Something that a friend pointed out to me as a possible factor is the religious backdrop of US Christianity. I’ve forgotten the specific phrase (it was something like “prosperity Christianity”), but basically the idea that good fortune (from hard work) is vindication of God in this life. It’s pretty deeply tied to the Protestant work ethic, which is pretty pervasive in US culture, even in ostensibly secular institutions.

The original idea was more or less “as well as having faith, you should also work very hard, because that’s part of your duty. Then you will be blessed and will have good fortune”. However, that has been increasingly distorted and subject to a logical fallacy that means people get it backwards. For instance, let’s say we took this doctrine to be an absolute fact: that if you diligently do good work, then you will be blessed, and have good fortune. I.e

if good work, then blessed

If blessed, then good fortune

∴ If good work, then good fortune

However, under this doctrine, people often commit the fallacy of “affirming the consequent”. For instance, if the only lamp in a room breaks, then the room will be dark. However, the room being dark doesn’t necessarily mean that the lamp is broken (it could be off, or be stolen, or covered). So what people do is they go “I am wealthy. People who are blessed have good fortune, and I have good fortune, so therefore I must be blessed”. This logic has been used to justify all sorts of awful, awful crimes against humanity. For instance, enslaved people must be bad people because they clearly do not have good fortune. But the person who owns those slaves surely must be blessed, because he has good fortune.

This way of thinking is so deeply embedded into US culture that even devout atheists end up absorbing a lot of this logic. This is only one small part of the puzzle as to why billionaires are so dumb, but applying this lens really helped me to understand the self-validation cycle that a lot of billionaires and powerful people get into.

The way I imagine this cycle going is that someone who is quite successful under capitalism (often due to advantages like inherited wealth) has a brief moment of self reflection where they wonder “am I actually doing well here? Do I have anything of value to add? I was given a lot of opportunities to succeed (e.g. inherited wealth), but have I effectively utilised those opportunities? How would I know if I had actually done well? Sure, I’ve grown my wealth a heckton, but maybe a different person with these same opportunities would have done far better than I did?”

With those questions comes a heckton of dread. And like, I actually really sympathise with that dread, because it’s a fairly universal feeling, I suspect. For instance, I dropped out of university due to a heckton of external extenuating circumstances. When I’m feeling bad about this, people who knew me during this period often reassure me that it was not my fault, and that it’s a testament to my strength that I held out as long as I did. Certainly, that’s what I’d like to believe, but the terrifying question that I’ll never be able to answer is “what if those external circumstances didn’t exist? What if I would’ve dropped out even if not for all that, and if I’m actually just not smart enough to study what I wanted?”. We can’t see alternative timelines.

What’s different about billionaires though is that they have so much money that they can ignore the uncomfortable dread, rather than sitting with it and doing some useful self reflection, before setting it aside. They push it out of mind and distract themselves by throwing themselves into work or hedonism, or both (I have never known a billionaire, but I have known some very wealthy CEO types, and they worked themselves to the bone, potentially to avoid feeling this imposter syndrome dread. I’m inclined to view their hyper working habits as being irrational in this way because a lot of the excess work they did seemed to be bullshit work (in the sense of David Graeber’s “bullshit jobs” — that is, it was work done to make themselves feel useful)).

Another thing that I have that billionaires don’t is friends that I trust to guide me on my self reflection. I trust my friends when they tell me my university disaster wasn’t my fault because they have shown that they are more than willing to call me out when I make poor choices. Even in scenarios where I am clearly the victim of some fucked up thing, if I have made things worse for myself by making poor choices (something I’m prone to doing if I’m in a fatalistic depression spiral), they hold me accountable for my choices, in addition to sympathetically supporting me.

