Our baseline instinct is that most new technology is a waste of time. Even not-so-smart electronics often do more harm than good. Like mutations in the gene pool, most are sterile...or grotesque.
Y'all know I'm a Luddite and a non-investor. You won't be surprised when I state that AI exists, because it can. It can exist for two reasons: the control crowd see their opportunity, and the profit crowd think they can make money. This is the same forked tongue that got us in trouble with immigration, especially illegal immigration. The control crowd saw the chance to un-white America, and the profit crowd saw a way to make more money. So, when it comes down to evaluating a trend or development, you know the 2 criteria to apply: control outcome and profit outcome. Best always. PM
The control crowd was not trying to un-white America simply they thrive on cheap labor via a permanent underclass. One is well kept with welfare housed in voter storage facilities in every large city in ever swing state. While the illegals are cheap labor this was never more apparent when political actors asked; "Who will mow our lawns, clean our toilets?" Not the folks in voter storage that's for sure, it's hard enough to motivate these to come to vote, mail in ballots are collected door to door stored in car trunks and applied if the vote is close.
The plan is simply the useful idiots don't ever want to leave office, if needed they'll burn down the system figuring they'll survive to steal again.
You see it how you (want to) see it, and I do the same. I agree that, at first, the overriding concern was both cheaper (than existing) labor, and actual labor replacement (because we had essentially put our working class on welfare, simultaneously exalting them to special class status while locking in their votes but creating need for laborers), and then, seeing their intent and model working so well, they, the controllers, came to understand that importing 3rd-worlders en masse served the overall goal of their feudalistic vision. I'm 73. I live on 4 acres. I have always cut my own grass and still do so. I clean my own toilets and haul my own garbage, maintain and wash my cars and have always done so and will continue to do so. Best always. PM
We see the workings of the world as we've experienced it.
Although born into what is today considered the lap of luxury, it was my father's home he was quick to teach his sons this fact of life. Chores aptly named were required, with hard work our status and responsibilities increased. Looking back a modern parent would be horrified, knowing nothing better we loved the system of chores. I credit these chores with my early successes that have led to my current lifestyle.
My father exposed us to the mining and construction. One summer it was decided the 10 inch crawl space under the kitchen was too shallow. The boys were mustered to dig it out by hand to a depth of 40 inches. Our next task was to haul cement into the space and pour a smooth floor. Our knowledge of metal working, and engine work came as we were tasked with fixing rust holes our mother's car, oil changes, tire rotations, gassing the tank. Prepared us for the $20 used cars that would be our lot until we'd saved sufficient funds to step up to $100 cars. Dad was the treasurer of our small town the police had better things to do than pull over our cars and check ages. This left us prepared to earn a legal drivers license at 16. The chief did put his foot down when my older brother took is 1935 Ford frame out for a test drive. What fun sitting on a kitchen chair strapped to the frame.
Our childhood taught me one thing, I didn't want to dig ditches or fix cars. I bought my first rental property at age 23 when I discovered not everyone owned their home.
It took me a better part of owning 3 properties to meet a fellow wiser landlord who suggested fixing toilets, shoveling, walks, and otherwise slaving for my tenants was a bad use of time. Hiring others lead to starting a contracting business, and then morphing into the HVAC business.
Life has taught the world although employed is in fact incompetent to some degree with government the most incompetent. The controllers just as incompetent simply when a king blunders those who are ruled suffer not the While for the most part the king is not. This is the system of the world, the masses seeking security have signed on to financial slavery. The entire system is smoke and mirrors, built on fairy dust and promises. Our money is worthless, as is our entire educational system on every level. Government and especially the judicial system exists to keep the slaves working as they are systematically and willingly drained of their means of production. Religion is supported by the State given special tax status as a former elder and Christian I came to learn the inside workings of the institution. A social club created to control and fleece its willing victims while acting as a pressure safety valve. When times get tough, the churches will step up and toe the government's line always. The covid response is proof. Trump and all politicians claim Jesus, a fictional intermediary between man and god created by the Roman Empire with the Pope as that intermediary with his church as proof of divine rule.
I let the world go its own way, I cannot change anything, people do not want the truth, nor are they willing to confirm what they believe is in fact true.
Advice to my children; avoid falling into the trap of working as a wage slave at least until you don't need the income. Don't fight the system, embrace the system to the same level as those on the mountain top. They've both incorporated at age 18, both receive all income within corporate entities. I'd hoped one would start a 501C3 corporation something I have not yet accomplished.
Yes, you and I closer to unanimity than you might think. My experience was similar to yours; my parents saw me as conscripted labor, and, though I did not like it, it was good for me. Not only that, I learned a lot of practical stuff by being responsible for the outcome of my work: I had to learn first how to do something, and then I had to avoid mistakes, and it all had to result in success and quality. They also saw me as an object needing regular and harsh physical "discipline". My parents were also alcoholics. All of this taught me: I make it happen, or it doesn't happen. The principal difference between my time and now is that hard work, honesty, initiative, and skills acquisition and development were then all highly sought and rewarded. These qualities were part of the culture. Today, not so much, because there are votes to be bought, and merit is not only scorned, it is punished.
Where we differ, somewhat, is that I have a more liberal attitude to religion than you seem to offer. Most people need structure and emotional support. Having seen firsthand the ravages of drug addiction, I think religion is infinitely preferable. John Lennon's song "Whatever Gets You Through the Night" sums up my attitude. Another song is by Tavares "Don't Take Away My Music". I have seen many people become successful stalwarts in society, and these would have been lost had they not had the support and structure of religion. You and I are strong personalities who likely don't need that particular support, but it should be available, if not for any other reason than it's cheaper for society at large. Now, that is not a blank check, not by far. "By their fruits ye shall know them, " says Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). Islam is not a religion in the western sense; rather, it is a system of social order, cultural indoctrination, and complete, total, top-down control, with the imprimatur of a supposed supreme being, the purpose of which is to make the whole scam appear unassailable, incontrovertible, and perpetual. That we accord this doctrine legitimacy and respect, esteeming it as a religion, is to me both immoral and scandalous. Perhaps you grew up Catholic. If so, I can understand your position.
