The last angel

Only in the USA, I think. I’m in the UK and don’t have ‘trash apps’.

Unless you mean Facebook and YouTube, thinking about it, which yeah is annoying.

Brother, there are so many logical errors in your thinking.

Number 1, as people keep saying: exponential growth is limited. Unlimited growth is slow and unsteady. There is literally nothing in the whole of creation that has grown exponentially and continued to do so. That is not how anything works. Even theoretically, scenarios like ‘the more energy it receives, the more it gives out, so one day this one steam engine will power the world!’ and ‘the more people buy these stocks, the more popular and expensive they will get, which will lead to more people wanting to buy them, making them more popular, so buy now while they’re still £1000 a pop!’ still keep fooling people who get caught on the ‘logic’ of exponential growth and dont see, understand or remember those boring facts we learned in school: What goes up must, and will come down Every action has an equal and opposite reaction Every force is restrained by at least two opposing forces There are no exceptions.

Literally every week, somewhere in the world someone is convinced that this time they (or their guru of choice) has found the exception, the line that can only go upwards, the perpetual energy machine, the product that everyone is going to want if they buy it now, and it has never ever been true because nothing is exponential unless one factors in the countless opposing forces and reactions and pressures that will come with extra growth.

And so far, we haven’t even managed to find a way of calculating that.

Don’t assume that Usain Bolt smashing the world records for speed (which themselves smashed the previous records, which smashed the people who said it was physically impossible for a human to run a mile in 4 minutes) means the next big thing is going to be running gear that protects the wearer from the as-yet-uncalculated cardiac effects of breaking the speed of light. He’s fast, but not ‘breaks the laws of physics before anybody has even calculated a way for that to happen’ fast, and it’s unlikely that his children or grandchildren - or anyone - will be.

Also: bro, even if it grew exponentially and kept doing so, we can’t pretend that means it’ll obviously go in these directions that aren’t a part of it or its development.

Human intelligence has increased as we’ve evolved, and the brain has grown with it. You can chart the growth of both over the millennia. Now that doesn’t mean you can just continue the line to see how intelligent humans will be in 1000 years, because of the exponential growth problem, but it also doesn’t mean the skull sizes of proto and early humans mean we will soon live forever.

See, even if past performance was a reliable indicator of future results (hahaha), projected growth does not, and never can, include chains of causation. That’s just fiction.

So yes, as humans get more intelligent and our brains get bigger we’ll probably continue to understand medicine and biology and tools and nutrition which will continue to improve brain health and wisdom, which will > increased intelligence and brain size, > better understanding of medicine and biology and tools and nutrition > continue to improve brain health and wisdom, etc.

And yes, we do not currently have the intelligence or understanding or technology to enable us to live forever.

But that doesn’t mean that increased intelligence or brain size, or better medicine or tech or tools or nutrition, logically lead to ‘discovery of the secret to eternal life’. Y can only follow X, but X does not lead to Y. And exponential growth of AI does not magically mean it gains the ability to do random things it couldn’t do before, for the same reason.

Does that make sense? It’s the same as ‘she’s a successful model but she couldn’t be a supermodel because she’s only 5’3".’ It does not follow that her gaining 6 inches logically makes her a supermodel.

Many domestic cats are vicious, deranged little fuckers, but they aren’t a threat to humanity because they’re too small and generally prefer to live with humans. Removing those limitations does not create a threat to humanity. An absurdly large domestic cat with an attitude problem would (probably) not end mankind, but would (maybe) make it onto a few TV shows and get a meme. And AI is not a threat to humanity because it can’t think or operate independently. Even if you removed those limitations, it would no more spell the inevitable dominance of fascism (odd endpoint you chose there but hey ho) than a gigantic tabby cat who didn’t like his dinner. Because, again, logic doesn’t work like that.

TLDR: many thousands of people throughout history have got rich by convincing people to buy into Pot number 5 because obviously, 3 + 3 = 6 and as soon as the -1 happens, that’s where we’ll all be. The maths isn’t wrong. It’s the fact that the sums have nothing to do with reality, the future, or anything except the weird game of ‘Bet the Pot’ that nobody else is playing.

To be fair, I prefer apples form of innovation over most other tech companies. iPhones haven’t got much flashier, just a bunch of incremental improvements. The battery lasts longer. It’s a bit faster. The OS works with more third party apps and systems. Minor tweaks. They aren’t exciting, but they’re steady.

