The evidence that the fungi overlords will soon take over continues to mount…that’s why I don’t eat mushrooms…better safe than sorry…

What do you expect to change for the world? The US has been a plutocracy for decades. Really not all too much difference to states like Russia - just another approach. The people in power did whatever they wanted to do for a very long time. Now they are just changing their modus operandi and giving up the pretense. Why? - well, because they can.

The only thing that worries me is that they could lose control over their straw man in the White House, but I think that’s unlikely because he’s much more like Hermann Göring than Adolf Hitler. He may be a hopeless narcissist, but he’s so incredibly greedy that filthy lucre and indulging his perversions are probably more important to him than real power, because power means commitment, and he’d rather go golfing.

Wow, the US really is just a complete clown show - the usual ridiculousness has increased many times over since January, and so has the greed. But yet: there is hardly any serious resistance to the obvious establishment of a dictatorship. Well, the citizens are probably so used to living in an unjust state that they think it wouldn’t make any difference.

For everyone else in the world, it probably won’t really make a difference, except that they’ll have to deal with another mentally ill despot. But I think that despite all the regime’s open organized crime, despite its brutish violence, the majority of US citizens still don’t understand what it means to live in a dictatorship.

We can only hope that the US will not resort to excessive use of its inflated military apparatus when the country inevitably continues to decline. Given the viciousness of the regime, this is unfortunately to be expected.

It would be great if the Americans could finally lock these criminals away, but to be honest, I gave up hope of that a long time ago.

Very good and very important!

Thank you to everyone who stands up against hatred and for a tolerant, humane society.

Thank you, I really appreciate that.

Figures and/or examples would be very interesting for:

1. The statement that LLMs will continue to develop rapidly and/or that their output will still improve significantly in quality. I currently assume that development will slow down considerably—for example, with regard to hallucinations, where it was assumed for some time that the problem could be solved by more extensive training data, but this has proven to be a dead end.

2. The statement that the value of the companies involved can be justified in any way with real-world assets. Or, at any rate, reliable statements about how existing or planned data centers built for this purpose can be operated economically despite their considerable running costs.

3. How you justify your statement that it would be realistic to replace human workers on a large scale. Examples where this is the case would be interesting (by this I don’t mean figures on where workers have been laid off, but examples of companies where human work has been (successfully) made obsolete by LLMs – I am not aware of any such examples where this has happened in a significant way and attributable to the use of LLMs).

4. I am aware that the technology is being used in warfare. I am not aware of its significance or the tactical advantages it is supposed to offer. Please provide examples of what you mean.

Considering what LLMs are useful for, I wouldn’t say so. But in terms of how it’s all being marketed, how it’s being pushed on consumers for no apparent reason, I definitely agree.

Do you have any sources that cite figures that would suggest this? To be honest, I have my doubts—except for the statement that money is being shifted back and forth; however, I don’t understand why massive investments in data centers would make sense in this context if it’s not just making a profit for Nvidia and such.

As I said, I don’t consider LLMs and image generation to be technologies without use cases. I’m simply saying that the impact of these technologies is being significantly and very deliberately overestimated. Take so-called AI agents, for example: they’re a practical thing, but miles away from how they’re being sold.

Furthermore, even Open AI is very far from being in the black, and I consider it highly doubtful that this will ever be possible given the considerable costs involved. In my opinion, the only option would be to focus on marketing opportunities, which is the business model of the classic Google search engine—but this would have a very negative impact on user value.

Thank you for this comment. I completely agree with you: I think all it takes is people who act according to their conscience—that results in a community worth living in. That’s all it takes.

I would say that we will very soon find ourselves in 1984 or perhaps Brazil, with a little bit of The Circle and Her thrown in, but overall it will be more like The Road due to climate change, unless Elysium technology has been developed by then, which is unlikely, but if so, it will certainly be used as depicted in the film.

How can the fascists be prevented from presenting their inhumane, xenophobic ideology as patriotism? How and why would anyone stop people from using a word? How is that supposed to work?

Language is a cultural matter that changes in its use. In this context, (social) media are pretty influential these days. However, the problem is that because a few very influential people can influence what billions of people see, they also have a disproportionately greater influence on the discourse from which the usage and meaning of terms derives. Therefore, it seems to me that the only people who could prevent others from presenting fascist ideology as patriotism are, unfortunately, the same people who ensure that fascist propaganda is presented as patriotic.

