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by SkipperCat 31 days ago
I can't help but think that this is due to Musk putting pressure on the current administration to help him win his lawsuit and punish Altman.
1 comments

Personal vendettas between the world's most powerful psychopaths playing out in the stock market while everyone else suffers does seem like the current meta. So it makes sense.
I'm all for it, let them attack each other and hopefully the backlash will elect a labor President to turn the final screws on knee capping big tech for the next 50 years.
Democrats being only slightly less beholden to corporate interests and functioning as controlled opposition is exactly how we've gotten to the point we're at. I'd like to be optimistic and say that the backlash from the second Trump catastrophe will be a full 8 years of simmering authoritarianism rather than the current rolling boil, but that wasn't even true after 2020. I think media saturation has gotten so strong that people are just so much easier to lead around by the nose. For example look at how many continuing hardcore Trump supporters there still are, even in the face of appalling abject failures like his choosing to simply give away the Strait of Hormuz of Iran. They've got ever-shifting rationalizations streaming into their brains 24/7.
Yup. that's why we need new Democrats.
If you want to help these new Democratic candidates, many are primary challengers that could use your help. I work on several Senate and Congressional campaigns, you wouldn't believe how impactful something as a simple well designed static site can be. There is a dearth of tech skills in these campaigns because they simply don't know alternatives.

Lots of low hanging fruit and very few people in the tech world can say they've worked on projects to improve the material lives of everyone by helping elect people that will implement medicare for all, universal childcare, and free school lunches.

I agree. But Republicans found a new Republican who spoke to their longstanding frustrations and look what it's gotten us. Just sayin'.
Republicans are getting what they voted for.
How do you knee cap big tech when other countries continue to push forward with it?
Why did we knee cap CIA/NSA/DOD from nominally operating on Americans when the Soviet Union continued to push forward with it?

For what it's worth, our once-and-(hopefully)-future allies the European Union are already on board with reigning in the surveillance industry (leading by example, even). So your question is more like how can we constrain our domestic technological authoritarians when China continues to embrace theirs. And the answer is that it's not a "how". The "how" is straightforwardly enforcing longstanding concepts like personal information, antitrust bundling, unauthorized access (backdoors in sold products), etc. So your question comes down to more of a why, and the why is because it is in line with our values based around individual liberty.

IMHO: when an emerging technology threatens the livelihoods of millions, it's responsible and ethical to step away from seeing this stuff through a purely competitive lens.

Out of the three big geographic players, the US and China are jockeying for "most performant" models (whatever that means) with two separate approaches; the EU is trying to develop models that work best within their privacy, human rights and labour rights frameworks and laws.

All of these have have merits, though arguably the US's (de-facto) strategy of market dominance at any cost with as few restraints as possible will be the worst for society at large. The prudent thing to do would be to first determine if this is something that will actually live up to the hype (which IMO is still very much in the air), and then if it does, turns this into an international collaboration rather than a competitive enterprise.

It's not lost on me that this is a terminally naive point of view.

You don't need to cap the technological process. You can simply curb the power of corrupt individuals. If anything it would accelerate progress.
If only there were some way to bet on the outcome...
God why do people frame things in such extremes? Neither person is a psychopath. If anyone is closer to a psychopath it’s Altman, but he doesn’t completely fit the monicker.
For all his weirdness and moral failings, I don’t see Altman saying things like whites being under apartheid in the US. And worse. Multiple times a day. Every day.
Outcomes matter, when both people are leading you to undemocratic societies why should I care about their messaging when both result in worse material lives for 100s of millions of people?
Psychopaths wear a mask of sanity but underneath they have no moral framework. Some people can hate black people or Muslims or anything like that but these qualities are very human. Things like racism has existed across cultures for more than several millennia among many people. A psychopath is a different ballgame.

A psychopath can plunge a knife into a babies face and feel no emotion. The only reason why the psychopath doesn’t plunge a knife into a babies face is because he has nothing to gain from it. The psychopath appears more sane then a racist because the psychopath is usually better at pretending to be sane simply because he is unable to comprehend the passionate yet racial hatred that the racist feels.

What I am saying is musk does not fit that archetype as much. Altman fits that archetype more. Neither actually crosses the threshold to be called a “psychopath” but if psychopathy was a gradient Altman is further down the line then musk. Much further.

That is the literal definition of what a psychopath is. You’re operating from a lack of understanding of the definition.

You’re trying to tell me, in an infinitely smug, condescending, and unnecessarily long-winded manner that you know as a clinical fact that Sam Altman is a psycopath?
No. Read it.

The way you're interpreting what I said makes you lean more towards psycopathy. It's deliberate and manipulative. You're a bit of an ass.

They are absolutely psychopaths. These are people that will flagrantly lie to your face and feel no remorse. They cause mass suffering and feel no remorse. They don't have empathy. They don't have normal human emotions.
Gleefully boasting again and again about ruining tens of thousands of lives is about as clear as it gets for evidence of psychopathy. Along with ~0 instances of empathy.
would you prefer sociopath? they're willing to lie to accumulate massive wealth irrespective of the harm.
When you're arguing the degree to which such powerful people fit the definition of psychopath, you're at extremes. You've just been in the warming pot too long to see it.
Haven't you heard? Psychopath, like Pedophile, is a mere epithet these days, to indicate a person's favoured status with the in-crowd. In contrast to the equally meaningless epithet "woke".
> like Pedophile

I really wouldn’t conflate these two. People with documented allegations of child rape are in a separate category from diagnosed-over-the-TV types.

who's calling people pedos that don't at least have credible allegations against them of that crime (eg trump)?
Musk has a history.
Outside of Elon Musk's Twitter, I think pedophile is actually used pretty appropriately in most spots.
Except Psychopath and Pedophile are actual words that weren't lifted straight off of gen-z slang.
How does everyone else suffer? We’re getting subsidized compute.
Look around at the country right now
Nothing to do with Altman v Musk. That would be an AI boom that would be going full steam ahead without either of them.
Almost no one in the country is feeling a boom. Everyone is feeling the consequences of their greed and recklessness.
AI is the only thing keeping the S&P afloat. You don't want to see what it would look like when all pensions numbers start going down. So far it's fake numbers from inflation and the value is decreasing dramatically, but at least they still go up.
huh? What are you are referring to is the lasting impacts of multiple years of inflation after living without it for 10 years. Those issues predate Musk v. Altman and would be happening without them.

AI build out / boom would be full bore without them.

The AI boom started a war with Iran and dismantled American public institutions?
Musk has a lot to do with the state of the country right now. Do you read the news?
You are really giving him a lot of credit here. Thats mostly the news cycle doing what it does - focusing on the big stories and loudest speakers.
These are the kind of hot takes Bluesky needs to hear. And lets be honest you already have an account there.
Yeah good job man, stick your head back in the sand. That'll help.
Would be nice if we could just afford things instead.