Finally, up to 1960, America was 90% white. Now she is barely 50%, and when the Boomers pass on, which is underway, she will be 20% less white overnight, and that will be the end of America as we knew her. This is a fact. I have been on this planet since 1952. "They" say correlation is not causation, but in my experience, America was a better place, worked better, and was infinitely more productive, when the country was white. I say this, not just because it's obvious, and not because whites themselves are somehow inherently superior, but they produced over time a superior culture both in Europe, and later here. A superior culture always displaces inferior and/or defective culture. This point is significant and crucial, and here's why: culture determines values, and values determine choices, and choices determine outcomes. This is why the USA is collapsing at such a precipitous pace: we gave up on our culture.
Everything we are experiencing we did to ourselves. I'm proud to know you, Dennis. Many thanks and best always. PM
You nailed it I was brought up by an Irish father and German mother.
My father retired at 50 and soon became an alcoholic, where our mother decided she would enjoy his retirement apart from his company. He passed from lung cancer 6 years later. She is still alive at 98 living in St. Mary's Kansas. Both of my parents hailed from an extreme orthodoxy known as the Pious the 10th society. This overly mentally oppressive form of the religion induced me to study the foundations of Universal Romanism, through its many iterations, heresies and final doctrines enforced by the sword until the entire western world submitted to the control of Rome.
Gnosticism, Marcionism, Eastern Orthodoxy giving way to Rome. Calvinism, Lutheranism, both common designations were assigned by Rome as heretical labels. The creation of the Latin Vulgate translated by Jerome from his reckoning: "No two Greek manuscripts are in agreement with the old Latin texts as wholly unreliable". The NT bible is founded upon a narration where in error is the basis for the translation one that according to Jerome was to support Roman church doctrines.
Yes, I agree man needs social order. The Founding Father used the Torah as a guide for their Constitutional Republic. They actually tried their best to divorce the new government from the ideas found in the NT and as such from the creation of a monarchy. Universal Romanism lead to Protestantism both faiths were created to provide a king the divine right to rule.
The Torah of YHWH originally granted no man to rule over another. However, Torah grants total free will to mankind, even to rejecting Torah. Simly live within the framework of be excluded from the family of YHWH.
Israel used its free will to demand a king, one of their choosing. Read the account. YHWH warns the people, the new king will take their sons adding these to his army, they will be cast into continuous wars. This king will take the best of their lands and the output of the lands he will take, the king will take their daughters as his perfumers, the people will lose all free will and be oppressed. They chose Sha'uwl anyway, war decimated the land, their new enemies defeated the king who committed suicide. There is no going back, however showing mercy YHWH chose a king best to rule over the people. David became king, he was not perfect in ruling the people but he was the anointed (messiah from the Greek) over Israel.
Simply put, I don't need a cleric to order my social life, nor do I have need to attend pot luck dinners or have fake friends from church. The Creator of all things provided a means to know HIm on a personal level, to become a member of His family. Why would I chose Rome or any flavor of the state religion they created from the letters of a self proclaimed Roman rabbi?
Christians shake their heads with wonderment and ask: Why do the Jews reject Jesus, when he's so good? They don't want the answer. I'm not a Jew but I understand why Jesus is rejected.
Simply put the Torah, Prophets, and Psalms reveals the identity of the messiah, and his purpose. Which does not include being born of a virgin, dying for the sins of anyone, nor was he to raise from the dead, and become the head of a church. Contrary to Paul's letters, the forgiveness of sins by YHWH does not require the shedding of blood.
The entire narrative of Christianity was identified by Marcion as that of a new god separate with no relation to the God of the Jews found in the Torah. Marcion was widely accepted in his time, so much so he garnered a majority of Christians to his cause. Shortly afterward Tertullian was tasked by the Roman church with the condemnation of Marcionism who was branded as a heretic.
I'm a fan of standing on my own two feet, taking responsibility for my own actions and misgivings. Praying to god to win the big game or for money is an abomination. Psalm 28:9 Whoever turns away his ear from hearing the Torah, even his prayer is an abomination.
No need to reinvent the wheel; listen and act accordingly it's His family and He makes the rules not clerics or rabbis. This will require learning Hebrew reading from original sources. In comparison to learning English, Hebrew is a breeze it's just very different. Christians and Muslims both agree Torah is from YHWH, and yet neither teach their members Hebrew. Where Jewish children are taught the language that by age eight it's like reading a newspaper.
A late friend of mine, raised in a family of Methodists, the grandfather being an actual minister in the Wesleyan tradition, eventually rejected "organized" religion, electing to become what he called an "agnostic atheist', using that term, because he could not honestly say he knew one way or another, but that needing to come down on one side or another, he had to chose atheism. His founding conviction, and I can still hear his voice, was "it is necessary to admit that, on balance, religion causes more harm than good." His follow-up statement to that was always, "But it is important that you believe in God or whatever makes good sense to you."
