Double edged meanings. Who orders chaos? Who brings order? Who demands dissolution? Who uses hope as a lever? That's a thing to think on and recognise. Who gains when nothing is certain? Who gains from constant crises? Who gains from noise, anger, fear, and violence? How do you build on shifting foundations? How do you trust when the truth changes daily?

Richard Osmond has some worthwhile insights.

@high_performance
Uhappiness = CHAOS 💥 Who is Richard Osman referring to...
♬ original sound - High Performance - High Performance

Another tour through some dots joined this morning. One technique for exerting control is to paint the entirety of life as precarious. Or (if you have required means, motive, opportunity) make lives that way. Cite threats to the status quo, even while eroding comfort. Embody threats as targets. Give them a face. Add some colour.

Who, specifically, is taking your jobs, houses, hospital beds, daughters, pets? Find or create incidents. Make threats feel immediate. Make the calls to violence and mob rule feel righteous. Them against us. Us against them. Splits inside families. DO NOT check on the Emperor's wardrobe.

We are not comparing political apples to apples. We are comparing apples to wrecking balls. Should we view Trump's cohort and other autocracy-curious groups as part of a patronage based system? A world of you scratch my back, I scratch yours. Interactions only worthy when there is a tangible pay off. Probably best exemplified by this reported statement about veterans.

Robert Kelly was killed in 2010 in Afghanistan. He was 29. Trump was meant, on this visit, to join John Kelly in paying respects at his son’s grave, and to comfort the families of other fallen service members. But according to sources with knowledge of this visit, Trump, while standing by Robert Kelly’s grave, turned directly to his father and said, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?”

Speaking of veterans, there is a new documentary (only currently showing in the US). War Game - a desktop exercise filmed and neatly produced. What happens minute by minute when there is a failure to peacefully hand over power? It includes bi-partisan people from 5 US administrations.

Playing out choices when chaos reigns and options narrow. Standing ground and defending democracy. An ex-marine from Veteran's Voice explains the motivation for the project. Veterans are being actively recruited by all kinds of influence brokers. They occupy a special place in US society with rare cross-party appeal to voters. This dichotomy - people who centre honour and duty supporting a man who views every action as transactional - played out many times during Trump's administration. Not least when stirring up supportive veterans, while others worked to hold the line at the Capitol.

This is an excellent related thread. It looks through a more global lens at parallels and connections. We all wonder how people can believe in space lasers and injecting bleach. That is completely the wrong focus.

The biggest problem with coverage of the US election is that almost nobody covering American politics has ever had to cover a pure patronage system, and very few people understand how autocratic pseudo-democracies do genuinely manage to get people to vote for them over and over again
— Daniel Knowles (@dlknowles.bsky.social) 2024-10-07T12:47:55.609Z

Daniel also tips his hat to Anne Applebaum, staff writer for The Atlantic. Her most recent book, Autocracy Inc, is excellent. A brief overview to consider:

"Nowadays, autocracies are underpinned not by one dictator, but by sophisticated networks composed of kleptocratic financial structures, surveillance technologies, and professional propagandists, all of which operate across multiple regimes, from China to Russia to Iran. Corrupt companies in one country do business with corrupt companies in another. The police in one country can arm and train the police in another, and propagandists share resources and themes, pounding home the same messages about the weakness of democracy"

The same can be done with hope and joy

Chaos is fragile, it can tighten into a destructive maelstrom if whipped up by external forces, but it can also quickly dissipate, giving way to a brighter future.

All that takes is some equal and opposite pressure. Not pushing back at the concerted whipping. That has no logic except to keep the temperature high and crises rolling. There is no fact check or witty counter to combat that.

I mean the kind of hope that people felt when Biden stepped down in favour of Harris. Then again when Harris appointed Walz. People sounded like disaster survivors emerging into sunlight. Confused and delighted by how good it felt. Shocked by how quick that weight in their chest lifted. A sense of purpose. Genuine opportunities. Kindness. Joy. Hope. The way it left the Trump campaign reeling.

Plus a wedge of the kind of snark that is Kryptonite for bullies. The one thing a bully absolutely cannot handle is being laughed at. Those guys do not like their own medicine. The opposite of love is not hate, it is derisory ambivalence. Not being paid attention to, not being lauded, not being feared, not provoking outrage, not generating headlines, not attracting the biggest rally crowds. Not inspiring think pieces that ignore history and equivocate about nuance-free racist rambles.