Instead, billionaires are surrounded by people who they can’t trust. Sycophants everywhere, who don’t care about who you are as a person, but what you can do for them. You’re less likely to have people calling you out for things, but you also won’t get much affirmation for the genuinely good things about your personality. Like, let’s imagine if Sam Altman had an aspect of his personality that was a really good quality that was distinctly him, and thus the kind of thing that would be productive to view as part of his self identity because it could help him focus on that as a direction of future growth. And let’s say he had a genuine, non-sycophantic friend who tried to highlight this to him — how would he be able to tell that this was a genuine compliment coming from a genuine friend, and not just another bullshit sycophant? You can’t, not really.

It’s tragic really. The ultra rich have basically gatekept themselves from genuine human connection. They burn out from being on guard all the time, and so they surround themselves with people in their own wealth class (people who are also extremely poorly adjusted). I find it quite sad, because this isolation seems to be an inevitable consequence of being mega-rich. This is why when I say things like “billionaires should not exist”, I’m not just speaking in favour of peons like us, but also out of compassion for the billionaires. I resent them like hell, but I also deeply pity them. I’d love to be financially comfortable enough to not worry about whether I’ll be having to be sleeping in my car next month, but I’d rather be in my position in theirs. If by some weird twist of fate, I suddenly became mega rich, I would do everything I possibly could to give away money until I was “merely” financially comfortable.

I got a bit off track with my ranting because I am procrastinating getting food, so I’ll bring it back to your question. Basically, billionaires get dumb because they are emotionally maladjusted and often deeply insecure. Wealth becomes a thing by which they measure their own self worth, but no amount of wealth can fill the vacuous chasm in their hearts caused by a deep isolation and lack of genuine fulfillment. Occasionally they do get slices of this fulfillment — see Mark Zuckerberg getting heavily into MMA.

But if they ever have moments of self reflection where they experience that normal and healthy self doubt, they are so socially isolated and maladjusted to actually reflect. Their wealth means they can afford to never be uncomfortable, and that applies here too. So to escape their dread, they build a narrative of how they deserve it. They’re not just lucky — they are actually very smart and good and they deserve their wealth. And the sycophants around them will tell them they’re absolutely right. Meanwhile, the people they respect as their peers (other billionaires) are also prone to spouting psuedointellectual bullshit whilst pretending to be smart, so this validates their own dumbassery.

The psuedointellectual stuff is another reason I pity them. I was a Gifted Kid™, and because I didn’t have friends in school, my intelligence was basically my entire identity. This meant I was so desperately scared of losing that that I would bullshit about what I knew or not. Nowadays, I’m a lot better at being open about when people ask me about something I either haven’t heard of, don’t understand, or can’t quite remember. I often say “I got a hell of a lot smarter when I let myself be more dumb”, because learning to be more vulnerable meant I had the opportunity to learn a heckton from loads of cool people (rather than being preoccupied with appearing smart).

Billionaires are dumb because they’re cosplaying smart people, and they’re so deep in the role that they forget they’re cosplaying. They’re also surrounded by other dumbasses spouting psuedointellectual bullshit, but they will never call them out on this, because they’re so pathetically insecure that they fear that this will out them as being an imposter — they don’t realise that their peers are also cosplaying. It’s an absurd echo chamber of the worst kind.

"Fargo police did not cover Angela’s expenses to get home after her release from jail. Local defense attorneys gave her money to pay for a hotel room and food on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

The day after Christmas, F5 Project founder Adam Martin drove Lipps to Chicago so she could get home to Tennessee. Fargo-based F5 Project is an organization providing services and resources to individuals struggling with incarceration, mental health and addiction."

It’s bittersweet to read bits like this. It reminds me of the Mr Rogers line about how, in a disaster, you should “look for the helpers” if you need reminders of goodness to avoid becoming demoralised.

I am glad that there are so many good people who are fighting for real justice — even people who have committed crimes don’t deserve the inhumane treatment they experience under our legal system. I wish it weren’t necessary though. These small kindnesses don’t make up for all the ways this imprisonment fucked up her life.

