3 ms·
At first I thought you were referring to Umberto Eco's laws of fascism: "Fascist societies rhetorically cast their enemies as at the same time too strong and to
by pocksuppet 1mo ago
At first I thought you were referring to Umberto Eco's laws of fascism: "Fascist societies rhetorically cast their enemies as at the same time too strong and too weak."
but it's subtly different, because incompetence is not weakness.
- Calazon 1mo agoI read it as suggesting that AI models are simultaneously terrifyingly powerful and incompetent dunces.
- devindotcom 1mo agono, it's the current administration, among others like musk.
- Calazon 1mo agoThat is also very fair.
- devindotcom 1mo agoheh, no. Eco is referring to how the white house casts groups like academics, immigrants, socialists, and trans people.
- pcstl 1mo agoIt is weakness in the long-term. It's pretty clear in how people talk about billionaires: They must somehow conclude that the people most successful within a system that rewards certain things are not competent because the things the system rewards are not what they think the system should reward (it is fine to believe the system rewards the wrong things, but people walk straight into denying that those people have skill even within the system, or they claim that skill within the bounds of the system does not reflect any "real" skill - totally ignoring that elites tend to stay elites even through, say, Communist uprisings). Hence how someone can say that Musk is "dumb" with a straight face.
- konmok 1mo agoI wouldn't really call cruelty or dishonesty a "skill".
- pcstl 1mo agoThat's a choice, but the universe has no reason to respect it.
- mapontosevenths 1mo ago> the system rewards are not what they think the system should reward It's the grown-up version of nerdy kids hating "the jocks" in high school. We're all just a bunch of dumb kids. Maybe obsolete children, but still children when it counts. That said, Elon Musk celebrated cutting funding that fed starving children and supported cancer research by waving around a chainsaw on stage. The richest man on earth did this because he wanted lower taxes... for himself. When Anubis weighs his soul against the feather it's likely to completely destroy the scale.
- pcstl 1mo agoI'm not saying any of the people in charge are good people at all. I'm just saying that they are skilled at achieving their own goals, regardless of the morality or lack thereof of those goals.
- pocksuppet 1mo agoI don't even think that. I think half of them accidentally stumbled into success. Elon was kicked out of PayPal with a nice golden parachute so he wouldn't sue.
- pcstl 1mo agoRegression to the mean is pretty nasty. Stumbling into success can make you a car dealership owner or something like that, but being consistently successful in business requires just about as much skill as being consistently successful in, say, chess.