How easily was that fear defanged? It prompted the extreme fictional counter of pet-eating Haitians. Forcing shock and outrage to reacquire headlines. Provoking bomb threats and chaos for Springfield residents

Not picking up the incitement to fear and violence is death to autocracy-curious candidates. They can't have heat and light co-opted by hope, empathy, and authenticity. It lays bare a lack of substance and true motivations. It underlines the desperation to gain or retain power. It highlights a need to obtain immunity.

What does this have to do with AI?

It is an adjacent link via Free Speech, Grok, Crypto, and Nobel Prizes. Adjacent but vital. That free speech thread ran deeply through all of Trump's campaigning and time in government. Ditto for Musk's acquisition of Twitter, creation of his AI, and formation of the super PAC for Trump.

It runs from there into Generative AI via inconsistent application. Hallucinations, confabulations, or whatever we currently call them are here to stay no matter the layered tools, checks, and balances. But all the Trump aligned technocrats are predicting Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), either as an existential risk, or as solution to all global problems. Something to accelerate towards or line pockets trying.

Huge numbers of new data centres (to fractionally sell as crypto tokens or traditional securities if the bubble bursts?). Potentially ditto with reusable lakes of data. or, in the case of Sam Altman, a compute unit as replacement for Universal Basic Income (UBI), by way of WorldCoin.

Jim Watson / AFP - Getty Image

Musk is jumping for joy at Trump rallies when he's not joking about the risk of jail time. More likely from multiple SEC and other cases vs trumped up charges. In the new book Character Limit, Kate Conger and Ryan Mac dig into his Twitter acquisition and surrounding Musk history. This NPR Fresh Air podcast sets the scene for that. Below is reporting on Musk's more recent interactions with the Trump campaign as an electoral cheerleader.

After recounting the various claims of election interference from Trump, Stewart played a clip of Musk saying the Left wants to take away free speech.

“Elon, were you not watching the rest of the show?” Stewart replied. “A movie Trump doesn’t like is going to get sued. A tech mogul he doesn’t like, he wants to put in prison. It’s not free speech if only Trump’s admirers get to do it without consequence. That’s just not how it works. It doesn’t go that way. I don’t see how his support of free speech is ‘expose the belly’ worthy. I just don’t.” Emily Zemler, RollingStone, 8th October, 2024

Are you tired of watching these games? Give me simple hope and joy any time. Those network effects are worth investing in. It can turn around a country. We just have to believe in each other and get a lot less credulous about the genius of the people who happen to be leaders. The prosperity gospel, according to characters like Wallnau and people central to Silicon Valley, supposes that people are rich and powerful BECAUSE they are worthy. Ergo, they know best for the remainder of the populous and should be gifted free reign (and subsidised).

A marvellous story for an autocracy-curious administration. A match made in heaven with seasoning from others like Curtis Yarvin and slightly equivocal approval from the Nobel Prize committee.

"...Tegmark stated: “Extinction is not something in the very distant future ... And once we’re all extinct, you know, all these other issues cease to even matter” (Bengio, et al., 2023). Similarly, when Geoffery Hinton, who also signed the petition, was asked by Rolling Stone about the issues raised by Timnit Gebru who was fired by Google after writing a paper on the dangers of large language models, he answered: “I believe that the possibility that digital intelligence will become much smarter than humans and will replace us as the apex intelligence is a more serious threat to humanity than bias and discrimination” (O’Neil, 2023). 'The TESCREAL Bundle: Eugenics and the promise of Utopia through artificial general intelligence' Gebru and Torres, 2024

Back in the real world we are putting one foot in front of the other, trying to keep the lights on, paying our bills, and not, in great numbers, following edicts and memes from the richest men in the world.

Genuinely joyful about small wins. Trying to look out for neighbours. Thinking about folk facing hurricane Milton while dealing with Helene aftermath. Also looking at global unrest and the collateral human damage. Lots of strongmen fighting to retain power. Working to delay consequences of actions.

We can say nothing changes, but we wouldn't have such a fevered set of tensions if that were true. Hold fast to some core beliefs, keep your family and friends close. Remember how to recognise decent people. That can take us a long way.

Authenticity, hope, courage, and kindness, one or two small acts at at time. That isn't weakness. Some of the kindest people we know are hard as nails. People who go to the mat for what is right and the people they care for.

In the next episode how some AI and Machine learning comes into that. Maybe, it depends where the media-verse takes me. This isn't an anti-AI site, or an anti-tech site. It's an anti-hype, anti-doomer, and anti-autocrat site. A pro-truth, pro-authenticity, pro-trustworthiness, pro-duty, pro-due diligence site. Not including, unless we say otherwise, AI writing.