Author: Crowhill Report

In a conversation this evening, a woman explained how her daughter is heterosexual, but “identifies” as bisexual because she wants to feel open to people in various scenarios.

That’s (1) completely foreign to my brain, and (2) an interesting factor to keep in mind when people talk about statistics.

From time to time (not as often recently, I think) I’ve seen calls to “bring your authentic self” to work, social media, etc. The idea is that we, the loving community, want to know all your cute and quirky little habits. We want to see the whole person.

We don’t only want to know that you’re an expert on differential equations. We want to know that you play bluegrass mandolin, that you love soccer, and that you’re a fan of Martin Scorsese films.

This is a lie.

What they really want is to ensure that all your “cute and quirky little habits” line up with the approved standards.

You can be a genius at differential equations, but if you listen to the wrong podcasts, you’re canceled.

“Bring your authentic self” is tyranny.

There’s a lot of chatter about all the jobs that will be lost due to artificial intelligence. It’s a pretty serious matter, and it’s upon us.

ChatGPT will — at a minimum — revolutionize search, and will most likely replace at least half the staff of most content companies. E.g., a newsroom with 20 reporters will be able to get along with 10 reporters who use ChatGPT. And probably fewer.

There will be similar changes in other areas, such as HR, legal services, or anything that requires the evaluation or creation of text. Programming will be hit hard as well. (Yes, ChatGPT can write programs.)

Services like Midjourney (which created the image on this page) will reduce the need for graphic designers. Who needs to hire an artist when AI can create an image in about 5 seconds?

For the short term, people won’t lose their jobs to AI, they’ll lose their jobs to people who are using AI.

My career has been in publishing, and I was hoping to ride that out before Skynet takes over, but now I’m wondering what publishing will be like two or three years from now. I’m very optimistic about what will be created over the next few years, but I’m not optimistic about the job prospects.

So I’m thinking about other lines of work. I have a new beverage idea that I’m experimenting with. I figure people will still (or maybe especially) need an adult beverage when they’ve become redundant.

Now we’re giving them tanks? This is a dangerous escalation. What’s going to happen when a Russian missile kills some of the U.S. advisers and trainers we’re sending along with those tanks?

Don’t forget that Hunter worked for a Ukrainian company called Burisma, and there are reasonable allegations that some of Hunter’s absurd salary was going to Joe.

Or is it just a coincidence that Hunter got a sweet job in Ukraine with Joe’s influence, and now we’re sending billions to Ukraine?

Is Zelenskyy threatening to reveal some juicy details if Joe doesn’t give him tanks?

William’s comment on the classified documents issue reminded me (again) that when evaluating a politician we have to force ourselves out of “the narrative.” (I dislike that phrase, but it’s useful here.)

Politicians want us to evaluate them by their stands on issues, implying that they’re principled people who are trying to be true to a philosophy or a cause. No matter how many times their behavior shows us that isn’t always or even mostly true, we fall for it again and again. They use an appeal to an issue to get the power to do what they want to do, which is to get more power and more money.

I’m not claiming that every politician is just a power-hungry sociopath who uses his office to line his pockets, but that tendency is always there to one degree or another, and it’s most certainly a major part of the system they work within.

Our attitude towards politicians should be about the same as the attitude of a prison warden towards the very talented prisoner who does the accounting. He has useful skills and is doing an essential task, but you’d be a fool to trust him. You have to have systems in place to keep him from cheating you.

A problem we face in America today is that many of those systems that are supposed to be keeping a wary eye on these snakes have themselves become part of the system. It’s like the police in the areas of Mexico that are controlled by the cartels.

Jefferson was a bit of a hot-head when he said all that business about nurturing the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants, but there’s a kernel of truth in it.

A benefit of thinking (according to some guy that Jordan Peterson often quotes, whose name escapes me) is that our ideas can die rather than us.

We need to apply that sort of logic to all these alleged checks and balances, which get corrupted from time to time. We need to shake them up, change them, break the system and recreate it with new checks and balances. Otherwise the mafia/cartel/swamp will simply find ways to make those things part of the system.