As you point out, dissent and/or denial in a culture of belief is not welcome "speech" or "thought". I still think that the Protestant Christian doctrine and tradition, and its ethos and morality, was a fundamental force in raising up the American people as we knew it. Perfect? No. My problem with Judaism, especially as you describe it, is that it is too arcane and detailed to do the masses any good. It takes up all your time and energy just trying to be a Jew. The founding tenet of the church in which I was raised, The Protestant Church in the United States of America, a participating church in the overall umbrella of the Church of England, was and likely still is (though over the last 50 years has grossly strayed from its own declared doctrine and purpose) that the Church can bring you religion and understanding, but in the final analysis, it's up to the individual to work out his/her own relation and understanding, one on one, with God through Christ Jesus. The Church, in my day, basically said, "We can't do it for you, and we won't do it for you. We will help and support you, but, ultimately it is on you." That appealed to me until the Church went off the rails in the70s and 80s for what it thought was relevance and accommodating secularism. At the time, I was angry about it, and took it personally. Now, I come to see that the fall of the Church mirrors the fall of the country. It dovetails perfectly with Bonner's dictum: When the money goes, everything goes.
Again, we face the sequence: Culture determines values; values determine choices; choices determine outcome. And now, we've got a mess. Best always. PM
While good AI can rationalize, and empathize, it still can't make decisions that matter. They can shuttle you to the next set of questions, and potentially using your voice, get you into the right queue, but that's where it ends.
That is why the majority of us, myself included, try to find the quickest way to a human, on all the IVR (Interactive Voice Response) systems around the world.
Why?
Because we want someone, who can make a decision. Usually tied to money.
It may give us some information, but the people in charge behind those systems, won't be giving those machines the ability to make dollar based decisions any time soon.
AI: "Oh we lost your suitcase for you? I'll just have some funds deposited immediately to your account. Will $1,000 do?"
Love self-deprecating humor, and agree with what happens in the back seat of any car! You hit the nail squarely on the head and drove home with one smack. There really is no "I" in AI.
It's programmed by a human, for example, what data set to align with, what do we feed it. It can not tell you anything someone doesn't already know. Google a query and you will get a different response, because Google uses up to date info. The AI, is only as proficient as the date of the last data set.
Where it begins to get a spooky is the alignment of Quantum & AI. The same data set limits apply, but Quantum can reach out to Google (and other search engines) for the latest data and augment its delivery of the result.
Per the Bing statement of "they really do not know who I am". Some are claiming a relationship to eschatology and alignment with the dark side. Interesting to say the least.
Ah yes, the good ol'd days. When seatbelts were optional, and sliding around a left hand corner at speed, in a Plymouth Fury III, meant that you were steering from the passenger seat, as you slid across the entire front seat due to Newton's first law.
Seat belts became mandatory equipment in 1968, though manufacturers began installing them prior to that. My Dad refused to use them. He didn't grow up with them. He got T-boned one night by a driver who ran a red light. He ended up on the passenger side of the bench seat, still holding the wheel. "Son," he said, "if I had had a seat belt on (the car was a '54 Chevy), I'd be dead." I quit talking about it. I had a 65 Chevy with no seat belts, and I had a 66 Chevy that had them. In 1984, the government mandated use of seat belts. I still see people doing without the benefit. I hope the Plymouth Fury had the V-8 hemi... Best always. PM
P.S. Dad drank himself to death, dying of cirrhosis in 1987 at age 61. Two things I did not pick up from my Dad: I wear seat belts religiously, and I am a tee-totaller. PM
In the '70 Plymouth Fury III, we only had a 318 V8. That was pop's first and only car he bought with cash. Best speed I could get out of it, was 115 mph in 1980. Unbenkownst to me, Mopar had decided to run the exhaust thru the intake manifold back in those days, to speed the heating of the intake - gas and air mix. Those exhaust ports running thru the intake manifold, would clog with carbon so thick, that after 40,000 miles or so, I had to rip the intake manifold off and chisel out the carbon. Like a coal miner. But the oomph I got back for that trip down coal miner alley, was insane. First trip out, buried the needle over 120mph, only to feel the car lifting off its wheels (Bernoulli effect). Fastest I've ever land travelled. Until a high speed train between Porto and Lisbon this past fall. :)
P.S. My Dad drank himself to death, dying of a massive heart attack in '73. At age 51. Was captured in WW2, saw things he couldn't unsee, and lived the rest of his life in constant PTSD. I too wear belts, mostly because I have no idea how to turn those darn bells off. And haven't drank since COVID, when my son and I both pushed the bottle away.
Bravo! Excellent piece. My sister, also a lush, died at 73 from colon cancer. If alcoholics live long enough, they will have cancer. Colon cancer, stomach cancer, liver cancer, pancreatic cancer, bladder cancer. The list goes on. The risk goes exponential if you pile cigarette smoking in on top of it all. Best always. PM
Thank you Paul. Brother-in-law recently succumbed to esophageal cancer, at the tender age of 63.
We've had cancer warnings on cigarette packages here in Canada since 2001. Still doesn't stop people from doing it, but at least they're "informed."
Imagine if that "cancer" label had been on every bottle of alcohol, since 1988? The lives it could have potentially saved, never mind the thousands if not millions of families that could have been spared the "consequences" of living with an alcoholic.
Globally, deaths have hovered around 1.2 million due to vehicular accidents. The majority of which had something to do with alcohol. Vietnam who recently implemented 0% tolerance for drinking and driving, has seen a massive reduction in vehicular accidents AND deaths.
Let's hope the rest of the world follows suit. Soon.
Most AI's now have the ability to search the Internet. Most of them now "remember" what you've talked about in your previous chats as well.
ChatGPT, Grok and Claude all "remember" previous chats. Gemini, sadly, does not yet. But you can practically stuff an entire encyclopedia into a single Gemini chat and it won't complain, whereas the others, go "what the flying duck are you doing?"
I think it's a matter of time. The internet was not initially useful, but, you must admit the newsletter business has become much more profitable because of it. We are also, invoices, purchase order, bills of lading are now all emailed, even receiving payment is via ACH. We ship product to a small town, then invoice to the home office in Atlanta, and magically, the invoice and the received bill of lading are joined in the cloud and payment is produced, very efficient, and very fast. There is no time for thinking or contemplation, if I do I'm wasting time!!
