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SHOW NOTES

We talk about the history of AI by drawing out the often very explicit millenarianism that undergirds so much of this technology and its culture over the last 70 years. This strange brew of Eschatological Evangelism and Technological Theology has sustained a cultish faith in AI’s ability to bring about a New Age.

••• Making God | Emily Gorcenski https://emilygorcenski.com/post/making-god/

••• The Taming of Tech Criticism | Evgeny Morozov https://thebaffler.com/salvos/taming-tech-criticism

https://www.reddit.com/r/BlackWolfFeed/comments/18dfyc6/789_eack_feat_liz_franczak_12723_70_mins/

Part 1
Part 2

Get yr fill of doomerism/failed state slop Also, starts with an extremely frank discussion of the Gazan humanitarian crisis that seems almost unconscionable to hear from a "mainstream" media outlet.

I mean, I understand the need for a more darker, serious et professional tone, so to speak, in Season 2 and Season 3 (Since it's the history of Cuba et DPRK that we're talking about, who've been terrorized by the U.S.A)

But that makes me all the more excited just wondering what's to come when listening to them talk about Afghanistan in Season 4, since I'm wondering if they'll talk about it in a more lighter or darker tone...

SHOW NOTES

With the dust settling, we can take a broader view of the whole OpenAI debacle, what likely caused an internal culture war to boil over into a corporate coup, how OpenAI’s convoluted governance structure made a lot of people ignore the obvious power at play, and what this all means in a bigger sense for the ongoing development of AI.

••• OpenAI and the rift at the heart of Silicon Valley https://www.ft.com/content/a6505db4-c8d4-44c1-a030-502b364ed370

••• OpenAI’s board had safety concerns. Big Tech obliterated them in 48 hours https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2023-11-20/column-openais-board-had-safety-concerns-big-tech-obliterated-them-in-48-hours

We were going to make a serious and informative episode about what you should look for when buying a used car, but instead we goofed off and dared each other to buy shitty unreliable cars for $5,000. We did sprinkle in some practical advice here and there, or at least you might learn what not to do from our bad decisions.

Alex will be back for a Part 2 soon, where we'll discuss practical, economical, and boring cars that you should buy if you're smarter than us.

Main topic at 1:09:14

Email us with tips, stories, and unhinged rants: carsandcomrades@gmail.com //

Our social media links etc: www.linktr.ee/CarsAndComrades //

Music by King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard: www.kinggizzardandthelizardwizard.com/polygondwanaland //

Links/Sources:

Alex's pictures of puppers and Porsches: https://www.instagram.com/for_the__animals/ //

Turbo a stock Honda Insight: https://youtu.be/kEV4KAnSjGg?si=mUIPjDOnugc1qfo3 //

Mini Cooper with a WRX engine and drivetrain: https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/build-projects-and-project-cars/introducing-colin-a-mini-ature-wrx/191397/page1/ //

Screenshots of Car Ads: https://ibb.co/album/GH67qq //

Links to Car Ads:

https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/709375080526846/ //

https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/1361196731420176/ //

https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/259269456582745/ //

https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/220081444409667/ //

The rest of the ads have been taken down by now 😢

Follow me to the Himalayas as I try to answer Wendy Paintings questions about inter-dimensional Big Foot. I will make an attempt at revealing how the British Operation Phoenix precursor was responsible for one of the most sold anti-communist book in history and how they spiked it with Yeti mythology. I will then try to link it with that bogeyman which have been haunting me all autumn. That's right more Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels insanities as I read to you from his Theozoology.

After that there will be some free wheeling as I answer Fergal from The Kingless Generation and contemplate on my daily and not so daily life in Japan.

part 1 here https://www.podbean.com/media/share/dir-tsyrp-1b72f25a

Hello and Welcome to the first QnA. I have received a fair share of interesting recordings and written questions which I will my very best to answer. This will become at least three episodes in total. I answer some hosts from other shows that I have visited, old time supporters and guests. Everything from personal questions and the possible childhood damage that led to this show, the real shit of Nordic Noir film-tips, the research of Stieg Larsson, Freud and The Uncanny in 18th century horror short stories and what the Sandman might teach us about Capitalism. Anti-Soviet appropriation of the Abominable Snowman Yeti and the possibility of a Lemur Big Foot. The demonology of landlords during the European peasant rebellions. Bodhisattva-Maoism in Nepal, why the repressed is returning and of course whether Hitler is dead or not. This and much more, so please take a stroll in the autumn landscape while I try and brighten up your weekend!

Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation (1976) by Joseph Weizenbaum displays the author's ambivalence towards computer technology and lays out the case that while artificial intelligence may be possible, we should never allow computers to make important decisions because computers will always lack human qualities such as compassion and wisdom.

Weizenbaum makes the crucial distinction between deciding and choosing. Deciding is a computational activity, something that can ultimately be programmed. It is the capacity to choose that ultimately makes one a human being. Choice, however, is the product of judgment, not calculation. Comprehensive human judgment is able to include non-mathematical factors such as emotions. Judgment can compare apples and oranges, and can do so without quantifying each fruit type and then reductively quantifying each to factors necessary for mathematical comparison.

Part 2 here

SHOW NOTES

We finish our run through Ivan’s parents’ adventures, including their support for Kenyan Mao Mao revolutionaries and participation in the American-sponsored “Kenyan airlift” that also produced Barack Obama Sr, supporting Greek, Turkish, and Mexican communists in their way, but for one reason or another being unable to stop their son Ivan from becoming the essentially conservative creature of the British establishment that he became, really quite naturally given the course that they had consistently set him on: elite boarding school, Harvard—and then came Hiroshima...

part 3 was paywalled

https://podbay.fm/p/the-kingless-generation/e/1700192062

Ivan Morris, Weeb Superspy 3: in the shadow of HUAC [PREVIEW]

SHOW NOTES

We follow Ivan’s parents, the peripatetic idle rich leftist novelist/journalists Ira and Edita Morris, from their wartime career “writing” in Haiti on the eve of the coup that brought the progressive President Estimé to power, then making “democratic” anti-fascist propaganda for the American Office of War Information and the Voice of America while moving in Brecht’s circle including the Eisler siblings, whose persecution by the House Un-American Activities Committee led the brothers to flee to Europe and the sister, Ruth Fischer, to turn anti-communist professor at Harvard. In this context, Edita leaves behind a most puzzling letter to a member of the Eisler family, talking mysteriously about “the step which I have taken”..._**

In this 14th installment of Matt’s (increasingly un-) Inebriated Past series, we begin what should be a 4 part look at the Spanish Civil War. In this installment, Matt guides from through the decaying Spanish Empire of the 19th century, through the social classes of village and city, the attempts for liberal reform in the early 20th century, the roots of Spanish anarchism and socialism, and finally the establishment of the 2nd Spanish Republic setting the stage for apocalyptic conflict.

Special thanks to Travis from the (great) band Activity for the Spanish Bombs cover that anchors this ep. Check out their latest release here: https://activity.bandcamp.com/album/spirit-in-the-room

I'm just happy to hear Matt's voice

Good episode and apparently interesting book discussed

Incidental thoughts:

When you search for a word, you don't have a map of statistical likelihood of the word appearing, you start from the concept/shape of what you want to say.

Nice thought about "you wouldn't let dolphin be a judge, despite them being intelligent"

Why won't ai believers relay all their life to chatgpt and stop fearing death? You have immortalized yourself allegedly then.

Also interesting thought about godel incompleteness applying between matrix operation and natural neural networks