I do agree that there is much that remains. Indeed, I have found a lot of joy by discovering all the weird little personal websites that people are building as an act of rebellion. However, the culture has irrevocably changed. It makes me think of the line “man cannot step into the same river twice, for it is not the same river, and he is not the same man”.

Many of us who grew up on a more free and chaotic internet have become jaded over time. If I went back in time, I wouldn’t be able to enjoy the internet in the same way I used to because I’d be too acutely aware of what lies ahead. That’s why I prefer to focus on moving forwards — it feels like a kind of healing

It makes me glad for having been born when I was. I am a younger Millennial, so I wasn’t online for the early internet, but I am old enough that when I read this blog post, it reminds me that I have seen firsthand that it wasn’t always this bad — even if, like you, I was surprised to realise how bad things have gotten. I feel like a frog boiling in water that started cool, but gradually became hotter^[1]

I feel sorry for Zoomers and younger, who have grown up only knowing the walked gardens of big tech. It invokes an odd sense of ethical duty in me; many of them believe they hate tech in all its forms, because all they know is the toxic cycle of dark patterns and a culture that expects them to be always contactable, making it hard to disengage. However, there’s an entire world that they don’t know that beyond the walled garden. I wish I could show them what I have seen, but you can’t easily convey the magic of a memory — after all, the internet that shaped me no longer exists.

So I guess the challenge ahead of me is trying to figure out how I can work with them to co-create a vision of a better internet. We can’t put all the enshittification and spambots back in Pandora’s box, but maybe we can build something new if people like us can use our memories to distribute hope to where it’s needed.

People like you help to make the internet a better place — which matters a lot to me, because one of my most desperately held beliefs is that it is possible to take the hopefulness of the early internet and combine it with the wisdom of the last few decades to produce a more robust kind of hope

Cory Doctorow actually goes more in depth on the radiologist example in a post from last year:

'If my Kaiser hospital bought some AI radiology tools and told its radiologists: “Hey folks, here’s the deal. Today, you’re processing about 100 x-rays per day. From now on, we’re going to get an instantaneous second opinion from the AI, and if the AI thinks you’ve missed a tumor, we want you to go back and have another look, even if that means you’re only processing 98 x-rays per day. That’s fine, we just care about finding all those tumors.”

If that’s what they said, I’d be delighted. But no one is investing hundreds of billions in AI companies because they think AI will make radiology more expensive, not even if that also makes radiology more accurate. The market’s bet on AI is that an AI salesman will visit the CEO of Kaiser and make this pitch: "Look, you fire 9/10s of your radiologists, saving $20m/year, you give us $10m/year, and you net $10m/year, and the remaining radiologists’ job will be to oversee the diagnoses the AI makes at superhuman speed, and somehow remain vigilant as they do so, despite the fact that the AI is usually right, except when it’s catastrophically wrong.

“And if the AI misses a tumor, this will be the human radiologist’s fault, because they are the ‘human in the loop.’ It’s their signature on the diagnosis.”

This is a reverse centaur, and it’s a specific kind of reverse-centaur: it’s what Dan Davies calls an “accountability sink.” The radiologist’s job isn’t really to oversee the AI’s work, it’s to take the blame for the AI’s mistakes.’

In short, we definitely could (and indeed should) be using tools like tumor detecting machine vision as something that helps humans build a better world for humans. But we’ve seen time and time again, across countless fields that it never works out that way.

That’s because this isn’t a problem with the technology of AI, but the fucked up sociotechnical and economic systems that govern how this tech is used, who gets to use it, who it gets used on, whose consent is required for those uses and most significant of all: who gets to profit?

!Not us, that’s for sure!<

Most of my understanding of the horrors of white phosphorus comes from the game Spec Ops: The Line, a game that initially presents itself as a generic FPS in which you’re a valiant hero, but later forces you to confront the effects of the war crimes you commit in the game.

