#bezo philosophy

[theonlybezo]

Saw this sign on the way home and had to photograph it.

[theonlybezo]

Remember the Britney Spears episode of South Park? Where it's revealed that we sacrifice young women's lives to some sort of harvest cult and the "next harvest was going to be even better" showing a picture of Miley Cyrus?

Look, say what you will about all the various ways South Park destroyed discourse for multiple generations (I personally contend that Trey Parker and Matt Stone exposed something that already existed rather than led to its creation). But it's undeniable that there is an American culture of finding young women and giving them a platform no person should have and repeatedly punishing them for having it.

That episode is more than 16 years old and we've learned nothing.

“While this is clearly another prime example of why the internet desperately needs to value media literacy again, it’s also glaring proof that Roan’s feelings of being under a microscope aren’t in her head. SNL ran a four-minute sketch that mentioned her name twice and it’s already spawned thousands of tweets and dozens of articles in less than 48 hours. And these are from people who say they’re fans of Roan. Now, imagine what people who dislike the “Hot To Go” singer might say the next time she so much as opens her mouth. “I’m still trying to catch up,” Roan said in July. “It’s been a really hard adjustment.” The singer has also been open about her struggles with managing her bipolar II disorder, dealing with stalkers, being grabbed by fans, and handling the stress that comes with a lightning-fast rise in popularity all at the same time. It’s no wonder she needed a break. Fans of Roan are quick to protect the pop star online. But in their effort to keep bad-faith actors from becoming the loudest voices in the room, the fans are quickly adopting the same energy that Roan herself is desperate to end. Maybe the best way to make sure your favorite artist’s favorite artist is able to stay in her dream career starts with knowing when to not take everything so seriously.”

— Chappell Roan, SNL, and Moo Deng: Can We All Chill Out?

[slacktivist]

There are only a handful of people who really "benefit" from exploiting labour and non-renewable resources. The global economic system reinforces the power that this handful of people have, even if they were a group that never crossed paths.

Your salary is negotiated in a vaccum, while the cost of living is relative. The price of all goods are determined to maximize company profit, but the return on those profits are decided by those with the most power and therefore incentive to benefit the most. The return is completely subjective to the person who has that power, and those who are close to that power are incentivised through financial and survivor bias, to reinforce the person who holds the power.

Complacency is greedy. There are people who make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, sometimes millions. For doing absolutely nothing. Have you ever thought that being a manager isn't a 'real job'? That's because in most cases, it isn't a job. It's a formal stepping stone to reinforce hierarchies where people are incentivised to reach a higher salary. It literally exists to justify your inadequacy to change your social caste.

Europe, the new western world, the new global north has been built upon these structures for centuries, and it has been "science" and western philosophy that has justified the pervasiveness of "global economics" . Competition is not exploitation. Competition is incentive. Greedy individuals have successfully stunted technological growth by outsourcing exploitation at a global scale and forceably shaping the world using their power, influence, and propaganda. If you think your favorite tourist destination is innocent in this, you are hopelessly wrong .

[sillyfreakx5]

i might have just started to solve my Ethical Crisis II. because like... it doesn't matter. it doesn't matter if i know what's ethically correct right now. I'm not influencing anyone else to do whatever, i just want to fucking experience this. I'm gonna do all of [thing] regardless of if i extensively think about the ethics of it, worsening my mental health in the process. so why just... NOT try to figure out the right answer?

i don't need to have all the answers right now. i just need to live.

[philosopherking1887]

Another rant about Neo-Rousseauianism on the Left

Why do people in the online Left have to set up this false dichotomy between “people are inherently evil” (i.e., selfish, competitive, aggressive) and “people are inherently good” (i.e., altruistic, cooperative, caring -- since those are the meanings we all tend to assume these days)? Showing examples of people being altruistic, or evidence that ancient humans cared for the vulnerable in their communities, doesn’t prove that that is the pure, sole essence of human nature; it shows that that’s part of human nature.

Human beings everywhere, in all cultures and time periods, have always shown a mix of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ behavior. Both tendencies exist in all groups; (almost) all individuals have both tendencies within them. Why is it so difficult to draw the inference that both are equally natural, and neither is a mere imposition of the artificial conditions of civilization (or capitalism, or Western colonialism, or whatever)? Then you won’t be ~shocked~ when people sometimes are selfish and violent, sometimes for no good reason -- i.e., when it’s not somehow determined by their social situation (or they’ve been “corrupted by society,” in more overtly Rousseauian terms).

