Divers subjects

a round up of what's on my mind

Do you like how I used the old Tudor spelling in the headline? You thought you caught me, the pedantic grammarian, with a big typo, didn’t you? But I was just being an homosexual anglophile—GOTCHA!

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Getting comfortable giving up constitutional rights

Lots of people have gotten used to algorithms and AI "making mistakes." People are treating it as normal that:

-A Youtube algorithm/AI demonetizes a channel or similar

-X suspends your account because an AI found a string of words it didn't like and doesn't understand

I'm terrified of how many people are used to this. It scares me to see people go, "Oh, I'm sure it's a mistake, you should just ask the nice people for a manual review."

This isn’t going to end with annoying software products or tech devices. It is already metastasizing into the way our government treats us. Here are just a couple things we can look forward to. There are countless others I can’t even think of.

1. Automatic, AI-driven suspension of your driver's license. You'll get to "ask the nice people for a manual review," but only after your rights have been taken away by a machine.

2. Having your voter registration canceled. You'll be able to "ask the nice people for a manual review," but only after the election.

All of this, and much, much more, is just around the corner.

Do you know what this is? The destruction of your constitutional right to due process. Literally.

Agencies like the DMV, or the voter registration office, are government agencies. The high-level constitutional concept of the right to due process devolves down onto government agencies. It is at risk of becoming “inoperative” in actual practice. And not, at root, because of artificial intelligence intrinsically. No. It is at risk because of what we have already accepted; that we don’t have these rights and we can just rely on the nice people for a manual review.

It is us, the citizens, doing this to ourselves.

Mini complaint

Have you noticed that, using a browser on a desktop now means you have only about 25 percent of the screen in which you can place your mouse to scroll without triggering multiple pop up "show this thing and take over the screen when mouse scrolls by" overlay things?

It's so unpleasant. It was never like this a few years ago.

Youth and age: the great reversal

The cultural 180 we have done on how we see young people and old people—that 180 started around the mid-20th century—is part of, or fits nicely with, the communist-woke agenda.

The creation of the "teenager" as a wholly separate stage of life the way we see it today is a creation. It is not a natural feature of all human societies. Yes, those between ages 12 and 18 do have certain typical characteristics. They’re moody, impulsive, horny, and all the things that mark those years. I acknowledge this.

What I am saying is that the inflated idea of THE TEENAGER as an all-encompassing IDENTITY is new, and it is not good. We have stoked, encouraged and enflamed these traits and behaviors over time instead of moderating them as we used to when we understood that our responsibility as parents and adult members of the community was to mold children, not to be steamrollered by them.

It coincides with our worship of youth, which is actually our fear of death.

We have elevated the young and degraded the old. That's why we have cultural jokes like "old man shouts at clouds."

That's why the first comment that comes to our minds when a "grumpy old man" like me complains about stupid and vexingly anti-user technology is to think "grumpy old man."

Notice that. It's the very first joke you want to make, and it's the thing you expect to see as the first reaction from others. And you're right.

It's a reversal. It's part of, or useful to, a political agenda that wants to "defund":

-Wisdom

-Discernment

-Autonomy

-Hierarchy

-Merit/excellence

Step back and just look at it from a distance. It's anti-sane that we believe:

-People get dumber as they age

-People's opinions become less relevant as they age

-The aging process makes you stupider, less important, and less useful to society

You may say to yourself, "But I don't believe any of those things." Actually, most of us have accepted these ideas, at least to some degree. We think we don't believe these things, but our actions show that we do. It's hard not to because it's universally culturally enforced.

Older people have bought in. They are embarrassed and apologetic about being older, just as this notion wants them to be. Think about how many times you’ve been tempted, middle agers and the old, to preface your query for help with something like, “I know this makes me sound old/like a boomer.”

Would a culture that respected the benefits of age and experience prompt us to pre-defend ourselves this way by degrading our own dignity on account of having lived a longer time than the young? When experienced, seasoned people who have learned much in a long life willingly degrade their own value, I don't see how it can change.

It’s not like you

‘Busted down and broken all in two

but you never thought it could happen to you’

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