Category: Cold Civil War

‘Are We Going To Have A Civil War?’ (A Reassessment)

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Now that the 2022 midterms are over, let’s take a deep breath and think again about how likely it is that we’re going to have a Second American Civil War. The boner that MAGA Nazis have over this issue comes in large part from the fucking froth found within far Right circles.

It took me a long time to realize what was going on, but now I think I have a better handle on things — the reason why MAGA Nazis have civil war on the brain so much is they want the ability to murder people like me in cold blood without having to worry about any criminal accountability. Once the rules of war, not law are in play, then they can finally end the “woke cancel culture mobs” tyranny of “grooming” and forcing them to learn to hate white people and attend drag queen storytime on their way to their gender reassignment surgery.

But, you say, “Are we going to have a civil war?“

Well, I don’t know yet. But I can tell you that if it happens, I just don’t see it being because MAGA Nazis take up arms in rolling political violence like civil war expert Barbara F. Walter thinks. She’s so busy thinking about how angry Reds are, that she misses that the dynamic is such that it will be Blues — the majority of the country — that will ultimately face the decision as to if we’re going to have a civil war or not.

But I will say that for a lot of people — especially people within the MAGA Nazis community — the idea of a Second American Civil War has taken on an air of inevitability. It’s al very ironic because the very people who just need to be patient so they can get everything they want through politics, MAGA Nazis, ironically are the ones chomping at the bit to run around murdering people.

It’s because of that weird, ironic, dynamic that I have serious doubts that we’re going to have a civil war. If you take out the possibility that MAGA Nazis are going to spontaneously take up arms to overthrow their smug “woke cancel culture mob” overlords…well, I just don’t think the logical people to start a civil war — Blues — have it in them to do it.

And, remember, the issue is of Trump.

If anyone could start a civil war, it’s ding-dong Trump. But, still, any civil war that happens will be caused when Blue States refuse to bend a knee to autocratic MAGA Nazi fascism. That’s it — I just don’t see Reds doing what they keep thinking and talking about. They have no need to. They’re getting everything they want through politics because they control the “attention economy” with a tyrannical vise grip.

So, my answer is — we’re not going to have a civil war. Either we somehow magically punt the tectonic problems we have as a nation down the road one more presidential cycle…or we have another Republican POTUS and he / she turns us into an autocratic state that probably will, if we’re lucky, looking like Hungary or Turkey, and if we’re not…Russia or Nazi Germany .

Good luck and Godspeed.

MAGA Nazis & The ‘Red Pilling’ of Our New Chatbot Overlords

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

We have to address the issue when it comes to chatbots (and AGIs) that humans are hardwired to believe in something akin to a “god.” We also love to “triangulate” with an “objective” third party whenever we have a disagreement with someone.

Combine those two things and we’re careening towards a very dark, troubling future where a lot of ding-dongs are going to use whatever output they get from an chatbot prompt as validation for what they already agree. And, worse still, if they don’t get that validation they’re going to scream at the top of their lungs about “bias” and demand something be done about it.

Gaming out the end result of a Singularity-like chatbot revolution, it’s easy to imagine the issue of chatbot “bias” becoming a huge fucking issue as soon as 2023. MAGA Nazis are going to hone in on what they perceive as the “mind virus” of the “woke cancel culture mob” and demand that chatbots be more “objective” when, of course, really means “agree with us.”

I’ve used Chatbot GPT some and, relative to me, I don’t see much bias. It struggles to give reasonable answers to dumb human prompts and, as such, it is clear that the issue is humans — specifically MAGA Nazis — are assholes who bitch and moan if they can’t use our new digital overlord to “own the libs.” They ask ChatGPT loaded political questions like, “what is a woman” and when it doesn’t tow the exact MAGA Nazis party orthodoxy they flip the fuck out.

And it’s only going to get worse.

The more young children use chatbots to find answers to questions, the more chatbots — just by existing — will bang up about the siloing of America in to two nations, Red and Blue. In fact, I the issue of chatbot “bias” becoming just another thing to throw on the culture war pyre. It will follow “CRT,” “grooming” and “cancel culture” in the clusterfuck that is modern American politics.

We already have MAGA Nazi parents wanting to pull their children from public schools so they can indoctrinate them in their hateful agenda. The moment little Bubba gets an output from a chatbot that suggests that maybe systemic racism is a problem in America, there will be hell to pay.

All of this plays into the conundrum that is how America is politically, socially, culturally and economically tearing itself apart in broad daylight. We just can’t fucking agree on anything anymore. And MAGA Nazis do everything in their power to force the issue because the more Reds are siloed, the more power MAGA has and the more it can try to destroy the “woke cancel culture mob” that wants little kids to be transgender and to attend drag queen story time on their way to gender reassigment.

UGH.