Why does this bother me so much? It all comes back to what my professor in a history seminar on the French Revolution said about how Rousseau’s philosophy led to the Terror, which I didn’t fully understand at the time, but which has come to make more and more sense as I spend time in Leftist spaces on the internet. Rousseau claimed that human beings are naturally good, but living in society, particularly in corrupt social structures that makes some people dependent on others, corrupts their natural inclinations to sympathy and leads to envy and the desire to dominate others. If we can just institute perfect social structures, then, everyone would return to their naturally innocent, benevolent state. (Rousseau’s own views are a little more complicated, but this is more or less how the Jacobins read it.)

But what happens when people continue to show selfishness and the desire to dominate within a social structure that has been (in theory) perfected? What’s wrong with them? Ideally, they can be ‘reeducated’; but if they persist in not being appropriately good-natured, they must be dangerous anomalies, and there’s no choice but to extirpate them from society, to purify it. This was what happened during the Terror, when people appeared to the Jacobins to be working against the good of the people (as they understood it): they must still be corrupted remnants of the old society, unsuited to have a place in the new.

Left Anarchism rests on the Rousseauian assumption that if you just leave people to their own devices, they will all be benevolent and prosocial; that what actually makes people bad is the existence of laws and institutions, and if no one has institutional power, then no one will harm or wrong anyone else. But we have zero evidence that this is true, and it honestly just seems like a perverse interpretation of human history. Under lawless as under lawful conditions, people still show a mix of benevolent, self-interested, and malicious impulses and behaviors.

The idea that humans are or should be naturally good, not naturally a mix of good and evil, encourages the idea that people should be punished not just for breaking explicit laws, but for behaving immorally (or even just having those inclinations), because it shows that they are somehow intrinsically wrong or corrupted, a dangerous deviation from wholesome human nature. And the only mechanism available to sanction anti-social or ‘immoral’ behavior in a society without laws and institutions is vigilante or ad hoc mob violence. Who decides what’s deserving of punishment? Who decides what the punishment is? Anyone and everyone. It has the potential to collapse into a kind of totalitarianism, where everyone has to fear their neighbors -- but now they have no clear way of knowing what will incur punishment. (And frankly, we already see this kind of thing in microcosm in the self-cannibalism and purity politics of online spaces dominated by certain strains of Leftist ideology and social justice rhetoric.)

A system of laws is preferable to anarchism for exactly the same reason that it’s preferable to authoritarianism and client-based systems of affiliation and loyalty (feudalism and its smaller-scale variants): it minimizes arbitrariness. Generally speaking, people have a way of knowing what they can do and what they’ll be punished for; they’re not subject to the whims of individual rulers or vigilantes. Most people will follow the laws because they want to be cooperative, or just because everyone else is doing it. But some people need the threat of predictable sanction so that their self-interest will guide them to behave in ways that are beneficial to the community. The rule of law rests on the assumption that people are a mix of altruistic and selfish, cooperative and opportunistic. Ideally, institutions moderate the ability of opportunistic individuals to wield power arbitrarily. They are built to harness a combination of the altruism and self-interest, the generosity and ambition of individuals to work for the good of the whole society.

And if the laws and institutions aren’t working for the benefit of the whole society? You change them; you don’t tear them all down on the assumption that the mere existence of institutions is what causes oppression and injustice, and that an egalitarian utopia will materialize as soon as all the Bad People (the billionaires, or the cishet white men or whatever) are guillotined (or eaten, or shot into the sun). There’s not a single class that can be identified and pruned out as the source of all evil in society. There will still be selfish, opportunistic, competitive, violent tendencies within people after the ones currently in power have been executed; you can’t rely on Fundamentally Good Human Nature to reassert itself in the absence of those Few Bad Apples.

