violiner

That doesn't really address what I was responding to, though, namely if the cost of intellectual labor is approximately 0. Yes, there is a possible outcome where a lower cost of developing software (which is not the only or even really most worthwhile intellectual activity) increases the amount of software and woohoo now more people can do more stuff and make more money. That might even be more likely. But if the cost of intellectual labor is nothing, well, that really doesn't add up very fast and all that's left is non intellectual labor. I suppose that people can start new companies to sell some new version of tomorrow's garbage, but not everyone wants to do that.

> our global material abundance would be truly unprecedented, nigh unlimited.

Serious question, how? Don't the people who own the models and the companies who want to want to use the models to do all the cognitive tasks want to make money? Are they going to give their products and services away for free? There always seems to be this kind of Underpants Gnomes logic about this where 1. We can do things cheaply 2. ??? 3. Material abundance! where step 2 is actually "very rich people give things away for free!". Which requires people like Altman/Thiel/Zuck whoever to have care for other humans and empathy and actual feelings other than a blind Will to Power. If all the cognitive tasks currently done by humans are ~free it seems like the far, far, far, far more likely outcome given who is actually creating and benefiting this nightmare is that all of us do tasks that don't require cognitive ability and subsist on whatever scraps we're given.

Guess I'll get to see all those screenshots of my lock screen one last time.

Yeah I read it as "Astmally pdrtable echesmtable". People shouldn't do this.

OK, sure, it is possible to imagine a culture in which the principle of free speech is above and supersedes all other principles. That culture would be terrible. Suppose I'm at that bar and Nazi Bob starts spouting Nazi nonsense. Is there a social expectation that I stay and engage despite my desire to go somewhere else? If Nazi Bob hangs out at that bar all the time and I decide I don't want to go there because I don't like listening to him and calmly engaging with him is there a cultural stigma associated with that? If there's not, suppose I and a number of other patrons stop frequenting the bar. Is the bar tender then subject to some kind of social cost for saying "Hey Nazi Bob, I'm going to have to ask you to not come back because you're driving away other patrons?" I agree that the high school debate thing is bad, and in general I agree that people talking about ideas is good, but this idea that there should be no consequences whatsoever for what you say just doesn't survive even the briefest analysis. How would that even work? If you say some combination of words that elicits a reaction in me am I supposed to just not feel or think those things? Does that mean that I experience the consequences of your speech but you don't? Do I have freedom to not associate with you until you say something abhorrent? If I'm friends with someone and I say "Hey I think it would be really funny to flay your kids" or some other terrible thing do they have to just calmly debate that? Do they have to continue to associate with me because if they stopped being my friend that wouldn't be respecting my freedom to express my ideas? I'd argue that it's not only possible to respect freedom of speech as a principle balanced against other rights, it's _only_ possible to respect it as such, because otherwise the person with the loudest,most extreme, and most offensive ideas sets the tone of any conversation. If I don't have the option to get up and walk away, either literally or metaphorically, then my association with them and consequently my speech is coerced.

You've edited this at least twice since I started to write so who knows what this will by the time I hit 'reply', but this is really weird. If I can't choose not to associate with someone because of something they said then freedom of association just doesn't exist. If I can't kick someone out of my business because of something they've said then I just don't have control over whom I do business with. In a society with a cultural principle of free speech people would be able to exercise their right to say heinous things, and decent people would exercise their right to not have anything to do with those people, and the heinous thing saying people wouldn't whine about it, except disingenuously, because despite all their protestations they would actually understand that their right to free speech should not compel me to have them in my club, church, business, whatever.

I'm really, genuinely happy for you that the thing you're passionate about is something you're good at and is extremely lucrative, but if I tried to make a living doing what I'm passionate about I'd live in a cardboard box. The reality is that software eating the world (and admittedly a number of other things, but this is a big one) have made it much, much harder to make a living doing just about anything else. I got a job in software development because I was good enough at it and I needed to pay the loans from pursuing my passion. I continue doing software development because it's a way to eventually maybe escape capitalism without swallowing a bullet.

> there's always room for optimism.

Bold claim.

> The eastern mystery cults of the late B.C. era

I'd hesitate to categorically lump all of the ancient mystery religions in with the rest of your list. Some of them were pretty strange, even for the ancient world, but e.g. the Eleusinian Mysteries and Mithraism were very mainstream for hundreds of years.

> Never before has crypto looked so criminal, wasteful and useless.

That’s really saying something!

On the rare occasions when a friend will ask why I don't use Uber my reply is "Because I don't support organized crime."

> a new developer could hit the ground flying.

Sounds like a plane crash. :)

I, for one, have embraced my negative partisanship. I'm not a Democrat. I'm an anti-Republican.

> Not everyone can take a year off, the world is unfair, and some people will live better lives than others.

This is literally what privilege means. It's not an insult.