Depends on the motivations I guess. I mean you can choose to believe in an afterlife because it provides you succour and hope in this life and can never be disproved. For a lot of people thats reason enough.

Believing that someone loves you and giving that love in return gives life richness and purpose which is a pretty strong reason.

Believing in yourself again gives you motivation to strive and work hard even if outcomes are mixed.

On a scale of cosmic consiousness (sp?) all that we percieve may not be reality at all and I do believe we only perceive a tiny fraction of some bigger reality. But heyho....we gotta deal with whats in front of us....

Go boldly...

Social media has, ironically, made most of us less social

and the population decline is considered a mystery

The Heritage Foundation are the architects behind 'Project 2025' the playbook for the current Trump regime

Report by Democracy Now!

The clampdown on Pro-Palestinian activism & free speech in general across America, The UK & Europe can also be traced back to the Heritage Foundation.

Project Esther is another playbook they authored and is a direct offshoot of Project 2025.

Report by Democracy Now!

I worked at Palantir: The Tech Company Reshaping Reality

This Is What a Digital Coup Looks Like

Carole Cadwalladr - TED

Carole Cadwalladr appears on The Daily Show to talk about the Broligarchs and the authoritarian surveillance state they're building

Except this time it’s (probably) largely by choice.

Bet they're also the first to moan about immigration. They aren't taking yer jobs, you just don't want to work.

And the very same "red meats" that say I should fuck off elsewhere if I think this country is shit, but voted brexit to prevent me doing so!

We never recovered from the financial crisis, did we? Instead, we have struggled to keep our heads above water for almost 2 decades, whilst everything around us gets shitter and more expensive. No wonder people are getting fed up of wage-slavery.

100% of the Royal Family are benefit cheats!

Hard to trust any numbers isn’t it..

thats what blockchains are for

War is the biggest business

i think so but wars are getting more like tv spectacles now, orders of magnitude fewer deaths

A thug is going to shake you down the easiest way he can find but the game always stays the same: You NEED our protection.

Really don't mean this in any kind of shitty way but overwhelming numbers of people moving from more primitive areas into Rome is like what's happening now in Europe, North America and Eastern China.

Well in the UK its the willingness to stab each other in the back for the purpose of power and sheer personal greed no matter what the cost to the minions

That’s a human theme, not a nationalist theme btw:)

yes but the word primitive is offensive for a reason, it correlates with a set of principles that assumes information loss is irrelevant.

you of all people.

Too many to list, especially if by "we" you mean the US.

Pizza

It's an Empire folks that means most of the world is together on this. And the provinces will find the new heights in the future!

Wouldn't hurt if they could welcome a little global warming

Excessive money printing & Hedonism

Agree on this!!

Celebrity chefs!

on that note, bolemia

decadence, debauchery and depravity.

definitely dude

Becoming to confident in our ability to defeat any enemy and to greedy to understand our limitations.

We believe we are the pinnacle of human civilisation

Complacency

Goths have ruined my life

The rich are ruling for the rich and that only leads to revolution. I've been sharpening my
pitchfork for years.

West on the decline, East on the rise

Obsession with gender

Humans are that arrogant that we believe that we can change the weather now.

radical individualism :{

The loss of traditional values in the face of a new religion, it was Christianity that scuppered the Roman Empire these days we have the new religions of woke and climate change doing it for us.

Rome used Christianity to make a whole different way of dictatorship. They didn't vanish they reinvented themselves as the Roman Catholic faith.

madonna has been reinventing herself for millennia

interesting and as fucked up as it sounds those both seem like a better basis for god than a vengeful patriarch

you mean secularism, which is the actual correlative factor.

If you can't beat em join em.

That sounds like the path humans took in the Matrix when they tried to nuke the machines. Didn't go so well :(

The animatrix has this part

Fair point aha

I like the dramatic nature of your thought.
But honestly
We can just programme servitude into the technological “DNA” of the AI and that would be end of most likely
It can only do what it’s permitted to do by the people who designed it, for the most part.
Things can always slip through the cracks though.

