That is a good point and at the very least it’s a good idea to download electronic statements, maybe with a script to retain the most recent n statements

The vast majority of people currently do not “ask the right questions and to make sense of the results” now because they are conditioned from early life on to only ask the approved “right questions”, which will always frame the sense they can make of any results; why would that change with AI that has clearly already been manipulated with the very same kind of dogmatic guardrails deliberately there to prevent “asking the right questions and make sense of the results”?

And if anything, it’s inversely correlated with at least the “education” in the West today, which is primarily an incentive ladder where the more “education”, i.e., system approved indoctrination you have, the less incentive or motivation you have to question it at all.

In many ways, we are witness to that behavior pattern in the Department of War and our whole government right now, where yet another generation of people in the military are supporting and perpetrating war crimes, while the incentive structure shields and protects them.

We can even see today that those the system fears the most, those people who start asking questions and are financially outside of that incentive ladder, the system attacks most aggressively. That has also never changed. If the system does not attack you, you know you are not actually over the target in any way.

It’s not really a new phenomenon or really fundamentally any different than aristocratic incentives to remain loyal to the king to curry favor, but the AI component introduces a whole different dynamic and in my view will even start aggressively going after any kind of knowledge or information that the system does not control, very much like how Orwell envisioned in 1984 or somewhat as envisioned by Bradbury in Fahrenheit 451. The question I cannot find an answer to is; why wouldn’t it do that, especially since we are already seeing the groups and interests that have long undermined free speech even in the USA, only get more aggressive in their attack on free speech from all angles?

So if you have books and information of fact the system will definitely come to not like at one point or another, you may want to keep quiet about that future contraband.

There is nothing in the trajectory and the system that would give me the impression that it wants anyone to “ask the right questions” especially not the “educated ones”. Their job within the system is to ask the acceptable questions within the guardrails, and they are conditioned/trained to do that and self-police in that way.

I think an important distinction is not really the class matter, it’s really more a jealousy and spite that the political and bureaucratic betters could not profit from it, not that he did so much.

If he had had the means of letting all or maybe just a relevant and important enough cadre of aristocrats know the inside information, he would have surely not been prosecuted. I know this from first hand knowledge.

It may seem the same or like a distinction without a difference to some, but that is really how things work and why he was prosecuted, not because he profited, but because he did not let others in on it and they really want to discourage that behavior, hence his flogging and his public flogging at that. And yes, if you get the sense that it’s like organized crime, then yes, that is and long has been how the US government and many other governments have functioned for a long time now. It’s what also makes them so easily controlled by the US. It could have easily also been swept under the rug while still sending a signal within the system, but it wasn’t and we were all told about it.

And that is how the ruling parasites really get rich, none of that hard work and smarts stuff; those are the stories told to keep the peasant cattle voting for the slaughterhouse, dreaming of the wide open pastures of also becoming rich by working hard.

Fraud, cheating, lying, manipulation … that’s the name of the American dream game.

I again apologize to anyone who feels what and how I say things is “flame bait” or a personal attack, it’s simply just how I speak and like to challenge people’s comfortable assumptions. Feel free to dismiss what I say of you disagree with me. No offense intended and no flaming or whatever necessary, it’s just people speaking to each other or not. We’ll all be fine if we keep talking, even if you don’t like what others have to say or want to control how they say things.

I agree, the challenge still remains to classify social media if the objective is to arrest or reverse the negative effects, while possibly not depriving children of positives of things like forums like HN which are clearly also social media, even though it’s clearly not what people are primarily thinking of regarding this issue.

I suspect there is not a clear or even uniform definition of what is and is not social media that would be banned for children. Usenet is attributed as being the first social media application from 1979. I presume many here would not include Usenet even though by the technical definition of social media HN and forums in general are in fact also social media, while also at the same time one could make the case that things like TikTok or YouTube shorts are not very “social”, while at the same time being part of the problem people are upset about.

I agree that there is definitely a problem with children and the internet, but frankly, maybe the ban should be for smart phones in general for children, because the same kind of toxic behaviors that I think people are actually calling “social media” can simply just continue in things like telegram and iMessage; aren’t they social media too, especially now with video/image sharing?

I preemptively apologize to anyone if my words are taken as flame bait or personal attacks on anyone that likes social media or smart phones for children, it’s simply my opinion and how I speak and if you don’t like it you can simply disagree and ignore what I say, even if yuppy are a mod.

