What are /r/DarkFuturology's favorite Products & Services?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

>Ten years ago, I published "The Shock Doctrine..." I noticed a brutal and recurring tactic by right-wing governments. After a shocking event - a war, a coup, a terrorist attack, market crash, or natural disaster, exploit public disorientation, suspend democracy, push through radical policies that enrich the 1 percent at the expense of the poor and middle class.

>Here is the one thing I've learned over two decades of reporting from dozens of crises around the world. These tactics can be resisted. And, for your convenience, I've tried to boil it down to a 5-step plan.

>1) Know what's coming

>2) Defy the bans

>3) Know your history

>4) Follow the money

>5) Advance a bold counter-plan

"I think computer viruses should count as life … I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image."

1994-08-04

Points for consistency.

Fina-fuckin-lee.

On the other hand, he just took ten minutes to paraphrase E.O. Wilson:

>We have paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology.

Everyone except the pseudo-nerdy wannabe intellectuals has known for a long damn time that humanity's problem is one of enlightenment. Or rather, a lack of enlightenment. It's going to take more than glitzy pop-psychology and IKEA-esque water filters to save the world this time.

Haha the downvotes are starting to come in, you guys are great.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=sp0n.citizen

This is the app they run on, if you have time head over there and give a 1 star for these rent-a-cops that think they have a right to take you to jail.

Jobs are disappearing because of mass automation.

http://www.scoop.it/t/concentration-of-wealth-existential-risk

This has been happening everywhere, for decades, but it is now accelerating to a climax. Somewhere this century all labor will be automated. There might be a few artists left, but AI will displace the vast majority of jobs and almost no new jobs will appear.

There are two possibilities - you me, everyone you know, 99.999% of people will be marginalized at a level of attrition of the Gaza strip. Like, Elysium. - a very small percentage of humans will be immortal posthuman superbeings. As in - no longer even remotely human. And that's when the dying will start.

Unless we do something about it.

The most—and least—reliable refrigerator brands. Consumer Reports' latest survey also found several brands to avoid

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2014/11/the-most-and-least-reliable-refrigerator-brands/index.htm

Would it be more or less dark if the article was recommended to OP by a machine learning service that sells content to people whom it determines would be most likely to click on a given topic?

I think my point is being missed - the stuff we're doing today is far removed from AGI (it's 'just' super-powerful computing). The reason we are no closer to AGI after massive striving is perhaps we do not understand what intelligence is and what is made from.

Maybe I should post a recent blog entry of mine which makes my position clearer (I hope) ...

This is a powerful intro: >>If innovations in housework helped free women to enter the labor force in the 1960s and 1970s, could innovations in leisure — like League of Legends — be taking men out of the labor force today?

but I think a little misleading. Technology didn't usher women into the workforce nearly as much as an absence of men in the mid 1940s due to war, and the feminist movement of the 1960s/70s. Remember they would eventually burn bras! Brand new appliances appeared, such as air conditioners, tumble dryers, freezers, and dishwashers, and became widely available in the 1950s source. Washing machines and vacuums were even in use before that so I'm not sure what specific tech the article is referencing...

> I can only laugh nervously at such notions.

I've had a lot of success limiting myself as much as possible to just the fundamentals before subjecting myself to "expert" opinions.

In this case I'd suggest reading Satoshi's original white paper on Bitcoin. It's the only way to cut through the bullshit of "experts". To be fair it took me months go grok that paper but it was one of the best investments I ever made. If I had to go by other's opinions instead of knowing the math, I would have never pulled the trigger.

When I noticed that everyone opposed to bitcoin almost always gets some part of it's fundamental technicalities wrong I know they don't understand what they are talking about no matter how much economics lingo they use.

Then I spent months and months reading about Keynesian vs Austrian economic schools of thought, after that it's deep dark rabbit hole.

>Before an app can access microphones in Android and iOS devices, permission has to be granted by the user. However, people tend to accept such requests blindly if they are interested in an app’s functionality.

So, user is at fault here if I understand correctly.

>Encouraging app development at the expense of user privacy, current permission systems are much less strict than they were in early smartphones and have been criticized as “coarse grained and incomplete”

How is "Facebook wants to use your microphone. Do you allow it?" not strict enough?

>Android and iOS apps with microphone permission can not only record audio at any time while they are active, i.e. running in the foreground, but also while they are in background mode, under certain conditions [7, 31].

Reference 31 literally just links to the Android P launch website, no study or proof or anything. Which is funny because that is the Android version which disabled the usage of the microphone API in the background.

Thank you so much. It started as a story I told my daughter I told in the car on the way to school to teach her about 1984. She insisted that I write it down. I brought it to Reddit, specifically to Dark Futurology and Cyberpunk because I thought you guys would get it. I received great encouragement from the subreddits and started the blog that you read. It blew up on social media in Russia and Ukraine first, and now people have visited the blog from all of the world. Currently it is growing in Norway. It is a total joy for me to write it! Check this out, I am going to Europe for over 45 days to meet people and talk about the issues in the book.

https://www.minds.com/archive/view/558728386919276544

No problem, this is a pretty niche subreddit so I always hold out hope that people here have much more in common with each other than not, especially in terms of thinking about larger picture things. I'm currently loving the flood of human irrationality science that's coming out and it's changed my worldview quite a bit.

I'd recommend the 'You are not so smart' podcast and Dan Ariely's books (start with the first one: Predictably Irrational). They, especially that podcast, are very approachable and fun to listen to. If you want to bite off some more heavy and complex stuff then Daniel Dennett's books are amazing, especially Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking. That's going to also deal with consciousness and free will and how we have to think about them differently now that we have modern neuroscience to inform our speculations.

