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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year

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The Collective Intelligence Institute

History is written by the winners, which is why Luddite is a slur meaning “technophobe” and not a badge of honor meaning, “Person who goes beyond asking what technology does, to asking who it does it for and who it does it to.”

https://locusmag.com/2022/01/cory-doctorow-science-fiction-is-a-luddite-literature/

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/07/full-stack-luddites/#subsidiarity

Luddites weren’t anti-machine activists, they were pro-worker advocates, who believed that the spoils of automation shouldn’t automatically be allocated to the bosses who skimmed the profits from their labor and spent them on machines that put them out of a job. There is no empirical right answer about who should benefit from automation, only social contestation, which includes all the things that desperate people whose access to food, shelter and comfort are threatened might do, such as smashing looms and torching factories.

The question of who should benefit from automation is always urgent, and it’s also always up for grabs. Automation can deepen and reinforce unfair arrangements, or it can upend them. No one came off a mountain with two stone tablets reading “Thy machines shall condemn labor to the scrapheap of the history while capital amasses more wealth and power.” We get to choose.

Capital’s greatest weapon in this battle is inevitabilism, sometimes called “capitalist realism,” summed up with Frederic Jameson’s famous quote “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism” (often misattributed to Žižek). A simpler formulation can be found in the doctrine of Margaret Thatcher: “There Is No Alternative,” or even Dante’s “Abandon hope all ye who enter here.”

Hope — alternatives — lies in reviving our structural imagination, thinking through other ways of managing our collective future. Last May, Wired published a brilliant article that did just that, by Divya Siddarth, Danielle Allen and E. Glen Weyl:

https://www.wired.com/story/web3-blockchain-decentralization-governance/

That article, “The Web3 Decentralization Debate Is Focused on the Wrong Question,” set forth a taxonomy of decentralization, exploring ways that power could be distributed, checked, and shared. It went beyond blockchains and hyperspeculative, Ponzi-prone “mechanism design,” prompting me to subtitle my analysis “Not all who decentralize are bros”:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/12/crypto-means-cryptography/#p2p-rides-again

That article was just one installment in a long, ongoing project by the authors. Now, Siddarth has teamed up with Saffron Huang to launch the Collective Intelligence project, “an incubator for new governance models for transformative technology.”

https://cip.org/whitepaper

The Collective Intelligence Project’s research focus is “collective intelligence capabilities: decision-making technologies, processes, and institutions that expand a group’s capacity to construct and cooperate towards shared goals.” That is, asking more than how automation works, but who it should work for.

Collective Intelligence institutions include “markets…nation-state democracy…global governance institutions and transnational corporations, standards-setting organizations and judicial courts, the decision structures of universities, startups, and nonprofits.” All of these institutions let two or more people collaborate, which is to say, it lets us do superhuman things — things that transcend the limitations of the lone individual.

Our institutions are failing us. Confidence in democracy is in decline, and democratic states have failed to coordinate to solve urgent crises, like the climate emergency. Markets are also failing us, “flatten[ing] complex values in favor of over-optimizing for cost, profit, or share price.”

Neither traditional voting systems nor speculative markets are up to the task of steering our emerging, transformative technologies — neither machine learning, nor bioengineering, nor labor automation. Hence the mission of CIP: “Humans created our current CI systems to help achieve collective goals. We can remake them.”

The plan to do this is in two phases:

Value elicitation: “ways to develop scalable processes for surfacing and combining group beliefs, goals, values, and preferences.” Think of tools like Pol.is, which Taiwan uses to identify ideas that have the broadest consensus, not just the most active engagement.

Remake technology institutions: “technology development beyond the existing options of non-profit, VC-funded startup, or academic project.” Practically, that’s developing tools and models for “decentralized governance and metagovernance, internet standards-setting,” and consortia.

The founders pose this as a solution to “The Transformative Technology Trilemma” — that is, the supposed need to trade off between participation, progress and safety.

This trilemma usually yields one of three unsatisfactory outcomes:

Capitalist Acceleration: “Sacrificing safety for progress while maintaining basic participation.” Think of private-sector geoengineering, CRISPR experimentation, or deployment of machine learning tools. AKA “bro shit.”

Authoritarian Technocracy: “Sacrificing participation for progress while maintaining basic safety.” Think of the vulnerable world hypothesis weirdos who advocate for universal, total surveillance to prevent “runaway AI,” or, of course, the Chinese technocratic system.