Maybe AI will be the same way, given enough time. I used to get a great magazine every month called International Living, loved it, and subscribed for years. Read it cover to cover even making notes in the margins. Then it went all electronic and they lost me. No time to think and dream. I envy you Bill, that's what you do for a living, connect dots, think, contemplate. What a great job!
We are at the front end of the world’s largest IT project. It is going to collapse under its own weight. This is not an opinion.
The globalist oligarchs who are “masterminding”(need a good antonym here) this Mother Of All IT projects have no sense of history, this driven by their gargantuan egos that result in them driving with no rearview mirror and a windshield that, rather than depicting the real world ahead, depicts a virtual and imaginary world that is a creation of their diseased minds. This is all quite evident. Just in the last two weeks we have seen major outages in the worlds two largest Cloud computing systems, AWS and Microsoft Azure. Nothing newsworthy here other than the immediate impacts. No one to connect the dots, and this is only the beginning. Take AI Data Centers. Each one could be characterized as a massive energy/water infrastructure project married to a massive IT project contained within a massive construction project. The Laws of Project Management would say that such projects are not “too big to fail”, rather they are too big to succeed. Raise you hand if you believe that the technocratic geniuses that are mentally architecting our future will get all the data centers they need, when they need them, all operating at capacity? If they don’t, the wheels come off the Digital Utopia wagon. I didn’t see any hands. The data center feature happens to be the most important link in the chain. If it fails the entire vision comes crashing down. The Laws of Unforeseen and Unintended Consequences will be legion. The problems and failures will be inherent and consistent with scale and scope.
Yes but at least you could set the points on your '58 Chevy. I knew a guy who timed his flathead six by moving the distributor until a 50 cent piece would sit on edge atop the engine without falling over while it was idling, Try DYIing a timing problem on you F-150 today and see how long it is before you are calling a tow truck and looking forward to a repair bill in the thousands...
And what good is an extra ten years of life if there is no one with which you can have an intelligent conversation. Last night I talked with an old college friend who graduated with a degree in English. He told me that he no longer reads books. Maybe soon we will be able to discuss the relationship of Joyce's "Ulysses" to Homer's "Odyssey" with our robot companion...
But you can. Ask ChatGPT to compare "Moby Dick" to "The book of Luke" for a great contrast discussion. Or how "Moby Dick" parallels Hitler or Napoleon.
I think most people prefer talking to humans, as opposed to AI. But it won't be long, before we have OpenAI "Home" devices, where we'll be able to keep them in chat mode for as long as we want. The phone app for ChatGPT already let's you "talk" to AI and it responds in a handful of different voices. With all the proper inflections you might expect of a human. There are some DIY raspberry Pi projects out there, where you can jury rig your own OpenAI "Home" device.
I'll just remember to keep "it" in the closet. Locked away. Overnight. Charging. While we sleep comfortably in our locked bedroom doors. With the knives in the kitchen, strategically on the top shelf.
I don’t understand what the point is. I believe no intelligent human being will let a machine make decisions for them. Yes, they may get information from a machine so that THEY can make a more intelligent decision. I don’t believe that human beings with a certain amount of intelligence will GIVE UP complete control to an AI machine.
How many "intelligent" human beings took COVID shots without doing any research to see if there were any studies? Believing a machine or government gets the same result. Humans want to believe somebody or machine is smart and will look after them - except maybe in the back seat of a 57 Chevy.
WOW-I remember very clearly. I had a ‘57 Chevy. Wish I still had it. I sold it for $250. You are correct. I guess the average person is quite ________. I’ll let you fill in this one.
Notice, that they trust AI with making driving decisions (ultimately deciding whether someone lives or dies), but not handling your bank account overcharges. Or whether you can return that set of steak knives at Costco.
"They", whoever is building these new AI centers, had better build their own power generation capabilities (apparently nuclear) or a terrorist cutoff of external power would render it incapable of adding 1 plus 1. We obviously don't have to worry about paying for building them. We just have the Fed create trillions more paper currency to go with the "well over" 100 trillion dollars currently owed. Everybody knows that the "dollar" is as good as gold, at least until gold is revalued to gold.
I'm a fan of AI on paper any way. I appear much smarter, grammar, spelling, the other day someone asked what college I attended. SWU side walk university where I've earned a Phd.
I tend to agree with Bill all this tech has done little to advance the human race. The boss (me) loves the idea for the cost of a few phones I can track my employees ever second of day. I know who's been naughty and who been nice. This has become so normal criminals look for cameras before acting, they forget the guy across the street has a video door bell.
Tech has removed all privacy taken away most leisure, to get away from the world you'd to buy a ranch in the far mountains of Argentina, or toss the phone.
No phone, no life in the big city, where a phone is a necessity for daily existence from parking to buying a cup of coffee.
If anything tech has filled the world with people who probably would have been better off not surviving to adulthood. Tech has spawned a lot of dumb and useless humans. While the bulk of workers produce nothing of lasting value.
Y'all know I'm a Luddite and a non-investor. You won't be surprised when I state that AI exists, because it can. It can exist for two reasons: the control crowd see their opportunity, and the profit crowd think they can make money. This is the same forked tongue that got us in trouble with immigration, especially illegal immigration. The control crowd saw the chance to un-white America, and the profit crowd saw a way to make more money. So, when it comes down to evaluating a trend or development, you know the 2 criteria to apply: control outcome and profit outcome. Best always. PM
The control crowd was not trying to un-white America simply they thrive on cheap labor via a permanent underclass. One is well kept with welfare housed in voter storage facilities in every large city in ever swing state. While the illegals are cheap labor this was never more apparent when political actors asked; "Who will mow our lawns, clean our toilets?" Not the folks in voter storage that's for sure, it's hard enough to motivate these to come to vote, mail in ballots are collected door to door stored in car trunks and applied if the vote is close.