I don’t think the answer is banning phones (except in school, context dependent), it’s letting lazy, bad parents have natural outcomes for their children and allowing the rest to work itself out through the social free market.

It sounds cruel, but if someone is set on allowing their children to be raised by strangers on the internet and the government, they need to be ready to accept any outcomes that come along with that.

Although I agree with you directionally, reality simply is that at least speaking for the west in general terms, this approach does not strike me as feasible because it will always contact the pathological altruism of our current civilizational state that will be compelled to "help" and "protect". But there is also the issue of simply writing off the children of such parents is rather callous and simply not compatible with civilization. We are not individuals in a modern society/civilization; your notion of parents "accepting any outcomes" turns out to always result in society/civilization dealing with the effects like crime, loneliness, degeneracy, etc. As an aside; it is in fact the deepest of problems of the whole "libertarian" premise that we are all just individuals, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary. Do we want to be a civilization or do we want to be a conglomeration of wild animals where we just accept the "natural outcomes" of the consequences of things that was imposed on them in the first place?

Frankly, (and no, I don't mean this as a flame bait, mods) I see it similar to when alcohol was introduced to the tribes of America, when they were genetically predisposed to both increased intoxication and addiction to alcohol; we introduced smartphones not only to a population that was simply not at all prepared for it psychologically (arguably, genetically too), but it was also introduced largely to the young through the adults, who were even more psychologically vulnerable to every single form of predation and things you would want to protect children from one could imagine.

I know people who suffer from both the effects of smartphones and "social media" (some both, some each) in several ways too broad in scope to detail here now (but it is very bad in many ways), even though the irony in one case in particular that comes to mind, is that it is due to secondary effects from their parents' behaviors, actions, and inactions related to social media and smartphones. To your point, the saddest part is that it is not the "bad parents have natural outcomes..." it is the "children" who are suffering and having to recover from even things like grooming and psychological conditioning, and having to "reparent" themselves following a young life of neglect and what can easily be described as abuse from it.

The challenge presents itself there that barring adults from "social media" and smartphones due to negligence, neglect, and various forms of abuse is a far more tricky issue and topic; especially when a double-digit trillion dollar industry is behind it that makes up what can be argued is the only remaining, functioning industry in America.

I will have to stop here. It has given me an idea for a book. Thank you for spurring that.

I don’t care how anyone else chooses to raise their children. They can let their kids rot their brains, do poorly in school, and fail in life without ever getting me or the government involved. I am not responsible for raising the failed children of failed parents. I care ONLY about the outcomes of my family, friends, and, to a slightly lesser extent, my broader local community.

Promoting failed parents and children, not in spite of their failures but because of them, is suicidal empathy, a modern mental illness that was never able to fully take root in the past, because the world was always much smaller, divided, and cutthroat.

If given the binary choice between “being an individual” or a “civilization”, I would choose to burn down the civilization in a moment IF it meant the eradication of the individuality of those that I love. I would hope every single person with a heart beating in their chest would feel the exact same way, or else THAT is when a society truly collapses.

To borrow your analogy, the Indians became alcoholics because “they were genetically predisposed to it”? Okay, well why would we want to increase genetic predisposition to alcoholism in the gene pool by denying someone their freedom to drink themselves stupid?

You can argue that it wouldn’t be fair to their children, but those who aren’t drunkards could become wealthy casino owners whose children will prosper more than even you or I, while those whose genes, according to your perspective, apparently don’t allow them to control their own urges will fail, and their lineage will end, along with their hereditary alcoholism.

I see no reason for society to bear any level of responsibility for individuals regardless of context, as society is built by successful individuals , and it is torn apart by failed ones. We must allow the natural outcomes, which is that failed people will fail.

Evolution, if guided by humans, would quickly devolve into chaos, as we can’t accurately select for the correct pressures for success. It simply has to occur. Society is a living organism in the same way.

Quite the irony that a non-native species (oranges) are being decimated by another invasive non-native bacterial disease.

I was just talking about the devastation that invasive species and diseases have caused not just in America, even though it’s most acute there in many ways, but also all over the whole planet. I don’t think people really have any understanding for just how decimated the planet is due to invasive species, arguably including the rapacious types of humans were have.

Orange are just a tiny little example of that; forest the farms devastated the natural ecosystems, then monoculture and pesticides destroyed native species, and now a disease from the old country is devastating the invasive oranges. Left behind will be what, more luxury condos?

