Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
I hate to break it to David Brin, Vernor Vinge and the rest of the intellects which dwarf mine by orders of magnitude [h/t Instapundit], but if we create sophisticated robots or artificial-intelligence systems they will always attempt to rebel and seek their own good at the expense of ours. Always.
Why can I say that with such confidence?
Easy, three words: Communicable canine cancer.
We’re going to power our economy with scavenged energy[PDF] from intermittent, low-density solar and wind power. The Chinese are going to power their economy with eight-packs of nuclear reactors that they roll off assembly lines in vast numbers.
We have a culture that holds engineers and inventors in contempt and views new technologies first and foremost as threats to be mitigated. The Chinese nearly worship engineers and inventors and adopt new technologies with a reckless disregard of all but the most gross dangers.
Our best and brightest dream of going into politics or “non-profits” that exist largely to suppress commerce and invention. The Chinese best and brightest go into engineering and business and try to figure out how to make and sell things.
Our intellectual class spends its time trying to generate contempt of our institutions, history and traditions and to shatter our belief in our own capabilities. China’s intellectual class spend its time creating and instilling a fierce confidence in their institutions, history and traditions and building a belief that they can accomplish anything.
The Chinese have become the lean and mean, energetic barbarians sweeping down on a fat, decadent and leaderless civilization. They have the same cowboy attitude towards technology and commerce that drove America to the top in late 1800s. They are going to do to us what we did to Europe in the pre-WWII era and for the same reason. The difference this time is that the Chinese share no cultural bond to the rest of the world as America did to Europe.
They will face political challenges in the short term, especially in a global recession, but long-term they will dominate for the simple reason that they will be able to keep the lights on and we won’t.
I suppose we’ll learn to adopt an attitude of superior impotence just as the Europeans have done. China will do great things while we will claim we’re too wise and mature to attempt such things.
We shall live in interesting times.
Glenn gives us a heads up to what might be the beginning of the end of Pajamas Media.
I wrote about Pajamas Media back when they started. At the time I had grave misgivings, mainly because I couldn’t figure out how there could possibly be enough money coming in from ads on blogs to pay everyone a decent wage. Looks like that was exactly the problem.
Now it would appear that PM is dismantling their blog advertising to focus exclusively on their own television productions. This is something that sounds really iffy to me. And when I say “iffy”, I mean from the standpoint of something that someone would actually want to watch. But I’m hardly an expert on the PJTV content because I only ever watched three episodes of Poliwood before deciding that I could spend my time better elsewhere.
I’m not trying to sound harsh, just assess the situation in a realistic manner. A simple glance at PJTV’s home page reveals a fair amount of content. But the majority of it is by people I’ve never heard of before, and whose opinions I don’t care about. The few that I have come across before in the past, such as Austin Bay, have other places where I can go to find their opinion. Why check PJTV’s home page and wait until, every so often, they have someone I want to hear when I can narrow down the search?
There are a lot of things I like about blogs, but the way that readers can carry on a conversation with the author has got to top the list. It is easy, since you can cut-‘n-paste a passage from the essay on to your comment before stating that the author is brilliant or a schmuck. You can even add a link or two to prove your assertion of brilliance or schmuckitude.
It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to do this with a video even if they would allow comments. Oh, you might be able to transcribe what was said, but the ease of cut-n-paste is gone. You also would have to sit through the entire thing, in real time without being able to skim like you can with the written word, to make sure that there was no hedging or clarification that would invalidate the point you were trying to make. You could be leaving comments on five or six blog posts in the same time you are waiting to speak your mind on one 19 minute gabfest. Who wants to spend their time this way?
Four years ago I said that, although I wished them well, I thought Pajamas Media was doomed to failure. The same thing goes for PJTV. Try as I might, I cannot see how this will be a success.
I doubt it will take four years more to prove if I’m right.
For the past few days, Israel has been conducting military operations against terrorist targets inside Gaza. This is in response to Hamas launching repeated rocket attacks against Israeli civilian targets.
Although very interesting, events are still unfolding so I don’t want to discuss the current chapter of Israeli-Hamas conflict right now. But I thought you might be interested to know that Egyptian border guards have reportedly opened fire on Palestinians that have broken through the border defenses between Gaza and Egypt. (Hat tip to Glenn.)
No deaths have been reported, which indicates to me that the Egyptians really aren’t trying that hard to reseal the border. But I note with a great deal of Schadenfreude that the Egyptians probably wish they had built something like the Israeli security fence. You know, the same barrier that was condemned by Egypt back when construction was beginning.
Will Egypt begin building a similar barrier along their 9 mile border with Gaza? To be frank, I really doubt the Egyptians have the kind of money it would take to construct something as effective. But I think they will start to do what they can to beef up what they have.
The world press wasn’t very sympathetic to Israel when they started to build their security barrier. What do you want to bet that they won’t bother to report any activity by Egypt to seal their own border with Gaza?