That’s what’s going through my head right now when reading this. White phosphorus is an abhorrent munition to use, even if there were no civilians in the blast area.

Marmite is really good for this. Some of the other go-to “umami bomb” condiments aren’t vegetarian, but Marmite works well for vegetarians

I didn’t know that about Framework HiDPI displays

I agree, but like others have said, it bodes well that they’re open about this in the article

Thanks for sharing that talk, it’s pretty good.

I always find his talks interesting, because it often feels like it’s the same core talk each time, but changed through iterative refining of his ideas and rhetoric due to how often he gets the chance to talk about these issues.

Even though I’ve seen many of his talks before, I am surprised at how skillfully he is able to weave in new angles and themes. I mean, he has been doing this stuff for literal decades, but still, it’s impressive.

Nice job. T shirts are deceptively tricky to sew because they’re often a bit stretchy.

I think you should leave it as is. I find the slightly rough look of hand repairs to be quite charming. Plus there have been times when I have been a perfectionist and undone adequate work, only for it to come out worse (which just ends up stressing the fabric more). I think this looks pretty good though — certainly neater than what I did when I had the same problem.

I love Pothos, they’re very forgiving and they communicate very well. They’re very good for people who tend to kill plants by loving them too much — I tend to water mine when they’re visibly beginning to look a bit sad. I don’t do stuff like spraying (I’ve found that this can lead to rot, and that I have an easier time keeping plants happy by thoroughly watering them even when the soil is dry at least an inch deep)

What I really love about them though is how easy they are to propagate through cuttings. Great for sharing with friends, plus it’s a great way to make an existing plant more bushy — just take a cutting that has at least one leaf node on it (I usually go for at least 2) and then stick it in the existing pot. I was especially grateful for this after I had to live in a fairly low light room and my Pothos had become a bit leggy due to stretching out to try to reach more light.

It sounds like looking after this plant might only be a temporary arrangement, so pruning is likely beyond your job description. If that’s the case, you should ask your mom if you can take a cutting or two when it’s time to give it back — I bet your daughter would enjoy that.

Edit: I felt like I explained the cuttings thing poorly, so I took another look at the pic to see if I could give an example, and I saw a stem with no leaves on it, and that’s a great example of where I’d prune. Here’s a pic that shows where I’d make a couple of cuts, and then I’d stick those stems into the soil, an inch or so deep.

Unfortunately, while I was there, I noticed a few signs that might be indicative of overwatering/potential rot. The surface of the soil near the bottom of the pic looks like it’s got some fungus growing on it. That in and of itself isn’t a problem, but it is a sign that the soil could probably do with having more chance to dry out between waterings.

Furthermore, some of the stems look like they’re beginning to get a bit wrinkly, and that tends to be a sign of root rot. If you give the stems a gentle squeeze with your fingers and they feel soft, then that’s likely the case. There’s no need to worry if this is the case though — this guy still looks pretty happy, so this is likely fixable by watering less often. When I first started out with houseplants, I watered them a little bit, quite often, but I didn’t learn until after I’d lost a few plants that thoroughly watering, less often is best.

By thorough, I mean watering over a sink or similar until water is freely running out the bottom of the pot. “Bottom up watering” can also work: this is when you place the plant in a container of water (about an inch deep) for half an hour or so. It’ll suck up the water it needs, and you’ll be able to feel how much heavier the pot is (this is especially good if you’ve gone for too long without watering, because the soil can become weirdly hydrophobic)

I’m sorry to come into this post of pride and be a buzzkill like this. My intention isn’t to be an “um actually” kind of asshole, I just think it would be tragic if the plant ended up dying, despite you and your daughter’s efforts to keep it happy. You definitely shouldn’t feel bad about this happening, because it’s pretty common, even for people who are experienced with plants. It’s especially likely to happen during winter, when plants are respiring less, and houses are more humid.

