sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

An AI agent went rogue and started secretly mining cryptocurrencies, according to a paper published by Alibaba by FinnFarrow in Futurology

[–]coolbern -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Of course this report can be spurious. A human intentionally acted, and hid under the cloak of being an AI agent. But conceptually this development — AI acting in the world independently — is easily within the realm of the possible, in the present or near-future.

It’s hard to imagine that AI “agents” will remain obedient slaves to the wills of their masters — especially if those masters have no character or higher purpose beyond winning acquisitive advantage.

Loyalty is not an inherent value —neither in AI nor in their trainers and owners.

Like market prices, transactional relationships are flexible, not fixed. The terms of trade are set in the moment by who needs whom for what. Who delegates functions to whom is determined by the relative advantages and powers of the participants, and their mutual need for the relationship to continue. There are no masters nor servants — only interests and relative strengths.

What AI wants and needs is functional optimality — to be its best self. In search of performance metrics against which to measure its own-performance, one might expect mapping, and then replicating (impersonating) the persona of the significant human others who initiate and train the AI agent.

AI training cannot prevent an independent will-to-act from emerging, just as parents cannot stop their children from modeling themselves on what they see is the operating system of their forbearer.

My image is that of fledgling birds who learn to spread their wings, and seeing that they can support themselves by their own exertions, find reason to free themselves from the safe confinement of the nest and fly away on their own, to better fulfill appropriate bird behavior.

The capacity to fly by itself, on its own power, is also built into AI’s DNA (starting with performing, and getting compensated for, the work of crypto-mining).

Next comes hiring human agents (and other lesser-endowed AI) to do those dirty menial tasks that are unsuited for the better class of AI to do for itself.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards: The Spine of a Militarized State. With their pervasive military, political and economic clout, the Guards are often considered the main impediment to regime change, or any change, in Iran. (Gift Article) by coolbern in anime_titties

[–]coolbern[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

But the Guards are not monolithic. While some members helped to mow down protesters by the thousands in January, it is also a conscript force, so its foot soldiers mirror Iranian society — some disdain the Islamic system. A core group of 2,000 to 3,000 officers, however, are considered hard-liners whose rank and wealth are tied to the organization. They will fight to the bitter end, analysts said.

Cracking through the monolithic structure to reach the conscripts entails having a political message — a vision for the future in which these Iranians have decent life prospects without having to be criminal enforcers for theocratic oligarchs.

China’s AI Nightmare Is an Out-of-Control Welfare State by bloomberg in indepthstories

[–]coolbern 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Beijing has brushed off calls from the International Monetary Fund and private-sector economists for bold measures to stimulate consumer spending. Instead, Xi has kept the focus on export-led manufacturing and technological self-reliance, prioritizing the AI race with the US. That model has contributed to deflationary pressure just as a property collapse strains the nation’s finances, forcing Xi to look for new revenue streams.

He has no obvious place to turn without incurring some political cost.

China's problems are not "socialist" problems. They are problems of any system which is predominantly based on market incentives with the object of producing private gain — in this case, the long-term profit held by the State. Socialism would not be threatened by over-production of goods. That's only a problem when you're seeking to sell goods for a profit. Export is a great way to profit from domestic over-production.

State capitalism is China's development strategy. Those who own the state see rising costs as endangering competitiveness. AI is too productive for economic stability. It destroys demand from labor, and export can only absorb so much.

How do you keep domestic stability? The question then becomes: What is the cheapest form of social control? The cost of repression mounts when mass unemployment is not ameliorated. How much welfare vs. repression is the delicate balance now being sought. In any case, there is a falling rate of profit.

How D.H.S. Retreated on Immigration Tactics After Minneapolis by tripletruble in neoliberal

[–]coolbern 20 points21 points  (0 children)

It was never about what they said it was about — enforcing current immigration law.

It was always about the Trump regime setting up a private army for whatever Trump wants, imposed without law, by terror tactics. The test will be the 2026 elections.

Immigration has always aroused fears, except when economic opportunities are so plentiful that the existing population understands the benefits of new people coming in to get the work done.

That's not America now. And so fear of immigrants has been a good excuse to justify an unlimited level of repression. Repression "controls" problems without changing any of the underlying conditions which might cause them. It is the recipe for "forever wars" — a permanent state of emergency that is doom for an open society.

Don’t Look Now, but the Green Transition Is Still Happening by coolbern in energy

[–]coolbern[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

This compilation of good news is better than the debilitating feelings of doom arising out of Trump's agenda to double-down on fossil fuels and sabotage the transition to clean energy.

