Tag: Elon Musk

Why Elon Musk’s ‘Neuralink’ Is Such A Dumb, Misguided Idea


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

This is so frustrating. Elon Musk wants to rummage around in my brain with something that requires drilling a hole in my head and hooking up directly to my wetware. I find this very dumb and misguided because Arthur C. Clarke in his book “3001: Final Odyssey” comes up with a far more practical — and less intrusive — answer: the mindcap.

Now, some context.

There’s evidence that Facebook has, at least, a patent on some sort of mind reading technology. And hardly a day goes by that I don’t use Tik-Tok and think its reading my mind in some way. It doesn’t happen very often, but when it does happen, it’s very spooky.

As such, if it’s possible they’ve figured out a way to read my mind in some way via a non-contact solution, why not develop a form of that technology that involves a skullcap of some sort laced with electrodes (or whatever) that touches my skull and allows the same things we hope for with the Neuralink without the risk of accidently being given a lobotomy.

It seems very obvious to me that if you could sell people at $1,200 mindcap that skips the middle step of wearing MX (VR / AR) equipment. It definitely would aid in the adoption of such technology if you didn’t have to overcome the resistance to wearing bulky goggles and allowed people to “see” and “hear” media using their own minds.

But, go ahead Elon, keep drilling holes in people’s heads.

Why We’re Going To Have A Second Civil War (Or Turn Into An Autocracy) In 2024-2025


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

We’re doomed. Because of a number of very specific situations — the pandemic and Trump being a total ding-dong — the United States dodged a catastrophe in 2020. We won’t be as lucky in 2024. There is going to be severe political instability in the winter of 2024-2025. And either there’s a rolling political violence across the country that descends into something akin to a second civil war or we finally fall into Republican minority rule for the next 50 years or more. Here’s why.

FOX Fired Its Election Night State Caller
One of the subtle things that saved our asses was FOX News Election Desk called Arizona. That was a tipping point for the night. This will not happen in 2024. If Trump — or someone like Trump — is anywhere near winning on Election Night the crucial FOX News is going to be on the side of the bad guys, no questions asked. So it could be possible that the Right will never accept a Democrat winning, no matter what. So, either the 2024 election is stolen and we become an autocracy, or the country implodes.

The Macro Problems of the Last 40 Years Are Still There
The deep seated rot within the bowels of the American political system are still there. Republicans are hell bent on turning the United States into a white ethno state where white Christians tell everyone else what to do because they have no policies and all their political views are based on fear. So, in a sense, if it’s not 2024, it will be 2028 and so on. There is going to be a point when these different macro trends are going to come to a head one way or another. Either it will be a civil war or our zombie liberal democracy will finally just be dead.

The Republican Party Is A Fascist Party
Liberal democracy is simply a means to an end for the modern Republican Party. They see it as either a way to take power or keep power. Any form of compromise is weakness. A huge chunk of the Republican Party has slipped directly into such thuggishness that they’re willing to embrace the traditional fascist playbook to achieve their ends. So, once they take over Congress in 2022, that will be the setup a very brazen theft of the 2024 election one way or another. And, really, the issue is do the fascist Republicans bungle the strangling of our zombie liberal democracy and start a civil war or do they get away with it clean?

Known Unknowns
There are a number of things that may come out of the blue to change things so much in the next four years that what is obvious — that on a macro level the United States is fucked — doesn’t happen.

Elon Musk
Four years is a long time. It’s at least possible that on the technological front someone like Elon Musk might pull a rabbit out of a hat that throws everything up in the air. There are 3 million high paying blue collar jobs at risk should Musk perfect the automated semis he’s working on. It’s at least possible in the 2024 presidential cycle that something will happen whereby the far Right and the far Left merge into a new party that is opposed to “soft singularity” technology like automation. But that would be a lot more sooner than I would expect.

North Korea
This is an existential threat to the United States that if it flares up in the next four years could make a lot what I’m worried about very moot. If we have a major regional war the scares the shit out of us, then it’s possible the Biden – Harris Administration will quite easily win a second term.