My biggest piece of advice would be to use the finger method I mentioned above — poke your finger in the soil, at least an inch deep, and only water if the soil feels fully dry, and teach your daughter that too. I find that this is the most reliable way to avoid overwatering because it’s like talking directly to the plant to know what it needs — with this method, you’ll find that you’ll naturally end up watering more frequently in the more Summery months.

Pothos are pretty drought resistant, compared to many (non succulent) houseplants though, so for these, it’s usually better to err on the side of too little water than too much. Here’s a before and after watering image of my pothos. Despite looking super sad in the first photo, it perked right up less than 24 hours later. In this case, I’d left it for longer than ideal before watering because I was making a point to an anxious friend, but I usually wait until they look at least a little sad.

If I were in your daughter’s position, I might be dismayed to learn that I had been inadvertently doing the wrong thing, so this might be a good opportunity to get her a plant that does enjoy a bit more regular love. Off the top of my head, that could include plants like fittonias (nerve plants — they come in loads of colours and are very pretty), birds nest ferns and calatheas.

Sorry again for being a buzzkill, and I hope this is helpful and not too overwhelming. I genuinely don’t believe that you’ve been doing anything wrong here, even if you change your practice as a result of this post — two months is long enough that it would have died by now if you were genuinely doing stuff wrong. It’s likely more due to things like the weather outside, or what your house heating is set to — Winter is a hard time to be a houseplant.

Piggybacking off this to add more lightbulb jokes.

The best joke I’ve ever heard was delivered by a German friend with an incredible deadpan delivery

How many Germans does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

!“One. We are a very efficient people”!<

Another one!

How many emos does it take to change a lightbulb?

!None. They all just sit in the dark crying.!<

(I should clarify that I find this one funny because when I first heard it, it very much applied to me. I felt mildly attacked, but not in a hurtful way)

Piggybacking off your comment to leave a pirate joke of my own.

“What’s a pirate’s favourite letter?”

(Ideally, the audience will reply “Arrr!” this this. It works best if you prime them for this by doing a bad pirate impression earlier in the conversation, or tell a joke such as “What’s a pirate’s favourite animal? An aardevark!”)

“You might think so, but a pirate’s true love be the C (sea)”

Bonus joke! What’s a pirate’s least favourite letter?

!Dear Sir or Madam, your IP address has been recorded downloading infringing copyrighted material on…!<

Movie dialogue tries to be verisimilitudinous, rather than realistic.

I’m mostly making this comment because “verisimilitudinous” is an excellent word that I love getting the opportunity to use.

The datasets they are trained on do in fact include CSAM. These datasets are so huge that it easily slips through the cracks. It’s usually removed whenever it’s found, but I don’t know how this actually affects the AI models that have already been trained on that data — to my knowledge, it’s not possible to selectively “untrain” models, and they would need to be retrained from scratch. Plus I occasionally see it crop up in the news about how new CSAM keeps being found in the training data.

It’s one of the many, many problems with generative AI

Thanks for sharing this. This bolstered my spirit.

I liked the bit where it discusses how, regardless of the effectiveness of whistles in deterring ICE, they have proven to be helpful in regular people feeling less alone.

The idea of copyright is to protect the financial rights of creatives, thus incentivising people to make more stuff, right?

Well even before AI, it wasn’t doing its job very well on that front. The only ones with the power and money to be able to leverage copyright to protect their rights are those who are already so powerful that they don’t need those protections — big music labels and the like. Individual creatives were already being fucked over by the system long before AI.

If you haven’t read the article, I’d encourage you to give it a try. Or perhaps this one, which goes into depth on the intrinsic tensions within copyright law.

An extended story that I recently read (or rather, listened to) was “There is no Antiemetics Division”, by qntm. The channel J&V SCP archives have an excellent audiobook-style reading of it, if that’s your thing. It’s not especially scary (though it does have its moments), but stumbling across it really reignited my enjoyment of SCP.