leicsmac

I'm sure that they would if I had one, but I remain resolutely single.

Of course there would be. People so often equate personal with important.

Well, 627 pages is a good run....

Imo, the "enemy" are the ones in large business buildings and homes, exerting power and influence in whatever way they can to create the very environment in which people see those enemies on the street - and all for their own personal gain. But that's just my take. You're certainly spot on in that the "enemy" is much more difficult to engage now, because they are everywhere.

Two world wars in the last century or so may beg to differ about that amount of hate. However, you're right in that the needle is getting pushed to 11 and given how quickly anything happens these days things can spin on a penny. It's totally right to be concerned about the present and the future - it's just that imo a lot of people are both chasing the wrong demographic responsible and the wrong way to make it better. Good question, would have to do a dig. That being said, the debate then comes down to whether very specific forms of violent crime are worse than others, and exactly why.

It is well and good, because objective numbers, leading to reasoned policy based on those numbers, is the only way such problems get addressed adequately without causing greater harm. History shows very quickly what decisions based on strong human emotion can do - even though most of the time that's the easier and better-feeling path. Occasionally good, often bad. People most often cannot remember horrific things happening to people in their nation, or elsewhere, in the past, simply because most of the time they simply did not know about it. In this day and age, the world is different, and easy access to knowledge and information about things happening far away is both a blessing and a curse. But the numbers are clear - the UK is objectively no more of horror movie now than it has been at a great many points in the past.

It is darkly interesting to see how crime figures across the board have fallen over the last 30 years, yet folks still believe that things have actually gotten worse - as the below graph indicates. It's a tremendous example of how massive information exposure today can shape people's opinions, making problems either bigger or smaller than they actually are - and, sadly, be used to manipulate in various ways. Recency bias and survivorship bias with respect to the past clearly play a part, too.

Sorry, then let me clarify. It's considered as a weapon (and a powerful one at that) by those who hold that idea and they are looking to use it to gain advantage over others, in spite of that perhaps being dangerous. As the original post above mine mentioned, it explains why a lot of parties are looking to run towards it (as it were) in the way that they are, in spite of the cost.

Only as a response in this case. Is the assessment about AI being abused in a new kind of arms race between bad people inaccurate, then?

Unfortunately there's still so many humans so caught up in the idea of supremacy that they don't know or don't care about how dangerous the methods are to get it. Particularly when they think the consequences are far enough away for it not to affect them.

Depends on whether or not you think the Med Arabic states are the only ones that really count. It's interesting how another major player in the region - South Africa - is often overlooked too, and they appear to be trying to play all sides.

The history of those "Thirteen Days" does make for fascinating reading, even though it was the closest time we know of to things going truly terrible. One thing though; the Americans already had a similar ballistic missile setup with their Jupiter missiles in Turkey, so from the viewpoint of the USSR they were merely matching them in kind. The Jupiter missiles were agreed to be removed as part of the peace deal - but secretly. On the surface though, it looked like a massive step down from Khrushchev and likely cost him his position.

Right. That fits their viewpoint of Turkiye and some of Eastern Europe looking to "play both sides".

The old boys would say it is about 29 degrees East, running through Istanbul.

That sounds about right (though I'm not sure about the last sentence) but also I think it's not really much new under the sun. It's just an extension of Trump-style abuse of power for personal gain.

As an addendum to this, it's all also a way of holding onto or securing more power for he and his.

I'd rather he and his lackeys all over the world were not pissing around anywhere and were neutralised politically ASAP. That might take a little longer, though. Hopefully not too long.

Certainly so, but there is rather a lot of important historical context that goes back further on this one. But it is demonstrative of an attitude that, if left unchecked, will harm us all. In fact, it's already causing harm, given the ubiquity of social media and its effect on the democratic process.

No, it goes back to the Monroe Doctrine far before that. The US considers all nations in the Americas as theirs to treat or torment so long as they have the power to do both over them.

