News — At The Edge — 7/27
Governments seem uninterested in helping people — SLAPPS, cyberwar, inequality, AGI & dark age — so why don’t we evolve better government systems?
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Posting a negative review can get you sued (5.5 min video)
Many Americans rely on online reviews to choose a business or service. But posting a negative review could put you at risk of being sued….Florida dog owner whose Yelp review of an animal hospital and veterinarian led to his being slapped by a lawsuit.
Cyber threats from the US and Russia are now focusing on civilian infrastructure —
“U.S. Cyber Command’s shift to a more offensive and aggressive approach in targeting Russia’s electric power grid…led Moscow to warn…[it’s] a ‘direct challenge’ that demanded a response…[with] cyber-reconnaissance on U.S. grids by sophisticated malware…[that] halted operations at a Saudi Arabian oil refinery in 2017….
[T]he aggression and scope of these operations now seems unprecedented….[Both] view civilian infrastructure as an appropriate and perhaps necessary lever to deter the other…rooted in mutual misunderstanding…..
[Russia’s] almost immutable view that the U.S. seeks to undermine Russia’s global position at every turn…[as] unmistakable act of U.S. cyber-aggression…[so] effort to affect the U.S. presidential election was…an appropriate comparison only in the sense that U.S. officials were blindsided by…almost seamless blend of psychological and technical operations….
Moscow’s hackers are comparatively unfettered by legal or normative boundaries and have a far wider menu of means and methods in competing with the U.S. short of all-out war…[and] certainly benefit from the highly permissive, extralegal mandate granted by an authoritarian state….
[But] to blackout swaths of Russia could jeopardize the few fragile norms existing…[and] perhaps leading to expanded targeting of nuclear facilities….
Washington could follow Moscow’s lead in realizing that this is a long-term struggle that requires…thoughtful solutions as opposed to reflexive ones…gambling with the safety of civilians that both sides’ forces are sworn to protect.” https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/22/cyber-threats-from-the-u-s-and-russia-are-now-focusing-on-civilian-infrastructure/
Nobel Economist Says Inequality is Destroying Democratic Capitalism —
“’[I]f you’re born poor, you will die on average 9 years earlier than others’…[leading] large groups of people…questioning whether their economies are working for them.
The same can be said of politics. Two-thirds of Americans without a college degree believe…there is no point in voting, because elections are rigged in favor of big business and the rich….
If the concern with inequality is simply envy…[as] claimed by the right…better to address the concern than the inequality. If the inequality comes from incentives that work for a few but benefit many, then…better job of documenting the need for incentives….If working people are losing out because corporate governance…favors shareholders over workers, or…decline in unions has favored capital over labor…then we need to change the rules….
[Any case] today’s inequalities are signs that democratic capitalism is under threat…[but not] beyond repair….
US, where the inequalities are clearest, real wages for men without a four-year college degree have fallen for half a century…[as] per capita GDP has robustly risen. Mortality rates are rising for the less-educated…ages 25 through 64, and by enough that life expectancy for the entire population has fallen for three years in a row, the first time…since the end of the first world war and the great influenza epidemic….The sense of being left behind, of not being represented….
There have been several episodes where capitalism seemed broken, but was repaired….Britain at the beginning of the 19th century, inequality was vast compared with today…. America’s first Gilded Age is another…[that] shows that the fundamental rules of the game can be changed…[and] four constitutional amendments were passed…to limit inequality of one form or another….
Safety nets are most needed when change is rapid, and…one of the reasons why America is doing so much worse….[The] less-educated white men and women…had their lives progressively undermined, starting in the 1970s….African Americans experienced a similar disaster thirty years earlier….
In the face of globalization and innovation, many…argue that American policy, instead of cushioning working people…contributed to making their lives worse, by allowing more rent-seeking, reducing the share of labor, undermining pay and working conditions, and changing the legal framework…[to] favor business over workers.
Inequality has risen…[with] upward transfers from workers…[as] mechanisms of enrichment….US wastes about a trillion dollars a year on a healthcare system that is very good at enriching providers, hospitals, device manufacturers, and pharmaceutical companies, but very bad at delivering health….
US has extensive business lobbying…[and] replacement of stakeholder capitalism by shareholder value maximization is widespread….[Clearly] people getting rich is a good thing…when it brings prosperity to others.
The other kind of getting rich, ‘taking’ rather than ‘making,’ rent-seeking rather than creating, enriching the few at the expense of the many, taking the free out of free markets, is making a mockery of democracy. In that world, inequality and misery are intimate companions.” http://evonomics.com/nobel-economist-angus-deaton-capitalism-democratic/
Microsoft wants to build artificial general intelligence: an AI better than humans at everything —
“Elon Musk-founded OpenAI…to build artificial general intelligence (AGI)…[with] capacity to reason across different domains and apply its skills to unfamiliar problems…[now] a billion dollar partnership with Microsoft….
’We believe that the creation of beneficial AGI will be the most important technological development in human history, with the potential to shape the trajectory of humanity’…[and] the capacity to surpass us…[to] enable centuries of technological advances to arrive, effectively, all at once — transforming medicine, food production, green technologies, and everything else….
[But] if poorly designed…could be a catastrophe for humans…[and] pursues a goal…hadn’t intended…. Or it could be maliciously used…to harm others…[or] make the rich richer….
It’s not just one breakthrough; it enables countless other changes in the way we live our lives….
[Some] argued that an AGI system…performing well at a small scale might unexpectedly deteriorate in performance when it has more resources available to it, as the best route to achieving its goals changes….
AGI could let us address climate change, extreme poverty, pandemic diseases…identifying promising new drugs, optimizing our power grid, and speeding up the rate at which we develop new technologies.” https://www.vox.com/2019/7/22/20704184/microsoft-open-ai-billion-investment-artificial-intelligence
The Darkness is Descending —
“[A] descent into a dark age….Ignorance, corruption, stupidity and unbelievable bigotry and hatred…is what we are seeing every day.
An idiot with a horde of supporting barbarians has…take[n] over the government…collapsing into chaos and confusion…as Rome did in the fifth century….
For the first time in modern history American IQ scores are going down. People are loudly claiming…science is a lie….Racism is now the theme…. Ignorance is king…. Unless you are white and male you are nothing….
America built the modern world in the 1940s and 50s with the power of the most diverse population in modern history…[but] all that was left were people pretending to hold positions and unable to actually do much of anything except struggle to survive….
We have begun to understand that…we are fighting a dark force of evil that has appeared and is trying to take control…[yet] denied ourselves the ability to recognize and name evil….We need to change the language we use and redefine the meaning of almost everything while fighting…to prevent the dark forces from destroying us and our planet.” https://medium.com/@mike.meyer/the-darkness-is-descending-2d8fb8b7b166
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Doc Huston