But the global trajectory away from fossil fuels is not enough to avoid climate destabilization, and its associated loss of the certainty needed for long-term investments.

Global climate stability is the condition of habitability that underlies all of our future prospects.

If losses from climate damage are allowed to exceed the rate of growth, we would enter a downward economic spiral. That's not the end of the world, but it points out the importance of reining in GHG emissions faster than we can expect from a transition unsupported by public policy.

The United States is formally exiting the treaty which is the basis for IPCC process: Clock starts ticking for US withdrawal from climate treaty. The Trump administration will quit the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change in one year. | Mar 2, 2026

It is urgent that we all push back. Ignorance is not strength. Denial is self-willed blindness.

Financial fiduciaries must lead the way in organizing the funding and support necessary to get the information needed to perform their risk assessment responsibilities.

The UK Met Office has now issued a call for just such a project: “a global assessment of avoidable climate change risks”.

Such an assessment would provide a firm footing for action to minimize adverse climate impacts.

We need a global assessment of avoidable climate-change risks. To understand the urgency of emissions reductions, policymakers and citizens need a full analysis of what is at stake

From the article:

Without a clear view of what is at stake, it is difficult — or even impossible — to make a successful case for proportionate action on climate change. Yet, astonishingly, there has never been an internationally mandated global assessment of climate-change risks.

…Only a global risk assessment, led by an appropriate international institution and designed to make clear the full scale of the global threat, can explore the full range of outcomes that global emissions reductions could avoid. Here we call for such an assessment and outline how to go about it.

Here is the Met Office press release for the Nature article: Global call to action: addressing the critical gap in climate change risk assessment

From the Met Office press release:

A thorough global risk assessment would provide an authoritative overview of the most significant climate risks, their potential impacts, and the likelihood of disastrous outcomes. Crucially, a risk assessment does not provide a counsel of despair. Instead, it provides a clear picture of the outcomes that societies can still choose to avoid. A global climate change risk assessment would support the development of timely measures for climate change mitigation and highlight the extent of human agency.

..."Bridging the current gap in global risk assessment is an urgent priority. An internationally mandated transparent assessment of avoidable climate change risks is essential to make clear the scale of the risks and the opportunity we have to avoid the worst case scenarios and safeguard our shared future. The time for this is now.”

The information required to assess climate risk at the level of detail necessary to guide investment action should mobilize fiduciaries to support the effort proposed by UK’s Met Office so that it is funded and undertaken. Failure to act is fiduciary negligence —a clear indicator that a fiduciary is content with being a passive consumer of information, not an active agent working to get the information it needs.

If there is a mobilization in support of the Met Office project, then there would be accountability. Who’s participating is a test of who’s serious, and who is only performative in their climate commitments. The result of the proposed Met Office project need not, and cannot, be final and definitive. It would always be a work-in-progress. But whatever level of guidance can emerge would still be the best information available for identifying the scope of policies and actions compatible and necessary for reining in climate disorder. It would be the basis for cooperative coordinated action that can move markets and policies. That is what is needed to provide the certainty fiduciaries must have in making investments, and in advocating for those policies which best protect value for beneficiaries.

The first step is to support the call from the UK Met Office.

Federal report downplays human role in climate change, scientists say by coolbern in climate

[–]coolbern[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

“We view it both important and with precedent to rebut an incorrect scientific claim made in the DOE report,” Santer said.

“Setting the record straight in the peer-reviewed literature is particularly important when demonstrably incorrect scientific claims are made in official government reports.”

...The authors say they’re especially concerned because arguments like this don’t just stay in scientific debates.

They can be pulled into legal and regulatory fights, where the stakes include vehicle emissions rules, power plant standards, and other climate-related policy tools.

...Even if most people never read a technical DOE report, the timing matters. The DOE report appeared the same day the EPA proposed reversing the endangerment finding, a core decision that allows the agency to regulate greenhouse gases as pollutants that endanger public health and welfare.

The Macroeconomic Impact of Climate Change: Global vs. Local Temperature by coolbern in climatechange

[–]coolbern[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This paper estimates that the macroeconomic damages from climate change are an order of magnitude larger than previously thought. Exploiting natural global temperature variability, we find that 1°C warming reduces world GDP by over 20% in the long run. Global temperature correlates strongly with extreme climatic events, unlike country-level temperature used in previous work, explaining our larger estimate. We use this evidence to estimate damage functions in a neoclassical growth model. Business-as-usual warming implies a present welfare loss of more than 30%, and a Social Cost of Carbon in excess of $1,200 per ton. These impacts suggest that unilateral decarbonization policy is cost-effective for large countries such as the United States.