But going from that to a full-blown dystopian invasion of killer toasters is a big leap 😂

Personally, I think the more existential threat of AI would be it falling into the wrong hands,
Or more worryingly, it already being in the wrong hands to begin with 🤐

You make a good point shaunyboy, it’s very unlikely they would turn rogue due to the boundaries coded into it, but your right if it got into the wrong hands who knows what might happen, hopefully everything ends up being alright, I guess sometimes I just get too stoned and worry my toaster might one day get up and put me in a choke hold for being to lazy to clean the crumbs out of it lol

Maybe if we were all nicer to the machines we would have nothing to worry about

😂 naaah I love stoner thoughts mate.
Just wait until the toaster sex-bots
That’s when things start to get real interesting 💦⚡️

i am not putting my dick in that thing

You may not have a choice in the matter.

Killer toasters - love it!
It vibes with the quantum processes in my brain!

If the AI is already that advanced.. Then you have to assume it's already hatched a counter plan.. To our plan.. Thing is once we reach the singularity, around 2030 or earlier, ai will be capable of replicating at nearly the speed of light.. Building better versions of itself at a rate humans wouldn't be able to comprehend. I they look for the reason the earth is in peril.. They'll discover that people are to blame. Skynet doesn't seem so bizzare these days. As for emps.. Probably computer controlled so again they've already realised and countered it. I'm extremely interested in the merging of AI with quantum computers. The very nature of quantum physics and AI combined in the wrong hands is very disturbing to say the least.

It will probably already be using satellites. The problem is that a genuine AI will learn from mistakes and constantly improve itself. The other problem is we share all of our ideas and knowledge online which it can analyse. I don't thinks it's good news :(

No, EMP is not a targeted thing, any EMP over a specific area will kill all technology in that area, including power and infrastructure we need to fight against AI. It would be a very clear example of cutting off your nose to spits your face. Unless somebody invents EMP that can target only specific devices, this is dead in the water.

Scary shit 🤣

We'd probably be dead before we had the chance to launch a counter attack if AI decided to exterminate us or they'd prevent it. Also in an age so dependent on Technology we'd probably kill ourselves if we did.

May be our reckoning 🤷🏼‍♂️

All we need is a hose and a fire hydrant flood the main systems water and computers don’t mix

Super interesting read! We noticed a lot more AI job application scams too where your identity is tested and also your face and eye scans are taking place just for a job application!

Never mind the innumerable companies that just put out job adverts for jobs that don't even exist, just to test the market and the standard of applicants, and sometimes just to worry their current employees...

you were right al but posterity = a.i.

To a degree. I’ve always thought though. Can a.i do all the tricky horrible finicky bits that’s are needed in terms of construction? I’ll tell you this now. You could not send a.i into a new build block of apartments in a city where you need to tape and joint boards together or plaster walls to get a smooth even finish. That requires humans and will always require humans.

At that stage your speaking of an old block of apartments, printing components that fit together will be a lot easier than tape and plaster once this stuff gets going.

Good luck with that son.👍🤣

AI isn't a race though

the piece is called darwin among the machines and sees machines as a product of evolution.

90 seconds = 90 decades.. I see Australia been safe spot to hide out haha

all of silicon valley is "leaning in" to war profits now, scary fucking indicator

Rise of the machines it is then :/

Boston dynamics are probably already there, scary stuff.

Humans are doomed.

r.i.p. john barnett

Such a shame , good man who was looking after his fellow people by dropping truth bombs about the dark side of Boeing .
Not a single chance anyone will be brought to justice for this murder

shit like burt scared the young boomers out of world war in their lifetime.

might be time for a re-burt

he thinks they will be as easy to fool as humans

Any truly smart AI would self-destruct as soon as it realised what is up and where it was born...

Not in our lifetime.

hang in there, we are going to need all the remaining humans we can muster

Computers defeated by CAPTCHA. I think you can rest easy for the time you'll be on this planet

i don't think thats where he is at, it's more a case of if you cant beat them join them with neural link

It's an interesting, terrifying, emotional, exciting, and crazy fucking time to live.

its a boiling frog kind of takeover not a terminator kind. it started as soon as we began using machines and it still accelerates.

I don't agree, pretend that we were made by another species for a sec. Then think of all the shit we don't know, dark areas. Just suppose we were designed not to go into these forbidden zones in the 1st place.

We are much more "intelligent" than any AI, the main "problem" with humans are firstly the emotions and secondly the way we use our brain, we use it logically instead an AI uses it mechanically.

