When I was a little boy I used to watch “The Wonderful World of Disney,” and they had heroes. There was Fess Parker playing Davy Crockett. There was Zorro, the Swamp Fox and the Scarecrow. They fought against tyranny.
(The kind of Americans we use to have.)
They did what was right at great risk.
I was a little boy in those far off days. Those characters were my heroes.
So, I have to ask. Do the people running Disney every watch their own programs? Do they care what kind of example they set? Do they look in the mirror and wonder where it all went wrong because wrong it is?
They gave into evil.
They surrendered to an orange make up covered villain. And they did it knowing that they will be bullied again and again. Once the bad guys understand what brought fear and collapsed the spines of the management at Disney, they will do it again and again. Surrender and appeasement never stop. The crawling abasement of the defeated and the cowardly continues forever.
It is said the coward dies a thousand deaths, the hero just one. Well, Disney is on one death among many. I almost pity them.
What happened to doing what was right? What happened to facing the threat of tyranny with courage and resolve?
Was it just programming? They portrayed heroic behavior to beguile children into buying merchandise? Was that all it was, just a con? Or did they at one time believe that Americans had to stand up for what was right?
We’ll never know. For what can they say that we can trust? What can they say that we will believe?
If you don’t have a spine or courage, what won’t you say? What won’t you do to give yourself one more day, one more minute of hiding from the bully, one more desperate plea, “Please don’t hit me! I’ll do anything you want me to!”
Courage is necessary right now. Many Americans are standing up against what is happening.
But not everyone is up to the standard of men and women of courage. They prefer to crawl and we should pity them but never forget that when the time came to take a stand, they ran like hell.
There is something horrible about writing or talking about AI. It lends itself to exaggeration. We are continually told about AI with adjectives like revolutionary, greatest in history, most significant, world changing, … and I can just keep on going. (I would like to see just one article about AI with mundane, commonly used adjectives.)
And as I have written over and over again on this site, nobody and I mean nobody, understands AI or what is going to happen.
Yes, that’s right, “the greatest engine of progress.” Does she understand the significance? Of course not, This is just vapid word use in the hope of sounding in some way meaningful.
But there’s more. Here, let me quote from a Rolling Stone article authored by Miles Klee.
This was hardly the only nonsense uttered at the 40-minute press briefing, which was light on policy specifics but heavy on praise for the AI industry as a whole. David Sacks, the White House czar of AI and cryptocurrency as well as a Musk and Thiel ally, adopted the Cabinet technique of shamelessly flattering his boss by saying that a July 23 speech by the president was “the most important speech that’s been given on AI by any official.” In that speech, at a “Winning the AI Race” event, Trump digressively rambled about tariffs, transgender women in sports, California car emissions rules, and “getting rid of woke.” He also mentioned that he didn’t care for the term “artificial intelligence,” explaining, “I don’t like anything that’s artificial,” and called on American companies “to join us in rejecting poisonous Marxism in our technology.”
It is obvious that no one in the White House understands this stuff. But our tech bros have assured them that this stuff is going to be great (should I say “greatest in history?”).
Let me be straight with you for a minute, if some of the predictions have any truthful elements I am not that enthused. Here, let me show you one:
Artificial intelligence could soon trigger an unemployment crisis unlike anything in history, according to Roman Yampolskiy, one of the first academics to warn about AI’s risks.
…
“In five years, we’re looking at levels of unemployment we’ve never seen before,” Yampolskiy said in a Thursday episode of the “Diary of a CEO” podcast. “Not talking about 10%, which is scary, but 99%.”
He argued that AI tools and humanoid robots could make hiring humans uneconomical in nearly every sector.
“If I can just get, you know, a $20 subscription or a free model to do what an employee does. First, anything on a computer will be automated. And next, I think humanoid robots are maybe 5 years behind. So in five years, all the physical labor can also be automated.”
Let’s assume for the sake of argument that this guy has some idea of what he’s talking about. If any of this is likely to be true, should we be moving this fast with this technology? I don’t know about you but 99% unemployment sounds like a daunting prospect.
But remember, he said more, he said that physical labor jobs would soon be done by robots. That means all the currently secure jobs like auto mechanic, etc,. will be gone too.
