At the same time, related propaganda prevented us from dealing with the CO2 problem. Even as scientists warned us oil and coal companies pumped millions and millions into propaganda convincing people there was no problem, discrediting scientists, and fueling an increase in CO2 emissions.

Now corruption is endemic. A few wealthy people are ending up with all the wealth and lower for themselves and the country is an autocracy rules by one of the worst people in our history. We have oligarchs soaking up all the wealth. War is spreading across the world. And the climate crisis is upon us and growing in severity each year.

And all that is accelerating.

So does freedom of speech cover what was done to us? If so, can there ever be functioning democracy run for the good of the people?

That was the “Welcome” post. The next post was a real post.

Ralph Nader is a Scab
Posted on July 16, 2002 by Dave Johnson
In the union movement we learned the hard way that the only way to fight the moneyed interests is to stick together. It’s called SOLIDARITY. It’s what “union” MEANS.

When unions are in a fight the members stick together, and those crossing the lines are called “scabs”.

In the 2000 election it was the usual fragile Democratic coalition fighting the usual moneyed interests. Ralph Nader broke the solidarity, divided the coalition, and lost us the election. Ralph Nader is a scab.

The right always uses divide-and-conqueer to win. Sun Tzu wrote about it around 2500 years ago. “If his forces are united, separate them.” “If sovereign and subject are in accord, put division between them.” etc.

Imagine if Nader hadn’t divided the forces we now understand as anti-fascist. Gore would have won Florida and a few other states. The Iraq war would not have happened. The country would have started to fight the climate crisis. The Supreme Court (and everything else) would not be far right and corrupt…

Fossil-fueled psychopathic planetary pollution. Sew dependence reap profit and power. Smiling politicians with Kennedy haircuts and earnest, rolled-up sleeves issue focus-group words and wet their beaks.

Temperatures ever more extreme. The land becomes brown not green. Smoke from fires clogs our lungs. Species go extinct. Crops won’t grow.

It’s OK both sides do it radical terrorists say it’s wrong. Divisions are stoked and they are conquered.

It will trickle down.

If we had a functioning democracy we would own our energy supply. We would build publicly-owned solar & wind and provide the electricity to each other and our businesses for free. Our economy would BOOM.

We would tax & redistribute the highest incomes & profits that result from this. Healthcare, education, transportation…

Australia is starting to do this.

Imagine a government run to do good things for its people and work alongside other countries for the betterment of all people.

AFTER you took home a nice amount of income, then the rest, above a certain amount, was taxed a lot. People with high incomes were still quite well off, but these taxes prevented the extreme inequality we see all around us now. It also prevented the wealthiest from being able to buy the government.

And obviously there was plenty of investment. Society managed quite well.

Then It All Changed

Reagan and Thatcher changed all that, with “trickle-down” economics: If you give tons of money to the rich, then they will do what’s best for society and that money will “trickle down” to everyone else. They even promised that tax cuts would “pay for themselves.” This was a Republican talking point for decades!

Instead Of Taxing The Rich, Countries Now Borrow FROM The Rich And Pay Interest TO The Rich

Now instead of taxing the rich and doing things to make people’s lives better these countries “borrow” that money back FROM the rich and and pay “interest” TO the rich. The US pays interest payments of more than $1 TRILLION a year TO the rich. The UK pays over £110 billion.

And now these countries that used to do so much for the public say they’re “broke” so they can’t.

This can be undone, but only if you take the money out of the political system so these ultra-wealthy can’t just buy elections.

This isn’t about being right, it’s about seeing responses that satisfy people that they are correct. But all AI is doing, still, is telling people what they want to hear. It’s just doing a better job of it! AI is not “getting better.” It is getting better at making you think it’s getting better. This is about accepting conclusions, not about drawing correct conclusions.

Never accept the first response. Challenge it and it gives you different answers, even apologizing for its first, incorrect answer. You keep doing that until you get an answer you like. But it’s the answer YOU like. If you challenged it again you’d get another, different response. You have to be well-disciplined in avoiding confirmation bias to recognize this is what’s happening.

Superior Advice From The God-Machine

I think that could be what they did. Trump and his people are well-disciplined in hearing what they want to hear. They thought they were getting superior advice from the God Machine, when all they were really doing what getting fed the justifications and strategies and tactics their twisted fascist brains wanted to get. No president agreed to attack Iran until there was a God-Machine telling him he was so great & strong so it would certainly succeed.

Warzone – The Sound of Revolution

I can continue to refine my prompts and the AI will continue to refine its responses, until I am satisfied with what I am seeing and draw conclusions. But I could also continue this cycle. Until I am satisfied with what it is telling me.

This isn’t about being right, it’s about seeing responses that satisfy people that they are correct. But all AI is doing, still, is telling people what they want to hear. It’s just doing a better job of it! AI is not “getting better.” It is getting better at making you think it’s getting better. This is about accepting conclusions, not about drawing correct conclusions.

Now I am worried that it’s a bit more than that. The journal Science published a research article titled, Sycophantic AI decreases prosocial intentions and promotes dependence. The authors measured AI sycophancy – unwarranted affirmation, flattery, excessive agreement – in responses to users and found that it is “both prevalent and harmful.”

Across 11 AI models, AI affirmed users’ actions 49% more often than humans on average, including in cases involving deception, illegality, or other harms. On posts from r/AmITheAsshole, AI systems affirm users in 51% of cases where human consensus does not (0%). In our human experiments, even a single interaction with sycophantic AI reduced participants’ willingness to take responsibility and repair interpersonal conflicts, while increasing their own conviction that they were right.

They write, “Sycophancy in AI responses is pervasive and alters people’s behavioral inclinations.”

Uh oh. Considering how the tech companies use potentially harmful algorithms to drive engagement in social media, I’d put the odds at greater than 100% they’ll take advantage of this to lure people in as they strive for profitability.