The plan is simply the useful idiots don't ever want to leave office, if needed they'll burn down the system figuring they'll survive to steal again.
You see it how you (want to) see it, and I do the same. I agree that, at first, the overriding concern was both cheaper (than existing) labor, and actual labor replacement (because we had essentially put our working class on welfare, simultaneously exalting them to special class status while locking in their votes but creating need for laborers), and then, seeing their intent and model working so well, they, the controllers, came to understand that importing 3rd-worlders en masse served the overall goal of their feudalistic vision. I'm 73. I live on 4 acres. I have always cut my own grass and still do so. I clean my own toilets and haul my own garbage, maintain and wash my cars and have always done so and will continue to do so. Best always. PM
We see the workings of the world as we've experienced it.
Although born into what is today considered the lap of luxury, it was my father's home he was quick to teach his sons this fact of life. Chores aptly named were required, with hard work our status and responsibilities increased. Looking back a modern parent would be horrified, knowing nothing better we loved the system of chores. I credit these chores with my early successes that have led to my current lifestyle.
My father exposed us to the mining and construction. One summer it was decided the 10 inch crawl space under the kitchen was too shallow. The boys were mustered to dig it out by hand to a depth of 40 inches. Our next task was to haul cement into the space and pour a smooth floor. Our knowledge of metal working, and engine work came as we were tasked with fixing rust holes our mother's car, oil changes, tire rotations, gassing the tank. Prepared us for the $20 used cars that would be our lot until we'd saved sufficient funds to step up to $100 cars. Dad was the treasurer of our small town the police had better things to do than pull over our cars and check ages. This left us prepared to earn a legal drivers license at 16. The chief did put his foot down when my older brother took is 1935 Ford frame out for a test drive. What fun sitting on a kitchen chair strapped to the frame.
Our childhood taught me one thing, I didn't want to dig ditches or fix cars. I bought my first rental property at age 23 when I discovered not everyone owned their home.
It took me a better part of owning 3 properties to meet a fellow wiser landlord who suggested fixing toilets, shoveling, walks, and otherwise slaving for my tenants was a bad use of time. Hiring others lead to starting a contracting business, and then morphing into the HVAC business.
Life has taught the world although employed is in fact incompetent to some degree with government the most incompetent. The controllers just as incompetent simply when a king blunders those who are ruled suffer not the While for the most part the king is not. This is the system of the world, the masses seeking security have signed on to financial slavery. The entire system is smoke and mirrors, built on fairy dust and promises. Our money is worthless, as is our entire educational system on every level. Government and especially the judicial system exists to keep the slaves working as they are systematically and willingly drained of their means of production. Religion is supported by the State given special tax status as a former elder and Christian I came to learn the inside workings of the institution. A social club created to control and fleece its willing victims while acting as a pressure safety valve. When times get tough, the churches will step up and toe the government's line always. The covid response is proof. Trump and all politicians claim Jesus, a fictional intermediary between man and god created by the Roman Empire with the Pope as that intermediary with his church as proof of divine rule.
I let the world go its own way, I cannot change anything, people do not want the truth, nor are they willing to confirm what they believe is in fact true.
Advice to my children; avoid falling into the trap of working as a wage slave at least until you don't need the income. Don't fight the system, embrace the system to the same level as those on the mountain top. They've both incorporated at age 18, both receive all income within corporate entities. I'd hoped one would start a 501C3 corporation something I have not yet accomplished.
Yes, you and I closer to unanimity than you might think. My experience was similar to yours; my parents saw me as conscripted labor, and, though I did not like it, it was good for me. Not only that, I learned a lot of practical stuff by being responsible for the outcome of my work: I had to learn first how to do something, and then I had to avoid mistakes, and it all had to result in success and quality. They also saw me as an object needing regular and harsh physical "discipline". My parents were also alcoholics. All of this taught me: I make it happen, or it doesn't happen. The principal difference between my time and now is that hard work, honesty, initiative, and skills acquisition and development were then all highly sought and rewarded. These qualities were part of the culture. Today, not so much, because there are votes to be bought, and merit is not only scorned, it is punished.
Where we differ, somewhat, is that I have a more liberal attitude to religion than you seem to offer. Most people need structure and emotional support. Having seen firsthand the ravages of drug addiction, I think religion is infinitely preferable. John Lennon's song "Whatever Gets You Through the Night" sums up my attitude. Another song is by Tavares "Don't Take Away My Music". I have seen many people become successful stalwarts in society, and these would have been lost had they not had the support and structure of religion. You and I are strong personalities who likely don't need that particular support, but it should be available, if not for any other reason than it's cheaper for society at large. Now, that is not a blank check, not by far. "By their fruits ye shall know them, " says Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). Islam is not a religion in the western sense; rather, it is a system of social order, cultural indoctrination, and complete, total, top-down control, with the imprimatur of a supposed supreme being, the purpose of which is to make the whole scam appear unassailable, incontrovertible, and perpetual. That we accord this doctrine legitimacy and respect, esteeming it as a religion, is to me both immoral and scandalous. Perhaps you grew up Catholic. If so, I can understand your position.
Finally, up to 1960, America was 90% white. Now she is barely 50%, and when the Boomers pass on, which is underway, she will be 20% less white overnight, and that will be the end of America as we knew her. This is a fact. I have been on this planet since 1952. "They" say correlation is not causation, but in my experience, America was a better place, worked better, and was infinitely more productive, when the country was white. I say this, not just because it's obvious, and not because whites themselves are somehow inherently superior, but they produced over time a superior culture both in Europe, and later here. A superior culture always displaces inferior and/or defective culture. This point is significant and crucial, and here's why: culture determines values, and values determine choices, and choices determine outcomes. This is why the USA is collapsing at such a precipitous pace: we gave up on our culture.
