Be The Power
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
If I was Elon Musk, I would flip through Arthur C. Clarke’s “3001: The Final Odyssey” for some inspiration.
As I recall, the book has a very specific plot point that could change the world rather rapidly, given existing technology.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
A number of things have happened recently that lead me to believe Big Tech can read our minds via our electronic devices — specifically our cellphones. The most conspicuous abuser of this technology is Tik-Tok.
Now, let me be very specific — I’m talking about instances where my For You Page on Tik-Tok presents me information fits a very specific metric: information that no one but me knows. So, we can dismiss any instances where I’ve spoken to someone about something, or texted, or messaged, or posted about some bit of personal information. I’m talking about a very specific type of information.
So, I’ve written before about Tik-Tok presenting me with information about women who have a very specific phenotype. So specific, in fact, as to be down to that of an individual woman. It’s beyond spooky. The most recent instance of this happening is with something gross — ear gunk.
I’ve been having an excess of ear wax recently and, until now, absolutely no one knew this about me. But, lo and behold, Tik-Tok was serving me ads about how to reduce ear wax. I’m well aware that such niche ads are everywhere these days and correlation is not causation.
But it is, if nothing else….spooky.
One day, when MAGA becomes technology-hating Patriot Party– it’s possible it’s mind-reading technology that they will really get worked up about.
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.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
You know why I know Big Tech is using Digital Telepathy on us without our knowledge or consent — they know abstract things about me.
That’s the tip off.
A lot of the spooky things I see on my For You Page on Tik-Tok can easily be explained by them somehow having access to everything on my phone. Ok, I get it. They could maybe be listening to me via my phone. Or reading any text I input into my phone.
But that doesn’t explain the more abstract things I’m seeing on my For You Page. Or the videos about things I’ve briefly thought about without telling anyone about it.
It reminds me of how my YouTube account suddenly started showing me videos about lockboxes, WW2 and The End Of The World. I was at a loss as to how this was possible until I remembered that my phone was in my car between my dad and myself.
It definitely seems as though whatever Digital Telepathy Google has was picking up what was on my DAD’s MIND, not mine. (My dad is elderly.) I will give you a way to test my theory — let someone else use your phone to use your Tik-Tok account for, say 20 minutes.
Then take your phone back and see what your For You Page’s recommendations are.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Let’s think about this. Why, specifically, have I come to the conclusion that Digital Telepathy is being used rather widely right now. Given that they’re using the Internet to do this, I guess maybe you might call it Internet Digital ESP? I feel like Big Tech has some sort of buzzy cooperate speak that they use when they’re talking about this technology in a meeting.
Anyway, back to the point.
I’m know for not only being wrong all the time, but occasionally thinking up some pretty weird ideas. And, I guess this could be another instance of that. I mean, just because Facebook has a patent for Digital Telepathy, doesn’t mean that Tik-Tok has it and is using it.
So, what has me so convinced?
I would have to say Tik-Tok’s abuse of its For You Page is what did it. When they have narrowed down the specific phenotypes of women who have been important to me over the years to the point that I find myself saying, “Hey, that girl looks like Annie Shapiro!” something is going on.
Let’s talk about that.
There are two female phenotypes that have made a big impression on me over the years. One of them is that of the late Annie Shapiro. That they would find a young lady that looks soooooooo much like Annie Shapiro Means Something. Our choices are that they’re using AI along with some significant rooting around on my phone so make some pretty astonishing inferences about the type of women I like, or, more directly, they are rooting around in my wetware, if you will.
When you start to think that it’s not even Google or Facebook, but fucking Tik-Tok that is rooting around in my mind, the implications can make you sick to your stomach. You definitely get a sense of mental rape. Is Annie Shapiro still so important to my mind that they are able to figure out that for emotional and sentimental reasons I like girls who look like Annie Shapiro? Or even more ominous — to what extent have they hacked into my subconscious!
The implications of that alone would be staggering.
