Example: Surveillance state, endless propaganda. That is already happening and is the most frightening but not included in your list. Are you not worried?
The difference for most people against AI is that there is no world where someone with intent and skill can engage with AI to make anything approaching art. If your process includes AI, it is impossible to be an artist.
> The war on drugs definitely didn't cause the drug trade or the murders.
Have to stop you right there. The “war on drugs” absolutely has created the conditions for the drug trade and the murders. If you criminalize a large part of the economy, then only criminals will profit from it. If we had sane drug policy, there would not be the profit that attracts these criminals. Additionally, the US intelligence services (and other nations) have a long documented role in cultivating the drug trade for diverse reasons: for profit and paying for operations, for control of regions, and to provide a reservoir of violence to disguise or facilitate their work.
The only way to stop it is to regulate it. We’re almost there. Read the history about the war on drugs. David Musto has a great book about it, The American Disease: Origins of Narcotic Control. It was never designed to stop it. Its goal from the beginning has been to criminalize “undesirables”
I’m from New Haven and if you went into a place and asked for a beef patty you would get a Jamaican beef patty, not a burger. It may not be everywhere, but pretty much every city I’ve lived in that is the case
Anecdote: I asked for the "mushroom burger" on their menu at an airport years ago -- I didn't want meat and it had nothing indicting meat in the listed ingredients that I checked -- and they brought me a hamburger beef patty with mushrooms on top. Imagine both of our surprises when they brought me the plate and I was like uhm I think that's another table's order? Well it turns out, at least to that restaurant (idk about the rest of the locality), that was considered a mushroom burger. Elsewhere in the same country (and even Googling it now), a mushroom burger means a vegetarian burger with a portobello mushroom or such as the "patty". Like how a salmon burger means the patty is made of salmon, or a veggie burger means the patty is made of veggies.
I sat there looking dumb and the waiter thought (like everyone here) that I was some idiot who didn't know what a burger was. Now I'm not suggesting they need to regulate what "mushroom burger" means across the locality too, but I couldn't have been the first one to get caught off-guard by this, and the whole incident never needed to happen either. At least in an airport where people from all over stop by, I seriously wouldn't think that only a racist or anti-meatatarian/anti-vegetarian dictatorship would impose some common-sense rules to prevent confusion or food/time wastage arising from cuisine-"unculturedness".
If I ordered a mushroom burger (especially as my preferred “mushroom and Swiss burger”), I’d be surprised if it came without the beef patty (the burger part).
It’s not that I can’t understand that the other exists, but my brain is wired to think of mushroom as a topping/adjective and burger as the noun.
I've seen the meat version plenty of times too, it's not like I couldn't understand that either. That was the entire reason I checked the ingredients, which had never failed me until then. Restaurants normally list something about the meat if it's there... but not always.
Which I point out here because there are people saying "just check the ingredients" and, no, this clearly happened despite that.
And which I also point out because the same people arguing "just check the ingredients" would get mad (possibly even more so) if you actually agree and decide to require reliable ingredient lists.
I once ordered a vegetarian burger in some kind of trivia bar of a big american city. It came with bacon... When I asked they said: "but nobody ever complained about having bacon in it". there are alternate realities out there. Even in the deepest small town I had never seen that.
Perhaps you should visit more of the US, or visit different types of restaurants? Neither meaning is as dominant as you make it sound. You see both within five minute walks of each other.
Haha I guess we discovered the mysterious country you were referring to when you said, "Elsewhere in the same country." I wonder why you didn't want to reveal it? Could it be because you knew you were wrong, ahead of time?
I'm talking about restaurants, not SEO'd slop recipe sites on google.
> You see both within five minute walks of each other.
Chili's mushroom swiss burger: https://www.chilis.com/menu/big-mouth-burgers/mushroom-swiss... - notice how this one doesn't say anything about a meat patty, except for the picture. That's because without some kind of qualifer, by default "burger" means a sandwich with a beef patty, everywhere in the US.
Those are chain restaurants which can be found throughout the US, so you can't claim this is something regional. I defy you to find a single counterexample at a restaurant like this. Certainly, this is going to be what you get at any airport restaurant.
Here's an example of how vegeterian mushroom burgers are typically listed, at https://www.barhygge.com/menus : "Mushroom-Barley Veggie Burger". Notice the "veggie". That's what will typically be specified unless you're at a vegan or vegetarian place where it's assumed.
> Haha I guess we discovered the mysterious country you were referring to when you said, "Elsewhere in the same country." I wonder why you didn't want to reveal it?
