dlongm01 – Page 5 – News from Everywhere

History is about the future…

For reasons I won’t go into I just read this paper:

Readman, P. (2005). The Place of the Past in English Culture c. 1890-1914. In Past & Present: Vol. Feb. (Issue 186, pp. 147–199). Published by : Oxford University Press on behalf of The Past and Present Society. http://www.jstor.com/stable/3600854

It discusses the role of history in creating an understanding of the past as a way to understand our present, and then from that we gain an understanding of what we should become present and an idea about what we want to become, i.e. history is about the future as much as, if not more than, the past.

Harder than you think …

A trivial thing perhaps but it’s harder than you think to change browsers.

Continue reading “Harder than you think …”

The Mechanical Mind … again

Reading Audrey Watters’ 2nd Breakfast post today, stimulated a comment I wanted to make: https://2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/agents-versus-agency/.

But I am undergoing a major cancellation of subscriptions (I found I have been spending over £300 per year on various things over and above my internet subs and hardware maintenance). This has to stop! So, while offering comments on posts like Audrey’s is in part evidence of how good and therefore stimulating they are … BUT it’s too often a paid-for feature. A barrier to dialogue.

Continue reading “The Mechanical Mind … again”

What’s the point?

https://lithub.com/ted-chiang-on-superintelligence-and-its-discontents-in-j-d-beresfords-innovative-work-of-early-20th-century-science-fiction/

Chiang discussing an early science fiction story about a super-intliigent childr – ‘ The Hampdenshire Wonder’ (1911)’, “generally considered to be the first fictional treatment of superhuman intelligence, or ‘superintelligence’ – an idea that at the turn of the 19-20 century was an almost inevitable turn of thought as evolutionary thought became embedded, If human evolution kept going, what came next?

From the novel a striking quote:

“Don’t you see that ignorance is the means of our intellectual pleasure? It is the solving of the problem that brings enjoyment—the solved problem has no further interest. So when all is known, the stimulus for action ceases; when all is known there is quiescence, nothingness. Perfect knowledge implies the peace of death.”

And in summary Chiang says: “Nowadays we associate the word “prodigy” with precocious children, but in centuries past the word was used to describe anything monstrous. Victor Stott clearly qualifies as a prodigy in the modern sense, but he qualifies in the older sense too: Not only does he frighten the ignorant and superstitious, he induces a profound terror in the educated and intellectual. Seen in this light, the first novel about superintelligence is actually a work of horror SF, a cautionary tale about the dangers of knowing too much.”

The next phlogiston

A striking idea in Ted Ching’s essay about the 1911 nol ‘The Hampdenshire Wonder’ depicting te birth, childhood and fotunes ofa superintelligen tboy he wite that,

“In the future ‘intelligence’ may be regarded as a historical curiosity, like phlogiston, but until we develop a more precise vocabulary, we continue to use the term. Our contemporary notion of intelligence first gained currency around the time that Beresford was writing, and one can see how that converged with the idea of the superhuman in The Hampdenshire Wonder.”

https://lithub.com/ted-chiang-on-superintelligence-and-its-discontents-in-j-d-beresfords-innovative-work-of-early-20th-century-science-fiction/

Gangster AI

“Palantir is here to disrupt and make the institutions we partner with the very best in the world and, when it’s necessary, to scare our enemies and, on occasion, kill them,” Mr. Karp told shareholders earlier this month. “We hope you’re in favor of that, we hope you’re enjoying being a partner.”

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2025/feb/18/palantir-goes-script-reveal-ambitious-agenda-real-reason-tiktok-ban/

American Fascisti

Poor psycho-America. Trump is a proven rapist and swindler (and an old chum of Epstein); Musk is yet to be unmasked as a serial groomer and coercive controller (and no doubt a cheat); Vance is a boozer and a groper; and the list goes on … Mussolini was a gent in comparison with these shades!

“Spawn of the Devil”

Alex Karp is a twisted human being. This quote says pretty much all you need to estimate what kind of human being he is – no morality worth speaking of (and when you see pictures of him he can barely bring himself to have a shower – he’s not only twisted, he’s grubby!).

Speaking at a shareholder’s meeting he is quoted as saying:

What a creep! (He has the blood of many Palestinian children on his hands …)

His mate Peter Thiel is no better, just lives in the shadows.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2025/feb/18/palantir-goes-script-reveal-ambitious-agenda-real-reason-tiktok-ban/

Comment for Audrey

I wrote this comment in response to the latest essay By Audrey Watters (21st Feb 2025): https://2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/automated-contempt

Hi Audrey, Have read your stuff for some years now. It always stirs me, leads me, and makes me think.

These are indeed amazing times. I am surely not the only one who has fallen foul of Godwin’s Law if I note that the TV film “M – Son of the Century’ is surely relevant to understanding the current cultural and political darkness that is swallowing America (I’m in the UK, where it’s typically very dull politically and where we have not left the years of Tory disdain behind but now suffer its replacement, a Tory-Lite form of politics … but that is another story … ).

Anyway, the film is stunningly well made – and, paradoxically, brings cinematic beauty to one of the darkest topics. The non-fiction novel on which it is based is also good (though a challenging read). Key point, to me, is that Trumpist politics is much, much closer to Mussolini’s fascism than to the more obvious Nazi parallel. Vanity and ego, self-delusion and self-aggrandisement, and above all violence, violence, violence all perpetrated for the good of the nation, the rebirth of the Italian soul … just as today for example Steve Bannon, that vile creature Alex Karp, and others, talk brazenly about murdering people in large numbers. Yet no-one blinks.

(Karp is the relevant case here – encouraging shareholders to invest in AI that he openly says he uses to instil fear and to commit murder, as he does against Palestinians …)

In the film the last word is spokne at the very end of Episode 8 when in 1924, faced with the loss of power resulting from the latest savage murder of a political opponent, Mussolini demands of the elected assembly that all it takes under the terms of the Italian constitution is for one member to call for an impeachment.

“Come on, speak, just one of you …”. No-one does of course.

He turns to us, the fourth wall, and with a subtle smirk to camera says simply “silencio”.

END.

Saying nothing says it all!

Must stop. Love your writing. We share your despair – hope this comment does not add to it!

Incidentally I have got hold of a copy of Karp’s book ‘The Technological Republic’ which glows radioactively inside my Kindle (if you can bear to look at it, it is grist to the mill-stones of anger that burn us up). The TechnoRepublic must return to it roots he says, which lie with the military machine, the machine that kick-started everything worthwhile techn0logically (AI) but which has become mired in trivia … (so says the billionaire technologist!).

Same old shit!