Because if Tik-Tok can peer into the subconscious minds of its uses, what’s to stop them (the Chinese government) from at some point using that information and / or selling it to the highest bidder?
I have no idea if my suspicious are in any way based in reality. I’m sure someone at Vox has it all figured out and I’m just pulling this out of my butt like usual. But….it definitely seems as though something…odd is going on.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Talk about future shock.
If Big Tech is secretly using the Internet to read our minds, the implications are massive. One question I have is are they storing what they know about us somewhere, or is it some sort of ephemeral point-to-point thing? I think if my fears are real, then what’s happening is there’s a massive amount of processing power being used that is being hidden from us.
Or, to put it another way, while we were all being “entertained” by the Trump Show, some pretty massive technological changes were being slipped past us without us realizing it.
If Facebook, Google and Tik-Tok aren’t storing what they know about our minds, they probably are working towards it. Even more interesting is who knows this stuff? What if someone goes rouge and starts to use what they know about our most personal thoughts to make money? I guess if you had the information of enough minds in aggregate at your disposal, you could predictively play the stock market quite effectively.
I guess what I’m trying to say is — what if the Singularity happened an The Powers That Be didn’t tell us? If they’re hiding Digital Telepathy from us, would they even tell us if hard AI came into existence? What the fuck is Silcom Valley up to? What’s their vision?
Now, let me be clear — it’s not like I think they’re out to get ME. I’m a random no body that no one listens to me. I’m just a crank. They have absolutely nothing to worry about — no one is listening to me, no one cares what I have to say and I can pretty much just rant about this obvious scandal and nothing will happen other than people will just roll their eyes and think I’m crazy.
My only response is the Martha Mitchell Syndrome — I know the truth and everyone thinks I’m crazy just like how she knew about Watergate just about when it happened.
To me, it’s not so much that they can read my mind it’s that they’re hiding it from us. If they were to slowly let the cat out of the bag, to let our minds get used to the idea that they can be read…then, lulz. But Big Tech is setting itself up for it’s own “disruption” if they start to use Digital Telepathy not only as a crutch, but as a secret money making opportunity.
Not cool, guys, not cool.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
The old Arthur C. Clarke quote when it comes to such matters is, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” I think of this quote as I use Tik-Tok and realize it’s reading my mind. I don’t know the specifics and I don’t know the extent, but it’s happening.
I’m not saying that Tik-Tok, Facebook and Google aren’t monitoring every aspect of my Internet use in other ways — they obviously are — but there is absolutely no way I’m getting some of the For You Page suggestions I’m getting on Tik-Tok unless they have figured out a way to literally read my fucking mind.
If these eerie things happened once or twice, then, yes, I probably could think of any of different ways they might have figured out that I like a certain female phenotype or that this or that thing was important to me in my internal monologue.
But it happens all the fucking time!
So, I can only come to the conclusion that the Singularity isn’t just near, it’s here! And if there is now commercial application of such Singularity technology as digital telepathy, then just imagine what the NSA, CIA or MI5 are now using on a regular basis.
It just seems very possible that Tik-Tok is going to screw up in some way. Or Facebook. Either one of those two I could see deciding to sell what they know about our minds to some nefarious group that turns around and uses it to do something we learn about later.
Imagine if the average person was presented with absolute proof that Facebook or Tik-Tok sold their innermost secrets to the 2024 Trump Campaign. Or the Russians. And, remember, Tik-Tok is tight with the Chinese government. That’s a clusterfuck just waiting to happen.
Or, put another way, if digital telepathy is being used as much as I believe it is, someone, somewhere is going to screw up. Knowledge is power. And if Big Tech wants to keep Digital Telepathy a secret instead of slowly letting people know of its existence, there’s going to be a massive scandal that could destroy companies that abuse it like Google, Facebook and Tik-Tok.
I know this sounds nuts. But I’m simply using cold hard facts and putting logic to use. And, remember, this is coming from someone who generally hates conspiracy theories.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I went to a MAGA rally in DC recently — which was not only a case of zemblanity, but may have given me COVID19 — and my big take away was what a fucking grift the whole thing is.