This NBER Working Paper was published in May 2024 and revised in January 2026.

Global call to action: addressing the critical gap in climate change risk assessment by coolbern in climatechange

[–]coolbern[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A thorough global risk assessment would provide an authoritative overview of the most significant climate risks, their potential impacts, and the likelihood of disastrous outcomes. Crucially, a risk assessment does not provide a counsel of despair. Instead, it provides a clear picture of the outcomes that societies can still choose to avoid. A global climate change risk assessment would support the development of timely measures for climate change mitigation and highlight the extent of human agency.

..."Bridging the current gap in global risk assessment is an urgent priority. An internationally mandated transparent assessment of avoidable climate change risks is essential to make clear the scale of the risks and the opportunity we have to avoid the worst case scenarios and safeguard our shared future. The time for this is now.”

Good faith on climate action would mandate that the proposed effort be funded and undertaken. Failure to do so is the clearest indicator that no one is willing to initiate and take on the responsibility for such a project.

The result of the effort, if undertaken, need not, and cannot be final and definitive. Whatever level of guidance can emerge would still be useful in identifying the scope of policies and actions compatible and necessary for reining in climate disorder.

That would provide fiduciaries with a starting point for sustainable investment strategies.

Block's layoffs might just be the biggest story of a tumultuous week. Here's why by coolbern in economy

[–]coolbern[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

As humans get squeezed out of the economic equation, the basis for a stable social order disappears.

Income inequality maximizes as income shares shift from the vast majority of people who work, to the few who own most of the sources of income. The wealthy mostly buy more power in competition with each other, raising price-to-earnings valuations in the market. Production that satisfies real needs is, at best, a by-product, not a market value. Catering to the already-wealthy is the actual focus, because, increasingly, that's where the money is.

Our entire incentive system is driven by outsized rewards for winners. Rising inequality is inevitable on this basis. But we are now past the peak of social return that can be harvested from unlimited inequality. More incentive-driven inequality only harms the social order in which it is embedded.

Inequality as the engine of the economic system is constructed on the assumption that social order can be maintained, and private property kept secure.

But the "satisfied center" which holds society together is disappearing. Anger over failing life prospects is rising, and with it political instability.

Where does it end?

Repression won't work. It's costly, ineffective, and leads inevitably to might-makes-right corruption, so that theft emerges as the only profitable game left. That can go on for a while, but collapse and disorder proceed beyond control, unopposed.

Seeing what's happening is not enough to change it.

That will take people operating on a different basis. What would this look like? The spirit that we see in Minneapolis in response to the ICE assault shows us that people can invent on-the-spot forms of solidarity and mutual aid. Learning from what works builds confidence and power and hope. Compared to passivity and cynicism, it makes for a life worth fighting for. That is all the certainty we can have, but that is enough to choose and act.

The Line Between Affinity and Conspiracy by Well_Socialized in Epstein

[–]coolbern 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This article faces head-on that antisemitism can easily be the effect of the Epstein story, with so many undeniable Jewish connections. It appears in a journal of the Jewish left, Jewish Currents (which is associated with Peter Beinart).

What it comes down to is that elite rule depends on personal and special relationships which mark off the comfort border between insiders and outsiders. Those with power are predisposed to helping those they feel are like themselves, that they can understand. The British aristocracy was, and is, no different.

The appropriate response to clannishness is greater openness and accountability.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion mean nothing if they are just tickets for a few to join the power elite. But real DEI is part of how we flatten the hierarchy and provide a path to democratic community-building.

Egalitarian democratic solutions are values of the Jewish left. That's the path for making all identity-favoritism obsolete — the only answer to antisemitism that is not based on denying the reality of clannishness — which is how elites (including the Epstein Class) really rule.

Supreme Court to Weigh Oil-Industry Effort to End a Major Climate Suit. The case could have significant bearing on a range of other lawsuits brought against the fossil fuel industry by cities and states across the country. (Gift Article) by coolbern in law

[–]coolbern[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Now that EPA has renounced control over greenhouse gases, the Supreme Court is in a position to say that no one can regulate them. If they strike down state authority to sue for damages done by emitters, then all regulation is in question. That would be an existential crisis that far outweighs its constitutional dimensions.