Everything we are experiencing we did to ourselves. I'm proud to know you, Dennis. Many thanks and best always. PM
You nailed it I was brought up by an Irish father and German mother.
My father retired at 50 and soon became an alcoholic, where our mother decided she would enjoy his retirement apart from his company. He passed from lung cancer 6 years later. She is still alive at 98 living in St. Mary's Kansas. Both of my parents hailed from an extreme orthodoxy known as the Pious the 10th society. This overly mentally oppressive form of the religion induced me to study the foundations of Universal Romanism, through its many iterations, heresies and final doctrines enforced by the sword until the entire western world submitted to the control of Rome.
Gnosticism, Marcionism, Eastern Orthodoxy giving way to Rome. Calvinism, Lutheranism, both common designations were assigned by Rome as heretical labels. The creation of the Latin Vulgate translated by Jerome from his reckoning: "No two Greek manuscripts are in agreement with the old Latin texts as wholly unreliable". The NT bible is founded upon a narration where in error is the basis for the translation one that according to Jerome was to support Roman church doctrines.
Yes, I agree man needs social order. The Founding Father used the Torah as a guide for their Constitutional Republic. They actually tried their best to divorce the new government from the ideas found in the NT and as such from the creation of a monarchy. Universal Romanism lead to Protestantism both faiths were created to provide a king the divine right to rule.
The Torah of YHWH originally granted no man to rule over another. However, Torah grants total free will to mankind, even to rejecting Torah. Simly live within the framework of be excluded from the family of YHWH.
Israel used its free will to demand a king, one of their choosing. Read the account. YHWH warns the people, the new king will take their sons adding these to his army, they will be cast into continuous wars. This king will take the best of their lands and the output of the lands he will take, the king will take their daughters as his perfumers, the people will lose all free will and be oppressed. They chose Sha'uwl anyway, war decimated the land, their new enemies defeated the king who committed suicide. There is no going back, however showing mercy YHWH chose a king best to rule over the people. David became king, he was not perfect in ruling the people but he was the anointed (messiah from the Greek) over Israel.
Simply put, I don't need a cleric to order my social life, nor do I have need to attend pot luck dinners or have fake friends from church. The Creator of all things provided a means to know HIm on a personal level, to become a member of His family. Why would I chose Rome or any flavor of the state religion they created from the letters of a self proclaimed Roman rabbi?
Christians shake their heads with wonderment and ask: Why do the Jews reject Jesus, when he's so good? They don't want the answer. I'm not a Jew but I understand why Jesus is rejected.
Simply put the Torah, Prophets, and Psalms reveals the identity of the messiah, and his purpose. Which does not include being born of a virgin, dying for the sins of anyone, nor was he to raise from the dead, and become the head of a church. Contrary to Paul's letters, the forgiveness of sins by YHWH does not require the shedding of blood.
The entire narrative of Christianity was identified by Marcion as that of a new god separate with no relation to the God of the Jews found in the Torah. Marcion was widely accepted in his time, so much so he garnered a majority of Christians to his cause. Shortly afterward Tertullian was tasked by the Roman church with the condemnation of Marcionism who was branded as a heretic.
I'm a fan of standing on my own two feet, taking responsibility for my own actions and misgivings. Praying to god to win the big game or for money is an abomination. Psalm 28:9 Whoever turns away his ear from hearing the Torah, even his prayer is an abomination.
No need to reinvent the wheel; listen and act accordingly it's His family and He makes the rules not clerics or rabbis. This will require learning Hebrew reading from original sources. In comparison to learning English, Hebrew is a breeze it's just very different. Christians and Muslims both agree Torah is from YHWH, and yet neither teach their members Hebrew. Where Jewish children are taught the language that by age eight it's like reading a newspaper.
A late friend of mine, raised in a family of Methodists, the grandfather being an actual minister in the Wesleyan tradition, eventually rejected "organized" religion, electing to become what he called an "agnostic atheist', using that term, because he could not honestly say he knew one way or another, but that needing to come down on one side or another, he had to chose atheism. His founding conviction, and I can still hear his voice, was "it is necessary to admit that, on balance, religion causes more harm than good." His follow-up statement to that was always, "But it is important that you believe in God or whatever makes good sense to you."
As you point out, dissent and/or denial in a culture of belief is not welcome "speech" or "thought". I still think that the Protestant Christian doctrine and tradition, and its ethos and morality, was a fundamental force in raising up the American people as we knew it. Perfect? No. My problem with Judaism, especially as you describe it, is that it is too arcane and detailed to do the masses any good. It takes up all your time and energy just trying to be a Jew. The founding tenet of the church in which I was raised, The Protestant Church in the United States of America, a participating church in the overall umbrella of the Church of England, was and likely still is (though over the last 50 years has grossly strayed from its own declared doctrine and purpose) that the Church can bring you religion and understanding, but in the final analysis, it's up to the individual to work out his/her own relation and understanding, one on one, with God through Christ Jesus. The Church, in my day, basically said, "We can't do it for you, and we won't do it for you. We will help and support you, but, ultimately it is on you." That appealed to me until the Church went off the rails in the70s and 80s for what it thought was relevance and accommodating secularism. At the time, I was angry about it, and took it personally. Now, I come to see that the fall of the Church mirrors the fall of the country. It dovetails perfectly with Bonner's dictum: When the money goes, everything goes.
Again, we face the sequence: Culture determines values; values determine choices; choices determine outcome. And now, we've got a mess. Best always. PM
No need to think or be clever, just buy silver. None of that stuff works without silver.