It's got that new scientific field problem where a lot of stuff turns out be not quite true but was close as it's studied more, so there's a lot of churn in the specifics. But I love the subject because it's a frontier of science that is overturning a lot of old notions and will definitely be a serious part of future history books but we get to watch it unfold now.

Excellent post... The economic equivalent of the Red Queen hypothesis (Running faster to stay the same) I am fascinated by all the things we need to spend money on to remain part of the system. Cars are an obvious case in point.

Everybody talks about the ridiculousness of positional goods but has anyone reading this attempted to escape the rat race. The only book I know that addresses this is Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez. I am not sure if his investment strategies would work today.

Work (once needs are met) is mostly consensus trance and a status display. How many hours do you really feel it would be necessary to make ends meet?

Snowden warns: The surveillance states and use of high-tech surveillance measures to combat the coronavirus outbreak will outlast the virus.

https://thenextweb.com/neural/2020/03/25/snowden-warns-the-surveillance-states-were-creating-now-will-outlast-the-coronavirus/

Well, during the Ukraine shenanigans, protesters were sent texts that informed them that they had been registered as participants in civil disturbance. Of course, the cell providers didn't do it, so it's probably police forces using Stingrays.

Quite a few are brothers, like the Charlie Hebdo, Brussel attack and marathon bombing cases.

It does seem like the internet is a good recruiting base, but it seems like they're not using it for planning at all. Various articles about it on theintercept. Not that if they did, that'd be a good argument for compromising, but it shows the fact-free-ness of that bit of politics.(and sometimes, reporting) Infact

> National Security Agency Director Adm. Mike Rogers said Thursday that “encryption is foundational to the future,” and arguing about it is a waste of time.

Further to this, actually reading the report it compares the total wealth of the 62 world's richest people, with the total amount of daily forex. As in, the total cash, assets, company worth, funds, shares and derivatives of the 62 wealthiest, with the amount of global forex cash. They quote global wealth as 1500 billion, when it is closer to 1.2 QUADRILLION. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-how-much-money-exists-in-the-entire-world-in-one-chart-2015-12-18

Actually it does not entirely seem clear what the motive is, like the recent killing of 150 "militants". Who benefits from the bombing? Is it literally military-industrial complex, an excluse to spend money? Seems a little weak reason. Quite frankly i think an aspect of egos thinking they're really important and "defending the homeland", and even some worse people who just get off from the rush.

I am comparing media treatment of your bubble towards BlackLivesMatter with the MSM bubble about ISIS. It is a distraction from real issues. I am not "against fighting ISIS".

The MSM might be shooting its own foot. But they cover him because they're essentially fine with what he says, they're not covering(edit: for instance, 20s vs 80minutes in one news show, even) Bernie Sanders because they're not fine with what he says.

And Bernie Sanders hasn't taken any either,(not this round at least) and has a long history of social activism.

And this is how well they fight ISIS..(edit: it is stupid, but do remember that she is "only an example" for the campaign, not running th campaign) Their internal sources tell them it is their policies causing this stuff. But they want to keep on raiding foreign countries for resources and power, so they cannot admit this.

What's the dystopian trend?

>Workers at Google just scored an impressive victory against US militarism.

Not yet they haven't. Google’s principles for developing AI aren’t good enough.

For those in a region where this is blocked (like me), you can view it via outline.com

The next step won't require new antivirus software.

>The researchers started by writing a well-known exploit called a "buffer overflow,"

What's new is the attack vector. DNA testing services need to prepare for this.

>>"it is possible that information about you or a genetic relative could be revealed, such as that you or a relative are carriers of a particular disease. That information could be used by insurers to deny you insurance coverage, by law enforcement agencies to identify you or your relatives, and in some places, the data could be used by employers to deny employment.

The hack described by the article you linked is concerning but maybe it isn't the real problem. Maybe the real problem are the centralized DNA testing companies that will be hacked. And even if, for example, the world’s largest consumer DNA database isn't hacked it still has a perpetual, worldwide license to sell or otherwise use its data against users and their genetic relatives.

>Companies could even potentially place malicious code in the DNA of genetically modified products, as a way to protect trade secrets, the researchers suggest.

Hopefully, the next step in research will produce open-source solutions to extend similar protections to individuals.

To be clear with "we don't have this" i mean the general public. Not only spatial information, but also graph-explorers like connections between people, ownership,(of corporations) readily machine-accessible data, etcetera. (Comparison of what level or attention stories get in different media, how they're treated)

And insofar we do have it, we're often dependent on large companies like google.

Wikipedia has a lot of data, of course.

This is the book that ACLU lawyer doesn't want you to read; hence you should read it:

https://www.amazon.com/Irreversible-Damage-Transgender-Seducing-Daughters/dp/1684510317

You cannot separate politics from war. Sun Tsu (The Art of War), Machiavelli (The Prince) and Clausewitz (On War) all agree. The scary thing is another arms race has developed because of drone use. Automated war is a game changer and the only defense is better automation. Like the Cold War although the MAD policy there ensured a shaky peace. There is no MAD policy with automated warfare and automation stands a better chance of being employed.

> Everybody talks about the ridiculousness of positional goods but has anyone reading this attempted to escape the rat race. The only book I know that addresses this is Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez. I am not sure if his investment strategies would work today.

There's also Early Retirement Extreme and the whole minimalism movement.

>If it is an AI, wouldnt it be designed, not evolved?

What if an AI were 'designed' via evolution-based genetic algorithms? The great book Our Final Invention talks about this quite a bit. Genetic algorithms come up with 'designs' far too complex and counterintuitive for us to understand. So though we could have wielded the algorithm and process that created the AI, we ourselves might not understand how it works, or even whether or not it is 'really' intelligent vs. just seeming so.