In short, the issue of chatbot bias is a ticking political timebomb. There is just not ready answer at the moment MAGA Nazis want to destroy America and turn us into fascist, autocratic state.

I continue to fear that it’s possible that late 2024, early 2025 could be one of the most astonishing few months in American — if not human — history. If you combine the so-called “Fourth Turning” in America as MAGA Nazis force Blues to decide if they’re going to bend a knee or not with the very real possibility of something akin to a Singularity….yikes.

But I’m always, always wrong. And there is still plenty of time for us to take an exit ramp. I’m just a person who likes to make my abstract fears concrete.

Spirits In A Digital World

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The more I look at Twitter as we experience something akin to a mini-Singularity associated with OpenAI ChatGPT, the more alarmed I find myself becoming. Not with the idea that there might be some sort of Terminator-like “Judgement Day,” but, rather the exact opposite.

There will be no need for our AGI overlord to blow the world up — humans will be so busy giving up any agency they might have to the decision making ability of an AGI. Given with the faux-AGI of a really smart chatbot, I see people pretty much just turning everything over to it.

Students no longer want to study. Adults think they can just have the chatbot do their work while they stroke one out to porn. Meanwhile, worst of all, all the same partisan bullshit we’ve seen with every other element society is now corrupting the chatbot revolution.

As such, THE political and societal issue of 2023 and beyond could very well be who gets to regulate the “bias” of chatbots (and, later AI.) When everything hinges on the “objective truth” of a chatbot because people are fucking lazy and refuse to talk to each other because of politics, then the whole woke vs. unwoke debate becomes white hot.

In the Second Trump Administration, I could see there being some sort of FCC-like agency design specifically to “purge” AI of any “woke” bias because children no longer learn anything but, instead, are trained on how to ask better questions of chatbots.

MAGA Nazis will scream bloody murder if a chatbot doesn’t give them the answer to “what is a woman” that they expect. They will say that chatbots are nothing more than CRT shills infected with the “mind virus” of the “woke cancel culture mob.”

I’m not exaggerating. That’s exactly what is going to happen — you see it already on Twitter with the usual fuckwit MAGA Nazi “thought leaders” whining that they can’t get their hate validated by a chatbot.

Of course, there is the even more darker scenario where the United States splits into to nations, one Red, one Blue and while Blue America is enjoying the fruits of an unfettered Singularity, Trumplandia will use chatbots to atomize Red States into a techno-autocratic state. Good times!

I think some of all of this comes from how the human mind is hard wired to believe in a god. So, people, presented with something like a chatbot, fall into the trap of thinking they can “pray” objective questions to the chatbot and get some sort of “objective revealed truth” that they can spread to the world. All you need is a burning bush and some stone tablets and it’s a story as old as history.

In short — we’re fucked. Humans are just too lazy to put up much of a fight with chatbots or AGI. It will be interesting to how all of this ultimately shakes out.

Should We Start Thinking Seriously About A Looming Singularity?

by Shelt Garner
@shetgarner

With the news that a major fusion technology breakthrough will be announced soon, given the other technologies that are rushing towards similar breakthroughs I find myself thinking about one thing — the technological Singularity.

The Singularity is the moment in time when technology goes so fast that human culture simply can’t keep up. Usually, the Singularity is associated with ideas like AGI, everyone living forever because we can upload our minds into a database…and fusion power.

While I’m not prepared to think we’re on the cusp of living forever, if things like the metaverse, AGI and fusion power (!) all become a part of everyday life at the same time, that sure does sound a lot like at least a “soft” Singularity, if nothing else.

My fear is, of course, that all these technologies are going to strike at the same time that we’re going through a massive political crisis in late 2024, early 2025 as we finally try to figure out what the fuck we’re going to do about the Trump Problem.

But, as an aside, I will note that if we reach fusion then I will have to begrudgingly admit that when my Traditionalist relative — who is a climate change denier — said “well, technology will solve it” might have been right. There is a chance now that we may end global climate change because, lulz, we achieve fusion power.

And, yet, even if we achieve fusion power, the kneejerk partisanship that created my relative’s climate change denialism will still be there. And that’s a real problem. Just like how being famous doesn’t solve any of your problems, so, too, will the Singularity not solve the severe political division found within the United States.

If anything, there’s a risk that when we’re confronted by even BIGGER issues — like “What the fuck are we going to do about AGIs?” we’re going to be so divided that Blues will have one absolute opinion about AGIs while Reds will take the exact opposite position out of spite.

Anyway, I don’t know how much all of this is my usual the-worst-case-scenario-is-going-to-happen inclinations and how much is this might actually happen. It’s actually pretty rare for human history to take the absolute worst case scenario, but has been known to happen on occasion.

Only time will tell.

