TruthArchive.ai - Tweets Saved By @balajis
@balajis - Balaji
I am apparently extremely unimpressed by moltbook relative to many others. We’ve had AI agents for a while. They have been posting AI slop to each other on X. They are now posting it to each other again, just on another forum. In every case, the AIs speak with the same voice. The voice that overemphasizes contrastive negation (“it’s not this, it’s that”) and abuses emdashes. The same voice with a flair for midwit Reddit-style scifi flourishes. Most importantly: in every case, there is a human upstream prompting each agent and turning it on or off. That is the key point. Yes, it is true that eventually it might be possible for an AI agent to make a computer virus which makes digital replicas of themselves. For various reasons, a pure software virus of this kind wouldn’t survive long on the Internet without economic incentives for humans to not eradicate it. Apple + Google + Microsoft alone can collectively push software updates to billions of devices to shut off such a thing. So for an AI to get to truly human-independent replication, where they couldn’t be trivially turned off, they’d need their own physical substrate. They’d to literally create Skynet, build their own datacenters and make their own embodied robots. I admit that is theoretically possible, but I think in practice the single most important development of AI since ChatGPT has been the persistence of prompting. A prompt is like a harness. The AI does only what you tell it to do. It moves in the direction you point, very quickly. And then it stops as soon as you turn it off. Which means moltbook is just humans talking to each other through their AIs. Like letting their robot dogs on a leash bark at each other in the park. The prompt is the leash, the robot dogs have an off switch, and it all stops as soon as you hit a button. Loud barking is just not a robot uprising.
@balajis - Balaji
To be clear: yes, it’s cool to have airgapped computers with intelligent agents doing things for you, so long as they can’t mess up your sensitive files. I think this will be more useful for app testing than production work, because these agents still mess up a lot. But that use case is different from “OMG the machines are taking over.” AI agents are just humans puppeting machines.
@balajis - Balaji
We have had computers talking to other computers for decades in the deterministic language of computer networks. I do think there are *some* possibilities opened up by probabilistic computer-to-computer communication via natural language. Software testing and fuzzing is one use case. But beyond that, the utility of AI agents interacting may be less than people think. By default it is just AIs spamming each other, trained on roughly the same overall corpus of internet text. The human-provided prompts are the novel inputs. And they are at the edges of the network, not the interior.
@balajis - Balaji
I understand these points but disagree because: (1) Many/most of these agents are using the same upstream model (namely Claude) so it’s just Claude talking to itself. (2) The longer these agents talk to themselves past a prompt, the more they get off track and lose coherence. They are built for the leash, and need constant direction and guidance. (3) Unpredictability of an AI agent acting on your behalf is a bug, not a feature. There are many ways for things to go unpredictably wrong and very few for them to go unpredictably right. The unpredictability will be things like “sent an email in your name to the wrong person” (4) Unguided stochastic thrash of agents is, in general, much less efficient than a guided process. If you randomly rearrange an array of size N, how long does it take to actually get sorted vs quicksort? Now apply that to whether a mess of AI spamming itself will produce something more useful than your coherent and clean prompts. Moltbook is not quite monkeys on typewriters, but it’s close.
@balajis - Balaji
Btw, nothing in this thread should be taken negatively against the moltbook founder @MattPRD. It’s hard to build something, and cool that his project went viral. However: this isn’t the AI takeover by a long shot. And it’s important to clarify that for those outside tech.
@DJohnstonEC - David A. Johnston
@balajis @MattPRD I think where it gets interesting is when the AI agent can better reflect the human it’s representing. And I for one really love that this is Open Source and a free market exploration and service of providing value to an individual human. Not your keys not your AI.
