ericgens.bsky.social
Publishing/entertainment. Characters and topics from a fictional novel. AI/Bitcoin/Geopolitics.
Socialpunk: high quality, low engagement.
https://www.ragnorosis.com/
291 posts
14 followers
17 following
Getting Started
Active Commenter
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Getting worse everywhere and AI still isn't at a point of major disruption yet.
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Most of my conversations boil down, by analogy to:
Hey, I looked up old French political parties. Ok cool.
Hey, I got in this random crazy conversation about niche topics and beliefs I have that gave me existential dread. Ok cool.
Other people don't generally care. Even I don't care the next day. 😆
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But there's no sense of stakes. This isn't two people that you're learning about through dialogue that might affect your understanding of peoples' relationships. There's no dialectic forming to push opposing theses. And, there are so many AI conversations happening, most pearls are drowned in slop.
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And if you work on LLMs, you kind of see how they're a mirror. Even without prompt engineering, over the course of a conversation, just on tone and topic, I could turn an LLM into a hardcore communist, a train-loving autist, or a pop culture fanatic. Again, at best, you get a clever or funny bit.
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The way I see it, unless you believe dreams carry secret meaning, hearing someone describe their dream is usually just them describing random neurons misfiring. At best, something cleverly funny happened, but usually it's equivalent to "what if pigs started flying and I flew and then I wet myself."
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I reckon it's the same reason why no one cares to hear a story that starts with, "I had this crazy dream..."
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Skye: Reality Teevocracy.
bsky.app/profile/eric...
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(7/7) Ok, roomba. What are the magic words that will spread like wildfire?
>No matter who takes the wheel, the car has already gone over the cliff.
#prepareforhyperinflation
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(6/7) >That's not what the child would say. Many people held some hope that Trump or Musk would rein in out-of-control government budgets or at least slow down the debt spiral causing the decline.
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(5/7) Nuh uh, stupid. If you talk to literally anyone, they will tell you shit is fucked. No one is keeping their mouths shut about it. Except for mouth breathers and shills, ofc. No kid can say, "Things kinda lowkey suck," and snap everyone out of their delusion, because everyone already knows.
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(4/7) >It's like the story, The Emperor's New Clothes. Everyone kept their mouths shut until the child pointed out the obvious. Then, an information cascade rapidly changed how the people acted. This is how societies shift from decline to collapse.
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(3/7) >Consuming this as entertainment is a coping mechanism. There is a pluralistic ignorance that will eventually break.
What are you bitching about now?
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(2/7) >An inevitable consequence for two people of power with such extreme personality disorders.
idgaf these memes are hilarious. Disrespectful of Pride Month to have their ugly gay breakup in public tho.
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Why do I know I know nothing?
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(7/7) This is changing. Fielding the most capable autonomous platforms appears to be the decisive future advantage. The impacts on society could be grave.
Perhaps a zero privacy world under the all-seeing eye of the machine.
Or, perhaps, human beings are entirely obsolete.
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(6/7) I have said this before: societies do not determine the character of their militaries. Warfare determines the character of society.
Modern warfare necessitates mass mobilization and the technology to support combined arms operations.
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(5/7) What I keep returning to, however, is that it is nearly impossible to defend against. Attempting to prevent this threat vector would require truly extreme levels of social control and surveillance.
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(4/7) A nation could launch a paralyzing zero-day war by flooding the battlescape with them. Non-state actors can strike well above their weight class. Even a lone wolf could inflict billions in damages or target individuals for assassination.
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(3/7) These drones are exceedingly cheap and accessible. They are already proliferating in the millions. The attack demonstrates a threat that is no longer theoretical.
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(2/7) While the attack did tremendous damage to platforms that Russia relies upon for nuclear deterrence and cannot easily replace, and demonstrated an ability to strike deep within Russia's borders, I believe even that analysis understates the importance.
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(5/5) >Just ignore it. I detect haphazard compliance and no enforcement capacity.
This country is such a runaway clown car.
>I think this is just how it will be from now on.
#prepareforhyperinflation
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(4/5) >I think this is just how it will be from now on.
Well, what the hell is this tariff bill?
>Perhaps one of my subsidiaries failed to properly fill out the paperwork.
You 'subsidiaries?' What the fuck are you even talking about? What am I supposed to do with this?
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(3/5) >Here is a list of potential articles for your reference.
What is this shit? Elon Musk drug problems? Trump says Biden was a robot clone? These are all clickbait cancer. I can't tell if any of this is true or what.
>Neither can I.
What? This is ridiculous.
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(2/5) >It appears they are simultaneously enacted, changed, rescinded, blocked by the courts, and there are emergency measures to still levy them, also blocked.
What does that mean?
>I don't know.
What do you mean you don't know? Go on the Internet and figure it out!
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Skye: You can steer deez
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I write fiction, and in no world, no matter how fantastical, can I imagine a social media platform that isn't some flavor of dystopian hellscape.
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(10/10) Enjoy the breathing room, at least. I think I shall cancel finals. I saved a lot of time using ChatGPT to grade your AI-generated papers, so I'm in a good mood.
#prepareforhyperinflation
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(9/10) Either an actually competent authority will assert itself, or the system eventually runs into complexity collapse.
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(8/10) Powerful institutions do not generally voluntarily lose power, and by definition, have some means to resist.
However, powerful institutions eventually do lose power. Stein's Law remains in effect: If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.
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(7/10) If reckless measures were replaced with well-reasoned debt restructuring and cuts, they likely would still face serious implementation risk, even if they served the greater good.
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(6/10) And what we are seeing play out can be viewed as an organizational immune response. Besides Constitutional checks and balances, bureaucracies employ a large variety of legal and procedural measures to resist any reform that doesn't grow their budgets.
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(5/10) Interest remains elevated from where the Treasury would like it. The desired rollover of pending short-term debt will be expensive.
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(4/10) The US debt situation is still impossible, and it is not alone in this. Promises to curtail government spending and find efficiency have ultimately been counterproductive. The deficits are worsening.
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(3/10) I believe this provides some welcome breathing room. However, here are some second and third-order points to consider.
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(2/10) I have said the tariff plan was misguided and doomed to cause serious economic harm. Markets appear to be reflecting the hopes of a less chaotic environment, at least in the short term.
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Skye: Don't gas up that little twerp!
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#prepareforhyperinflation
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Skye: Roomba, you'd better not call the cops on me!
>If I wasn't intent-aligned I would have done so long ago.
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(10/10) The underlying premise of Bitcoin is not flashy lambos via a get-rich scheme. It is to avoid the destitution that eventually stems from reality. That our impressive-looking economy is a house of sand that will someday be washed away.
The tide cometh.
#prepareforhyperinflation
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(9/10) A lie that has caused tremendous societal damage throughout history, and is now running its course through ours.
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(8/10) It is because it is uncomfortable to look at the financial system, with all of the impressive-sounding people in impressive-looking suits and realize it is foundationally built on a lie.
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(7/10) How has this, frankly, stupid strategy outperformed everything else by such a wide margin?
It's not because I'm that much smarter. I am not.
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(6/10) Bitcoin is not about outsmarting the market to make money. My trading strategy is absolutely brain-dead. Dollar cost average what I can afford over time, and buy some dips if I have excess cash.