Shared Stagnation: “Sacrificing progress for participation while maintaining basic safety.” A drive for local control above transnational coordination, unwarranted skepticism of useful technologies (AKA “What the Luddites are unfairly accused of”).

The Institute’s goal is to chart a fourth path, which seeks out the best parts of all three outcomes, while leaving behind their flaws. This includes deliberative democracy tools like sortition and assemblies, backed by transparent machine learning tools that help surface broadly held views from within a community, not just the views held by the loudest participants.

This dovetails into creating new tech development institutions to replace the default, venture-backed startup for “societally-consequential, infrastructural projects,” including public benefit companies, focused research organizations, perpetual purpose trusts, co-ops, etc.

It’s a view I find compelling, personally, enough so that I have joined the organization as a volunteer advisor.

This vision resembles the watershed groups in Ruthanna Emrys’s spectacular “Half-Built Garden,” which was one of the most inspiring novels I read last year (a far better source of stfnal inspo than the technocratic fantasies of the “Golden Age”):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/26/aislands/#dead-ringers

And it revives the long-dormant, utterly necessary spirit of the Luddites, which you can learn a lot more about in Brian Merchant’s forthcoming, magesterial “Blood In the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech”:

https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/brian-merchant/blood-in-the-machine/9780316487740/

This week (Feb 8–17), I’ll be in Australia, touring my book Chokepoint Capitalism with my co-author, Rebecca Giblin. We’ll be in Brisbane tomorrow (Feb 8), and then we’re doing a remote event for NZ on Feb 9. Next are Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra. I hope to see you!

[Image ID: An old Ace Double paperback. The cover illustration has been replaced with an 18th century illustration depicting a giant Ned Ludd leading an army of Luddites who have just torched a factory. The cover text reads: 'The Luddites. Smashing looms was their tactic, not their goal.']

#pluralistic #ai #artificial intelligence #b-corps #collective intelligence #full-stack luddism #full-stack luddites #governance #luddism #ml #sortition #subsidiarity

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karmesean · 7 months

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So when does mango adopt cho and sec in your au? This man is just gonna be collecting children lol. I love your au sm <3

ty violet!!! <3 and heheh um

later

.

i mean. he would sure love to adopt them asap.

EDIT: I FORGOT A PAGE ITS NO T HING HUGE BUT OH MY GOD

next runaway au post

previous runaway au post

first runaway au post

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opens-up-4-nobody · 4 months

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Based on yugioh, can you draw Joey Wheeler as a full grown man please? You can design how he looks and what job hed have

Not a dramatic change but I think he would be a good e-clown so he'd probably be a streamer

#sorry i fucked up the colors #sponsored by kaiba corp. mostly bc of a fic i read in high school that was really good but also traumatized me lol #it was too real and too sad. but i guess he could also b an e-sports dualist. or both #jounouchi katsuya #joey wheeler #ygo #yugioh

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lonestarflight · 2 months

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Boeing Y1B-17 Flying Fortress flying near Mt Ranier, Washington.

From the Paul Fedelchak Collection.

Date: February 28, 1938

San Diego Air and Space Museum Archive: link, link

#Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress #Boeing B-17 #B-17 Flying Fortress #B-17 #Flying Fortress #Bomber #Y1B-17 #Mt Ranier #Washington #United States Army Air Corps #U.S. Army Air Corps #US Army Air Corps #Army Air Corps #Air Corps #USAAC #February #1938 #my post

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deadpresidents · 24 days

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"If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: 'President Can't Swim.'"

-- President Lyndon B. Johnson, on the cynical media coverage that he believed he and his Administration often received, particularly when compared to the coverage of his predecessor, John F. Kennedy.

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hijackmac · 2 months

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GOOD MORNING!!!! (night) GOOD THURSDAY!!! (friday) I KNOW I'M ABIT LATE BUT IN DISCORD SERVER TERMS I'M NOT. FOR JOSE THURSDAY.

I went ahead and had some fun doodling him during classes / making cognition filter doodles of him with alt. confirmed outfits for AF this year.. etc.. you can theorize abit on the 2nd batch if you'd like too! 🙏

I'M GONNA TRY AND. GET TO SOME OF MY REQUESTS SOON. BWAH.