I'll tell you what AI can't do. Yet.
While good AI can rationalize, and empathize, it still can't make decisions that matter. They can shuttle you to the next set of questions, and potentially using your voice, get you into the right queue, but that's where it ends.
That is why the majority of us, myself included, try to find the quickest way to a human, on all the IVR (Interactive Voice Response) systems around the world.
Why?
Because we want someone, who can make a decision. Usually tied to money.
It may give us some information, but the people in charge behind those systems, won't be giving those machines the ability to make dollar based decisions any time soon.
AI: "Oh we lost your suitcase for you? I'll just have some funds deposited immediately to your account. Will $1,000 do?"
Love self-deprecating humor, and agree with what happens in the back seat of any car! You hit the nail squarely on the head and drove home with one smack. There really is no "I" in AI.
It's programmed by a human, for example, what data set to align with, what do we feed it. It can not tell you anything someone doesn't already know. Google a query and you will get a different response, because Google uses up to date info. The AI, is only as proficient as the date of the last data set.
Where it begins to get a spooky is the alignment of Quantum & AI. The same data set limits apply, but Quantum can reach out to Google (and other search engines) for the latest data and augment its delivery of the result.
Per the Bing statement of "they really do not know who I am". Some are claiming a relationship to eschatology and alignment with the dark side. Interesting to say the least.
Nice write up!
When the bench seat went away, so did the fun. No more opening up the passenger door and sliding across to the wheel. Best always. PM
Ah yes, the good ol'd days. When seatbelts were optional, and sliding around a left hand corner at speed, in a Plymouth Fury III, meant that you were steering from the passenger seat, as you slid across the entire front seat due to Newton's first law.
Seat belts became mandatory equipment in 1968, though manufacturers began installing them prior to that. My Dad refused to use them. He didn't grow up with them. He got T-boned one night by a driver who ran a red light. He ended up on the passenger side of the bench seat, still holding the wheel. "Son," he said, "if I had had a seat belt on (the car was a '54 Chevy), I'd be dead." I quit talking about it. I had a 65 Chevy with no seat belts, and I had a 66 Chevy that had them. In 1984, the government mandated use of seat belts. I still see people doing without the benefit. I hope the Plymouth Fury had the V-8 hemi... Best always. PM
P.S. Dad drank himself to death, dying of cirrhosis in 1987 at age 61. Two things I did not pick up from my Dad: I wear seat belts religiously, and I am a tee-totaller. PM
In the '70 Plymouth Fury III, we only had a 318 V8. That was pop's first and only car he bought with cash. Best speed I could get out of it, was 115 mph in 1980. Unbenkownst to me, Mopar had decided to run the exhaust thru the intake manifold back in those days, to speed the heating of the intake - gas and air mix. Those exhaust ports running thru the intake manifold, would clog with carbon so thick, that after 40,000 miles or so, I had to rip the intake manifold off and chisel out the carbon. Like a coal miner. But the oomph I got back for that trip down coal miner alley, was insane. First trip out, buried the needle over 120mph, only to feel the car lifting off its wheels (Bernoulli effect). Fastest I've ever land travelled. Until a high speed train between Porto and Lisbon this past fall. :)
P.S. My Dad drank himself to death, dying of a massive heart attack in '73. At age 51. Was captured in WW2, saw things he couldn't unsee, and lived the rest of his life in constant PTSD. I too wear belts, mostly because I have no idea how to turn those darn bells off. And haven't drank since COVID, when my son and I both pushed the bottle away.
Bravo! Excellent piece. My sister, also a lush, died at 73 from colon cancer. If alcoholics live long enough, they will have cancer. Colon cancer, stomach cancer, liver cancer, pancreatic cancer, bladder cancer. The list goes on. The risk goes exponential if you pile cigarette smoking in on top of it all. Best always. PM
Thank you Paul. Brother-in-law recently succumbed to esophageal cancer, at the tender age of 63.
We've had cancer warnings on cigarette packages here in Canada since 2001. Still doesn't stop people from doing it, but at least they're "informed."
Imagine if that "cancer" label had been on every bottle of alcohol, since 1988? The lives it could have potentially saved, never mind the thousands if not millions of families that could have been spared the "consequences" of living with an alcoholic.
Globally, deaths have hovered around 1.2 million due to vehicular accidents. The majority of which had something to do with alcohol. Vietnam who recently implemented 0% tolerance for drinking and driving, has seen a massive reduction in vehicular accidents AND deaths.
Let's hope the rest of the world follows suit. Soon.
Most AI's now have the ability to search the Internet. Most of them now "remember" what you've talked about in your previous chats as well.
ChatGPT, Grok and Claude all "remember" previous chats. Gemini, sadly, does not yet. But you can practically stuff an entire encyclopedia into a single Gemini chat and it won't complain, whereas the others, go "what the flying duck are you doing?"
and of course, i been using Gemini!
I've been waiting for a response to some of my questions, " Is that a trick question?" Ha ha
I think it's a matter of time. The internet was not initially useful, but, you must admit the newsletter business has become much more profitable because of it. We are also, invoices, purchase order, bills of lading are now all emailed, even receiving payment is via ACH. We ship product to a small town, then invoice to the home office in Atlanta, and magically, the invoice and the received bill of lading are joined in the cloud and payment is produced, very efficient, and very fast. There is no time for thinking or contemplation, if I do I'm wasting time!!
Maybe AI will be the same way, given enough time. I used to get a great magazine every month called International Living, loved it, and subscribed for years. Read it cover to cover even making notes in the margins. Then it went all electronic and they lost me. No time to think and dream. I envy you Bill, that's what you do for a living, connect dots, think, contemplate. What a great job!