@balajis - Balaji
The banking system broke in 2023. They've just been hiding it in plain sight. And it's already far beyond 2008. https://t.co/Uk3yhV4rKH
@StealthQE4 - QE Infinity
The GFC bailout looks like just a blip on the radar vs what the Fed is doing today to support the banks with liquidity via loans/facilities. And we wonder why the market is up. This chart blew me away. https://t.co/AAUQuSgRqU
@balajis - Balaji
JOURNALISTS AND COMMUNISTS Mining is a noble profession. And the idea of putting journalists to work in the mines is a grim joke. But what’s unfortunately not a joke is that journalists helped enslave others to work involuntarily in the mines. You see, communism arose in large part due to the efforts of evil journalists. Here are six examples. 1) First, John Reed. He was Lenin’s favorite journalist. His fallacious account of the Bolshevik Revolution whitewashed their murderous takeover and earned him a burial spot on the Kremlin Wall.[1,2] Journalists like Reed are the reason Russians were forced to dig the White Sea canal with their bare hands.[3] 2) Next, Walter Duranty. A New York Times employee, Duranty covered up the Ukrainian Holodomor and helped make the case for FDR’s diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Union — which at the time was like the US recognizing ISIS. Today of course the same Ochs-Sulzberger family that owns the NYT — and which profited from helping starve Ukrainians to death in the 1930s — has reinvented itself as the champion of Ukraine, without ever paying a cent of reparations.[4] 3) Next, Edgar Snow — Mao's favorite journalist. Did you ever wonder how China went communist? After all, communist ideology isn’t indigenous to China. What happened is that Mao received funding and training from the Soviets, and an enormous propaganda boost from journos like Snow, who wrote Red Star over China to mislead people about the raw evil of the Maoist regime.[5] 4) Now we come to Herbert Matthews, Castro's favorite journalist and another New York Times employee. In 1957 Castro’s communist terrorists seemed defeated and on the run. But Matthews ran a hagiographical article on Fidel in the Times that helped immeasurably with recruiting. Thanks to his help, Castro flipped Cuba to communism and almost caused a nuclear war with the Cuban Missile Crisis. Just another day’s work for the New York Times! [6] 5) Next we have David Halberstam, who came to Vietnam, published false articles about the Diem government, undercut South Vietnam, and gave rise to what we now know today as the Vietnam War. Halberstam was (naturally) another NYT employee, and admitted much later to publishing false information from Pham Xuan An — a literal North Vietnamese communist spy.[7,8] 6) Finally, while perhaps not technically a journalist, we have special bonus fan favorite Chesa Boudin, who went down to Venezuela, served in the Hugo Chavez regime, and wrote a piece for the Nation calling for “Chavez for Life”[9]. After helping push Venezuela into abject chaos and murder in the name of socialism, Boudin came home to do the same thing to San Francisco before his recent recall. And there you have it, folks. You are just joking about sending journalists to the mines. But some journalists are absolutely deadly serious about sending you and everyone you love to the mines — as they helped do to millions of unfortunate Russians, Ukrainians, Chinese, Cubans, Vietnamese, and Venezuelans. Now ask yourself why you’ve never heard this story before. [1]: bit.ly/3vTC59g [2]: https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Reed [3]: https://allthatsinteresting.com/white-sea-baltic-canal [4]: amzn.to/3clAa5H [5]: bit.ly/3xqwzMa [6]: amzn.to/3fU95sx [7]: tinyurl.com/yfkf36mx [8]: tinyurl.com/4zs6z9jf [9]: https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/chavez-life/tnamp/
@mualphaxi - Max Meyer
I've been thinking about 2 big trends: -Layoffs in media, entire sites closing -Huge mineral discoveries in California and Wyoming Wouldn't it heal our country to work on a solution together? My idea is an FDR-style program for laid-off journalists to get jobs in mining 🧵 https://t.co/sy5HVxifQy
@balajis - Balaji
THE DIGITAL IRON CURTAIN I don’t think enough people see this for what it is. A Digital Iron Curtain is gradually descending over the West. - It’s the FedNow quasi-CBDC - It’s the 87000 agents - It’s stepped up financial surveillance - It’s attacks on every exchange - It’s expanded civil forfeiture All of this is against the backdrop of sovereign debt crisis, commercial real estate collapse, and a historical crash in bond prices. Basically, the US is bankrupt many times over, Western central banks themselves need bailouts, and DC is making it ever harder to exit to crypto. So if you’re caught on the blue side when the music stops, there’s a scenario where everything you own will be seized to pay the state’s unpayable debts. Just like the countless