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This is surely the future. At some point we will eventually have battles fought entirely by pilot(less) drones? And then war becomes purely economical.

It would start economical and then some side would eventually resort to the meat grinder.

There won't be any well off people because the machines will rule. Humanity will become second to its own creation.

There is no future in which a human ruling class will be lording it over superhuman machine intelligence. I mean look at the clowns who run the world today. They won't be able to keep the machines from taking over.


I'd propose that the opposite is just as plausible. Look at the world today: compared to most of the people in charge, plenty in the underclass are superintelligent. Yet the rich remain that way, because the underclass are taught to play by the rules that were written by the rich. Who's to say the same scheme can't be pulled off against the machines?


Honestly, I'd rather be ruled by my laptop than the Epstein class.


This AI risk is the same as with Tesla's Autopilot a couple years back...

People believe for some reason that the AI is 99.99% correct and the warning not to trust it too much is just legalese.


> People believe for some reason that the AI is 99.99% correct and the warning not to trust it too much is just legalese.

That "some reason" is science fiction plus some modern-day hype. The sci-fi trope of AI is that it's something more intelligent and perfect than any human (e.g. Data from Star Trek or even HAL, despite his malfunctions), and the people who are selling LLMs are happy to let influence people to over-estimate LLM capabilities.

There's no sci-fi model for subhuman and kinda crappy generative AI.


The NHS is a bit like the NRA in the US. Politicians and rich folk would ideally do away with it, but they cannot, so they have to play lip service to gain favour with the public.

So its not propaganda in the way you are thinking of.


What a mental stretch to compare a free life saving organisation with a organisation that supports guns to kill with. Seriously?


It's a classic American worldview.


Are there any remaining western countries with strong free speech protections?

UK and Germany weren't ever good in this department but now worst than ever.

US supposedly good but I wouldn't risk it in practice.

Australia I hear is also quite bad.

Canada and NZ I don't know.

I expect Denmark and Sweden to have somewhat weak free speech laws too.

Norway and Finland I expect to be good.

France I expect to be just slightly better than Germany.

Netherlands and Switzerland, I have no idea.

Czech Republic I think has strong protections.

Italy and Spain and Ireland, I heard mixed reports about.

Poland, Greece, Slovenia, Portugal and other unnamed countries I don't know at all.


"Free speech" usually refers to the freedom to say what you want without the state giving you consequences for what you say.

In Germany, for example, you can say almost anything you want and no-one will give a hoot. If you're truly interested, here's some background for Germany in particular https://www.deutschland.de/en/topic/politics/freedom-of-expr...

And reporters without borders has a world press freedom index that ranks the US on place... 57 - behind most of Europe. https://rsf.org/en/index


>Central African Republic higher then Serbia

>Ukraine higher then Cyprus

LOL


Do you want to elaborate and cite sources why that's funny, or do you just want to be snarky based on prejudice?


I really do not think European countries had "free speech" like it is understood in the US.

After WWII you mostly had state run and controlled TV and radio. And some more freedom in the written press but still most countries mandate Legal deposit [0] sometimes since the Middle Ages. Legal deposit is just the granddaddy of what we understand the Internet is in China. You could really get in trouble easily.

Then mass media were liberalized and put under the control of big corporations in the 1970-80s what gave the illusion of more freedom.

But the WWW really brought the US free speech standards to the entire developed world in the 90-2000s. This is why people under 50 understand "free speech" according to this standard.

The "you get put in jail because of a meme on Facebook" is really a return to normal after a 20 year pause on the Internet. If you don't fight for it, it will never last.

Starmer, like most leaders in the EU, has an 18% approval rating. He really can't afford free speech for its subjects.

- [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_deposit


How is age verification and free speech in any case related?

You can solve the problem of age verification without limiting your free speech right. Those two get entangled all the time and it does not make sense.


Non-anonymous free speech is a bit of a red herring. If you say something publicly, especially in this era of mass data, you are perpetually liable to be punished for it at some point in the future. If not by the current government, potentially another. Virtually every country in the world has experienced authoritarianism at one point or another, and there is never a guarantee that it won't again. Saying something publicly tied to your identity is signing up to be imprisoned when an authoritarian who doesn't like what you said seizes power. We have many historical examples of dictators rounding up and executing wide classes of people, so we know this threat model is more than just a hypothetical but rather something that can and does realistically happen at various times and places.

Therefore, in practice, anonymity is the only way to safely express oneself in public. Privacy is the true bastion of the freedom of ideas. This is naturally lost when the means to communicate privately are stripped from us, when every word we've ever said is recorded and tied to our identity. Age verification could possibly theoretically be implemented in a way that does not immediately infringe upon privacy, but you surely know that there is no world in which it will ever be implemented in such a way.


That's my case - you can proof your age anonymously. There are edge cases where this does introduce minor issues - see https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/07/zero-knowledge-proofs-...

but all in all this is solvable and the best we got.

It's miles better than any "upload your face or ID to some third party".

We can't let perfect be the enemy of good here and allow the worst systems to flourish now.


If your ID is tied to your anonymous identity this creates a chilling effect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect


The problem is all the AI slop that people are publishing to bolster their CVs.


Americans famously don't respect native peoples and their lands.


Tbf I think you could say this for almost any European country as well.


Greenland can vote for independence any moment they want. How are you treating Hawaii?


I was speaking more to Europe's whole history as colonizers and slavers.

> How are you treating Hawaii

Hawaiians are Americans, so we treat them fine I guess?


Beef was literally never a staple food in the EU. There's only a few regions were there is enough pasture land for a local operation but even then it was always too expensive to be a staple. Pork has always been the staple meat and we grow enough of that.


?

Every health authority mentions both cholesterol/saturated fat and blood sugar as contributing factors.


not sure where people have been for the last year but MAHA and rfk have been on the "fat is good train" and seem to completely ignore entire decades of science.


Fat is good if you eat the right kinds of fats and your consumption of unhealthy fat is limited.

The issue is more that people eat too much fatty food, a specifically unhealthy fats.

On the other hand sugar is probably never good for you and you should aim to reduce it as much as possible.


Pretty much every health authority will tell you that high blood sugar damages blood vessels, thereby enabling the formation of said plagues.


Healthy adults consuming some dietary sugar doesn't cause persistent high blood sugar, though. That's diabetes.


it's not just sugar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycemic_index#Grouping

all simple carbs are the devil, but we can't possibly feed billions of people actually healthy food - organic vegetables, nuts, and animal products, so come drink your corn syrup.


The sugar industry (topic of this article) can only be blamed for sugar, though -- not all high-GI foods.

And you can replace "sugar" in what I said earlier with "high-GI foods" and it doesn't change a thing. Persistent high blood sugar is diabetes; it isn't dietary.


>Persistent high blood sugar is diabetes; it isn't dietary.

how is it not dietary if consuming most carbs spikes your blood sugar for hours, which, with three meals + snacks + starbucks slurry, means elevated blood sugar 20+ hours a day?


It doesn't happen in non-diabetic people. It's different in type 2 diabetics who will see large swings in blood fat and glucose after meals.


Please can you provide a source for the above?


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