An example: Ten years ago, it was unthinkable in Germany to use Nazi slogans in public. People who did so were socially isolated because they were Nazis. Today, however, politicians can stand in front of the camera and quote Goebbels. The reason, in my opinion, is that all this Nazi crap has been pushed so hard by influential media billionaires that it now gives the impression of being a socially acceptable attitude. My point: It can also be an effect created by the media, especially social media: It seems as if you can say these things without running the risk of being socially isolated for your inhuman views – and unfortunately, this has now spilled over into the real world.

What I mean by this is that in order to influence discourse and thus also the usage and meaning of words to some extent, you need to influence the media that people use - and these media platforms are controlled by people like Musk.

But stopping things like flag pledges that I mentioned would make the word less powerful for misuse.

Well, I can see that you disagree and I don’t think we’ll ever see eye to eye on this.

My opinion is that patriotism and nationalism cause far more harm than good. Of course, one can disagree, but I haven’t read a single comment in this entire thread that addresses why patriotism is so important or what positive effects it has.

Only references to the fact that nationalism and patriotism are not the same thing, which is clear to me — still: interestingly, no one has addressed where the difference lies. And no one has addressed the actual statement, namely that both concepts are abused as instruments of power.

That’s a shame.

If people didn’t invoke patriotism so excessively, as they do, for example, in the US with flag pledges in schools, Stars and Stripes air shows at sporting events after the national anthem, that gets played nearly every time, flags everywhere from houses to tv shows, and much much more constant declarations of love for this proud nation, if all that would not happen every day, don’t you think it would be way harder to spread propaganda on this basis?

No, but give them as few opportunities as possible to justify their misdeeds. Patriotism is traditionally the favorite argument of unscrupulous oportunists: they invoke it because it appeals to people and offers them a way out, a way to legitimize morally reprehensible acts—in the sense that you can do whatever you want because it is in the service of the fatherland.

How this works can currently be seen in Israel, for example: here, soldiers commit terrible atrocities and claim that human rights do not apply to enemies of Israel, enemies of their holy fatherland. So they act as ruthlessly as possible because it is supposedly patriotic.

It is important to make it clear that people remain people, even if they have a different nationality. Emphasizing national pride and all that makes this more difficult, because if you always emphasize how proud you are of your country, you inherently emphasize at the same time that people of other nationalities do not belong. For reasonably rational people, it is of course perfectly obvious that this does not imply any judgment of people of other nationalities—on the contrary, many are rightly proud that their country is just and guarantees human rights. The problem, however, is that many people are anything but rational—and some of them are only looking for (spurious) arguments to use against others: patriotism is ideal for this purpose because it is an abstract concept - there is no universal definition of what it means.

That’s why I believe we should emphasize patriotism as little as possible and instead stick to concrete issues—such as emphasizing a fair legal system and so on. This makes it less abstract and offers less potential for abuse.

Decent people.

All I want to say is this: if you insist on portraying patriotism as something good and lose sight of reality in the face of idealism, however desirable, this leads to situations like those in Nazi Germany—and history is currently repeating itself in the US. The reason will always be the same: unfortunately, people are not inherently good, and the bad ones know how to exploit this.

With regard to the US, my point is simple: patriotism is an abstract idea that is currently being massively abused by fascists to create an unjust state very similar to Nazi Germany, which fortunately came to an end. They are using exactly the same propaganda techniques that the Nazis used in Germany to establish their reign of terror.

If you agree with me that patriotism has been misused for the most horrific atrocities ever committed by humankind, where do you see the value of this concept? Even if one starts from a purely utilitarian ethic, what could ever outweigh that?

The actual Sturmabteilung (SA) and all other Nazi divisions also claimed to be patriots—they killed millions of people under this premise. That is a fact, and that is what I am getting at.

My argument is that terminology is irrelevant; what matters is how both concepts are used in practice: both are employed and explicitly emphasized to persuade people to serve a centralized power, usually against their own interests. This was the case in the Third Reich and is also the case in the US today (and in many other countries as well).

What I’m getting at: Theoretical distinctions are only relevant in theory, but not when you look at practice – and there it makes no difference whether someone calls themselves a nationalist or a patriot if both can be used to suppress dissenters by force.

It would be nice if people who call themselves patriots were good people, but history teaches us that they are usually not.

If patriotism were practiced in this way, it would be desirable, but that is not the case. The current US administration’s portrayal of its criminal actions as patriotic duty should be example enough. This obviously has nothing to do with what you are saying. And yet, it is the reality.

Here’s an example of what I mean: Every ICE employee in the US will claim to be a patriot. I don’t think there’s much more to say about that.

I’m from Germany myself, and I can assure you that every Nazi in the Third Reich also considered himself a patriot.

Your distinction may be relevant in theory, but it is not in practice.