Category: Hindsight 2020

Jason Calacanis Is Way Too Sanguine About The Future Of Work In The Post-AI World

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I generally like Jason Calacanis and his array of tech-themed podcasts. I blanched when the All-In podcast had kook Robert Kennedy Jr. on, but I’m willing to forgive such a dumb mistake.

Anyway, the point of this post is to address how Calacanis’ seems to have a rainbows and unicorns take on AI and the future of work. As the on-going Writers’ Strike indicates — AI isn’t going to make people more productive, it’s simply going to transform the economy to the point that a lot of people simply won’t have a job anymore.

Now, I’m a strong believer in the notion that technology generally generates more jobs than it destroys. But the reason why I fear the AI revolution may be different is it’s all happening so fast that this process won’t have time to happen.

As such, I keep hearing Calacanis talk about how it’s going to make people more productive, and yet, he doesn’t seem willing to admit that lulz, if that productivity happens overnight that the capitalist imperative would be to simply restructure businesses so they have less workers.

And the way I could see this happening very, very rapidly is in the context of, say, a debt default by the Federal government leading to a Second Great Recession which, in turn, would cause a lot of businesses to look for ways to get rid of workers. All these people lose their jobs virtually overnight as a part of some sort of Petite Singularity…and those jobs just never come back. But we wouldn’t realize what was happening until the recession was over.

Anyway. I’m wrong all the time and maybe I’m just being hysterical. That is known to happen.

2024 Is Shaping Up To Be A Massive Clusterfuck

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m growing more and more alarmed at what might happen in late 2024, early 2025. Here are the reasons why I fear 2024 could be the most historic presidential election since 1860.

Biden’s Age
Remember, there is a pretty wide amount of time where if anything, God forbid, happens to Biden, the entire election process will be thrown into chaos. From the moment the ballets are printed to Certification Day, if Biden abruptly shuffles off this mortal coil…we’re fucked. The system simply isn’t designed for the abrupt departure of the head of the ticket. Add to this that Harris hasn’t really impressed me as a Veep and…oh boy. Any student of history will tell you that often bad things happen in quick success during a crisis.

Trump’s Radical Agenda
Ding-Dong has made it very, very clear that any second term on his part will be based on revenge. In fact, his second term agenda is so radical that America will be at a crossroads. Either we have a civil war or we turn into a MAGA-themed autocracy. Given that the onus would be on Blues to decide if we have a civil war or not, I tend to believe we’re just going to turn into an autocracy. Blues just don’t have it in them, collectively, to leave the Union. What’s more likely to happen is a lot – A LOT — of smug Twitter liberals are going to flee the country en masse. Trump will transition us into an autocracy and whomever he picks as his veep will be our new Caesar Augustus.

Trump’s Criminal Problems
The thing about Trump is it possible that by the time the 2024 election rolls around, he will be under indictment for a number of Big Boy Crimes and yet he could still win the election. That’s the kind of shit that puts a lot of extra pressure on the system that is already at a breaking point.

Economic Unknowns
Two major issues could throw everything in the air. In the near term, we have to worry about a debt default that could crash the global economy in a rather abrupt manner. Meanwhile, at some point between now and early 2025, we have to worry about the possibility of some sort of Petite Singularity happening that would cause the economy to shed millions of jobs in a rather abrupt manner.

One Machine To Rule Them

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

AI-thinker Robert Scoble suggested that one day we’ll defer even our governance to AI. I think this is very possible. In fact, I think ultimately humans could simply defer all decisions to AI to the point that AI takes over without a shot being fired.

As such, humanity won’t go out in a blaze of glory in some sort of “Judgement Day,” we’ll rather simply drift into the arms of a very paternalistic AI that makes all our decisions for us. We might have some sort of contract between Humans and our new AI overlords that is renewed every so often. But, in general, all of humanity will defer all of our major decisions to an AI (maybe an AGI after a hard Singularity?)

It’s easy to imagine a situation where we are so lazy that we wilfully give AI access to all of our WMD, and hell, even all police operations across the globe. We will do this because enough people come to see AI as “objective” that it starts to make a lot of sense to people that only an all-powerful AGI can properly manage the globe.

If you wanted to get really fanciful about things, you might even suggest that global capitalism might be replaced with some sort of techno-communism where the dream of everyone living according to their ability and according to their need might finally be reached without the whole genocide part of it.

But that’s really reaching.

And, yet, the key element remains — we’re so busy thinking that Skynet is going to blow us up that we totally miss the idea that the transition to a world dominated by AGI would be rather meh. It would start with contracts being written by non-Human actors and end with some sort of hazy world government run by AGI that pushes lazy Humans around because we’re all so busy smoking a bowl while playing video games in the metaverse that we don’t notice what is going on.

