That’s the thing about being paranoid about MkUltra - it was actively suppressed and denied while it was happening (according to FOI documents) - and they say that they stopped, but if it (or some similar successor) was active they’d certainly say that it’s not happening now…

At the time there were active rumors around town about influenza propagation studies being secretly conducted on the local population… probably baseless paranoia… probably.

Now, as you say, your (presumably smaller) country has never known such things to happen, but…

The only thing driving solar panel production development to China is cost. Cost of labor, cost of environmental regulations, maybe cost of raw material acquisition… All that investment there for the past 20+ years driven by cost is “paying off” now with their production capacity. We’re getting TMSC plants in Arizona, we’ve already got BMW, Mercedes, Toyota etc. production plants in the US, nothing stopping us from building solar panel factories, except international corporate profit optimization.

Oh, I investigated it too - it seems like it was a real thing, though likely inactive by 2005… but if it were active I certainly didn’t want to become a subject.

Bad results are nothing new.

Currently, we’re preventing the “sunken coastal cities, economic crisis and famine in poor regions” kind of change

Are we really preventing it? Seems like the track toward that change is mostly unabated. Sure, it’s a couple of generations out before it gets serious, but what are the signs that the track has improved?

I’m reading hopeful signs from China that they are actually making positive progress toward sustainability. Not that other big players are keeping up with them, but still how 1 billion people choose to live does make a difference.

It’s just that now it tries to be a bit more stealthy.

With regard to what has been happening the past 100 days in the United States, it’s not even trying to be stealthy one little bit. If anything, it’s dropping massive hints of the objectionable things it’s planning for the near future.

There are still existential threats: https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/

The difference with a population of 8 billion is that we as individuals are less empowered to do anything significant about them than ever.

1925: global financial collapse is just about to happen, many people are enjoying the ride as the wave just started to break, following that war to end all wars that did reach across the Atlantic Ocean…

Yes, it is accelerating. Alvin Toffler wrote Future Shock 45 years ago, already overwhelmed by accelerating change, and it has continued to accelerate since then. But these are not entirely new problems, either.

There have been a couple of big discontinuities in the last 4500 years, and the next big discontinuity has the distinction of being the first in which mankind has the capacity to cause a mass extinction event.

Life will carry on, some humans will likely survive, but in what kind of state? For how long before they reach the technological level of being able to leave the planet again?

My problem with LLMs is that positive feedback loop of low and negative quality information.

Vetting the datasets before feeding them for training is a form of bias / discrimination, but complex society has historically always been somewhat biased - for better and for worse, but never not biased at all.

Not all of us, and that’s the problem with compassion.

It’s a luxury state: analysis; whether self or professionally administered on a chaise lounge at $400 per hour.

Self awareness is a rare, and valuable, state.

The one thing you can say for AI is that it does many things faster than previous methods…

I think there was a recent unsuccessful rev of ChatGPT that was too flattering, it made people nauseous - they had to dial it back.

Around 2006 I received a job application, with a resume attached, and the resume had a link to the person’s website - so I visited. The website had a link on the front page to “My MkUltra experience”, so I clicked that. Not exactly an in-depth investigation. The MkUltra story read that my job applicant was an unwilling (and un-informed) test subject of MkUltra who picked him from his association with other unwilling MkUltra test subjects at a conference, explained how they expanded the MkUltra program of gaslighting mental torture and secret physical/chemical abuse of their test subjects through associates such as co-workers, etc.

So, option A) applicant is delusional, paranoid, and deeply disturbed. Probably not the best choice for the job.

B) applicant is 100% correct about what is happening to him, DEFINITELY not someone I want to get any closer to professionally, personally, or even be in the same elevator with coincidentally.

C) applicant is pulling our legs with his website, it’s all make-believe fun. Absolutely nothing on applicant’s website indicated that this might be the case.

You know how you apply to jobs and never hear back from some of them…? Yeah, I don’t normally do that to our applicants, but I am willing to make exceptions for cause… in this case the position applied for required analytical thinking. Some creativity was of some value, but correct and verifiable results were of paramount importance. Anyone applying for the job leaving such an obvious trail of breadcrumbs to such a limited set of conclusions about themselves would seem to be lacking the self awareness and analytical skill required to succeed in the position.

Or, D) they could just be trying to stay unemployed while showing effort in applying to jobs, but I bet even in 2006 not every hiring manager would have dug in those three layers - I suppose he could deflect those in the in-person interviews fairly easily.