You think there shouldn’t be billionaires? Great, I agree on that. But the solution is not to execute the people who are currently billionaires because they made all their money by exploiting people and they were immorally hoarding all their wealth instead of giving it away to people who are starving. You know what that sounds like to me? The revolutionaries beheading Louis XVI not because he broke any identifiable laws, but because “no one reigns innocently.” You can’t execute people for being immoral. You make laws so that people who are inclined to behave immorally can’t do massive harm to others without incurring predictable penalties. You rewrite the tax code so that it’s impossible for anyone to become a billionaire without breaking the law. You change employment laws so that employers can’t exploit their workers in the ways that were necessary for the owners to become billionaires. If the billionaires broke existing laws to amass their wealth, make sure they’re prosecuted “to the full extent of the law,” as they say. But the sentence for committing financial crimes, tax fraud, employment violations, etc. is unlikely to be the death penalty. Can you prove that bad working conditions caused deaths? Great, maybe you can get ‘em on negligent homicide. But there’s no sane, rational, sustainable system that can license summary executions for people who caused a lot of harm by doing bad things that were legal, or didn’t carry the death penalty, at the time they did them.

[sellingforstartups]

[jayjuno]

social media is the new wall street

musk, bezos, zuckerberg, trump are nouveau robber barons

so Socrates was right

[myuberlife-business-consulting]

🧠 Leveraging the cultural and innovative strengths of the United States can provide a pathway out of the current economic climate by focusing on several key areas:

1. Stimulating Economic Growth Through Innovation

Investment in Technology and Research:

- Continued investment in technology and innovation can drive economic growth. Technological advancements create new industries and job opportunities. For instance, the tech sector, including companies like Apple, Google, and Amazon, contributes significantly to GDP and job creation.

- Research and Development (R&D) spending leads to new products and services, boosting productivity and economic expansion. In 2020, the U.S. spent over $600 billion on R&D, which is critical for maintaining its competitive edge.

2. Boosting Consumer Confidence and Spending

Cultural Exports:

- The entertainment industry, particularly Hollywood and the music industry, can stimulate economic activity through global exports. Movies, music, and related merchandise drive significant revenue, which supports various sectors within the economy.

- Streaming services and digital platforms can expand their global reach, increasing revenue streams and promoting U.S. cultural products abroad.

3. Enhancing Workforce Skills

Education and Training:

- Investing in education and skills training ensures that the workforce can adapt to changing economic conditions and technological advancements. Programs that focus on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) can prepare workers for high-demand fields.

- Online education platforms and alternative education models (e.g., coding bootcamps) can provide flexible and accessible learning opportunities, helping workers acquire new skills and improve their employability.

4. Fostering Entrepreneurship and Small Businesses

Support for Startups and Small Businesses:

- Encouraging entrepreneurship through grants, loans, and tax incentives can lead to the creation of new businesses and job opportunities. Startups, particularly in the tech sector, can drive innovation and economic growth.

- Public-private partnerships can provide the necessary support and resources for small businesses to thrive, fostering a dynamic and resilient economy.

5. Utilizing Soft Power and International Influence

Cultural Diplomacy:

- The global influence of American culture can be leveraged to enhance diplomatic relations and trade opportunities. By promoting cultural exchanges and international collaborations, the U.S. can strengthen its global position and create economic opportunities.

- Soft power, derived from cultural influence, can attract foreign investment and enhance the attractiveness of the U.S. as a business destination.

6. Encouraging Domestic Consumption

Stimulating Domestic Markets:

- Promoting domestic consumption through targeted fiscal policies can drive economic recovery. For instance, providing financial support to households can boost consumer spending, leading to increased demand for goods and services.

- Policies that support domestic industries, such as manufacturing and agriculture, can ensure that increased consumption benefits local businesses and worker.

7. Addressing Income Inequality

Note Sure Here: Universal Basic Income and Social Safety Nets:

- Implementing programs like Universal Basic Income (UBI) can provide a financial safety net, reducing poverty and inequality. By ensuring a basic level of income for all citizens, UBI can stimulate consumer spending and support economic stability.

- Strengthening social safety nets, including unemployment benefits and healthcare, can provide security for individuals, allowing them to invest in education and entrepreneurial activities.

Conclusion

By leveraging the cultural, innovative, and educational strengths of the United States, the economy can navigate through the current challenges and emerge stronger. Investment in technology, education, and entrepreneurship, combined with the global influence of American culture, provides a robust foundation for sustained economic growth and resilience.

References

1. [National Science Foundation](https://www.nsf.gov/)

2. [Federal Reserve](https://www.federalreserve.gov/)

3. [Harvard University](https://www.harvard.edu/)

4. [MIT](https://www.mit.edu/)

5. [Stanford University](https://www.stanford.edu/)

6. [Hollywood Industry Report](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/)

7. [Music Industry Data](https://www.riaa.com/)

8. [Technology Market Analysis](https://www.techcrunch.com/)

9. [Global Innovation Index](https://www.globalinnovationindex.org/)

[scotianostra]

On November 25th 1835 Andrew Carnegie, was born in Dunfermline.