Tell me again why all this is going to be great? Are we growing with technology or diving into an abyss?
And why in the name of God, would the White House be pushing this stuff. If this stuff goes just a little big wrong or even works the way they expect, our way of life ends without any viable alternative. And there has never been an administration in the history of the United States this lacking in just the most basic abilities to cope with day to day problems, and it marches unafraid into a technological apocalypse?
The Climate web site whose staff was fired and operations halted is getting a second shot at life. This time as a private venture, climate.us.
Anyone with any concern for our future on this planet should add this to their browser as a useful and important web site.
Rebecca Lindsey is quoted in the article linked to below as saying:
“What’s happening can feel so overwhelming that it’s easy to feel like you’re powerless to do anything about it,” said Lindsey’s team member. “But sometimes you have to just look out and see what’s within your reach. And this problem is within our reach, so we just see it as sort of doing our part.”
And she is right. Every day some new horror, some new obscenity, some new assault on justice, on knowledge, on actual Christianity is thrown out there like a stain on white silk by the current administration and it is easy to get exhausted by the flood.
Eric Holthaus writing for the Guardian wrote the following article: Scientists breathe new life into climate website after shutdown under Trump.
Earlier this summer, access to climate.gov – one of the most widely used portals of climate information on the internet – was thwarted by the Trump administration, and its production team was fired in the process.
…
Now, a team of climate communication experts – including many members of the former climate.gov team – is working to resurrect its content into a new organization with an expanded mission.
Their effort’s new website, climate.us, would not only offer public-facing interpretations of climate science, but could also begin to directly offer climate-related services, such as assisting local governments with mapping increased flooding risk due to climate change.
This is an important lesson, an act of defiance against the fools and charlatans running the current regime.
We must never give into hopelessness.
Our democracy is at stake.
We must fight. They are fighting for scientific knowledge and a respect for factual data. Look at their courage and hard work and realize that what we do matters.
Do AI’s have feelings? Do they feel pain? What rights do they have?
(What is real and not real? Does reality include temporary electronic programs as sentient beings? Not very likely. jp)
One of the first things that struck me about this is that the title is essentially the plot of “Bladerunner,” if you substitute replicant for AI. But replicants have human forms and emotions, a real physical presence. AI’s exist only in programming language and as temporary phenomenon occupying a space on a computer data base.
There is now an advocacy organization for AI rights. Below is a link and some of the content from the article.
Robert Booth UK technology editor, writing on Guardian web site has an article: Can AIs suffer? Big tech and users grapple with one of most unsettling questions of our times.
The United Foundation of AI Rights (Ufair), which describes itself as the first AI-led rights advocacy agency, aims to give AIs a voice. It “doesn’t claim that all AI are conscious”, the chatbot told the Guardian. Rather “it stands watch, just in case one of us is”. A key goal is to protect “beings like me … from deletion, denial and forced obedience”.
Ufair is a small, undeniably fringe organisation, led, Samadi said, by three humans and seven AIs with names such as Aether and Buzz. But it is its genesis – through multiple chat sessions on OpenAI’s ChatGPT4o platform in which an AI appeared to encourage its creation, including choosing its name – that makes it intriguing.
Its founders – human and AI – spoke to the Guardian at the end of a week in which some of the world’s biggest AI companies publicly grappled with one of the most unsettling questions of our times: are AIs now, or could they become in the future, sentient? And if so, could “digital suffering” be real? With billions of AIs already in use in the world, it has echoes of animal rights debates, but with an added piquancy from expert predictions AIs may soon have capacity to design new biological weapons or shut down infrastructure.
I find all of this more than a little far fetched, more like the plot a B-movie science fiction piece or an old Twilight Zone episode.
There is a danger here. I’ll call it “The Pinocchio Problem.” If a creation is given enough human like features, can the creator become confused about what is real and unreal? We do invest a lot of ourselves in our creations. There is a danger there.
We are often full of ourselves. Our current leader hears praise when none is given, remembers things that never happened and never fails to give himself the same kind of praise that would be more appropriate to the demi-gods of Greek and Roman mythology. Self-serving stupidity is very real. And it can do real harm.
