freemanon
Close walled platforms will always wither sooner or later. They had massive potential back in 2021, when VRChat felt like the start of a new internet. Instead of letting the communities flourish, they were tempted by VCs and their unsustainable business model.
Trickle down economics is music to the ears of the rich. Despite people thinking that everyone's vote weigh the same, the rich has more influence than others, in the form of lobbying, or even through the sheer "legitimacy" that comes with wealth and fame, whether or not it's deserved. E.g. celebrities.
Politicians have more incentive to appeal to the rich and powerful, since those people hold the key to power. The vast majority of the populace are mere sheep who will fall in line.
> nixpkgs - the software collection built by Nix is the largest software repository on the planet, containing around 80 000 packages. You can use any of those packages via geospatial-nix
You sound like you should be working in the marketing department rather than dev.
Are you creating a UI for setting up nix flake configs? What does it do beyond that?
And why is it coupled to geospatial tools?
Freedom of expression has to work both ways.
And on the value of generative AI, the same argument against new trends has been made on previous inventions. For decades, a typewriter was still more practical than using a word processor on a computer. For more than a decade, calls and SMS were more practical than online messengers and forums.
My point is capitalism itself is not necessarily the root of all evils; it is puritanism, dogmatism, and when it comes to the US, it's their puritanical approach to "freedom" that ironically makes the majority of the population less free and less democratic. A communist, planned economy is as much capable of creating an incompetent government and society if there were no political, ethical and cultural wisdom.
To summarise, capitalism is abhorrent, but there are other dimensions.
The US is simply a thug. It has too much firepower for its own good. It's drunk on its ideologies of freedom or democracy or what have you, that it can never recognise its mistakes.
People mistake oppression and basically incompetence of the soviet union as proof that communism will never work, but it wasn't communism. During the Lenin era, industrial output actually far outpaced western countries, millions were lifted out of poverty. Same in China, Mao's madness with the great leap forward plunged the country into famine. These weren't communism.
There has not been a real communist society in human history. It'll require the population to change its mindset first from greed, ignorance and blind faith, towards critical thinking, socialism (care for others). These are pre-requisites for any ideals, even democracy.
The falacy of the neoliberal order is to think greed, excess consumption and the paramount right of the individual will magically bring a prosperous society, where in fact it sets up an exploitative system where the vast majority toils for the tiny minority and stays poor and stupid.
Barely 10 days holiday per year, no universal healthcare, car-infested cities, unsafe cities filled by homelessness, racial tension all over the country, drug addiction, and many more. The US is a living nightmare yet people like you are blinded to think you're still the best in the world. Pity.
Which question is a useful opener for a discussion:
- "How can we help Africa end starvation?" vs - "Should we send more aid to these ungrateful African countries who have been cozying up to China instead? (Obviously not)".
It should be obvious which is a discussion and which is merely a statement veiled as a rhetorical question. But hey maybe most people can't tell and that's why Fox news still has so many viewers.
By declaring the described future as undesirable, the authors' question and wish to stimulate a discussion is clouded with prejudice, IMHO.
It's up to us humans to decide whether discussions are better off taking place within a neutral/biased forum.
A bigger house or a fancier cars doesn't persuade me more than doing something to empower the disenfranchised.
Edit: Also, civilisations arose because people were able to work together and trust each other. We stopped killing each other or relieving ourselves whenever we want so that we can all have a better quality of life.
This project claims to be promoting a discussion, therefore being the forum rather than a participant. If it itself takes a clear position from the start, it has already impaired the debate by turning itself into a participant vs those for the adoption of AI within government.
Unless its understanding of "dystopian" is one that's merely provocative rather than intrinsically evil or needs to be prevented.
In my view taking for granted that the role of AI would be bad/dystopian makes it unsuitable to be called a discussion.
Imagine if we switch this topic to immigration in the 1900s, then we'd have a project that take for granted that a country where the majority are immigrants would be dystopian, and the "discussion" would revolve around how to stop migrants from coming in or getting rid of them.
Many times in history we've been blindspotted by quickly applying good/bad dichotomy to every matter, instead of exploring it.
IMO the west's ideals reflects their history of loosely-confederated tribes, e.g. the Germanic and Frankish tribes. Centralised governments are the exception (the Roman empire, lasting only a few hundred years).
Compare this with the east with China being the center of eastern civilisation for more than 2000 years. Education, order and standardisation enabled society to progress beyond wars and civil wars into commerce and creativity.