“To try to make the world in some way better than you found it is to have a noble motive in life.” - Andrew Carnegie

Today I thought we’d look into things we might not know about Andrew Carnegie

So how rich was he really? Well in 2015, the Carnegie Corporation estimated that at his peak wealth, Carnegie was worth $309 billion (accounting for inflation). For comparison, in 2022, Elon Musk is worth about $219 billion, Jeff Bezos is worth roughly $171 billion and Bill Gates comes in at $129 billion.

“To try to make the world in some way better than you found it is to have a noble motive in life.” - Andrew Carnegie

Andrew Carnegie's philanthropic career began around 1870 in his native Dunfermline and ultimately extending throughout the English-speaking world, including the United States, Australia, and New Zealand.

In 1887, Carnegie married Louise Whitfield of New York City. She supported his philanthropy, and signed a prenuptial marriage agreement stating Carnegie’s intention of giving away virtually his entire fortune during his lifetime. Two years later he wrote The Gospel of Wealth, which boldly articulated his view of the rich as trustees of their wealth who should live without extravagance, provide moderately for their families, and use their riches to promote the welfare and happiness of others. This statement of his philosophy was read all over the world, and Carnegie's intentions were widely praised.

“The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.” - Andrew Carnegie

In 1889, Carnegie published The Gospel of Wealth, publicly extolling his beliefs that personal wealth should be distributed for community benefit once your family’s needs were taken care of.

“The problem of our age is the proper administration of wealth, so that the ties of brotherhood may still bind together the rich and poor in harmonious relationship,” - Andrew Carnegie

Want to hear the man himself reading from his Gospel of Wealth check the link below

In 1911 Andrew Carnegie established Carnegie Corporation of New York, which he dedicated to the “advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding.” It was the last philanthropic institution founded by Carnegie and was dedicated to the principles of “scientific philanthropy,” investing in the long-term progress of our society. Carnegie himself was the first president of the Corporation, which he endowed in perpetuity with his remaining fortune — $135 million — to be used principally to promote education and international peace. While his primary aim was to benefit the people of the United States, Carnegie later determined to use a portion of the funds for members of the British Overseas Commonwealth. For the Trustees of the Corporation, he chose his longtime friends and associates, giving them permission to adapt its programs to the times. “Conditions upon the earth inevitably change,” he wrote in the Deed of Gift, “hence no wise man will bind Trustees forever to certain paths, causes or institutions…. They shall best conform to my wishes by using their own judgment.”

By the time of his death, Andrew Carnegie, despite his best efforts, had not been able to give away his entire fortune. He had distributed $350 million, but had $30 million left, which went into the Corporation’s endowment. Toward the end of his life, Carnegie, a pacifist, had a single goal: achieving world peace. He believed in the power of international laws and trusted that future conflicts could be averted through mediation. He supported the founding of the Peace Palace in The Hague in 1903, gave $10 million to found the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in 1910 to “hasten the abolition of international war,” and worked ceaselessly for the cause until the outbreak of World War I. He died, still brokenhearted about the failure of his efforts, in August 1919, two months after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles.

Andrew Carnegie helped give the world Sesame Street -Yes really!

The Carnegie Corporation provided the American television writer and producer Joan Ganz Cooney with the funds to develop Sesame Street and the Children’s Television Workshop. According to Sherrie Westin, executive vice president of global impact and philanthropy at the Sesame Workshop, “Sesame Street literally would not be here were it not for the bold vision and audacious philanthropy of the Carnegie Corporation.”

The iconic saguaro cactus is named after him, the plant, which is found only in the Sonoran Desert in Arizona and Mexico, can live as long as 200 years and grow to be 45 feet tall. Its scientific name, Carnegiea gigantea, is a nod to Carnegie’s philanthropic contribution to botany: The Carnegie Institution, founded in 1902, helped establish the Desert Botanical Laboratory in Tucson in 1903.

One of Carnegie's major philanthropic efforts included donating 7600 of the instruments to churches across the United States. He also oversaw the installation of the 8600-pipe organ at Carnegie Music Hall in Pittsburgh in 1895 and had pipe organs in his homes in New York and Scotland.