Reveal what? The country of the airport and my travel was irrelevant. You wanted to talk about the US and I talked about the US.
> Could it be because you knew you were wrong, ahead of time?
Wow, you totally caught me.
> notice how this one doesn't say anything about a meat patty, except for the picture.
Except the picture? Why the heck would I ignore the picture? Do you understand the fundamental issue here, or do you think it was that I was too stupid to look for a picture when I looked at the menu at the airport?
Since it's so difficult to comprehend: the whole problem is over whether information is communicated adequately enough that people can confidently understand what they're buying. The format of said communication, whether typewritten on a menu, imaged digitally, drawn by hand, handwritten on papyrus, engraved into a rock, or verbal from the waiter... is so clearly not the point.
> also no mention of beef.
It's literally in the photo. You seem to be really struggling to find examples where this information is actually missing. I wonder why.
I’d be curious to learn about what you were experiencing, what the astronauts experience and the third man syndrome that Everest hikers experience. I don’t know if they are similar but I’d be curious to learn more about how our perception and attachment to our bodies changes while enduring these extreme conditions.
As a side note, it seems pretty naive to believe that humans would be able to handle going to Mars without serious psychosis. I have no idea, but it would not be surprising to find out it is an insurmountable obstacle to becoming an interplanetary species.
I would be extremely surprised if it's insurmountable. It may turn out that this effect is triggered by environmental factors that are entirely controllable that we simply never had any reason to control.
There are so many unknowns when it comes to crewed space travel and habitation that it's difficult to say much of anything with certainty.
I’ve always thought the same thing with regards to early explorers. Being on a ship, sailing into the complete unknown, for months. How would you not go insane?
Wow, I would sign up instantly for such a voyage to Mars. I am probably too old but knowing why you are engaged in a heroic task makes one happy to tolerate all kinds of problems. Sure they might get a bit twitchy but gonna stay basically glued.
People assume they handle hardships one way, and then when SHTF and their mind starts coming off seams under severe stress and fear they often realize reality is someplace else.
For many of us exposed to mortal dangers in one way or another via more or less extreme sports with little margins for errors, we realized our limits are often much further than we thought. Training and exposure hardens mind too. But it also goes the other way - without that training and experience, its all just a projection and wishful cosplay thinking that looks nice on the paper and even may give warm fuzzy feeling, but not much more.
And I am old enough to know how many folks have some deep issue (usually some unresolved shit form childhood) that they sort of handle during normal days, but it comes back knocking on the door in less pleasant times. Also, for such long missions, one has to handle periods of boredom very well and be exceptionally well in tune with their inner self (for the lack of better words) - most folks reach for phone within 5 seconds of quiet time at the desk.
So your enthusiasm is commendable, but thats not how to select for such mission.
I would never be chosen as an astronaut, but I have certainly had long periods of time doing difficult unrewarding and unrecognized work because I believed in the ends - as a stay at home parent, as a child that was being sexually and physically abused, and at a 1990s company undergoing sustained hypergrowth.
I have a lot of experience with operating with reasonableness and equanimity despite extreme fear and lots and lots of boredom.
No way to know of course what a Mars trip would be like, but i do confidently know myself and my ability to specifically handle long duration of isolation, boredom, and exacting operational requirements.
> People assume they handle hardships one way, and then when SHTF and their mind starts coming off seams under severe stress and fear they often realize reality is someplace else.
to paraphrase a Lt Colonial I used to work for... "everyone is a tough guy until the mortars start getting close"
Humans as a species are rather adaptable (based on the number of climates and ways of life they adapted to on earth).
Finding the type of human that would thrive in the environment is a different story. Currently astronauts are highly selected (as the investment in them is huge) and the selection attributes might not be ideal with regard to psychosis. Probably one solution would be to make it that cheap to allow a significant sample of humans to go and see which one survives.
Hi, this is a well known phenomenon in politics that is much discussed in political science and sociology, and goes by many names (strategic polarization, racial capitalism, split labor market theory, etc, and depending upon how you frame it, it encompasses all politics going back to Plato’s Republic). There are many examples where elites have stoked division amongst the poor (usually along ethnic or religious differences, but any difference can be utilized).
The most famous examples in America were the divisions created between poor white and poor black Americans during Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era to prevent them from forming class solidarity, and then later, the Southern strategy that enabled Nixon and the Republican Party to regain power during and after the Civil Rights era.
If you are unfamiliar with this topic, you can look at wiki articles and blogs like these, and then go deeper by reading academic papers and books on the subject.
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