Jim C
We are at the front end of the world’s largest IT project. It is going to collapse under its own weight. This is not an opinion.
The globalist oligarchs who are “masterminding”(need a good antonym here) this Mother Of All IT projects have no sense of history, this driven by their gargantuan egos that result in them driving with no rearview mirror and a windshield that, rather than depicting the real world ahead, depicts a virtual and imaginary world that is a creation of their diseased minds. This is all quite evident. Just in the last two weeks we have seen major outages in the worlds two largest Cloud computing systems, AWS and Microsoft Azure. Nothing newsworthy here other than the immediate impacts. No one to connect the dots, and this is only the beginning. Take AI Data Centers. Each one could be characterized as a massive energy/water infrastructure project married to a massive IT project contained within a massive construction project. The Laws of Project Management would say that such projects are not “too big to fail”, rather they are too big to succeed. Raise you hand if you believe that the technocratic geniuses that are mentally architecting our future will get all the data centers they need, when they need them, all operating at capacity? If they don’t, the wheels come off the Digital Utopia wagon. I didn’t see any hands. The data center feature happens to be the most important link in the chain. If it fails the entire vision comes crashing down. The Laws of Unforeseen and Unintended Consequences will be legion. The problems and failures will be inherent and consistent with scale and scope.
And this is only the beginning
Yes but at least you could set the points on your '58 Chevy. I knew a guy who timed his flathead six by moving the distributor until a 50 cent piece would sit on edge atop the engine without falling over while it was idling, Try DYIing a timing problem on you F-150 today and see how long it is before you are calling a tow truck and looking forward to a repair bill in the thousands...
And what good is an extra ten years of life if there is no one with which you can have an intelligent conversation. Last night I talked with an old college friend who graduated with a degree in English. He told me that he no longer reads books. Maybe soon we will be able to discuss the relationship of Joyce's "Ulysses" to Homer's "Odyssey" with our robot companion...
But you can. Ask ChatGPT to compare "Moby Dick" to "The book of Luke" for a great contrast discussion. Or how "Moby Dick" parallels Hitler or Napoleon.
It can go where we didn't think it possible.
Yes Lucas You are correct. But I prefer that "human " touch .
And AGI is when you can't tell the difference.
But then I never speak to computers.
I think most people prefer talking to humans, as opposed to AI. But it won't be long, before we have OpenAI "Home" devices, where we'll be able to keep them in chat mode for as long as we want. The phone app for ChatGPT already let's you "talk" to AI and it responds in a handful of different voices. With all the proper inflections you might expect of a human. There are some DIY raspberry Pi projects out there, where you can jury rig your own OpenAI "Home" device.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLP4aznirC8
But if you don't want to get your hands too dirty, the retail model is sure to be here. Soon.
Bill asks what AI might do: " Launch nuclear missiles on its own? Shut down the internet or skew an election by falsifying the news?"
Presidents of both parties have done precisely that, and he doesn't get on about them.
you did make me laugh
That's because he was talking about lack of intelligence. Uh, wait...
Until AI can fix the leak in my roof or change a flat tire by the side of the road it’s basically useless.
That's this guy, coupled with AI. And a set of wrenches.
https://www.1x.tech/neo
Deposit down! (Is that Bill?)
I'll just remember to keep "it" in the closet. Locked away. Overnight. Charging. While we sleep comfortably in our locked bedroom doors. With the knives in the kitchen, strategically on the top shelf.
BS, mistakes and hallucinations... 57 chevy :)
I don’t understand what the point is. I believe no intelligent human being will let a machine make decisions for them. Yes, they may get information from a machine so that THEY can make a more intelligent decision. I don’t believe that human beings with a certain amount of intelligence will GIVE UP complete control to an AI machine.
Abe, You'd be surprised what a human being, intelligent or no, will allow, And that's what the control advocates are banking on. Best always. PM
How many "intelligent" human beings took COVID shots without doing any research to see if there were any studies? Believing a machine or government gets the same result. Humans want to believe somebody or machine is smart and will look after them - except maybe in the back seat of a 57 Chevy.
WOW-I remember very clearly. I had a ‘57 Chevy. Wish I still had it. I sold it for $250. You are correct. I guess the average person is quite ________. I’ll let you fill in this one.
But they have. See Tesla's Self Driving.
Notice, that they trust AI with making driving decisions (ultimately deciding whether someone lives or dies), but not handling your bank account overcharges. Or whether you can return that set of steak knives at Costco.
How about the bench seat in a 1931 Ford pickup.
"They", whoever is building these new AI centers, had better build their own power generation capabilities (apparently nuclear) or a terrorist cutoff of external power would render it incapable of adding 1 plus 1. We obviously don't have to worry about paying for building them. We just have the Fed create trillions more paper currency to go with the "well over" 100 trillion dollars currently owed. Everybody knows that the "dollar" is as good as gold, at least until gold is revalued to gold.
A great one, Bill, keep them coming.
I'm a fan of AI on paper any way. I appear much smarter, grammar, spelling, the other day someone asked what college I attended. SWU side walk university where I've earned a Phd.
I tend to agree with Bill all this tech has done little to advance the human race. The boss (me) loves the idea for the cost of a few phones I can track my employees ever second of day. I know who's been naughty and who been nice. This has become so normal criminals look for cameras before acting, they forget the guy across the street has a video door bell.
Tech has removed all privacy taken away most leisure, to get away from the world you'd to buy a ranch in the far mountains of Argentina, or toss the phone.
No phone, no life in the big city, where a phone is a necessity for daily existence from parking to buying a cup of coffee.
If anything tech has filled the world with people who probably would have been better off not surviving to adulthood. Tech has spawned a lot of dumb and useless humans. While the bulk of workers produce nothing of lasting value.
Artificial “Imitation” ……