Phenomenal post, Bruce. A nudge is as good as a wink? Pithy to the core. You've got such a trove of layered meaning going I was smiling (to myself) at every turn. Although I was raised/indoctrinated in England, with all that entails, I emigrated to the US, or should I say California in the patchwork American quilt. I had the best/worst of both worlds. Now I find myself back in the UK/Europe since 2012. It was here, when in France about 3 hours from the Pyrenees in the Midi, old Occitanie, that I read a paperback of Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Française, written during the Occupation while she was hiding out in the French countryside, with a sense of 'urgent foreboding'. She was eventually captured and died in a concentration camp. While reading it, the parallels were too uncanny to miss - I was hiding out in the French countryside, there was a sense of urgent foreboding as the fascism of the pandemic swept across Europe, across the world, stories of concentration camps being set up. This was a turning point for me. While I saw fascism was appearing, it was only while reading this book that it hit home, that the Third Reich had become the Fourth Reich. I subsequently read many more books set during the Occupation, of the Resistance, the British SOE agents dropped into France, the entire milieu of that period, of the Vichy government, of what it meant to be a collaborator.
So yes, the parallels are unmistakable. And yes, A.I. is machine-learning everything about us in the approach to the Singularity. But we can't just give up in the face of its relentless inevitability. We have to keep speaking, shouting the truth in all its multifaceted forms, even if it means preaching to the choir, which only makes the choir sing louder. Remember the Estonian Singing Revolution?
Phenomenal post, Bruce. A nudge is as good as a wink? Pithy to the core. You've got such a trove of layered meaning going I was smiling (to myself) at every turn. Although I was raised/indoctrinated in England, with all that entails, I emigrated to the US, or should I say California in the patchwork American quilt. I had the best/worst of both worlds. Now I find myself back in the UK/Europe since 2012. It was here, when in France about 3 hours from the Pyrenees in the Midi, old Occitanie, that I read a paperback of Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Française, written during the Occupation while she was hiding out in the French countryside, with a sense of 'urgent foreboding'. She was eventually captured and died in a concentration camp. While reading it, the parallels were too uncanny to miss - I was hiding out in the French countryside, there was a sense of urgent foreboding as the fascism of the pandemic swept across Europe, across the world, stories of concentration camps being set up. This was a turning point for me. While I saw fascism was appearing, it was only while reading this book that it hit home, that the Third Reich had become the Fourth Reich. I subsequently read many more books set during the Occupation, of the Resistance, the British SOE agents dropped into France, the entire milieu of that period, of the Vichy government, of what it meant to be a collaborator.
So yes, the parallels are unmistakable. And yes, A.I. is machine-learning everything about us in the approach to the Singularity. But we can't just give up in the face of its relentless inevitability. We have to keep speaking, shouting the truth in all its multifaceted forms, even if it means preaching to the choir, which only makes the choir sing louder. Remember the Estonian Singing Revolution?
And yes, we have a fight on our hands. Saddle up.