A perfect distillation of the modern shift in "conservative".
Reagan was of the older, blue-blood, quasi-libertarian camp (Buckley's 3 legged stool) that was really good at defending free markets (ala Locke), but terrible at defending virtue.
The new (post Tea Party) wing of conservatism has seen their jobs shipped overseas, their wives having to work to make ends meet, and their social order turned upside down ("Women can have penises? What!"). And they're less enamored with free trade and free markets and more concerned with fostering social stability (ala Burke).
And unlike Reagan and Goldwater, they're not afraid of using government to do it.
History really does rhyme. We are replaying the Locke / Hobbes / Burke debates of the 17th century.
Oh, I don't agree. Those were my guys. What went wrong happened long after they left the stage. It began to unravel with 9/11, so in a sense, Bin Laden made some gains. The big turning point was the GFC.
The backlash against the GWOT and the loss of faith in capitalism create an opening for Obama and the Red-Green Alliance. Trump, I was a reaction more in the mode of the Gingrich mean-spirited conservatism than the hale and hearty, kinder/gentler Reagan-Bush mode.
COVID and Floyd tempered the progressive pushback into razor-sharp steel, and Trump II is a bare-knuckle, brute force counterstrike.
In the wake of Charlie, it’s time to dial it down or else there won't be anybody left to debate.
I suspect you may be a few years older than I am, George. I'm 52, so while I remember Reagan, he left office when I was 15 and barely paying attention.
But looking historically from the world today (and I teach civics and philosophy, so I do that a lot), it's very hard to conclude the 60's-90's conservatives were successful at (or perhaps even interested in) conserving anything other than free markets. Despite "standing athwart history yelling stop" for many decades, history (and those convinced they were on the right side of it) squashed Buckley like a bug.
Of that group, Buckley is the best example, since he not only participated in but helped drive conservatism for nearly that entire period, surviving long enough to see the populist backlash against his own generation's failures.
I am more than a few years older than you and I disagree with you. Buckley single-handedly restored conservatism as a serious political force in American politics. Trump and MAGA are its inheritors and look who’s in the White House.
One criticism, philosophies capture points of view. Other than I suppose the worship of Satan, I would avoid labeling them as evil, immoral, etc.
For example, the Federal Reserve socializes interest rates across the economy, which otherwise would adjust piece by piece, loan by loan. That is called socialism, and specifically exerts control over one of the means of production using the power of the government.
AI's greatest risk to freedom is rooted in the great expense and difficulty of creating large scale systems. Because these systems are expensive, there will only ever be a very few of them. Which means that, as they become ever more able to answer questions with minimal effort, more and more of the people's "research" or answer-seeking will rely on a small number of sources. What we're creating here is a monopoly, or at least an oligopoly, of knowledge. But, while a normal oligopoly threatens only our ability to receive some product or service at a fair price, an oligopoly of knowledge threatens our ability to maintain an informed citizenry -- without which there can be no freedom.
We've been taught by Elon Musk's manipulation of the output of Grok, to reflect his personal view of South Africa and other issues, that those who operate AI systems are quite capable of influencing the view of reality held by millions of people. While Musk's interference was intentional, we must also anticipate that there will be unintentional biases of output. Each system's decisions concerning source of training inputs, methods for preparing that input, and for weighting it, has dramatic impacts on what they will output in response to user queries.
The monopolization of knowledge ensured by these systems may not cause much concern if the tasks are mundane. But, it is clear that users also ask AI systems to weigh in on issues important to society. What are the arguments for and against abortion? What is the proper way to tax? What are the most important conservative or liberal principles? These latter questions are not ones whose answers should be largely served up by a small number of systems controlled by individuals whose interests are not necessarily in line with those of society. We should't be surprised to see "conservative" or "left-wing" AI models tend to appear. Systems with a "China-bias" already exist...
There were those who argued against the influence of Google and search engines for similar reasons. But, at least with those systems, their users had to dig through the sources linked to and make their own conclusions. Even if the search engines themselves didn't link to some content, sometimes those links could be found within what they did link to. Yes, there was certainly a danger presented by a monopolization of search services. But, that danger pales when compared to the danger from the concentration of access to knowledge in a small number of highly expensive, inevitably opaque AI systems.