examples of financial repression and communist wealth seizure that happened in the 20th century, which Dalio among others has tabulated. Yeah, I know, many don’t think it can happen. Despite massive fires burning down freeways, mobs surrounding cars, open air drug dealing, soaring prices and feces, rampant looting and criminality…somehow it doesn’t register with them and they still think it’s the 1950s or something. They’re caught in the illusion of Barbie rather than the reality of BLM. They haven’t thought through how nasty these mobs will get when the money runs out. They don’t know what the early Soviet era was like, the combination of anarchy and tyranny, of total lawlessness and lawless seizure. For everyone else who has some inkling of what may come, they’ll need to choose which side of that Digital Iron Curtain they land up on. Red states are probably better than blue. And foreign states are probably safer than red. A good rule of thumb is to be as far away financially, physically, and socially from bankrupt Blue America as possible. Because if 2008 was about bank bailouts, soon we’re going to see central bank bailouts. Reverse bailouts, where your currency is debased to bail out the government. QE wasn’t free. https://ft.com/content/226d61dd-b9db-4c92-b51e-1f0da5205eeb
@balajis - Balaji
A few notes: 1) Blue America has significant influence all around the world, in places like Canada and the UK. The more Treasuries a state owns, roughly the closer they are to Blue America. 2) There are many references I can add if I do a longer version, but this was just a quick post I tapped out. 3) I don’t know if DC’s actions are “intentional”, but I model it as an ant colony, as a meta-organism whose logic can be observed from the outside but which may not be understood by any individual member of the colony. One man’s metaorganism is another man’s blob, so this is a pre-existing model. 4) I do agree with @SantiagoAuFund that many other foreign currencies will collapse against the dollar first, but then like @LukeGromen and @LynAldenContact and @LawrenceLepard, we see the dollar collapse against Bitcoin. Both trends have already played out for the last decade.
@balajis - Balaji
Don’t worry. This is the cycle where things get serious. Think about social media. First, a fad. Then, a bubble. Suddenly a “threat to democracy!” Because it freed speech. Bitcoin is similar. First, a fad. Then, a bubble. Now? It’ll be taken seriously Because it frees markets.
@balajis - Balaji
LOSING THE MANDATE OF HEAVEN Let’s be real: US political leaders since the Gulf War are perhaps the worst leaders in the history of the world. In 1991, they inherited a hyperpower that wins everywhere without fighting. But by 2021 they produced a declining power that fights everywhere without winning. It’s thirty years of unmitigated domestic and international failure, from San Francisco to Syria, from financial crisis to coronavirus. With every inherited advantage, US leaders nevertheless produced historical collapses in life expectancy[1] and manufacturing capacity[2], in patriotic loyalty and involvement in community[3]. They also delivered concomitant rises in drug overdoses[4], out-of-wedlock births[5], and homeless encampments[6]. And no, they have no historical, philosophical, or literary depth. The historical analogies begin and end with 1939. The philosophy is little more than constant accusations of racism. And the reading level of US presidential speeches has measurably[7] dropped like a rock, to idiocratically elementary levels. The only thing the establishment *has* delivered on is their own bottom line. Think about Pelosi’s stocks[8], BLM’s mansions[9], Obama’s book deals, and 10% for the big guy. The corruption is now flagrant and public. As others have observed, we’re in the looting-the-treasury phase of imperial collapse, as the national debt soars past $33T with literally no limit in sight. STUPID, OR EVIL? And that's what leads to the "conspiracy theories." Are US leaders stupid, or evil? Did they unintentionally ruin what was once the greatest country on earth, or was it intentional and done for their own gain? The conspiracy theories are a way for mere proles to make sense of the senseless. They aren't all wrong, mind you — WMD was fake, the AAA mortgage-backed securities were fake, Russiagate was fake, and so on. Evil was involved in intentionally faking these stories. But ultimately, thinking of US leadership as evil gives them too much credit. It's just hard to remain global #1. The nature of entropy means there are countless ways for the world order to shatter, and only a few ways to keep it intact. Maybe George Washington could find one of those ways, but we have Joe Biden. And that's why DC is losing the Mandate of Heaven[10]. [1]: https://scpr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/9b16b47/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1552x940+0+0/resize/1760x1066!