In keeping with his wealth philosophy, Carnegie left his wife Louise a small amount of money, as well as their properties in Manhattan and Scotland, when he died. His only child, a daughter named Margaret, received nothing but a small trust. She eventually had to sell the family townhome because it was too expensive to maintain. But that was it—the rest of his immense wealth went to his charitable causes and endowments.

You might think that that would cause some resentment on the part of his heirs, but they apparently all agreed to the arrangement well before Carnegie passed away.

[fernlessbastard]

ok hot take. we all hate capitalists. I know. I do too. I really, REALLY hate capitalists.

that being said C!Quackity is the definition of a capitalist. like in a fully "I made the money, I deserve it because I took the risks." "its not my fault that some people dont work as hard as I do." "las nevadas is a company, the only government is the corporation which Quackity owns." way.

he is sat RIGHT at the bottom right corner on the political compass, and he is not budging. obviously, thats not to say hes a homophobe or a racist or generally a bigot, but hes very much a land hoarding, greedy, individualistic, profiteer type guy.

him and wilbur have gotten into several arguments about this, as with pretty much all of the ways Quackity runs his goverment, and shots have been FIRED.

I think the main argument from wilbur would be: "was it your fault that you were homeless after you ran from schlatt? do you really belive that youre the only person who has ever needed to run from financial abuse?" and "if it hadn't been for my policies about taking in all we can feed, then you would have starved to death in the woods. according to your philosophy I should have told you to piss off because you wernt profitable."

and then quackity responding with: "you change your ideology like youre a kid playing dressup, dont act like youre better than me because you woke up and decided that being a marxist suited your situation best, you just want something to argue about." and "you only took me in BECAUSE I was profitable. maybe not through labour but you would have used me as a bargaining chip any day of the week."

anyways, they've both been heads of state and both of them are well versed in political science and economics, which leads to both some very fun conversations and some less fun arguments. (wilbur might enjoy it a little)

ok so yes I agree with that take in the context of the smp, but it's also important to point out that minecraft "capitalism" is what those capitalists who want to convince you it's good claim capitalism to be. Food is abundant, shelter has little requirements to be functional, you can literally just dig a little into a hill and you're set, and then make a farm from things you can find anywhere. Anyone can mine, anyone has access to anywhere that isn't already someone's exact base, food is easily accessible and renewable, etc etc.

What Quackity's doing is he's actually providing a luxury service which isn't at all necessary. And Las Nevadas deserves to earn a profit from people using its facilities, cause they've been carefully and deliberately made to provide entertainment. Quackity doesn't have monopoly on food, shelter, land, resources, etc. Anyone could make their own small version of LN if they had the want and time to. So it isn't fair putting cQuackity in the same box as idfk bezos or musk, cause in cQ's case it's deserved, earned, and not a monopoly that causes everyone but him to suffer. Translating that into real life is just simply much more difficult than taking it at face value

As a sidenote I think that while Quackity is like that on the outside, he still wouldn't ignore someone needing help. Like, he's definitely got that built up resentment of "I had to work for all of this so hard, I've gotten through so many hardships. Why should someone else have it easier??" but then when the push comes to shove he's still end up helping, even if just a little bit.

[robfinancialtip]

Greg shares Jeff Bezos's philosophy about focusing on what won't change in the next decade rather than short-term predictions. He emphasizes that while marketing channels and tools may evolve, the fundamentals of eCommerce remain constant.

We discuss the challenges of platform silos, rising marketing costs, and how social media platforms are making it harder to drive external traffic.

Chapters 0:00 Intro 0:41 The Future of eCommerce 2:07 Why You Need to Watch Marketing Trends 3:15 Painpoints of Social Media Marketing Platforms 4:23 Tracking eCommerce Traffic and Client Retention

[theonlybezo]

Remember when the losers of the manosphere realized they could no longer pretend to be alpha males, even to themselves, so they invented the sigma male (which, when you think about it is actually better than being an alpha male)?

Babygirl, you're not a lone-wolf secret leader, you're just a failure.

[thedoncasterk3]

yeeeeah so I'm clinically addicted to "the space school sapphic romance that becomes a high tech political thriller that becomes a shakespearean revenge plot"-

But genuinely watch Witch From Mercury, here's my pitch/rant:

it starts off with an ep0 "prologue" that already tells you this show is something. It details a science institute that was doing research on an experimental brain-linked interface for machinework (Gund-Arm, aka Gundam), the life of a few people there (including a mom, a dad and their baby), and the assault the government launched on it without warning because of that interface's drawback of being insanely demanding of the human body, and how barely a few people escaped from it.