My personal feeling is that when a resource is shown to provide a vital benefit to society, then, if that resource isn't likely to be subject to the kind of market forces that will ensure that it continues to serve society's needs well, we should consider regulating it to ensure that it does. The vast majority of businesses don't have the broad societal impact needed to justify such regulations. But, some do. That why we regulate the electric grid, water and sewer systems, and transportation routes, do. Now, I think we should ask whether "knowledge" provision, in the form of AI systems, might not be yet another resource significant enough to warrant regulation as a societal utility.
“…the American spirit—the spirit that saved the world in World War II…”. Certainly our country contributed to winning that war, but the Soviets with steely resolve and great sacrifice, 26 million dead (8-10 million combatants) did keep the Germans tied up, no? Four million of the five million German KIA’s were on the Eastern/Soviet front.
No. If it wasn't AI it would have been something else: The Devil made me do it. Rock&Roll, TV, Pornography, Alcohol, Heathens, Capitalism, Albinos. you name it someone will believe the world will be a better place without it. People are always looking for something to blame as "The Cause!" Oh, and then there is always "The Jews!". If someone wants to end their life they will find a reason\ justification and other people will try and assign the blame to whatever the latest thing is to blame for all the ills in the world. AI wasn't the cause the Branch Davidian's or Jones Town, or Heavens Gate ( the cult, not the movie). AI is just the lates hook people want to hang the blame hat on.
An interesting idea to check the power of big corporation and to slowdown AI is an energy fee and dividend. It is better known as a carbon fee and dividend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_fee_and_dividend but the idea is the same, it would also work as an AI fee and dividend.
What’s Senator Hawley and the speaker done about this? And wouldn’t this argument apply to actual opioids too? And why just Big Tech, and not Big Ag, for example?
Great point. I travel to Eastern Europe a lot and that is one thing that I really enjoy about the place - the right of the individual is not greater than that of the collective society. So you cannot blast your music out your car and ruin our quiet that we desire and deserve. It’s just quieter period.
Unfortunately, we are headed for a transhumanist society. This is what the techies want and believe we need to do. Also, this is where the money and status are. The old religious, family-based community concept is dying and will continue. This is one big reason for the nihilism taught in the universities. Same happens with cell phones. The blanking of the mind to make it more available for the technology to be used. They will win they have the power.
Now, would they ever allow a place to live where we could say no to this technology? Where we don't have to be pounded into submission from the techies. We would be at their mercy but maybe they would allow this type of society to exist.
If not, then get the chip implants and do as your told.
The University = The "New Religion" (religion of nihilism)
He's our problem. He elevated "maximal individual autonomy" to a first principle, the highest good of society. This makes collectively defined standards or norms or virtues impossible, since any such rules might infringe on my (or your) "autonomy". Within our Millian framework, limiting access to the Internet or video games or AI or porn is philosophically impossible.
Read Aristotle to find out what happens to a society that stops defending virtue.
Anyone who has been close to someone with opioid addiction understands that it came from good old American ingenuity, greed and marketing from the pharmaceutical industry along with complicit doctors. China and Mexico became the low cost producers. Now we are on the verge of abuse of ADHD drugs and Cocaine use is soaring again.
I'd like to know the extent of your grasp on communism, socialism, and fascism respectively, and for you to justify your opposition to them. Not the necessarily directed to the writer in particular, but a general "you/your."
This might warrant its own series of articles grounded in philosophy, history, or whatever your expertise. And, which directly engages with primary sources of the big three boogeymen, or engages with real existing communism, socialism, or fascism of the past or that of today in order to demonstrate claims made about them.
There are valid critiques to be made, such as those made by Ágnes Heller and Richard Dien Winfield.
There's an enormous contradiction in this argument. It bases an argument for MORE government regulation on the patron saint of LESS regulation.
A perfect distillation of the modern shift in "conservative".
Reagan was of the older, blue-blood, quasi-libertarian camp (Buckley's 3 legged stool) that was really good at defending free markets (ala Locke), but terrible at defending virtue.