#lobotomy corp oc #project moon oc #doodlesthatincludejose #lobcorp oc #lobotomy corporation #body horror cw #blood cw #? Technically??? B&W BLOOD THOUGH SO BWAAHH #At the same time this is literally the project moon fandom... blood everywhere...

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ifelllikeastar · 1 year

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Captain Colin Kelly was a World War II B-17 Flying Fortress pilot who flew bombing runs against the Japanese navy in the first days after the Pearl Harbor attack. He is remembered as one of the first American heroes of the war after ordering his crew to bail out while he remained at the bomber's controls trying to keep the plane in the air before it exploded, killing him. His was the first American B-17 to be shot down in combat.

* Kelly was with the 14th Bombardment Squadron, 19th Bombardment Group, United States Army Air Corps

Colin Purdie Kelly Jr. died December 10, 1941 at the age of 26.

#love #wwii #vintage #pearl harbor #B-17 #united states #army air corps #west point #respect #remembrance #flying fortress #colin kelly #hero #1940s #florida #philippines #december

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tinydragondreamer · 1 year

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i. spent way more time on this shitty mspaint doodle comic than i should've

Lobotomy corporation is a great game that dares to ask the question:

"What if you were stuck in a time loop mostly controlled by an idiot?"

in case you can't read my horrible handwriting:

[X: Alright! Time for another day to begin! Hope nothing goes horribly wrong! tee hee~

X: Alright let's see then... Hold on!

X: Dang it, I forgot to equip my new EGO gear!

X: Welp, guess I gotta invoke the Time Loop. (RETRY DAY!)]

#lobotomy corporation #lobotomy corp spoilers #????is the time loop thing a spoiler???#mm i dunno i'll tag it just to be safe #anyways I understand why Angela is Like That in LoR.#B: your AI is untrustworthy!!!!#me: i mean i am too #but for an entirely different reason

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samanddean76 · 1 month

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by SamandDean76

I’ll Show You Heaven If You Let Me | Mature | 11.3k words (Mafia AU)

Omega Dean Winchester just wanted to take out his recycling in peace. But he finds a mystery Alpha unconscious on the ground, stashed behind the bins. Dean gets him inside, but then work calls. Once Dean returns home, he finds that the mystery Alpha Castiel is recovered, and he's waiting to claim the Omega that saved him.

The only problem? They're on opposite sides of the law. Now Dean has to risk all to earn back his freedom. But will he lose his true mate along the way?

Entirely Unacceptable | Mature | 10.7k words (Royalty AU)

Alpha Castiel has unexpectedly acquired a very well-trained Omega Dean when he escorted his brother Gabriel to a public auction house. But the Omega he brought home harbors not only secrets, but enemies as well. Will they survive long enough to reach their happy ending? And can they really be true mates if neither is sure that they even believe in such a thing?

Love, rescue, and some revenge in a modern day A/B/O setting.

Alpha Seeking Omega | Mature | 66.6k words (Dystopian AU)

Omega Dean has lived a harsh life prior to being selected to be a demonstration model at a party unveiling the latest product that Morningstar Enterprises is set to produce. Alphas Castiel and Jimmy Novak are guests of honor at the event, but when they lay eyes on the Omega that is clearly at the center of something that was not a part of the party, the twins leap into action. Unfortunately, they are separated. Now Jimmy must keep Dean safe until Castiel can be rescued.

But the more that Jimmy learns about this very well-trained Omega, the more he questions what was really going on that night. The problem is will he be able to figure out the puzzle and still rescue his brother?

Letting Fate Decide | Mature | 14.6k words (A/B/O AU)

Castiel is a new Omega in the big city. He meets the Alpha for him in the form of a fry-cook named Dean Winchester. But a military commander pulls Dean in for a mission and as Castiel waits he is taken by Lucifer to be added to one of his many Omega brothels. There he meets an Omega named Gabriel who helps him to survive. Little does he know that Gabriel is longing to be reunited with his one true Alpha, Sam Winchester.

The Spirited Sprite | Explicit | 8.1k words (Fantasy AU)

Alpha Castiel is the destined true mate of Sprite Dean. But an ancient curse and an unjust punishment threatened to keep them apart. As Dean heals Castiel, will the secret Dean keeps hidden lead to their happy ending, or their being torn apart once more?