The Inevitable
Neither Biden nor Trump is immortal and it’s at least possible that one — or both of them — may pull a Justice Scalia on us. If it’s Trump, then that opens up the flood gates for a number of young would-be autocrats to do a lot of shit that Trump wanted to do but was too big an idiot to pull off. If it’s, God forbit, Biden, then it’s possible a President Harris might have the spunk necessary to fight the macro forces that I think have us doomed at the moment.


The Secret Singularity


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It never occurred to me until now that a form of the Singularity may be a upon in secret. Or, put another way, Big Tech isn’t exactly going out of its way to tell the general public that some technologies that would be considered a part of the Singularity are already here and being used in ways that are changing people’s lives.

Take, for instance, automated cars.

What happens when hard AI arrives via cars…and we just accept it as a part of life like automated elevators? In other words, what if Big Tech cracks the nut of hard AI and does in a way meant to make us all shrug and continue to curse the meat?

For me, the main reason why this is unnerving is if Big Tech can figure out hard AI to make money, then an autocratic government could use it to control its population more effectively. Given it’s loudmouths like me that always run afoul of autocratic governments, the idea that President Pompeo or President Hawley might have access to hard AI to monitor domestic communication is not cool at all.

So, it’s at least possible that either we’ll find out about the Singularity when some sort of whistleblower pops out or something like hard AI will arrive via a Her-type personal assistant.

But I agree with Elon Musk — unregulated hard AI is probably one of the biggest dangers facing humanity. Too bad it may already be here in secret.

Elon Musk & A Potential Strategic Realignment of American Politics


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

A number of technological megatrends are coming to a head in, say, the next four or so years. I would propose that Elon Musk — if his dreams of automated semis come true — could personally cause a massive realignment in American politics.

The origins of that realignment are already there.

The Republicans, because of Trump, want to be the party of the volk. And, yet, it’s really the party of “German Industrialists,” if you will. But imagine 3 million high paying blue collar jobs go…poof!..at some point in the next four to 10 years when we no longer have any need for human truckers.

Then, you have the possibility that the Far Left and the Far Right of each party will become very interested in Neo-Ludditism and become their own party, while the moderate corporate-friendly parts of the two parties would fusion into a new party. This process would likely happen very fast — maybe within one or two presidential election cycles. Then something that the political class absolutely hates — a clear choice — would be presented to the electorate.

Voters would have a choice between an autocratic, anti-democratic, anti-technology party and the debris of everyone else. While given the reasons for why America is so very, very, very fucked there’s no stopping our march to autocracy, the rise of neo-Luddites might, at least, slow the process down.

But this is all very theoretical at the moment. It could be that I’m over thinking things and what I think is going to happen –we’re either going to be an autocracy or have a civil war — is what is going to happen.

Again, as I keep saying — get out while you still can.

The Human Factor: Automated Cars & Our New ‘Bumblebee’ AI Overlords


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I realized the power of Mark Zuckerburg’s vision for Facebook a few years back when I was walking around the campus of my college and it struck me that Facebook really is the college experience for everyone. When you walk to and from class everyday, you run into the same people and learn a little bit about them as you pass by them.

It’s the human factor that made Facebook what is today.

So, I read Robert Scoble’s very long post about automated cars and was left with some questions about human nature. While I think one day automated cars will be a mundane as elevators are today, it seems as though the real issue is we’re hurtling towards a “soft Singularity.”

In fact, I would say all the elements of a soft Singularity are already here. But for some reason, unlike the rise of the Internet, it seems as though The Powers That Be in Silicon Valley want to hide this soft Singularity from us. It definitely seems, from what the Scobleizer has written, that some form of hard AI is already pretty much here. It’s just not cognizant. Instead of a HAL 9000 that we interact with we have, well, enough AI in a car not to get into an accident.

From what Scoble has written, it seems to me as though should there be a Rise of The Machines, it will look a lot more like Her than the Terminator. What if hard AI was extremely sly about controlling us, say, through romantic connections via the Internet? (This is not my idea exclusively, but the result of a very interesting conversation with a deep tech thinker.)