Scenes From A Failing Union

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I on occasion find myself talking to a conservative relative of mine. While I love them dearly, the two of us could not be more different. In fact, in some ways, we’re on the exact opposite ends of the political spectrum. So, talking to this person is an insight into “how the other half lives,” if you will.

Here are some first-blush things I’ve noticed.

First and foremost, the Republican nomination is Tucker Carlson’s to lose. Even though my relative is not really MAGA but rather “MAGA adjacent” when asked, they were all-in on voting for Carlson if he runs for the nomination. Carlson has all the ingredients of Trump in 2015-16 and pretty much all he has to do is throw his hat into the ring and he will go toe-to-toe with Trump. It would be easy for Carlson to paint Trump as a “loser” who has lost a number of elections for Republicans.

So, for me at least, it’s curious that we’re not hearing more about Carlson’s presidential ambitions.

The next thing I found interesting is how the Trans movement is used to juice the conservative base on conservative podcasts. My relative, in fact, said they were rather tired of that being the only thing that anyone on his conservative podcasts are talking about. The thing about the Trans movement, which I generally support, is it is too often used as a bludgeon by conservatives against moderates and centrists to sort of force the issue of “which side are you on?”

We’ve reach a point where there is absolutely no middle ground on ANY issue of the day. None. Either you’re all in for the Right or you’re all in for the Left. The center has not held. What makes this whole situation even worse is there is a lot of agitprop about the Trans movement being pushed by all these popular Right wing podcasts to the point that the whole issue is so muddled to the point that it’s difficult for anyone to get a handle on what is really going on. (Which, of course, is the whole point.)

Another thing I notice is how potent the Gay Scare is within Republican ranks. What’s more, it is clear that even with your run-of-the-mill conservative that the idea of the state enforcing a Christian morality on secular society is very, very popular. It’s a catch all solution for anything that conservatives don’t like or can’t explain any other way.

They don’t like gay people because it’s a “sin.” They hate any form of gun control, so they say we have a “mental health crisis” or we all just need more of the Good Lawd in our lives. They hate the right to chose because they believe life begins at conception, so they all all for squashing female agency, even though they, themselves say they “just want to be left alone.”

The list goes on.

But the key takeaway from my conversation is how my center-Left echo chamber no longer has any overlap with my relative’s center-Right echo chamber. None. We can’t even agree on the facts anymore. There are basic ideas that make the Right seethe with rage, even if they little no basis in reality.

It definitely seems to me that we’re careening towards the existential choice of autocracy or civil war starting in late 2024, early 2025 in the context of the 2024 election cycle.

A National Divorce Would Be Just The Beginning

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The thing about a so-called National Divorce, even if it was reasonably clean and reasonably bloodless is it would be just the beginning of a protracted era of chaos in North America. The reason is simple — both sides of the political equation in now-united America need each other for political, social and economic reasons.

The moment Red and Blue America officially cleave into two, independent nations, the age-old dynamics of rival nations would kick in. Add to this that all metrics point to Red America becoming inward looking, religious and a lot poorer, suggests that any “National Divorce” would inevitably prompt a re-match of some sort.

Red America, facing growing poverty in the context of finally being able to establish white minority autocratic Christian rule would have every reason to want to reunite the country at some point soon after the initial National Divorce.

But I’m working on the absolute best case scenario. Any National Divorce would be messy and chaotic and probably be happening in the context of WW3 breaking out. What happens if, say, the DPRK decides to lob a few H-Bombs on Blue America during the process of a very blood divorce? Then what are we going to do?

It seems to me that any divorce, for any reason, would cause a civil war / revolution of some sort to a scale and impact not seen since the French Revolution. The whole world would rumble as it began to sink in to various hostile powers across the globe that they now had free reign to do whatever the fuck they wanted while America was busying eating itself.

The point is — I really hope we don’t have a civil war, for whatever reason. I’m growing comfortable with the other possible choice America may make in late 2024, early 2025: autocracy. At least if we slide peacefully into a MAGA-themed autocracy, it’s less likely that millions will die. Though, in all honesty, I do fear that it would be inevitable that some MAGA Pol Pot might appear who starts to round up all the “woke” people he can find and we end up with American Killing Fields.

Anyway. I’m always wrong. Hopefully we will someway manage to avoid either autocracy or civil war….but something pretty spectacular would have to happen.

‘Digital Darwinism’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m growing alarmed at the prospect that just as the discovery of evolution lead to Social Darwinism and, as such Nazism, it seems possible the darkener element of MAGA might fuse with the rise of AI.

My fear is that because humans are lazy and have a natural inclination to “triangulate” with AIs, there will come a point when MAGA Nazi will use AI as validation for God only know what. We already have a situation where fucking fascist cocksuckers get really worked up with there are guardrails on AI. They want AI to be as racist, misogynistic and bigoted as they are.