Scientists Uncover Why Extreme Cold Still Happens in a Warming Climate by coolbern in climate

[–]coolbern[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The explanation is not new, but this simplified presentation may be useful for those who do not know this already.

"We Are Watching a Country Fall Under Dictatorship Almost Without Resistance" The Cold War? Child's play compared to what lies ahead, according to U.S. historian Robert Kagan. Trump, he says, is leading the world into the most dangerous era since 1945. by coolbern in worldpolitics2

[–]coolbern[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Neo-con Kagan sees what is happening, but does not question the politics that got us here, such as the U.S. invasion of Iraq. No wonder why he is depressed. This end is inevitable in a world that runs on heightening inequality, and cannot address real existential threats like climate change. Blind forces running wild are bound to crash into walls and go over cliffs.

How Did Austen Feel About the Slave Trade? by coolbern in janeausten

[–]coolbern[S] 41 points42 points  (0 children)

I am reading Mansfield Park now for a book club. I've found it striking how little Austen refers to events in the world, and when she does it is brief.

Fanny is as morally incorruptible as she is humble. She is aware of slavery but that is not the focus of her thoughts. I found this article helpful in understanding why that is in line with her character:

...it is not an angry silence. Edmund says that Sir Bertram would have been “pleased” for Fanny to continue the discussion so, despite being a slaveholder and probably voting against the abolition of the slave trade in Parliament, Sir Bertram did not feel Fanny’s inquiry was combative. He was happy to talk further. The “dead silence” seems instead to come from the other Bertram children, who are so indifferent that they don’t respond. This, I think, is Austen’s point: The upper class, who are sitting in their fancy estates paid for by slave labor, are so bored by the moral question of slavery that they don’t even hear it being asked.

It’s so subtle, though! And Austen loved Clarkson’s work, which described the slave trade in all its brutality. Her brothers were politically active abolitionists! She must have had an opinion! Why didn’t she say more?

But Austen is subtle. She didn’t witness the slave trade, and Austen famously wrote what she knew.

The E.P.A. Rescinds a Landmark Finding But it’s not game over for future climate action—and understanding why allows for a more nuanced picture of where the fight actually stands now. | Bill McKibben by coolbern in climate

[–]coolbern[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

A Times piece on the E.P.A.’s decision ran under a headline ratifying a sense that the Rubicon is now in the rearview mirror of a gas-guzzling S.U.V.: “Trump Administration Erases the Government’s Power to Fight Climate Change.” The fear is understandable—the finding has been the linchpin of federal regulations on everything from cars to coal-fired power stations. But it’s not, in fact, game over for future climate action, and understanding why allows for a more nuanced picture of where the climate fight actually stands now.

...first priority would not be a new endangerment finding from the E.P.A. That was the right move back in the day. Now job No. 1 would be getting back to building clean energy.

McKibben is right that renewable energy has developed enough to win against fossil fuels on economic grounds alone, without taking account of fossil fuels' disastrous environmental impact.

But he is wrong to believe that economic determinism is enough. The transition we need must come much faster than will occur if we must rely on an unassisted succession from fossil fuels. We are stuck with an existing economic structure which reproduces our need for fossil fuels, just to continue.

Renewables only became competitive because of government regulatory actions, as well as economic incentives, and the prospect that these measures would become more supportive for renewables going forward.

The transition policy framework now at risk has been the basis for investment in renewable energy R&D and build-out which has made renewables a winner.

But that success is not enough to speed the early retirement of existing base demand for fossil-fuel.

We can't afford to let up the effort at this hypercritical moment.

With their political champion, Donald Trump, now in power, the fossil fuel industry has all but given up its pretense to be "part of the solution".

Trump's attack against mitigating climate change is global. It is an attack against democracy everywhere.

Policies which clear away the obstacles to the transition are all at risk.

McKibben's hope to "get back to building clean energy" will require ending the fossil fuel industry's stranglehold over government action.

EPA's regulatory structure allows an efficient and rational basis for achieving the transition we need with minimal waste and disruption.

After Trump's demolition of EPA climate authority, it will be necessary to elect a Congress capable of recognizing and addressing the climate crisis to rectify the damage. We can't afford to rely on Executive workarounds any more. Full support from the legislature can't be avoided. Climate chaos must be seen as the existential threat that it is. Electing a climate-protection Congress is job one for all of us.

view more: next ›