Michael

For me, I have a stigma to medication because the side effects are terrifying. I almost died from SSRIs, I got very ill and also suicidal. On benzos, I got paradoxically anxious and angry after cessation/when I wasn’t taking it (I am not an angry person). I took them as prescribed.

I only got more and more unstable after taking various psychiatric drugs, and everyone in my family who has taken psychiatric drugs was not better off for it. Seems like suicidal ideation is a common reaction for those in my family. Perhaps there is a genetic cause for it, like how we metabolize drugs.

I don’t know a single person in my life who has had a good experience, but if you or someone you know has had a good experience, I’m happy for you. It’s just unfair to say it’s magical thinking when there are real life reasons why people are hesitant.

See Soteria Houses. Schizophrenia or psychosis is not always a permanent state that requires medication for the rest of the patient’s life. Soteria Houses achieve remission in individuals with little to no psychiatric medication. They use antipsychotics for stabilization, in controlled doses, and usually (to the best of my knowledge) only for a few months.

I care, and I know a lot of other people do as well.

I’m not making an argument for chemtrails. It’s pointless to speculate about, there is no evidence or smoking gun.

I’m just suggesting that we be kind and empathetic towards individuals that do believe these sorts of things. Is it out of character for the US government? Nah, not really.

Many of these people probably were living in or around 1969. In their lived reality, the US government was doing shit like this. Have things really gotten better?

These are the people voting Trump in, dude, you cant actually be this dense

Of course these individuals share responsibility for potentially voting for him, but we ALL share responsibility for him rising to power.

No, but I do try to make the world a less stupid place when I can

We don’t need to call out stupidity to make it a better place. Expressing yourself with clarity and confidence of thought is infinitely better.

If they’re too stupid to learn basic science then I reeeeally don’t care

You don’t need to care about any of this.

Ok? They’re also very stupid individuals, I don’t care at all what makes them believe the blatantly stupid thing, only that they refuse to accept reality

If somebody you love is frightened (in a general sense), what would you do? Calming them down and helping to see the truth would be one potential path to ease their suffering. What would making fun of them do?

You’re doing an awful lot of defending of people who are choosing to behave the way they do, it’s weird. Gonna file you in with them and call it a day, you don’t seem to be too far from them in the ol’ comprehension skill

Do what you want, I’m not going to apologize for my behavior or take it personally. If my crime is being too empathetic, guess I’m guilty.

The Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee called for using far-right candidates “as a cudgel to move the more established candidates further to the right.” Clinton’s camp insisted that Trump and other extremists should be “elevated” to “leaders of the pack” and media outlets should be told to “take them seriously.”

Hillary Clinton, the DNC, and mainstream media played a pretty big role in Trump’s rise to power. Everybody is responsible for his rise to power, but the facts are facts. They intentionally elevated him.

They’re willingly living in stupidity. If we just let people do that we get people like Trump, so Id rather avoid that

These people don’t have power over others like Trump.

Neither can I, but as I said you’re purposefully ignoring a big part of what’s being discussed: the part where they don’t ever tread back out of delusion. There’s 0 defense for that

You aren’t responsible for other’s beliefs. You are loosely reveling in their suffering, whether you realize it or not. They are very concerned and are likely vulnerable individuals.

Plenty of things happen in this world that each respective populace doesn’t consent to.

Seriously, why single them out for going a little crazy? It’s not like I haven’t pointed at somebody and laughed in the past, so no judgement here, but the whole system and world order is nuts and we need something new.

If you are worried about people holding factually incorrect or wrong beliefs, e.g. delusions, then advocate for decentralized media, unbiased news organizations, etc. Help elevate voices that help others to climb out of their delusions and fear.

Why go out of your way to disprove them, laugh at them, or name-call them? You can just empathize with them.

For me, I’d rather address why the government HAS felt it had the right to experiment on us. I can NOT blame these individuals for treading into delusion with our current system being the way it is, especially considering the history.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea-Spray

From the page:

Between 1949 and 1969, open-air tests of biological agents were conducted 239 times.

239 open-air tests of biological agents in a 20 year period. Remind me again why people have no reason to be paranoid? This wasn’t that long ago.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentation_in_the_United_States

These aren’t conspiracy theories.

Is there something real behind these people’s paranoia and suspicion? Do our government, military, and our corporations inspire trust?

Can you blame them when the US government has directly experimented on the American populace in past?

e.g. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea-Spray

From the page:

Between 1949 and 1969, open-air tests of biological agents were conducted 239 times.

239 open-air tests of biological agents in a 20 year period. Many, many people are still alive from that time period. It’s not that long ago.

Or more broadly, just look at this page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentation_in_the_United_States

Do those pages inspire trust in the government and military? Would you know if you were being experimented on and gaslit?

Corporations engage in similar unethical behavior, like putting ingredients that are known to be toxic or harmful to human health in products we consume or put on our bodies.

Instead of blaming or name-calling people who are paranoid or suspicious, we need a society with a greater focus on human rights — with more regulation and oversight. A society that inspires trust, with the facts, ethics, and independent review to back it up.

💯%.

I hear you. I just wonder, will it be worth it in the end to for them to see to it that society rots and capitalism “wins”, by shutting down discourse in the limited places that it is able to exist?

I’d reason that it won’t be worth it. I just wish they could see it that way too.