The new (post Tea Party) wing of conservatism has seen their jobs shipped overseas, their wives having to work to make ends meet, and their social order turned upside down ("Women can have penises? What!"). And they're less enamored with free trade and free markets and more concerned with fostering social stability (ala Burke).
And unlike Reagan and Goldwater, they're not afraid of using government to do it.
History really does rhyme. We are replaying the Locke / Hobbes / Burke debates of the 17th century.
Nothing new under the Sun as they say, however I think the Gipper was a strong advocate of virtue.
I would agree. Reagan was. My family just got back from the Reagan Library a few months ago; that man really was amazing.
But in terms of outcomes, the Buckley / Goldwater / Reagan brand of conservatism completely failed to conserve anything.
Oh, I don't agree. Those were my guys. What went wrong happened long after they left the stage. It began to unravel with 9/11, so in a sense, Bin Laden made some gains. The big turning point was the GFC.
The backlash against the GWOT and the loss of faith in capitalism create an opening for Obama and the Red-Green Alliance. Trump, I was a reaction more in the mode of the Gingrich mean-spirited conservatism than the hale and hearty, kinder/gentler Reagan-Bush mode.
COVID and Floyd tempered the progressive pushback into razor-sharp steel, and Trump II is a bare-knuckle, brute force counterstrike.
In the wake of Charlie, it’s time to dial it down or else there won't be anybody left to debate.
I suspect you may be a few years older than I am, George. I'm 52, so while I remember Reagan, he left office when I was 15 and barely paying attention.
But looking historically from the world today (and I teach civics and philosophy, so I do that a lot), it's very hard to conclude the 60's-90's conservatives were successful at (or perhaps even interested in) conserving anything other than free markets. Despite "standing athwart history yelling stop" for many decades, history (and those convinced they were on the right side of it) squashed Buckley like a bug.
Of that group, Buckley is the best example, since he not only participated in but helped drive conservatism for nearly that entire period, surviving long enough to see the populist backlash against his own generation's failures.
I am more than a few years older than you and I disagree with you. Buckley single-handedly restored conservatism as a serious political force in American politics. Trump and MAGA are its inheritors and look who’s in the White House.
Wonderful speech, well spoken, well argued.
One criticism, philosophies capture points of view. Other than I suppose the worship of Satan, I would avoid labeling them as evil, immoral, etc.
For example, the Federal Reserve socializes interest rates across the economy, which otherwise would adjust piece by piece, loan by loan. That is called socialism, and specifically exerts control over one of the means of production using the power of the government.
AI's greatest risk to freedom is rooted in the great expense and difficulty of creating large scale systems. Because these systems are expensive, there will only ever be a very few of them. Which means that, as they become ever more able to answer questions with minimal effort, more and more of the people's "research" or answer-seeking will rely on a small number of sources. What we're creating here is a monopoly, or at least an oligopoly, of knowledge. But, while a normal oligopoly threatens only our ability to receive some product or service at a fair price, an oligopoly of knowledge threatens our ability to maintain an informed citizenry -- without which there can be no freedom.
We've been taught by Elon Musk's manipulation of the output of Grok, to reflect his personal view of South Africa and other issues, that those who operate AI systems are quite capable of influencing the view of reality held by millions of people. While Musk's interference was intentional, we must also anticipate that there will be unintentional biases of output. Each system's decisions concerning source of training inputs, methods for preparing that input, and for weighting it, has dramatic impacts on what they will output in response to user queries.
The monopolization of knowledge ensured by these systems may not cause much concern if the tasks are mundane. But, it is clear that users also ask AI systems to weigh in on issues important to society. What are the arguments for and against abortion? What is the proper way to tax? What are the most important conservative or liberal principles? These latter questions are not ones whose answers should be largely served up by a small number of systems controlled by individuals whose interests are not necessarily in line with those of society. We should't be surprised to see "conservative" or "left-wing" AI models tend to appear. Systems with a "China-bias" already exist...