How To Accidentally Create Soulmates | General | 2k words (Just Fun AU)

Gabriel was given a brand-new and very important responsibility by Chuck. To oversee the soul nurseries in heaven. Well, Gabriel delegated this boring task to Castiel.

I mean, what's the worst that could happen?

To Know Him Is To Love Him | Explicit | 6.5k words (Hunter Corp AU)

John Winchester is very concerned. On what should be one of the happiest days of his life, the wedding of his oldest child Dean to the absolute love of his life Castiel, both grooms and Sam are missing. John calls upon Gabriel, a Supernatural Consultant for Hunter Corp, and then sets out to find the missing men. Just hoping that he’s not too late to walk his son down the aisle.

A Valentine’s Day adventure with a little peril, a lot of love, and quite the happy ending!

Well, I Never Been To Heaven | Mature | 23,654 words (Season 4 AU)

Dean Winchester is living a plain, ordinary, and boring life. Until one day a new student shows up in the little town of Spain, SD. It’s love at first sight, but then an unimaginable tragedy happens, and Dean is left alone in his misery. Or is he a student attending Oxford University on a full athletic scholarship who finds a familiar face in his coxswain? Or is he hiking in the desert and attempting to save a known stranger? Or is he a traveler who stops for the night at a cheap motel and finds the pizza man of his dreams? Or is he none of those things? Just an unwitting victim of fate and destiny?

Castiel had led the assault on hell, in order to save the righteous man and prevent the first seal of the apocalypse from being broken, lest hell should be allowed to reign on earth. In the aftermath of his disastrous mission, he is being held captive by Alastair, and his image is being used in a final, determined attempt to break Dean.

But the profound bond that Castiel feels towards the pure soul won’t allow him to go down without a fight, and he makes a desperate prayer to his very old friend to set in motion a chain of events that might save him and his beloved mortal, or possibly, doom them for all eternity.

More coming soon…

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cloverpatches · 11 months

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A green-eyed stranger.

#lobotomy corporation #lc benjamin #lobotomy corporation benjamin #lc b #lobotomy corp spoilers

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fortunaestalta · 3 months

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#artists on tumblr #ai artwork #tried to take old B&W photo to color #my father #Army-Air Corp #end of WWII #actually stationed at Area 51 #denied knowing anything

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carbone14 · 1 year

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Vue aérienne d'un bombardier lourd Douglas B-18 Bolo – Mi 1930's

#Avant-guerre #Pre-war #Armée de l'Air américaine #United States Army Air Corps #USAAC #Aviation militaire #Military aviation #Bombardier #Bomber #Bombardier lourd #Heavy Bomber #Douglas B-18 Bolo #Douglas B-18 #B-18 #Bolo #1930's

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lonestarflight · 9 months

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"Consolidated B-24 Liberator, 15th Air Force, flies over smoke from bombs that struck at an enemy gun positions in the Sete area of Southern France."

Date: August 12, 1944.

NARA: 204897962

#Consolidated B-24 Liberator #B-24 #bomber #World War II #World War 2 #WWII #WW2 #WWII History #History #August #1944 #United States Army Air Corps #US Army Air Corps #Army Air Corps #Air Corps #USAAC #my post

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victusinveritas · 6 months

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1942 diagram illustrating the amount of firepower a formation of four B-17 Flying Fortresses could bring to bear on intercepting fighters from various angles.

#air war #wwii #army air corps #b 17 flying fortress #pew pew

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wormboyfriendcentralstation · 6 months

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sinclair and hong lu are so different in regards to combat because sinclair is from the kind of rich family where he didn't see a ton of combat and he's still shocked by it but hong lu is from the kind of rich family where if you told him that someone tried to wipe out both parents and his siblings in one night, he'd. assume his second cousin gave it a go for tax purposes.

#limbus company #like sure hong lu's old money he is ALSO old money From The City #his family are probably up there with people bidding on the ring's shit from the comic #so #game theory #his egoshard is literally his eye #my MONEY is on connections with the eye/b corp #he heavily references going wherever his grandma tells him to in alt ids and his eye literally flashes like a quote unquote camera

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thepastisalreadywritten · 9 months

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On 6 August 1945, during World War II (1939-45), an American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

The explosion immediately killed an estimated 80,000 people; tens of thousands more would later die of radiation exposure.

Three days later, a second B-29 dropped another A-bomb on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people.