The entire rally was based on a racist, misogynistic lie. The lie that at some magical, mystical moment in the past America was “greater” than it is now. We all know what that’s code for — whatever moment in the past when white men without a college education could get laid. So, it’s a time before #MeToo and #BLM. Or something.
Anyway, I have long thought that I missed a golden opportunity to make a lot of hard cash by faking to be MAGA and working my way up the MAGA delusion to the very top. I could have been a regular MAGA Chauncy Gardner before it was over with. I could have been standing next to Trump in the Oval Office if I had just given things some thought in, say, 2015.
So, if you want to know what I think the next big political grift is going to be, it’s Neo-Luddism. If you wanted to rebrand it something like NeuLudism, you could, I guess.
But we’re one Elon Musk announcement away from about 3 million hard working truckers losing their jobs virtually overnight. All those people might be receptive to a political message that wanted to destroy technology. Don’t quite know how you would convey that idea without…technology, but who would have thought that deranged ding-dong Donald Trump would get as far as he did?
But the Neulud grift isn’t going to be as easy as the MAGA grift. You’re going to have to work harder for no other reason than Neulud requires leadership to gently move MAGA people (who love Facebook, Twitter and now Parler) towards the idea of hating all technology that kills jobs.
So, in a sense, if, say, Tom Cotton adopted this political gambit, you would see a total realignment of American politics for no other reason than wealthy MAGA has gotten their plutocrat tax cut and they like Elon Musk too much to go along with such an idea.
If such an idea got any traction, you might everything thrown up in the air politically in the United States for a few years as things sorted themselves out. You might see a huge portion of the Republican Party fuse with a huge portion of the Democrat Party, while some Far Left and Far Right elements of both parties fused into an anti-technology party.
The only reason why I even suggest this is possible is Elon Musk and how overdue we are for a major lurch forward in technology. We’re about 10 years away from the last big burst of technology that changed the lives of every day people.
When it happens again, it might be so dramatic (in a way) as to be something of a “Soft Singularity.”
Anyway. No one listens to me.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
It’s been about a decade since smart phones came out and began to change the lives of everyday people. The next big technological shift may be when Elon Musk disrupts the trucking industry — kills it, really — when he perfects an automated semi without the need for a driver.
If this happens really fast, it’s not difficult to imagine today’s MAGA turning into tomorrows Luddites. And, really, all you need for this transformation is someone a Trump like character who isn’t simply an avatar for the rage of the common man, but someone who takes their rage and leads them in a specific direction.
So, it’s possible it could go Tea Party — > MAGA –> Luddites. Now, for this to happen, you probably would have to cleave off a big chunk of the Republican Party. It’s difficult to imagine rich, educated MAGA going along with such a radical agenda. It’s easy to imagine a situation where this happens and the Republican Party finally dies.
Or there’s a massive re-alignment of American politics with the wealthy tech-friendly people going to one party and the Luddites soaking up extremists from the far Left and far Right who have a common enemy — technology (or, the Singularity.)
I’m wrong all the time, though. But it is something to think about.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Let me put some context to this — I have no idea if I’m right on this and, given my pretty bad history of making false assumptions, I probably am. And I would add that I generally don’t believe in conspiracy theories.
But hear me out on this one.
I have noticed from Facebook and Google and now Tik-Tok a level of knowledge about my private, mental dialogue that is inexplicable. For instance — why is it that Tik-Tok recommends videos to me of women who look eerily like my personal “one that got away?” They keep doing stuff like this to an extent that is enough to be very jarring.
And Facebook keeps recommending ads to me that make absolutely no sense unless you knew specific things about me that I have told no one about. No Tweets. No emails. I haven’t even vocalized them.
The technology to read people’s minds — in a very ham handed way — exists. It’s been perfected enough for Facebook to patent it.
I’m probably wrong. But how Tik-Tok, Google and Facebook could possibly know such things about me if I’m the only person who knows about it is extremely puzzling.
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