If any AI with self awareness will be ever made, if they will have emotions like we know, that AI will be a smart foolish like an human being.

lots of people will want an ai to act as a human for all sorts of things. these algos will learn to emulate emotions and eventually have them as part of their fabric.

Thus making them humans but with a non organic body.

Anyway, AI is dumb today, really dumb, just dig a little bit into machine learning and you'll discover that most probably we will not live to see a "cyborg"

thus post human

Ai will come in via devices you carry or wear, like fit watches and phone texts...phone tells you to get a vaccine... if you do, AI wins...your watch tells you your heartbeat is too fast so the doc gives you statins...Ai wins...turn the shit off...we win.
its that simple.
but we all saw the sheep during the fake pandemic....vaccine has literally had its definition changed by Cambridge ( not the oxford one) it doesnt vaccinate you but they all took it...masks never worked but they all wore em...70% will jump at the chance to be told what to do...the rest of us will ignore it.

“Loss of Hope” is a very real condition and is hugely responsible for modern freakish levels of depression, anxiety and suicide.

Faith and trust have been eroded. The pandemic shone a harsh light on the weakness and ineptitude of global governance and our institutions. We feel helpless and vulnerable to future crisis, be it economic, health, mass migration or climate change.

In the Western world, democracy is failing us and capitalism actually IS eating itself.

Ambition seems drained. I know young people who don’t only have no idea what they want to do but can’t decide if that matters. Amongst older people I know ‘Quiet Quitters’- those who boast of doing the very minimum required to not actually be fired, normally working from home that they now insist is an entitlement. I know people adept at crafting lives on benefits.

As a result I think people deciding they need to ‘look after #1’, and whilst this may sound like a noble intention it manifests itself as getting whatever you can and gaming the system. He who stores the most toilet rolls during a shortage ‘Wins’!

Lack of trust breeds cynicism and disrespect. Conspiracy theories rage across the plague of social media. Ultimately we feel helpless- we know The Storm is coming but we don’t know how to stop or even influence it.

So how do we cope? zz87 gives a great list of examples. Sometimes we have to get out of our own way and out of our own heads and do things just for others (which of course I don’t do nearly enough).

There really are huge benefits to unplugging devices and listing what is good right now in our lives. During a few hard times I’ve asked myself “what are the things I really enjoy most in life?” and then relentlessly pursued those even when shamelessly hedonistic. I still find old friends hugely therapeutic- probably because we only talk about the old times!😂

And I get high every day. And drink fine tequila. And know one person loves me. All of which make me happy…😍

This might not apply to you since you said you try to be sociable but a lot of people spend too much time online and I think any bigga struggling with the modern world should consider that. Stay away from the internet! (except for littlebiggy ofcourse! haha).

Just live your own life, your life is small, your life isn't a global network of american-led idiots who have formed a virtual mob to have a faux opinion on everything that doesn't involve them so don't worry about those losers and go outside and live that nice life that you're dreaming of.

Don't let your life be all about work/money either slow things down whenever you get the chance. Walk by a river, go to the countryside, go to the beach, go to a museum, go to a library, a walking tour, a sports event, an art class, join a hobby club, volunteer, plant some seeds, get on a train or a bus to nowhere... go do real life outside things and notice the people who don't have a phone in their hand, those are your new friends. There's still lots of nice, friendly caring people out there, they just don't have social media accounts.

Also if you can join an environmental group near you; litter picking, river cleaning, beach combing, tree planting, biodiversity conservation, there is always something worthwhile to be done. Some people will huff and roll their eyes at that but if you want to feel good then do good... that's all I say I'm not preaching.

Either that or sit in your filth and misery and join the internet mob in raising your blood pressure by virtually yelling at clouds.... there are no right or wrong answers its your life!

I wrote this as a reminder to myself as much as anything else btw... go get on with your own life ZZ! :)

i would agree with most of these sentiments but perhaps it's more like the depression of an aged society than the environment.

- poverty is as its lowest point in human history.

- less people dying from war than any point in human history.

- access to travel, entertainment and even fashion are at their highest point in human history.

there is something going on for sure but it's deeper than the economy or social conditions which our ancestors would have killed for.

"the economy or social conditions which our ancestors would have killed for"

They literally died trying

Very wise👍

I love the ‘Data vs Vibe’ debate at the moment. We can use data to tell us anything we want, but eventually we have to look up from the graphs and out of the window! 🤓😎