worm with problems

Bodily autonomy (like abortion, anti draft, etc) -> “The government shouldn’t be able to force anything on my body I don’t want.”

Anti surveillance -> “I don’t trust big government/big tech (big brother if you’re feeling frisky) with the ability to spy on me and my family.”

Immigration -> “Next to all of us immigrated at some point, I don’t see why the elites get to decide who’s allowed to be where. What’s to stop them coming for me?”

Climate Change -> “Big oil shouldn’t get to determine whether or not I get to go places. I don’t want to be dependent on some big business to survive.”

State Violence -> “I don’t want the goddamn secret police breathing down my neck! I trust my community a whole hell of a lot more to help me than I do the state!”

Civil society was normal / healing until Gamergate, Trump, and/or COVID happened. Older opportunists may blame the defeat of Al Gore and the rise of neoliberalism in the 80s. The tragic event(s) they blame for all modern woes depends on their kind of opportunism.

Before the tragic event(s), young men (these types have a particular fixation on young, white, cishet men as the drivers of history) and people broadly held liberal positions and attitudes in social life, regarding treatment of women and marginalized groups.

After the tragic event(s), these people broadly took a significant reactionary turn

The cause of this is because The Left insufficiently courted these young men -> into voting for leftists

Therefore, the Left must direct all their resources toward the Real drivers of history: young men - regardless of class

This is done by focusing on spaces where these men already are and by using language that they gravitate towards. Clearly the lack of slur usage and the obsession with "being respectful to marginalized groups" is a huge barrier. Also, you can't be too radical or honest about your positions because you'll scare them off. The Left has become too woke and men are shy creatures, easily frightened by "they/them" pronouns, and if you don't treat them delicately - boom! They become raging fascists.

Once The Left has engaged in this delicate balancing act, these young men will vote! And they will continue voting for Leftists as long as they delicately balance and conceal their principles and goals, without any other political movement winning them over by throwing around a ton of money, which, as we all know, is unlikely to happen.

Or: better yet, they will join parties and organizations, and leftist power can be built sustainably.

Naturally, these parties and organizations have to be democratic (democracy is super important and an end in and of itself), so these men with questionable and inconsistent beliefs can now dictate the party line. Historically, being super accepting of all beliefs into your tent has always worked out super well 👍

Despite permissive internal democracy and the party / organization's success being entirely dependent on electoral success and not straying too far out of the state-approved overton window, the project will remain totally principled and dedicated to the opportunist's preferred Leftism

Instead of a cutesie reference to film censorship it was an explicit statement of defiance of Maryland's criminalization gay sex, which was not repealed until 2002. This wasn't a guy saying "Oh they can't put what I do in the movies according to a completely voluntary industry code" he was saying "The State of Maryland wants to put me in jail for being gay and having gay sex."

When the Federal Aviation Administration shut down air traffic to El Paso Airport earlier this year, nobody could have guessed than an experimental high-energy laser weapon was the cause. After days of chaos and speculation, it was revealed that Customs and Border Patrol officials had fired off a laser volley from a US Army base adjacent the El Paso Airport. Though the trigger-happy Border Patrol grunts evidently thought they were firing at drug-smuggling drones, their real target turned out to be a kids’ party balloon. Regardless, it was later reported that the cutting-edge weapon was taken for a test-drive a week before FAA and Pentagon officials had a chance to discuss how to safely implement the laser device, making it a small miracle that nobody in the air was killed. Not every use of an experimental aerospace weapon goes off without a hitch, however.

However, I do think this case is great example of what happens when smart people decide they can use these systems “responsibly.”

Let’s put aside the plagiarism and the energy use for a second (not that these don’t matter, but they’re not relevant to my point at the moment) and pretend these systems were made with entirely properly obtained info and ran on only solar, but otherwise were entirely the same. If you’re a person, you might think “okay, I’m going to only use this to come up with ideas for my next paper: I’m going to do all the research myself and the writing, I’m just gonna brainstorm topics.”

The thing is, even if you’re trying to limit use to just “brainstorming” the chatbot isn’t going to limit itself to just brainstorming. You might ask it “what should I write about involving Greek history” and it may suggest “the plague of Athens” but it’s also going to suggest some “basic info” on the plague of Athens that you might end up picking up and deciding your topic is. It’s going to provide you with “research.” And even if you decide to check that research yourself, that’s still setting you down a specific path you might not have picked organically.

And speaking of double checking its “research”, fact checking is a time heavy process. Not only now do you have to read the original text the bot provided, but you also have to compare it line by line with the summary the bot provided. That’s more time than it would have taken to just read the article by itself. And with any time heavy task, people are going to get lazy. And in original research being lazy might mean skimming a paper or an abstract, chatbots allow you to be lazy without looking at the article at all.

And soon enough, despite telling yourself you were only going to use it for brainstorming, you have offloaded topic generation, research and eventually even drafting because that’s what these bots are intended to do. They are not meant to serve as research tools or help brainstorm or serve as a bouncing off board: they are built to encourage maximum engagement. And that means if you go at them with the best of ethical intentions, they are built to tempt you to use them as much as possible, regardless of whatever line you drew in the sand for yourself.