That nuance is not important - it’s not worth wasting your breath on. If people focused on root causes of the dysfunction and the change needed to solve the issues plaguing our societies - we’d be much better off.

The nuance isn’t lost to me, I just don’t care to quantify it and then shout it out to the heavens. It makes no difference to me whether Elon Musk is worse than Bill Gates. They can duke that battle out themselves if they care to.

I’ll reiterate the point from my other comment. Value judgements are a waste of time, energy, and our voices.

Whether or not Bill Gates is worse than Elon Musk is just as important as to whether Tom Cruise is a better actor than Leonardo DiCaprio. Neither value judgement is worth my breath. It’s a pointless exercise.

We are reaching a critical junction in our timeline where these billionaires can not and should not exist any longer. We’ve learned our lessons, their benefit and merit is irrelevant because even the best billionaires sit silently and are complicit. They have power, influence, and wealth - all the ingredients needed to directly affect change.

At best, they throw around pennies that don’t address root causes and play the PR game, or play the blame game by focusing on individuals who are absolutely not responsible for the root causes of various issues that plague our societies.

If engineers/developers directly involved with Microsoft have called out Microsoft, and they were quickly silenced and fired, I’m more inclined to believe them versus a supposed lack of evidence.

Older reporting: https://www.972mag.com/microsoft-azure-openai-israeli-army-cloud/

According to the documents, the AI services that the Defense Ministry purchased from Microsoft include translation (about half of the average monthly consumption during the first year of the war), OpenAI’s GPT-4 model (about a quarter of the consumption), a speech-to-text conversion tool, and an automatic document analysis tool. In October 2023, the army’s monthly consumption of AI services provided by Azure jumped sevenfold compared to the month preceding the war; by March 2024, it was 64 times higher.

AI is a commodity that’s being developed by the few. They are shaping it to do things that are not for human benefit, like war and surveillance. It’s the truth. They are responsible for their choices and actions, they are consciously making this technology.

If you read the bottom part of my response, you’d hear that I’m just calling out the bullshit you’re peddling. You don’t really care, you’re focused on purity testing impassioned individuals who feel strongly about these subjects.

Microsoft is making the decision to directly sell their AI to that state and its military. It doesn’t change the fact that every being on earth shares responsibility as well. But I don’t have a direct ability to stop Microsoft from choosing to sell their proprietary technologies to support a country in surveilling, targeting, and killing innocents.

I will do everything in my power to voice my opinion and convince others that AI shouldn’t be used for war. I don’t want to live in that world and I’m sure many others don’t as well.

As for Linus, his stances about the use of his technology in war is pretty clear. He doesn’t like it, but he can’t stop it. His software is open-source. There’s a big difference between open-source software you give to all for free (for the benefit of all of humanity) and proprietary software that you provide only with payment.

I think making value judgements on individuals is a counterproductive use of our time, energy, and voice. That’s what I’m trying to point out.

If we focused on root causes and the change we’d like to see to solve those problems, we’d be smooth sailing as a world already.

Yeah, I know.

Can I get a copy of Microsoft’s AI on the free market? Can I get direct support for killing children and women with a company’s proprietary AI on the free market?

Your arguments have fallen flat, but I’m here to be enlightened. You know so much that you’re defending these companies and diluting their involvement, so clearly I must be misunderstanding something here or my knowledge isn’t sufficient.

Convince me harder that Microsoft’s direct involvement is actually not so bad, and these dastardly companies that indirectly provide hardware are somehow just as responsible for AI killing innocents. If these hardware manufacturers have specific contracts or involvement with that state or its military, I’d like to know.

Microsoft Office also doesn’t especially facilitate the killing of innocents. And they could easily use other software, the functionality isn’t unique or specialized like AI.

Just to be clear, the whole world is indeed responsible for what happens here. The free market doesn’t absolve everyone of their shared responsibility. You could pull your entire head of hair out boycotting or screaming at every individual or group that provides support to one thing or the other, direct or otherwise.

My goal is to just point out the truth and also help people see it clearly. Microsoft et. al are a symptom of a larger dysfunction in society. People are so disconnected and propagandized that they don’t even know truth from fiction, and the people that do understand the truth (to some degree) sit there and downplay modern atrocities as “the best we can do” and point fingers wildly at individuals who the media wants us to pay attention to instead of addressing the root causes.

AI should not be used for military purposes. That’s my point.

And I’d like to apologize in advance if I misunderstood or misrepresented your points.

I’m not suggesting that they be murdered. You’re saying some are worse than others, I’m just saying the concept should die.

Thanks for agreeing with my sentiment loosely, sorry to trigger you.

You said you boycott all of them. How are you posting a reply?

I am not the same commenter.

Providing goods on the free market is not the same thing as directly partnering. Please enlighten me, does Intel, AMD, and ARM specifically and directly sell/provide their specialized components through another mechanism than the free market to that state/military?

What hardware or software Microsoft chooses to power their infrastructure is their choice. Could the companies that provide this hardware boycott Microsoft? I don’t know how effective that would be because you can’t choose who buys your products on the free market - you, however, can choose who you directly sell to or contract with.

And I don’t care how smart AI and specifically LLMs are. The hardware is irrelevant. AI is still determining the targets (and potentially even firing the shots). This technology and the companies who provide this specialized technology are, at minimum, participating in the slaughter. The AI is proprietary and closed-source, these companies are willingly providing access and working with their military to specialize it for war.