There were those who argued against the influence of Google and search engines for similar reasons. But, at least with those systems, their users had to dig through the sources linked to and make their own conclusions. Even if the search engines themselves didn't link to some content, sometimes those links could be found within what they did link to. Yes, there was certainly a danger presented by a monopolization of search services. But, that danger pales when compared to the danger from the concentration of access to knowledge in a small number of highly expensive, inevitably opaque AI systems.
My personal feeling is that when a resource is shown to provide a vital benefit to society, then, if that resource isn't likely to be subject to the kind of market forces that will ensure that it continues to serve society's needs well, we should consider regulating it to ensure that it does. The vast majority of businesses don't have the broad societal impact needed to justify such regulations. But, some do. That why we regulate the electric grid, water and sewer systems, and transportation routes, do. Now, I think we should ask whether "knowledge" provision, in the form of AI systems, might not be yet another resource significant enough to warrant regulation as a societal utility.
“…the American spirit—the spirit that saved the world in World War II…”. Certainly our country contributed to winning that war, but the Soviets with steely resolve and great sacrifice, 26 million dead (8-10 million combatants) did keep the Germans tied up, no? Four million of the five million German KIA’s were on the Eastern/Soviet front.
No. If it wasn't AI it would have been something else: The Devil made me do it. Rock&Roll, TV, Pornography, Alcohol, Heathens, Capitalism, Albinos. you name it someone will believe the world will be a better place without it. People are always looking for something to blame as "The Cause!" Oh, and then there is always "The Jews!". If someone wants to end their life they will find a reason\ justification and other people will try and assign the blame to whatever the latest thing is to blame for all the ills in the world. AI wasn't the cause the Branch Davidian's or Jones Town, or Heavens Gate ( the cult, not the movie). AI is just the lates hook people want to hang the blame hat on.
An interesting idea to check the power of big corporation and to slowdown AI is an energy fee and dividend. It is better known as a carbon fee and dividend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_fee_and_dividend but the idea is the same, it would also work as an AI fee and dividend.
What’s Senator Hawley and the speaker done about this? And wouldn’t this argument apply to actual opioids too? And why just Big Tech, and not Big Ag, for example?
Great point. I travel to Eastern Europe a lot and that is one thing that I really enjoy about the place - the right of the individual is not greater than that of the collective society. So you cannot blast your music out your car and ruin our quiet that we desire and deserve. It’s just quieter period.
Unfortunately, we are headed for a transhumanist society. This is what the techies want and believe we need to do. Also, this is where the money and status are. The old religious, family-based community concept is dying and will continue. This is one big reason for the nihilism taught in the universities. Same happens with cell phones. The blanking of the mind to make it more available for the technology to be used. They will win they have the power.
Now, would they ever allow a place to live where we could say no to this technology? Where we don't have to be pounded into submission from the techies. We would be at their mercy but maybe they would allow this type of society to exist.
If not, then get the chip implants and do as your told.
The University = The "New Religion" (religion of nihilism)
Charlie - RIP
The Chinese are a few years into limiting young people’s access to the internet. It is easy for them not so easy for us.
Their society isn't built on John Stuart Mill.
He's our problem. He elevated "maximal individual autonomy" to a first principle, the highest good of society. This makes collectively defined standards or norms or virtues impossible, since any such rules might infringe on my (or your) "autonomy". Within our Millian framework, limiting access to the Internet or video games or AI or porn is philosophically impossible.
Read Aristotle to find out what happens to a society that stops defending virtue.
Anyone who has been close to someone with opioid addiction understands that it came from good old American ingenuity, greed and marketing from the pharmaceutical industry along with complicit doctors. China and Mexico became the low cost producers. Now we are on the verge of abuse of ADHD drugs and Cocaine use is soaring again.
I'd like to know the extent of your grasp on communism, socialism, and fascism respectively, and for you to justify your opposition to them. Not the necessarily directed to the writer in particular, but a general "you/your."
This might warrant its own series of articles grounded in philosophy, history, or whatever your expertise. And, which directly engages with primary sources of the big three boogeymen, or engages with real existing communism, socialism, or fascism of the past or that of today in order to demonstrate claims made about them.
There are valid critiques to be made, such as those made by Ágnes Heller and Richard Dien Winfield.