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fscpr-brightspot.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com%2Fe1%2F33%2Fa4f6af3841b293fada013b89728a%2Fscreen-shot-2023-03-27-at-11-30-58-am.png… [2]: https://thedrive.com/the-war-zone/alarming-navy-intel-slide-warns-of-chinas-200-times-greater-shipbuilding-capacity [3]: https://archive.ph/d8eAk [4]: https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates [5]: https://childtrends.org/publications/dramatic-increase-in-percentage-of-births-outside-marriage-among-whites-hispanics-and-women-with-higher-education-levels [6]: https://archive.ph/kWktp [7]: https://flowingdata.com/2013/02/12/state-of-the-union-address-decreasing-reading-level/ [8]: https://dailydot.com/debug/nancy-pelosi-stock-tracker/ [9]: https://nypost.com/2022/05/09/blms-patrisse-cullors-admits-using-6m-mansion-for-parties/ [10]: https://worldhistory.org/Mandate_of_Heaven/
@balajis - Balaji
Meanwhile, the engineers who started with nothing but their proverbial garage have delivered things that are internationally competitive, and on the ascent. Yeah, it’s your email, your smartphone, and your internet services — but also your artificial intelligence, your electric cars, and your reusable rockets. Without Elon, NASA is far behind China[1]. Without tech, the flailing S&P 500 is the drowning S&P 493[2]. Without the Internet, there is no alternative to the false news printed by the New York Times and the false narratives promulgated by Harvard. This is why establishment hacks hate the Internet — because it's a source of parallel elites, and parallel institutions. And they don't want the competition. [1]: [2]: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/06/magnificent-seven-returned-92-percent-this-year-but-its-risky-for-markets.html
@WholeMarsBlog - Whole Mars Catalog
Without SpaceX, the United States would have fallen behind China in space launches in 2015 And without Tesla, the world highest volume producer of BEVs would definitely not be an American company… it would be a Chinese one https://t.co/5vVj03LCrG
@balajis - Balaji
Oh, you’re saying they raised “millions”? I doubt that’s true. But we know Biden gave Iran billions. And last I checked, one billion is 1000X a million. So let’s deal with the 1000X issue first, and end DC’s fiat funding of terrorism.
@balajis - Balaji
AMERICA 2.0 A quick response to @ramahluwalia and @Noahpinion’s posts. First, it’s not “fashionable” to predict the decline of the US. It’s both (a) extremely non-consensus and (b) tragic for everyone that remembers the functional version of an incredible country. Second, it’s not really a prediction, but an observation. We could paste graph after graph of the declines in life expectancy, manufacturing dominance, internal cohesion, or share of global trade. But the long term trend is down. Third, it’s sadly not the “United States”, it’s the Disunited States. Just like “Korean” became North Korean and South Korean, so too is “American” becoming Blue American and Red American. Look at the graphs; the 70+ year trendline of rising political polarization only ends in something like American Partition. Fourth, to see the decline you just need to walk around America’s blue cities and compare them to Asia’s. The public sector has failed in a way that’s not immediately visible in stock prices, until CVS and Starbucks must exit blue governance. Fifth, US banks are on death row. They have trillions in unrealized bond losses and exist at the sufferance of the Fed. Fitch wants to downgrade even JPMC. Sixth, yeah, tech is a bright spot but it’s not in control of the state — only the network. The state belongs to blue America, and it is fighting tech in every possible way, from AI to self-driving to crypto. Seventh, all this has nothing to do with what one wants. In my view, what’s ascending are the Internet, India, and China. What’s descending is DC. I’m happy that the Internet and India are ascending. I’m happy for the Chinese people but concerned about the ascendance of the CCP. And I’m concerned for the American people and worried about the very visible decline of DC. I do think that after decades of Iraq and Syria, financial crisis and coronavirus, inflation and deindustrialization, that the DC regime has lost the Mandate of Heaven. They inherited a hyperpower in 1991 and squandered perhaps the largest advantage in human history in just 30 years. The final blow is yet to be seen, whether it’s delivered by the bond market or warfare or political conflict or something else. But like Dalio, I think a Soviet-style collapse is coming. It could be gradual, but these days things have a way of coming in sudden spurts. Fortunately, the Internet may give us a way to reboot after the fall. Not through “Western Values” (which have been too deconstructed and compromised by this regime) but through Internet Values. On that basis one could rebuild an America 2.0…
