demand (PhD), pays for it, and that person eventually takes it back to country of origin.
US education must be in a woeful state because that is the definition of export.
Given the exclusivity and value of the service you'd think you'd want to hang on to it, but I guess xenophobia is one thing that is more important than money.
I've been hearing nothing but bad things about the actual education in US institutions. I think they've tarnished their name at this point to no return.
STEM PhD students typically pay with labor rather than cash. Labor to teach undergrads, and to perform other university research. (though they typically pay their undergrad with large piles of cash).
That is, very much, a substantial form of payment.
This is manifestly not true. What leads you to believe this? Certainly there are some who don't, just as with undergraduate education. But there's no blanket program in the US to pay for all STEM PhDs.
All of the dozens of US STEM PhDs I know from recent decades had to pay their tuition by working as TAs, RAs, or usually both. They didn't walk in the door with a trust fund, work through the coursework, and then write up a dissertation. I'm not sure that's even a possibility in most STEM fields: you need access to millions of dollars of ultra-specialized equipment which you can realistically only get by working in an existing lab, which means being an RA.
"...a growing sense that increasingly few Americans are benefiting from global goodwill and development"
That "growing sense" is not growing organically, it's being energetically fertilized. The problem isn't that most Americans aren't benefiting from global goodwill and development, it's that they aren't benefiting from domestic development. And the minority who are benefiting disproportionately from domestic economic growth are expending significant resources to convince everybody else that the problem lies with the rest of the world.
> The isolationist and xenophobic rhetoric of recent years is mostly a reaction to a growing sense that increasingly few Americans are benefiting from global goodwill and development.
I'm not sure I buy your claim that this is the reason for the rhetoric. And if you're right that this is the reason for the rhetoric, it's extremely flawed reasoning.
Diminishing material conditions makes a fertil breeding ground for right wing nationalism (isolationism and xenophobia). It's a pattern being replicated all over the world. UK citizens don't have high heat bills and sewage leaking into their rivers because of privatization and Brexit, it's because there's too many refugees!
Of course it's incorrect, but without the diminishing material conditions, it's a lot harder to get people to drum up the energy to be racist.
The US got talent for free for years; young people whose upbringing and education has been paid by/in a foreign country. The most expensive formative years had been paid for by the sponsoring country.
> The isolationist and xenophobic rhetoric of recent years is mostly a reaction to a growing sense that increasingly few Americans are benefiting from global goodwill and development
The rhetoric is learned from a well balanced media diet, served for free by the 0.0001%
"Increasingly few Americans are" getting to evade the consequence of wealth concentration and monopolies. Large parts of the US economy have been starved by monopolist practices in the past decennia. I recently linked a very approachable documentary¹ from ARTE, in thee parts, if you want to understand what is really happening.
Maybe try a vpn? It is an European production, I am not sure, but there could be some rights limitation. It is available till end of January. Protonvpn is free and has EUR servers.
Bit of a shame for the hassle though, the documentary is very good and the topics it touches are rarely highlighted. So give it an other try.
Wouldn't the easy answer to this be increased efficiency of RAM usage?
RAM being plentiful and cheap led to a lot of software development being very RAM-unaware, allowing the inefficiencies of programs to be mostly obfuscated from the user.
If RAM prices continue rising, the semi-apocalytic consumer fiction you've spun here would require that developers not change their behaviors when it comes to software they write.
There will be an equillibrium in the market that still allows the entry of consumer PC's it will just mean devices people buy will have less available RAM than is typical. The demand will eventually match up to the change in supply as is typical of supply/demand issues and not continuously rise into an infinite horizon.
I see multiple comments regarding his actual views.
Its been pointed out multiple times that hes a believer in a dark-enlightenment, where democracy has run its course and the power should be taken from ordinary people and centralized to the aristocratic elite such as himself.
He uses alot of coded language, hence why he is often called a Crypto Fascist (Crypto as in encrypted language, not cryptocurrency)
To anyone knowledgeable enough to own a basic mental cypher, they can decode fascist and monarchist language. He's very clearly a selfish person in the business of consolidating his own power over others to fulfill his outlandish fantasies.
He's deffinately not the only person in the world holding these sorts of views, there is an overabundance of sociopathic elites in the world.
But Thiel is able to operate on an influence level beyond that of most sociopaths and thus his wealth is one of the most pressing issues regarding his person.
This particular nutjob being far less powerful and wealthy, would preserve alot of our social order.
free speech absolutism sounds fair in a vacuum but neglects the power disparity that wealth provides in a connected world.
Free Speech is not the concept of anyone can say anything without rules. Its about the ability for those without power to be able to speak on an even playing field as those with power.
The Wealthy and powerful have never had to worry about the freedom of their speech in history. They determined what speech was acceptable.
Take a break from defending those actively destroying our society through their actions, intentional or not, and learn the foundations of why free speech is designed the way it is.
What's the alternative though? Regulation of speech is often used by those already in power to silence dissent[1]. And there's still plenty a rich person can do to hide themselves as the source of something unsavoury while making it appear "grassroots". Now more than ever, with LLMs and bots.
It's not that free speech absolutism is fair, it's that there's not really an alternative that's any more fair.
Additionally, Americans are very technologically astitute in comparison to other countries, we were first adopters for AI. I think at this point its been proven that AI is underperforming all expectations, and thus we are starting to resent the sentitment that more and more of our economy needs to be directed towards this technology that still remains a pipedream rather than a reality.
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