So, I’m Getting A Surge In MAGA Nazi Hate Followers On Twitter

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I don’t know what to tell you on this one. Over the last few days, I’ve begun to get a steady trickle of new followers who obviously hate my politics. It’s a very surreal experience.

In a way, a follower is a follower and should some third party look at my follower list and it’s 10,000 people, they won’t care much if a third of them hate my guts.

I suppose I should tone it down some if people who are at the polar opposite of the political spectrum want to use me as some sort of confirmation that they should start a civil war. Ugh.

But I am who I am. I generally mean well, or, as the late Annie Shapiro said of me, I’m a “delusional jerk with a good heart.” It is a testament to how fucked up our political system is that someone such as myself, who thinks of myself as a “moderate” has become a “radical moderate” because of the rise of MAGA Nazism.

And, by definition, to have really strong opinions on Twitter is inevitably going to draw attention to you and, as such, you get hate followers.

A Hot Take On OpenAI ChatGPT

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I am not an expert on AI, but I did live through the early days of the Internet / Web revolution and it’s very interesting how similar it is to the rise of chatbots and, potentially AGI.

Everyone is coming at ChatGPT from their own personal direction because it’s so new that we don’t have any established idea of what it is or its place in society. As such, everyone projects on to it their hopes and fears — which is exactly what happened when it became clear that because of the Web the power of the Internet would soon be harnessed for the average person.

Before I go any further, I have to note that chabot technology is just one of several different emerging technologies that are probably all going to go mainstream at some point between now, and, say 2025. Things like the metaverse (Web 3.0) chatbots, the blockchain, robotics and automation are all going to fuse into an event that might be something similar to a “Singularity,” or at least a “soft” one.

The real Singularity, of course, will happen whenever we move past chatbot technology into the realm of Artificial General Intelligence. If you hook that up to robotic trends…yikes.

But back to chatbots.

I just can’t imagine that we’re all going to be using one chatbot — OpenAI ChatGPT forever going forward. I suspect that numerous other chatbots of equal or greater ability will pop out in the next few years. I say this because if you were to talk to people in 1945 about nuclear technology they might make a lot of assumptions on the idea that only the United States would have The Bomb going forward.

It didn’t happen with the a-bomb and it’s not going to happen with chatbots. In fact, if Moore’s Law is to be believed, we’re going to be aswash in chatbots as major company — and a lot of start ups — get woke to how advantageous it would be to them to have their own advanced chatbot to use. So all the people who seem to think that ChatGPT is going to somehow overthrow Google should probably slow their roll.

Another thing to note — and this one really grinds me gears — is how the extremes on both sides of the political spectrum seem really invested in chatbots. You have your usual suspects of ‘woke” people complaining about the stupidest shit — well beyond the obvious, legitimate concerns about potential abuse for racist or misogynistic behavior. They get upset if the chatbot is somehow goaded into doing something that they perceive as not following their “woke” media narrative.

Meanwhile, on the OTHER end of the political spectrum in a much more ham-handed way, you have the fucking MAGA Nazi cocksuckers who apparently want chatbots to be “Ultra-MAGA” so they can turn around and use that as justification for their own form of Social Darwinism.

As I’ve said before, I would feel a lot better if we had a functioning political system. As it is, we’re on our own. It’s inevitable that as chatbots grow in cultural importance — and more and more children turn to it to do their homework, the batshit fucking bonkers MAGA people are going to scream at the top of their lungs that chatbots are “woke” and the only way to stop their spawn from being “indoctrinated” into the “woke cancel culture mob” is for the Second Trump Administration to regulate it parrots MAGa doctrine.

I wish I was exaggerating. I really do. But I’m not. This is what I literally think will happen at some point in the not-so-distant future. Or, it could be, that instead of the Second Trump Administration doing it, the issue will be regulated differently in the new Blue Union as opposed to Trumplandia after we have a National Divorce and Second American Civil War.

The point is — things are on the cups of getting very, very turbulence on not just a technological basis, but a cultural, economic and political basis as well. The next few years could be some of the most dramatic in human history — or at least since the end of WW2.

Cal it “The Fourth Turning” or “The Great Reset,” or whatever the fuck you want. There’s not going to be any narrative or value to it while it’s happening and it’s going to be scary as hell to live through. There’s a reason why “May you live in interesting times” is a curse.

Well, That Was Pointless

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m pretty much left of center and a fan of the Crooked Media podcasting network, but the latest “Offline” episode made me feel like picking up a pitchfork and charging the nearest ivory tower.

So, Jon Favreau was talking to this dude from Washington University about how horrible social media is. I totally agree with that premise, but there were times when the conversation really sounded like a smug liberal circle jerk.

“Oh, if only we could limit how much the Plebes could annoy us on social media,” seemed to be the gist of what they were talking about at times. The reason why this annoys me is I know that I am, despite me agreeing with them politically in general terms, just the type of person they would love not to have to deal with.