2 provisos: my newest iPhone is like, 5 years old. It does not have AI or any of the weird shit they’ve been pushing recently. And: it’s my spare phone. Because lol fuck apple. I like their products but not as much as I like having a decent phone in my daily life

Fun fact: the countries to the north end east of the USA have a king, the countries to the south and west used to have a king and an emperor (respectively).

You’ll notice that none of them are overrun with tyrants.

In fact, most of the English speaking world shares a king, and many, many countries have a royal family who have bumbled along happily for centuries.

We think it’s deeply weird when one world leader is doing his very best to piss off everyone except Russia, deliberately destabilising the environment, the global media, all the agreements that every other country is working together on, and his citizens are split between those who support him and those who keep saying ‘this reminds me of how much I hate kings. No offense to the foundational identities of all our neighbours except Russia, but I can’t imagine sinking so low as to tolerate a king’.

Like, dude, watch your own kids before you bitch about everyone else’s. How does someone train an entire nation so well that they express displeasure at the flagrant atrocities of their president and say ‘fuck other countries and their shitty systems’.

It’s honestly like living next to someone who keeps playing their music too loud and throwing rubbish into your garden and every now and again he stands on your garden yelling about how much he hates your begonias. It wouldn’t be so bad if it was a sensible criticism, or something political, but it’s so random you waste a surprising amount of energy being offended on behalf of your begonias before realising, every time, that neither of you probably specifically care about the begonias. It’s the shouting.

I mean, I’m pretty sure that Disney makes at least a little money outside the USA. I’m willing to bet that there are at least 2 other countries whose subscribers won’t all cancel their subscriptions because the American political shitshow has touched upon a person they’ve never heard of (source: I’m in an English speaking country where people have Disney+ and watch Disney films and as far as I know, virtually nobody has heard of this guy and virtually everybody has exhausted their supply of ‘wtf is the USA doing, surely they can’t get away with that’ for the year).

So unless you honestly think that the entire American user base is going to cancel - which seems wildly unlikely, given the political scene - AND that the number of Americans with subscriptions is at least equal to the number of subscribers outside the USA, then sorry bud, you aren’t going to defeat fascism by pausing your Disney+ subscription for a few months.

It’s a great start, and I personally think it’s healthy to ethically curate one’s free time where possible, but when October rolls around and Disney is still solvent, don’t throw up your hands and say you gave it your best shot but the fight is clearly hopeless. You guys have let your corporations run unchecked for decades, if you want them to suddenly find a moral compass you need to settle in for a long game.

If we lose the 1st amendment we will lose everything because our very knowledge that those other two issues exist is because of our constitution.

Which is why no country outside the USA has free speech, truth, or media that is in any way connected to reality. We’re all just bumbling around in the epistemological darkness, relying on the USA for information about our own countries, wishing we had a first amendment too so we had a media landscape.

Alternative perspective: truth, freedom, and communication are inherent to the human existence. They exist outside the US constitution. If your government decides to rip up all your laws, it won’t suddenly be ok to run amok murdering and stealing (which is why there are countries outside the USA where the citizens survive).

A lot of Americans seem to have a kind of cargo cult idea of human rights and laws. They do not exist because they are written in the constitution. The constitution has no value outside the rights it contains, and the antique paper. It does not create or contain free speech, it doesn’t even guarantee it, it merely documents a broad consensus of values.

I personally think a lot of Americans would understand a lot more about the world, and their own country, if they realised that. Your constitution doesn’t give you anything, any more than a shopping list has nutritional value or an inventory guarantees your furniture.

TLDR: I don’t know if it’s a phrasing thing or an actual misconception among Americans, but saying the first amendment ‘gives you’ free speech is a really dangerous mindset. It’s like saying, the first rule in my instance on Lemmy is ‘don’t be a dick’ so if they delete that rule or, God forbid, the instance / Lemmy gets shut down, the entire world will just run around being dicks. No.

You should behave in moral ways because it’s the right thing to do, not because it’s written down. Anybody who stops obeying a repealed law didn’t want to obey it in the first place. The vast majority of the world is out there not being dicks, despite not being part of your online instance. You are human, you have rights and responsibilities as a human, not just as an American. You do not have rights because of the constitution: the constitution is only valid because, and as long as, the citizens agree with what it says.

(Also you guys have been killing people for saying things like ‘I kinda think black people deserve rights’ and ‘hey guys look at this pharma company’s accounts’, so it shouldn’t really be a surprise that your constitution isn’t a magic force amulet against all wrong. It’s an old terms and conditions document that’s not always enforced)