> The email is dated 26 Jun 2016, right after Brexit, and in it, Epstein writes:
> return to tribalism . counter to globalization. amazing new alliances. you and I both agreed zero interest rates were too high, as i said in your office. finding things on their way to collapse , was much easier than finding the next bargain
> This is a perfect example of what Naomi Klein calls "disaster capitalism."
Disaster capitalism only works if there’s enough law and order to preserve capital for those who acquire or control it. People who believe in ideas like the two mentioned in the email have experienced nothing but post-WW2 America-enforced global security, albeit relative amounts of it depending on how you are.
That security is not a constant guarantee, it is not a natural element of the world, it is not a force of physics that exists by itself. In a way, the post-WW2 order was crafted by centuries of both physical and mental toil. Undoing it will not bring the selective prosperity or success these people hope it will.
If you decide to be “enlightened”, you force your enemies to assume the same posture. If you decide otherwise, then what they do in return is fair game. Then very soon afterwards you find out there’s no such thing as sheltering from the aftermath of such events. Look at any societal collapse example in history, recent or otherwise.
This is why the ultra rich have been building out heavily fortified, private, self sustaining compounds. They know the potential consequences of their choices, and are fine with them as long as they can leverage technology to insulate themselves from them. It's basically Fallout mindset.
Societal collapse doesn’t necessarily mean all-out nuclear catastrophe, and can also mean transitioning from one set of norms or rules establishing the status quo to another. People shouldn’t labor under the false impression that they will have guaranteed success when such transitions happen. What are they modeling this on, exactly? Countries where mafias are de facto rulers, or there’s some level of dictatorship, are only held up due to external pressures put on by democratic world orders. As mentioned, guns and bombs can guarantee protection up to a point, and the rest of that necessary work is done by ideas and ideals.
Secondly, I am afraid a lot of the people who believe they’ll have some sort of success in scenarios with lesser law and order than they grew up with will find out it wasn’t their winning personalities which guaranteed them anything. There will always be someone more brutal ready to just take yours and dispose of you. To put it more plainly, if all they like is your money then you’re just standing in the way of that.
I would say don’t do what this article is saying. Have the agents write to a space dedicated for their edits specifically, keep the agents.md file as your instructions to them. Not your task-specific prompt, but any generalizable actions across different tasks.
The article is taking a simplistic take on the issues.
Yes, all generations have their unique references and fixations. But what’s different for generations growing up with the internet is that ads/marketing optimization has made it easier to create the same signals across different cultural mediums, so everything roughly becomes, looks and sounds the same. Gen AI is only going to make this worse, especially for music.
Nothing makes this more obvious than the fact that even the “alternative” culture is cookie cutter down to a set of ingredients and shapes. For example, black lipstick if you’re {type 1} {goth}, {makeup item} on men, etc. It’s not “alternative” if it’s an identity uniform.
The other disappointing thing is that even crossing international borders doesn’t change what you see and experience because there’s a checklist of experience optimization that filters out anything unique, different, or weird that may not be immediately accessible.
Okay, but currently people are really losing jobs over economic uncertainty due to policies, and tariffs increasing the cost of doing business. The AI reason for job cuts is given to placate shareholders, putting a positive spin on job cuts due to struggling bottom lines instead of suffering from job cuts news.
I am tired of articles making claims without substantiating them as it’s just an extended form of forum posting (shitposting).
Maybe do an empirical analysis (a small one?), or point out people who have, as it will at least tell us the underlying theoretical frameworks and assumptions. May make for more interesting discussion.
Seems to me an AI companion company is a great front for collecting kompromat, but I don’t feel like I am saying anything particularly insightful here. I can only assume that the people using these tools are clever about how they use them.
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