It's not that they even consider them a threat - as you say, the very idea is factually absurd. They're not addressing a threat, they are using the power they have to intimidate and daunt any places they think do not share their ideology, with the overall objective of control. They are applying Might Makes Right in the most obvious fashion, simply because they think that having power automatically gives one the right to abuse it. It's easy for a decent person like yourself to try to look for some logical or vaguely reasonable motive, because it's how decent and or logic driven people are themselves motivated. But these people aren't motivated by logic, or forethought, or even any kind of altruism when it comes to their country (as much as they would claim otherwise). Some men (and it is mostly men) are so twisted inside by power and for power, that power, and using it over other people simply because they have it, is all that motivates them.

Well, if it is that serious, at least it answers the question of Stokes captaincy being the only thing really keeping him in the team.

It probably is an act of war, but the problem is that they are powerful enough at the moment that they can seemingly get away with throwing their weight around as they like. Hopefully one day soon that will change. No nation state should have that kind of relative power.

Interesting, if dark, Internet find here, summing the current situation up: The biggest existential threat facing humanity at present is the perfect storm. A confluence of malign events that undermine everything at once. The principal elements would be: AI systems that have no ethics or agency, no preferences even, put in service to a dangerous agenda…good soldiers in effect. The capability to hasten a fascistic agenda and no moral scruples about doing it. It’s not the AI to blame… it’s their ownership and capture. A political system that leans ever more perilously close to abandoning the post war democratic consensus in favour of blunt dictatorial power. Most nations are one bad election result away from signing away their democracies to the far right. Environmental concerns about ever widening planetary damage for which both harms are amplified by the above. Then throw in Wars that generate unplanned for destabilisations elsewhere. The Middle East destabilisations led to migration surges which in turn generate political destabilization for third parties like EU member states which in turn lead to far-right political gains and democratic erosion. Even when nations agree on a shared problem we don’t have organisations capable of problem solving to scale. The UN seems increasingly toothless. We also have a disinformation crisis. Journalistic standards are collapsing. Largely factual journalism is being overwritten by social media slop and an ever enlarging lumpen economically ignored and disenfranchised, undereducated, class are actively promoting said slop. This is civilisational collapse. If we can’t even begin to agree on what is going wrong or how to create effective dialogue and mechanisms to fix it we aren’t going to succeed in preventing it happening. I hesitate to get proscriptive because that’s a conversation that should involve everyone but I’d venture this much: Ever widening wealth inequality and short termist neoliberalism is not ultimately sustainable without allowing mitigating unsexy progressive reforms that really mitigate. Even conservative Prime Ministers historically were not blind to the need to socially engineer to mitigate against the destructive outcomes for left-behind communities when a dynamic capitalist development is allowed full sway. We have to spend more time anticipating consequence before it consumes us. If we can’t even name the risks how do we build a consensus towards fixes? We currently appear to be trying to fight a multi-dimensional fire storm with a series of disconnected wooden buckets and we’re running out of forests. It really won’t do. There are historic examples of States offering interventionist solutions that broadly speaking worked, broadly better than leaving everything to the irrationality of the markets. The Norwegian wealth fund, FDR’s New Deal, the NHS under Attlee, where genuinely structural reforms happened within democratic legitimacy, albeit under intense pressure but without systemic collapse either… radical in content but constitutional in method. Shrugging and looking away isn’t going to get the job done. Then there is the power of Activism too. It asks a lot of the individual and States generally distrust activists as potential disruptors and law breakers. Historically in the UK, the quickest route to getting a Christmas tree stamped on your file at MI5 was to get a reputation as an activist. But not all forms of activism are equal. Campaigning to keep local communities cohesive and say keeping your local library open is not the same as a moron destroying an irreplaceable work of art by throwing paint at it. Discernment matters. The perfect storm is not so much an act of God as an act of abdication; the only thing more dangerous than the fire storm is our refusal to admit we might be the ones holding the paraffin and matches.

The more of an embarrassing farce, the funnier it appears.

It was some talking head on Reuters that I saw. I'll have to look at this interview here. You're right about the competition element, but I think it's a distinct possibility that these people are messing with forces they don't really understand in the name of personal legacy and prestige. And that doesn't end well.