And then immediately the toneshift going back into ep1 with the protag joining a new school and somehow awkwarding her way into:

-getting into a big robot fight with the top bully in school

-winning

-gaining a courtship with the daughter of space jeff bezos and not even knowing that that would happen.

The show starts off fun and wholesome as suletta and miorine grow close to eachother and other friends they make, and then from roughly halfway through S1 the show starts to give you both the happy chemicals and OH GOD moments, and oh my god it keeps getting better consistently (There's something insane about seeing a usually serious and angry character break their façade in one ep to talk about their romantic feelings, and immediately next episode, have their façade fully fall apart out of sheer fear of something).

:)

Anyway, on a non-"ohno" note

The characters are all likeable, well written and broad and each grow and change throughout the show (including background characters), multiple threadlines keep being unpacked that make you more and more excited and concerned simultaneously, and there's SO many good twists/reveals in it that completely change how you perceive the show or even where the show is going. Not to mention this show will make you question philosophies and ideals heavily. The writing on this show was done with surgical precision.

Sulemio will bring you to the top of the world and also yank you right back down without a parachute (this post was made halfway through S2 and i am in suffering but also worth it for them)

Also, the morals are surprisingly not as black and white as you think, and every character, be it villain or hero, has a completely different motivation which is insanely satisfying.

Also, the animation is fucking BEAUTIFUL.

And with the majority in 2D even for the big battles with the mobile suits, with 3D only being used for rapidly flying small drones or complicated mobile suit coreography and the like. The soundtrack is also incredible too, with there being a crazy amount of orchestral music written for it and the main themes being of a genre only describable as "pop, orchestral and techno fused into one". Love the S2 opener "slash", my favorite overall.

but yes overall, this is a threat if you don't watch this show I will find your fridge and steal ham from it.

PS: the happy birthday song is brought up more than once in the show, and that's a happy and good thing...right?

...right?

[kafkasapartment]

“Or that “the lives of Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) and René Descartes (1596–1650) synced almost perfectly with each other, despite the one being the dogmatically Puritan figurehead of the English Civil War, and the other the father of modern, rationalist philosophy by giving doubt to a central role in the pursuit of truth”?

[mariacallous]

Elon Musk just dragged ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence programs into the Trump crosshairs by repeating his warning that current AI models are too “woke” and “politically correct.”

“A lot of the AIs that are being trained in the San Francisco Bay Area, they take on the philosophy of people around them,” Musk said at the Future Investment Initiative, a Saudi Arabia government–backed event held in Riyadh this week. “So you have a woke, nihilistic—in my opinion—philosophy that is being built into these AIs.”

Although Musk is himself a polarizing figure, he is right about AI systems harboring political biases. The issue, however, is far from one-sided, and Musk’s framing may help further his own interests due to his ties to Trump. Musk runs xAI, a competitor to OpenAI, Google, and Meta that could benefit if those companies become government targets.

“Musk clearly has a close, close relationship with the Trump campaign, and any comment that he’s making will hold a big influence,” says Matt Mittelsteadt, a research fellow at George Mason University. “At a maximum he could have some sort of seat in a potential Trump administration, and his views could actually be enacted into some sort of policy.”

Musk has previously accused both OpenAI and Google of being infected with “the woke mind virus.” When Google’s Gemini chatbot produced historically inaccurate images, including black Nazis and Vikings, in February, Musk saw it as proof of Google using AI to spread an absurdly woke outlook.

Musk is clearly no fan of government regulation, but he backed a proposed AI bill in California that would have required companies to make their AI models available for vetting.

The first Trump administration also targeted perceived bias at Big Tech companies with an executive order that sought to hold platforms such as Twitter, Google, and Facebook accountable for censoring information for political reasons. The pressure had a tangible impact, with Meta ultimately abandoning plans for a dedicated news section on Facebook.

Mittelsteadt notes that Trump’s VP pick, JD Vance, has also talked of reining in Big Tech companies and gone as far as to call Google “one of the most dangerous companies in the world.”

Mittelsteadt adds that Trump could punish companies in a variety of ways. He cites, for example, the way the Trump government canceled a major federal contract with Amazon Web Services, a decision likely influenced by the former president’s view of the Washington Post and its owner, Jeff Bezos.

