Emerson Green convinced me that p-zombies are plausible. So there’s no way to know if a teleporter would end your consciousness.

That efficiency is an absolute good.

“Where” is a question that applies to the physical world. The dream people are constituted of something more fundamental than matter.

How many vulnerabilities would’ve been found if we had spent several million dollars on human security researchers though?

Culture is our most important invention as a species. So important, in fact, that we’ve evolved to make it essential to our individual health and collective capacity to function. To deny someone access to interact with culture on the basis of their lack of wealth is cruel and anti-human.

Likewise, developing something like an LLM, which spews thoughtless pollution into the only shared infosphere we have, and displaces individuals’ ability to connect to each other to develop culture… that is an existential threat to the human race and should be opposed vehemently.

Perpetual loop of “bounty encourages bad reports”, “canceled bounty”, “bug reports improve”, “bounty comes back”, “bounty encourages bad reports”…

Science fiction’s superpower isn’t thinking up new technologies – it’s thinking up new social arrangements for technology. What the gadget does is nowhere near as important as who the gadget does it for and who it does it to. Your car can use a cutting-edge computer vision system to alert you when you’re drifting out of your lane – or it can use that same system to narc you out to your insurer so they can raise your premiums by $10 that month to punish you for inattentive driving. Same gadget, different social arrangement.

https://locusmag.com/feature/commentary-cory-doctorow-reverse-centaurs/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_ethics

“If you’re thinking without writing, you only think you’re thinking.”

Soooo, programming?

Part of the trilogy: Mean Girls, Median Girls, Mode Girls

I agree with Prime on most things, but I think he’s getting this one wrong.

There are more options than just “light-hearted satire” and “earnest business idea”.

The FOSDEM talk is silly, and reads like a skit, but it has a gravely serious undertone.

The security guy has posted on Twitter “I still can’t believe he hooked it up to Stripe lol”.

Meanwhile the LinkedIn of the other guy describes him as a “researcher of political economy of FOSS” at Rochester Institute of Technology, and he runs a non-profit about FOSS for humanitarian aid.

He’s also been very active replying to people talking about the conference talk or the Malus site, asking whether they think this should be legal and what we can do to protect the future of open source.

I think these are people who take this threat very seriously, and are willing to expose themselves to litigation in order to force the issue into courts.

Everything is a third kind of thing that unifies the physical and mental

Tyring

I avoid the potential presence of ads.

I recall seeing some research that suggested “ignoring” ads makes you more susceptible to their content. I couldn’t find it after a couple searches though.

One box

Fear is, famously, an excellent impetus for rational decision-making. (/s just in case)

A Russian is on an airliner heading to the US, and the American in the seat next to him asks, “So what brings you to the US?” The Russian replies, “I’m studying the American approach to propaganda.” The American says, “What propaganda?” The Russian says, “That’s what I mean.”

This analysis is spot-on. I especially think you’re onto something with your reference to the commons. (Edit: The generative AI movement could be a seen as a modern reincarnation of enclosure)

These guys think of a commons in a sense of ownership: if I own something, I can do whatever I want with it.

But the real historical examples of a commons are more like a mutual obligation. It’s a relationship, not a delivery of inert goods. Yes, you get access to the benefits of the commons, but that comes hand-in-hand with accepting the duty to care for the commons as an ongoing entity.

That’s what really irks me about all of this. They didn’t “steal” something. They killed a collective organism.

Primeagen mentioned it here, noting that sqlite does this