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Agreed. Sam's full of crap and the way we tackle that is with conversations, not violence. He deserves to grow old like anyone else, violence isn't an answer.
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I don't condone violence, but the contract he's signed with the US military is a credible threat to everyone in the US. OpenAI will now certainly be called on to assist in domestic mass surveillance, under threat of the kind of severe penalties Anthropic has faced. So why did he agree to that contract, unless he's will to provide that assistance? So it's gone well beyond conversation, though not to a point where violence is appropriate. Boycotts and hostility are definitely appropriate at this point IMO, though.

He isn't going to suddenly grow a conscience from a riveting, intellectually stimulating conversation.

> the way we tackle that is with conversations, not violence

I think the breakdown here is that conversation seems to have no power. To only be a bit hyperbolic, the only language with power is money -- or violence. To the extent that ordinary people cannot make change with "conversation" (which I interpret here to mean dialog within society, including with lawmakers), they feel compelled to use violence instead.

A non-rhetorical question: What recourse to non-billionaires have when conversation has less and less power, while money has more and more, and those with money are making much more money?


Then we move to regulation and law, that's still talking. Bombing his house isn't cool.

There's still a meaningful difference between violence wielded by a single individual who feels angry or unheard, and violence wielded by a large representative group who has invested genuine effort in conversation before collectively deciding violence is required.

They aren't mutually exclusive. Often the former and latter, in that order, are two parts of the same historical event.

Yes, fully agree. Nonetheless, I suspect violence can be used more effectively and more minimally if it's considered and performed by a group rather than haphazardly by individuals. I recognise that's a very simplistic view.

I think it's as realistic as it is simplistic. The State gets a monopoly on violence so that you can sue someone who wrongs you instead of killing them. When conversation and cash fail, violence is all that's left, and we concentrate that power in groups of people tasked with deciding when the alternatives have failed. It doesn't always work but it's a better alternative than the individualized bloodlust disappointingly endorsed elsewhere in this thread.

Everyone else deserves to grow old, too...

It's pretty amazing to observe people experience the past ten years in American history and continue to think that we can out-talk the bad people in the world.

Michelle Obama's, "When they go low, we go high", is some of the stupidest political advice and a generation has lost so much because of it. (The generation before got West Winged into believing the same thing.)

When you look to the right, you have a stolen election in 2000, a stolen supreme court seat, an attempted coup, and relentless winning despite it.


I don't think street violence solves anything. I don't think Michelle was right, sometimes you have to fight fire with fire, but you don't fight words with literal firebombs.

This may come right when Americans see themselves backsliding relative to other power blocks, and allies turning away. It’s started.

But it seems a distant hope at best.


That sentiment always comes from people who are better at fighting with communication.



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