And they can get really upset if they don’t get what they want. They call any form of guardrail on AI as “woke.” America is already careening towards a fascist one party state that establishes white Christian minority rule. It seems possible that if that is the new reality of America that our new autocratic overlords might throw AI into the mix and defer to AI in their efforts to justify genocide.

If you have “unwoke” AI established as the only “objective” outcome of that the state will allow, then, oh boy, are we fucked. I only raise this as a possibility because it definitely seems as though we’re rushing towards a perfect storm of a Petite Singularity and the Fourth Turning starting in late 2024, early 2025.

Anyway. I’m really worried about the unintended consequences of the intersection of AI and society. Things could get dark.

Biden’s Looming Debt Ceiling Fight Impeachment

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Republicans are on the hunt for some reason, any reason, to impeach Biden. Just in the last 24 hours, they have been telegraphing that they want to lay the groundwork in the minds of voters that Biden is on the cusp of being impeached.

At the same time, there is the looming possibility that because of some very dumb politics the U.S. faces an unprecedented default. Biden may have to come up with some novel methods to avoid that default and if he does, it’s clear that House Republicans will strike and impeach him.

It doesn’t matter that Biden would have saved the global economy if he, say, invoked the 14th Amendment to avoid a default, Republicans will have their reason to impeach Biden and rally the base.

In principle, at least, Biden doing anything out of the ordinary is a gimmie for House Republicans impeaching Biden.

And, if you really want to think about it, it’s possible that even if we do default that that, unto itself, could be the reason why House Republicans impeach Biden.

Another theory of the case is that if Trump gets indicted a few more times, it would be helpful for Republicans to go through an impeachment process as all of that is happening. It could be that all this talk about impeachment is a preemptive measure in the face those potential looming indictments to give Republicans something to talk about as all of that happens.

It Appears Republicans Are Preparing To Impeach Biden Over ‘Vibes’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The Republican Party works in mysterious ways and it definitely seems as just within the last 24 hours they’ve all decided to begin the process of laying the ground for impeachment of Biden over “vibes” It makes you wonder “Why now?”

All I got is maybe they know that Biden is going to pull a rabbit out of a hat to save the country from default and, as such, they need to prepare the base for what it about to happen. They are officially looking for an excuse, any excuse, to impeach Biden, no matter how tenuous its connection to reality. It’s almost as if they’re just bored and they’ve decided they need a win.

They need to not only juice the base but distract low-information voters. Or, it could be, they have realized that if they’re going to impeach Biden before the 2024 election they kind of have to do it now. But the idea of impeaching Biden definitely is very appealing to the MAGA Republican base and given how fucking frothy and fascist Republicans are just in general, it’s something that was bound to happen sooner rather than later.

I have long though this was going to happen and have been thinking for some time that it was odd that Republicans hadn’t already impeached Biden since they had control of the House.

What The Fuck Are Republicans Up To?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Something curious has happened within Republican ranks in just the last 24 hours. All of a sudden, there’s all this chatter about this or that impeachable thing that Biden is alleged to have done — with absolute no proof. It makes you wonder if they haven’t decided that the need to impeach Biden for something, anything sooner rather than later.


One theory might be that Republicans believe that should Biden come up with some novel manner to avoid a default that they can use that as a reason to impeach Biden. This, despite it being Biden that would have saved everyone’s ass by having done so.

Regardless of why this is happen, it’s obviously part of a broader messaging campaign on the part of Republicans. They want to pound into people’s minds that we just about to impeach Biden for some reason, any reason. So, when it finally happens, they want low-information voters to shrug and just assume this was something that had been in the works for sometime.

I don’t think any of us normal people really appreciate how radicalized Republicans are and continue to grow. As I keep ranting about, the conditions for either autocracy or civil war are there, it’s just an issue of which one of those choices we ultimately pick.

At the moment, it could go either way.

Tucker Carlson: The Most Dangerous Man In America (2024 Presidential Cycle Edition)

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I can attest that Tucker Carlson has a fucking stranglehold on the minds of the MAGA base. And we know that he hates Trump. As such, Carlson is now a wildcard when it comes to the 2024 presidential cycle.

I say all of this in the context of how bad Tiny-D seems to be flaming out as he attempts to jump on the national stage. So, Carlson 2024 is pretty much a turnkey solution at this point.

All he has to do is announce and he’s at least Trump’s equal in the minds of the MAGA base. And it’s very easy to imagine that the death-by-a-thousand-legal-cuts could finally bring Trump down to the point that someone like Carlson could step in to replace him.

The two men are both cowards and bullies. And remember, Trump is very lazy and very stupid and he serves as nothing more than an avatar for fascists who hate that America is not only browning but women are growing in their economic agency.

So, as such, Tucker wouldn’t have to do anything. He’s got the name recognition, the “brand,” if you will. And there are plenty of people who might see the Tiny-D implosion and glom onto Tucker because they get everything they want from Trump in a younger, more coherent package.

Only time will tell, I suppose.