It would not be hard for policymakers to point to evidence of political bias in AI models, even if it cuts both ways.

A 2023 study by researchers at the University of Washington, Carnegie Mellon University, and Xi’an Jiaotong University found a range of political leanings in different large language models. It also showed how this bias may affect the performance of hate speech or misinformation detection systems.

Another study, conducted by researchers at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, found bias in several open source AI models on polarizing issues such as immigration, reproductive rights, and climate change. Yejin Bang, a PhD candidate involved with the work, says that most models tend to lean liberal and US-centric, but that the same models can express a variety of liberal or conservative biases depending on the topic.

AI models capture political biases because they are trained on swaths of internet data that inevitably includes all sorts of perspectives. Most users may not be aware of any bias in the tools they use because models incorporate guardrails that restrict them from generating certain harmful or biased content. These biases can leak out subtly though, and the additional training that models receive to restrict their output can introduce further partisanship. “Developers could ensure that models are exposed to multiple perspectives on divisive topics, allowing them to respond with a balanced viewpoint,” Bang says.

The issue may become worse as AI systems become more pervasive, says Ashique KhudaBukhsh, an computer scientist at the Rochester Institute of Technology who developed a tool called the Toxicity Rabbit Hole Framework, which teases out the different societal biases of large language models. “We fear that a vicious cycle is about to start as new generations of LLMs will increasingly be trained on data contaminated by AI-generated content,” he says.

“I’m convinced that that bias within LLMs is already an issue and will most likely be an even bigger one in the future,” says Luca Rettenberger, a postdoctoral researcher at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology who conducted an analysis of LLMs for biases related to German politics.

Rettenberger suggests that political groups may also seek to influence LLMs in order to promote their own views above those of others. “If someone is very ambitious and has malicious intentions it could be possible to manipulate LLMs into certain directions,” he says. “I see the manipulation of training data as a real danger.”

There have already been some efforts to shift the balance of bias in AI models. Last March, one programmer developed a more right-leaning chatbot in an effort to highlight the subtle biases he saw in tools like ChatGPT. Musk has himself promised to make Grok, the AI chatbot built by xAI, “maximally truth-seeking” and less biased than other AI tools, although in practice it also hedges when it comes to tricky political questions. (A staunch Trump supporter and immigration hawk, Musk’s own view of “less biased” may also translate into more right-leaning results.)

Next week’s election in the United States is hardly likely to heal the discord between Democrats and Republicans, but if Trump wins, talk of anti-woke AI could get a lot louder.

Musk offered an apocalyptic take on the issue at this week’s event, referring to an incident when Google’s Gemini said that nuclear war would be preferable to misgendering Caitlyn Jenner. “If you have an AI that’s programmed for things like that, it could conclude that the best way to ensure nobody is misgendered is to annihilate all humans, thus making the probability of a future misgendering zero,” he said.

[nocturnowlette]

A tip if you're unsure if you should trust if a video essayist is good.

I'm a relatively large video essayist (you'll just have to trust me here) and if there is one single thing that is the biggest (though absolutely not perfect) indicator that a video essayist is either incompetent or malicious: overpolished editing.

Video essays, in comparison to a lot of other youtube video genres, is focused far more on what is being said than what is being shown. The actual video substance is the ideas being presented, and while plenty of people with simplistic editing are very bad at making essays, people with overly complicated and flashy graphics are placing as much if not more weight on the video instead of the essay.

I think the closest medium to compare it to is music videos. Most times, the music is made first, and then a video for it is crafted in a process separated from the song (or at least not compromising the song in order to make it). When the video is the most appealing part of a music video, that person's art form isn't really music. Their art form is music videos.

When the auxiliary aspect of an art medium is given too much weight, it is often a way to compensate for something. There are obviously exceptions, but the exceptions (like hbomberguy, Philosophy Tube, etc) take months and months to release new material, because while a lot of effort is put into editing and presentation, everything else has far more effort put into it in comparison. That aspect of the medium is risen up by consequence of everything else rising. They also actually have good artistic taste and attention to detail instead of just putting a vignette while tilting and zooming in on text but y'know whatever

Some actual examples of what I'm talking about if you wanna get what I mean:

Moon SunnyV2 Louaista Turkey Tom

Oh also from personal experience, nearly every single youtube drama video essayist talks like a tech bro entrepreneur and the second coming of Jeff Bezos. Never meet youtubers, 90% of them suck.