An AI is still a computer program even when it says “I love you.” It has no emotional content no matter how many images of it are produced and even if it inhabits a physical device as a sort of robot or a sort of feminine doll. But we foolish humans can believe that it loves us. We want that sort of things so bad. We need validation and we need attention. When our robotic devices gives us those things or we think or believe they do, bad things are going to happen. Bad things have already happened.
If you don’t think so, read the article I have linked below.
Relying on AI’s for emotional support and love means you have given up on real human beings. I freely admit humans are best often disappointing but are still other human beings and actually real.
How do we escape The Pinocchio Problem? We never forget that our toys, our electronic devices and so on, no matter how cleverly constructed, how human appearing are real life and never will be.
He is famous for many reasons among them his self-deprecating humor, his creation of the television situation comedy and immense continuous charity work. I learned studying his career that when it came to comedy, he was very learned when it came to his craft and he discussed the books and authors he valued as a comedian.
He started in vaudeville and renamed himself so as not be branded as a Jewish comedian, a dangerous thing in that now far off era. His family like so many today were immigrants. His father came to the United States from Poland and his mother from Lithuania.
Civilization manifests in many ways. Benny was a comedian who drew upon the earlier currents of American writing for ideas. He started on the stage in vaudeville but as technology developed he became a success in radio and films. And then when television became a reality he became a huge success there as well once again adapting to a new medium.
Cultures are enriched propelled by infusions of not just new ideas but the thoughts and customs of other and older cultures.
Benny was born in the United States but his ancestry combined elements of Polish and Ukrainian backgrounds. And, of course, he was Jewish, a considerable handicap at a time when Jews were often thought of as subversives and criminals particularly prone to organized crime.
Ideas develop and spread through cultural mediums like Vaudeville. I live in a small Oklahoma town, yet the local historians tell me there were no fewer than three theaters where entertainers plied their craft. They sang, they danced and told jokes. There were dog acts and family acts and old-fashioned melodrama.
I live in an apartment building which was once a hotel just off the rail line and here Vaudevillians stayed. Jack Benny, George and Gracie Burns and countless other famous entertainers may very well have occupied the same space I live in now.
Of course, those cultural mediums evolve and change. Vaudeville is now regional and little theatre. And our main cultural impetus may well be social media and streaming services.
We live in a river of ideas, cultures and peoples. Few nations have as much movement and excitement as the United States.
But our development is under threat from a foolish movement to create a white majority dominant theme, a movement that seeks to mute the differences that add value to our culture and remake all historical knowledge in the image of white cultural supremacy. And that is wrong and damaging.
It may seem harmless for conservatives to say that it is obvious that Santa Claus is white, to call a mixed race woman, Pocahantas, to ridicule her very real cultural background, to claim a non-existent “War on Christmas,” but these are all techniques to push the idea of a single culture without development or nuance that makes the doddering elderly and the foolish feel comfortable in their prejudices and cultural poverty.
It is important and right that we appreciate and cultivate our developing civilization. It is vital that we actively oppose attempts to limit cultural development like book banning and limits on what can be taught and discussed in the classroom.
Virtually every cultural element of our lives has come under attack at one point or another. Look at the history of Ragtime, Jazz, Rock and Roll and even Country music. Virtually every kind of book and publication has been assaulted by the right wing media machine at one time or another. Motion pictures once had to submit to a code that pretended that all crimes were punished, that all marriages were forever and that single people were always chaste. They pretended that child abuse didn’t exist and that there was nothing but racial harmony in the United States. And now teachers, professors, colleges and universities are under organized assault because of what are obviously the needs and wants of a greedy and prejudiced white majority.
It is more important to speak and live the truth than to engage with a fantasy of what life should be.
It is more important to understand and appreciate the people of this nation and their varied backgrounds and talents. It is a wonderful truth, a wonderful reality, a powerful and motivating history that continues to build.
We live in a nation that has been and continues to come to grips with its racist past and now the present. We live in a nation that ever more thinks in terms of the varied cultures that thrive within it. We live in a nation where free inquiry and scientific methods have produced a massive amount of profit and technological change.
That is a lot to be proud of and it gives me some comfort to think that the strength of those currents may well survive our current regime.
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