The guy even said at one point, in a wistful way, how great it was back in the day when there were three TV networks and an established “reality” where people like him could just tell people like me what to think. I also found amusing that he would explain exactly what he wanted — a return of traditional gatekeepers — then turn around and poo-poo the idea that that was exactly what he was talking about.

It seems to me that what was really going on was the guy was using everyone’s general distaste of social media as a cover to mentally masterbate about how great it was when Plebs knew their place in society and did not really have any way of talking to people like him in a practical manner.

The cat is out of the bag when it comes to social media and rather than looking back to an era that will never come back, I would much rather want to know how we can make social media better without letting smug pointy headed academics limit my ability to express myself online.

This post is vague because I’m lazy and don’t feel like doing the basic research necessary to make it more specific and I don’t feel like having to risk catching the guys attention and having him complain in The Atlantic about how a bonkers drunk like me picked on him.

Is Elon Musk A Modern Day Henry Ford? (And Not In A Good Way)

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Henry Ford changed the lives of millions of people in a practical, beneficial way. He was also an astonishing antisemite. So spare me the fanboy whining about how we can’t criticize Elon Musk just because of all the “cool” things he’s up to.

The more Musk leans into being a MAGA Nazis golden child, the more dangerous he becomes — and more danger not just America, but the entire globe faces. He’s adding to an already unstable situation in the United States by being a MAGA Nazi “edgelord” on the very service that he owns.

All of this is part of a broader, even more alarming trend — MAGA Nazis are politically and culturally ascendant. They hate to admit it because they’re about the catch the car again because then they would have to admit that maybe their rage over the “woke cancel culture mob” is…a little too much?

Anyway, I’m growing more and more alarmed by Elon Musk’s shenanigans. He’s really helping to make the next election — or the time immediately after the next election — a potentially extremely dangerous not not just for Americans, but the globe as a whole.

The Coming Battle Over Chatbot ‘Bias’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

As chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatbotGPT grow more and more mainstream, there will be a growing tendency by the average person to assume whatever answer it generates is “objective truth.” People are going to treat it like praying to a god who just happens to give them a direct answer.

The problem is going to be that by definition, any statement of fact that doesn’t align with this or that person’s personal views will be seen as “bias.” So, on one side, MAGA Nazi cocksuckers will grow enraged if the answers the get are what the perceive to be “woke,” while center-Left people will be equally enraged if their chatbot shoots up answers that they perceive to be racist or misogynistic.

Under normal circumstances, when our politics functioned, there would be debate back and forth as to how to deal with this. Maybe, if it became that big a problem, the government might pass legislation regulating this particular element of chatbot technology.

But, lulz, that’s just not going to happen. All the techniques that MAGA Nazis have used in the past to make polite debate impossible, they will use to force the issue of “what is objective truth for a chatbot?” Either they win and we all get MAGA-approved “objective truth” or they win when a new chatbot designed specifically for them is designed and, lulz, yet another element of society is siloed into Red and Blue.

I still think there is a chance that a war will be fought over chatbot and AGI bias. And it could be a world war. The moment we have a setup where there is a battle between us (Humans) and THEM (AGI) anything is possible. Some pretty strange things could happen because once the nation-state isn’t as important as your views on our new AGI overlord, the civilization itself may be at risk of collapse.

I am well aware of how hysterical that sounds. But we have to start taking these things seriously. If there was some way for us to figure out the gray areas of “objective truth” in the context of politics, then there might be a chance that we might see us peacefully and gracefully transition into a post-chatbot, post-AGI world.

But Americans can barely agree on what color the sky is. So, we’re fucked. As I’ve said before, I’m concerned that given there might be a recession in 2023, that by 2024 we will face a perfect storm — a Singularity, a lingering recession and a massive political crisis surrounding the 2024 election.

What Happens When Tech Bros Are Poor?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The argument can legitimately be made that there may come a point, in the not-too-distant future when software development will be reduced to simply asking a chatbot a well-crafted question.

Now, I say this because it definitely seems as though the cat is out of the bag when it comes to the potential of chatbots. Now that The Powers That Be are aware of what chatbots can do, the natural inclination of capitalism is to replace most programmers with a chatbot.

This won’t happen overnight — if ever — but it is a risk. It’s easy to imagine the software design industry being among the first industries to become moot because of chatbots.

What would be the consequence of this?

It’s possible that if a lot of young, wealthy men will suddenly lose their jobs. That, in turn, could cause something akin to a neo-Luddism. If nothing else, we’re in for a very bumpty few years as we figure out what we’re going to do as more and more human tasks are taken over by non-human actors.

When it becomes clear that chatbots could be just as big a cultural and economic revolution as the Internet, all bets are off as to what happens next. Buckle up.