Japan’s Emperor Hirohito announced his country’s unconditional surrender in World War II in a radio address on August 15, citing the devastating power of “a new and most cruel bomb.”

The Manhattan Project

Even before the outbreak of war in 1939, a group of American scientists — many of them refugees from fascist regimes in Europe — became concerned with nuclear weapons research being conducted in Nazi Germany.

In 1940, the U.S. government began funding its own atomic weapons development program, which came under the joint responsibility of the Office of Scientific Research and Development and the War Department after the U.S. entry into World War II.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was tasked with spearheading the construction of the vast facilities necessary for the top-secret program, codenamed “The Manhattan Project” (for the engineering corps’ Manhattan district).

Over the next several years, the program’s scientists worked on producing the key materials for nuclear fission — uranium-235 and plutonium (Pu-239).

They sent them to Los Alamos, New Mexico, where a team led by J. Robert Oppenheimer worked to turn these materials into a workable atomic bomb.

Early on the morning of 16 July 1945, the Manhattan Project held its first successful test of an atomic device — a plutonium bomb — at the Trinity test site at Alamogordo, New Mexico.

No Surrender for the Japanese

By the time of the Trinity test, the Allied powers had already defeated Germany in Europe.

Japan, however, vowed to fight to the bitter end in the Pacific, despite clear indications (as early as 1944) that they had little chance of winning.

In fact, between mid-April 1945 (when President Harry Truman took office) and mid-July, Japanese forces inflicted Allied casualties totaling nearly half those suffered in three full years of war in the Pacific, proving that Japan had become even more deadly when faced with defeat.

In late July, Japan’s militarist government rejected the Allied demand for surrender put forth in the Potsdam Declaration, which threatened the Japanese with “prompt and utter destruction” if they refused.

General Douglas MacArthur and other top military commanders favored continuing the conventional bombing of Japan already in effect and following up with a massive invasion, codenamed “Operation Downfall.”

They advised Truman that such an invasion would result in U.S. casualties of up to 1 million.

In order to avoid such a high casualty rate, Truman decided – over the moral reservations of Secretary of War Henry Stimson, General Dwight Eisenhower and a number of the Manhattan Project scientists – to use the atomic bomb in the hopes of bringing the war to a quick end.

Proponents of the A-bomb — such as James Byrnes, Truman’s secretary of state — believed that its devastating power would not only end the war but also put the U.S. in a dominant position to determine the course of the postwar world.

'Little Boy' and 'Fat Man' Are Dropped

Hiroshima, a manufacturing center of some 350,000 people located about 500 miles from Tokyo, was selected as the first target.

After arriving at the U.S. base on the Pacific island of Tinian, the more than 9,000-pound uranium-235 bomb was loaded aboard a modified B-29 bomber christened Enola Gay (after the mother of its pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets).

The plane dropped the bomb — known as “Little Boy” — by parachute at 8:15 in the morning.

It exploded 2,000 feet above Hiroshima in a blast equal to 12-15,000 tons of TNT, destroying five square miles of the city.

Hiroshima’s devastation failed to elicit immediate Japanese surrender, however, and on August 9, Major Charles Sweeney flew another B-29 bomber, Bockscar, from Tinian.

Thick clouds over the primary target, the city of Kokura, drove Sweeney to a secondary target, Nagasaki, where the plutonium bomb “Fat Man” was dropped at 11:02 that morning.

More powerful than the one used at Hiroshima, the bomb weighed nearly 10,000 pounds and was built to produce a 22-kiloton blast.

The topography of Nagasaki, which was nestled in narrow valleys between mountains, reduced the bomb’s effect, limiting the destruction to 2.6 square miles.

Aftermath of the Bombing

At noon on 15 August 1945 (Japanese time), Emperor Hirohito announced his country’s surrender in a radio broadcast.

The news spread quickly.

“Victory in Japan” or “V-J Day” celebrations broke out across the United States and other Allied nations.

The formal surrender agreement was signed on September 2, aboard the U.S. battleship Missouri, anchored in Tokyo Bay.

Because of the extent of the devastation and chaos — including the fact that much of the two cities' infrastructure was wiped out — exact death tolls from the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain unknown.

However, it's estimated roughly 70,000 to 135,000 people died in Hiroshima and 60,000 to 80,000 people died in Nagasaki, both from acute exposure to the blasts and from long-term side effects of radiation.

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