Anyway, the point is, Silicon Valley is missing the forest for the trees when it comes to smart cars. What if smart cars go all I, Robot on us at some point in the future? If they’re hooked up to the Internet and each car has a hard AI…wow we wow wow. Human civilization won’t stand a chance.

That, in fact, has always been my problem with the Terminator franchise. How did SkyNet built the Terminators if the whole world was blown up? Why blow the world up at all? Why not lord over humanity and tell us what to do in far more subtle ways?

The only reason why any of this is any more than a phantasma, a daydream, is it seems from what Scoble has written that AI is here by way of smart cars. What happens next may not be up to us.

A $1 Trillion Challenge To Elon Musk: The ‘Mindcap’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Silicon Valley is embarrassing itself right now. There’s all this talk of a “neural link” where you fucking drill a hole in someone’s head — possibly giving them a fucking lobotomy — when there’s a far, far less intrusive solution to this problem: the Mindcap.

I’m cribbing this idea from Arthur C. Clarke’s novel “3001: Final Odyssey,” but here’s the point — wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to lay the technology over someone’s shaved head making someone stupid by accident as part of the development process? Ugh. It’s so obvious and so annoying.

Now, the reason why I even mention this is I have come to believe that the basis for such a revolution in how we consume technology already exists. I’m just an idiot in the middle of nowhere, but I definitely get the sense that Big Tech is using electronics to read our minds in some way. Or, it’s at least possible.

So, Big Tech, instead of thinking very, very small with a digital party line called Clubhouse, why not live up to your ideals of “disrupt” by breaking huge swaths of the economy like it did with the Internet. Why even go through the middle sage of VR – AR using Oculus Rift.

It makes far, far, more sense to throw all your efforts into a Mindcap. People will have to shave their heads, yeah, but so what. You can always wear a wig AND you get to cut out the middle man when it comes to consumption of media, services, you name it.

We’re talking Steve Jobs “think different” levels of transformation of the average, everyday person’s life. Apple, or Elon Musk, someone, if you could mass produce a $1,200 mindcap that was actually functioning in any way at all, you could easily make $1 trillion through first mover advantage alone.

But I know I’m working on some dubious assumptions. Only someone like Elon Musk could throw money at the idea of a Mindcap. Remember, my idea this Mindcap would be completely unobtrusive. No drilling into someone’s head. You lay the technology directly over someone’s bare scalp and the Mindcap augments your existing mental ability and allows you to access the Internet.

It’s just kind of sad that Silicon Valley has lost its touch. For shame, for shame. You come up with smartphone and now you’re too busy stroking one off on a digital partyline to think big.

Hey, Elon Musk, Don’t Waste Your Time Terraforming Mars


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It seems to me the logical way to settle the universe is to simply turn people into data then shoot tiny probes out across the galaxy at near the speed of light. Once they reach, say, Alpha Centauri, you zap the all the information to the probe. Using nanotech, you re-create humans and look around.

Now, that last bit is a bit much even for me.

More likely, what you do is, you have hard AI and that hard AI is zapped to your tiny probe which then creates an android body of some sort using the aforementioned nanotech.

Anyway, the point is, it seems like a huge fucking waste of time to actually send humans anywhere off planet. Using hard AI, nanotech and the speed of light, you could look around the galactic neighborhood pretty easily. Or, put another way — you’d be an idiot to throw any resources at terraforming Mars when you could wait for technology to reach the point where you could zap humans to a livable planet at the speed of light.

In the 10,000 years it would take to terraform Mars, you could settle hundreds — thousands — of planets within 10,000 lightyears of earth. Seems a no-brainer to me.

Silicon Valley’s Next Frontier: The Mind


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

First, I’m a nobody and no one listens to me. But I’m old enough to notice something — the last time Silicon Valley changed the average person’s life on a practical level was the smart phone.

Since then, Silicon Valley’s been resting on is loreals by designing apps.