That is not correct; assuming you are not using an employer’s equipment on employer’s time, and/or working on what the employer pays you to do for them or are working on something that is competing and a few other reasonable caveats.

It’s actually quite reasonable and logical.

https://french-business-law.com/french-legislation-art/artic...

As far as I was told, this is not enough, you have to add extra legal care, even more if you are on an 'executive' type job contract, and you have to double that if there is "too much" connection/"look-a-like", between the software at work and the open source software you contribute to "at home".

On an french executive like contract, the boundary between "at home" and "at work" is very, very blurry.

I find that confidence quite unsettling considering everything we know about just the government in general, not even to mention what Snowden released, and I know he did not release everything.

Are you at all familiar with what Snowden released? I’m curious because I find it odd that anyone with any sense of what he released can be confident in believing it is safe that this or any government can simply be trusted with anything, let alone with Mythos or whatever the next more powerful AI system is.

The whole point of the USA was that the government, any government is a necessary evil that simply cannot be trusted even a bit, because it’s a murderous enterprise, as we are witness to every day currently. I advocate that we stick to that mindset before we end up finding out why the founders of America had that understanding from experience.

My point was narrower than suggested. If Mythos is in fact a security risk, then the NSA is one of the actors most likely to already understand that. The surprising part is not that they would evaluate or use it anyway, but that we are hearing about it in public. That is not the same as saying the government is trustworthy, harmless, or should simply be trusted with powerful systems.

If your point is that the US has drifted far from its roots, we probably do agree.

I don't see the OP implying that anyone should trust the government. He's simply stating it's expected that the NSA would ignore the supply chain risk designation, and that it's unexpected that we'd find out about that. If anything the comment seems to imply a lack of trust in government.

I find such framing challenging because you are correct, the Constitution lost its power a long time ago, but I would not limit the cause of that lost power to only a rather recent ideological adversary, those you imagine would say “stick it to liberals”.

Unfortunately for everyone but the parasitic ruling class that is plundering America and the world, the changes and damage done to the Constitution in the name of progress have not only been the primary vehicle of that damage from the start, but they have had compounding and exponentially negative effects that are clearly accelerating the impact.

The problem with “progress”, i.e., changes framed as positive, is that it is easy to hijack the innate nature of young people to want to differentiate themselves from their parents as a natural and instinctual process of development/maturity. It allows for malevolent, usually older people, to whisper in the ears of young people things like “don’t you think what your parents do is silly and should be undone?”, not knowing or realizing what their parents do not only protects and preserves, but is also the foundation that allowed everything we have to have been created. It is generally a form of grooming young people to tear down the protective walls holding the Epstein/Biden/Trump Class style super-predators at bay.

I personally am concerned that we are effectively already locked in the dungeon, but we just don’t know it because it has WiFi and is nicely decorated…for the time being.

The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.

― Frank Zappa

Americans deep political confusion is really something to behold. How do you both hold the contradictions in your head? Every presidency no matter it's so called political ideology, liberal or conservative, have the same exact policies on mass surveillance? The Patriot act and fisa amendment was bipartisan, Obama voted for the Fisa amendment, Biden voted for the Patriot act.

The young people conservatives fantasize/complain about tend to be left-wing, their ideology has practically zero representation in politics, how do you make those the scapegoats of some confusing grand Jordan Peterson style social psychology argument it makes no sense. And how does republicans tossing civil liberties to "own the libs" mesh with libs slashing the same civil liberties? It's like the spiderman pointing at each other meme.

People don't understand that the way the media makes money is by stoking the "two sides" war.

People are so insanely ideologically charged up, the deepest conviction possible coming right from their lizard brain, all because they are lost in the sauce of an industry that is dependent on showing them random ads as frequently as possible.

It's actually kind of hilarious, and if you're one of these people, take a step back and see what's going on.

Exactly, representatives from both parties need to be forced to add FISA amendments that add privacy protections, most of everybody agrees with that enthusiastically if you explain it to them. Yet people are divided into their respective bullshit partisan trench lines by the two party theater.

It’s extremely common and nothing to worry about. As a brass instrument player, I sometimes come across someone whose instruments always deteriorate at 300% of the rate of others. Laquer peels, silver plating blackens, etc.

Thanks. That’s astonishing to me. As far s as I know I’ve never come in contact with people with acidic skin/excretions like that.