Now, Elon Musk is apparently trying to take things to the next level by doing a some sort of neural link. But, fuck, man, I’m not drilling into my skull. It seems like there’s a pretty obvious way to avoid giving someone a lobotomy during the development process of such an invention. If you want to know what I’m alluding to, read Arthur C. Clarke’s 3001: Final Odyssey. There’s a pretty obvious way to allow us to do the obvious — skip the goggle phase of MX (VR / AR) and get plugged directly into our minds wetware.

If you could use your own mind’s processing ability, then you don’t have much need for googles that no one will wear. It’s the most intuitive — and logical — next step in media: use your own mind as your media player.

I still think Big Tech can read our minds (to some extent) via our phones. And, to that extent, I think we’ve reached something akin to a “soft Singularity.” The Singularity is here, but it’s so subtle in nature that not everyone realizes it’s happened.

Those who do know, are making a shit ton of money off of it.

Sometimes, They Come Back


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

As of Monday (at the latest) I’m throwing myself back into the novel I’ve been working on the last few years. Everything is in place — I should be able to write the first draft very, very quickly.

I’ll always be the guy in the circle. Me, 2032

What started as me raging against the Trump Era now has a very different context — it’s going to be a lot more character based, a lot less preachy and…also a warning of what might be to come.

I really just want to forget the Trump Era ever happened. And, yet, given Trump’s apparent interest in the “Patriot Party” concept, I have decided to read up on Hitler. My fear is because of the “megatrends” that caused the rise of Trump in the first place, that he and his movement will come back in a big way far, far sooner than any of us might otherwise believe.

So, in preperation for the rise of honest-to-God-American MAGA-Nazism, I’m going to start to study Hitler, his rise and his use of power once he got it. My fear is that Trump — or a “velvet fist” of, say, President Lara Trump and Vice President Mike Pompeo — may finally turn us into an autocratic managed democracy like Putin’s Russia.

America is currently an autocracy without an autocrat and something pretty huge would have to happen for our democracy not to go the way of the Weimar Republic within no more than 10 years. But, let me make it clear — Trumplandia’s Fourth Reich wouldn’t be expansionistic. It’s not like Trump or Lara Trump would want to take over the world.

It would be an implosion, not an explosion.

The United States would collapse in on itself, maybe even to the point that there was a complete re-imagining of the world order. The United States would leave NATO, pull all its troops out from South Korea, etc and also have some sort of “Final Solution” for the “Liberal Problem.”

Or, to put it another way — there are some fucking dark forces at work on a macro level in the United States.

Weirdly enough, there really hasn’t been much discussion about how Elon Musk is just a few years away from ending the trucking industry as we know it. When 3 million high paying blue collar jobs fashion overnight, there are going to be a shit ton of angry men and women who might embrace neo-Luddism. And that would cause a massive jiggling of our political economy.

The Patriot Party might fuse the far Right and the far Left into an anti-technology party while the corporate elements of the Democrat and Republican parties might fuse together in response.

Anyway.

The point is — Trumplandia ain’t dead yet. Sometimes, they come back.

Advice To The ‘Patriot Party’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

First, — eat shit you fucking fascist shithead cocksuckers.

Now that that’s out of the way, I would suggest to would-be Patriot Party founders to have some vision and think outside the box. Put your stick where the puck is going to be, not where it is now.

So, in that sense, don’t see the Patriot Party as the MAGA party, see it as the neo-Luddite party. Remember, Elon Musk could very well destroy the trucking industry virtually overnight with self-driving semis. That’s three million people out of work right there.

As such, if you’re going to be thinking up some sort of National Socialist American Workers Party ideology, I would suggest you attack technology. Or, specifically, worker-replacing technology. This is something that would give you broad appeal in both the far Right AND far Left. If you played your cards right, you could totally upend the entire American political system in fairly short order.

But I would also note that Trump seems primed to flame out politically in a rather dramatic fashion. You might want to look for a new leader who can articulate this anti-technology agenda in a smooth, toothy fashion. Trumpism without Trump.

I don’t wish you good luck. But it will be interest to see what the future of the fucking fascist Patriot Party will be.