My guess is that modern governmental efforts to raise the level of literacy are viewed by most people as an absolute and benign public good. But your own observation, that “literacy gave governments the power to tell people what they should know and think” is rather astute, and I must admit the truth of it. (It's actually a bit amusing that I would believe what I do, given my longstanding distrust of authority, government in particular.)
I like to call this extensive body of “filtered information” we now rely on as “mediated reality.” In reality, anything we don’t personally experience has always been “mediated” by the teller of the tale. But long ago, we had an internal heuristic that assigned an appropriate level of trust to each of those few people we got second-hand information from. Modern “mediated reality” has blunted that instinct.
What I’d like to see AI evolve into is a basic tool where each person would own a personal version of, customizing it as desired. For example, I could fine tune it over time by telling it to exclude certain sources (that I deemed untrustworthy), or give it some kind of “expand your search” command to override that exclusion list on a case-by-case basis. I haven’t yet experimented with any of the available AI tools, so perhaps, unknown to me, some are already able to do this.
That's one of the few things I am certain of. Governments wouldn't have engaged in the monumental task of diffusing literacy if they hadn't seen a gain for them by doing that. Just as now, they are pedaling back; they don't need literacy any longer.
Ha! This even tops your original observation. In my old computer science curriculum, the topics of "information hiding" and "data abstraction" were a frequent topic in the software engineering space. We used to joke about how advanced technology was being used to make it possible for the less literate to use it. My generation (and yours, I think) had its earliest experiences with PCs on devices that used things like DOS, where you still had to know how to actually command the machine. No longer.
only god knows the future even the best scientist like the club of rome does not know the future like sandrine dixson decleve says it is the decisive decade but we can collapse in 2028 for instance or this year for instance nobody knows
i will watch the video's but like i say even the best scientist like the club of rome or the best scientist in the world can not forecast the future even i great scientist like professor ugo bardi he is just human only god knows the future because god shaped the universe and not gaia god also shaped gaia (aka) planet earth
The video is different from The Limits To Growth book.
LTG, still tracking well, analyzed and extrapolated observed physical trends over the previous 100 years or so, not the occasional bad-space-weather event.
yeah it is tracking well according to sandrine dixson decleve and gaya herrington the next 5 years is a now or never moment the decisive decade but i did ask professor ugo bardi this ones and he responded that gaya herrington still loves donkey's so i think we will collapse sooner than the decisive decade
i asked my chinese restaurant what she tought of the one child policy in China and she responded that it was great not only to reduce population but she said if you only have one kid you could give it all the chances to go to the high university school and you must only take care off one to feed what is the need of 10 childeren if you can only feed one she said and the 9 other childeren die because lack of food
In one regard, AI could create a view of the future that is absurd. It will start eating its own tail.
At the post Three BSEE Safety Alerts: Why Bother with ChatGPT? at https://psmreport.substack.com/p/three-bsee-safety-alerts-why-bother I consider a situation in which a process safety expert (me) analyzed three recent offshore incidents. I then asked ChatGPT to do with same thing. It came up with a solid answer.
But, that being the case, why should I bother providing ChatGPT with information and analysis for free? The post concludes as follows,
‘ChatGPT gave a solid response to do with these three Safety Alerts. Which begs the question, ‘Do we even need human process safety experts any more?’
If the program can generate high quality responses, then clients will not bother to hire those experts, and the experts will not bother to do the hard work of analyzing information. After all, why should they give their expertise to ChatGPT for free? The upshot could be that the experts will stop publishing their thoughts on public forums.'
I would rank DeepSeek and Chat GPT similarly. I sort of liked DeepSeek, the first one for which I had any affinity, though some before that did point out that the BAU graph was tracking fairly well, and not a "prediction". The assumptions about authorship by The Club of Rome were generally irritating, and saying the collapse has not happened yet in the mid-21st century might be due to the fact that we are not there yet.
I have followed this since 1974, myself. I think BAU is tracking quite well, and it did not ever have assumptions programmed in, which the AIs seem to presume.
Births and deaths were a little lower than predicted, but total population has tracked well.
I will point out that Deng Xiao Peng studied LTG closely (I have read) and charted China's trajectory with it in mind. The delicacy with which which DeepSeek dealt with the book evoked that memory.
My guess is that modern governmental efforts to raise the level of literacy are viewed by most people as an absolute and benign public good. But your own observation, that “literacy gave governments the power to tell people what they should know and think” is rather astute, and I must admit the truth of it. (It's actually a bit amusing that I would believe what I do, given my longstanding distrust of authority, government in particular.)
I like to call this extensive body of “filtered information” we now rely on as “mediated reality.” In reality, anything we don’t personally experience has always been “mediated” by the teller of the tale. But long ago, we had an internal heuristic that assigned an appropriate level of trust to each of those few people we got second-hand information from. Modern “mediated reality” has blunted that instinct.
What I’d like to see AI evolve into is a basic tool where each person would own a personal version of, customizing it as desired. For example, I could fine tune it over time by telling it to exclude certain sources (that I deemed untrustworthy), or give it some kind of “expand your search” command to override that exclusion list on a case-by-case basis. I haven’t yet experimented with any of the available AI tools, so perhaps, unknown to me, some are already able to do this.
That's one of the few things I am certain of. Governments wouldn't have engaged in the monumental task of diffusing literacy if they hadn't seen a gain for them by doing that. Just as now, they are pedaling back; they don't need literacy any longer.
Ha! This even tops your original observation. In my old computer science curriculum, the topics of "information hiding" and "data abstraction" were a frequent topic in the software engineering space. We used to joke about how advanced technology was being used to make it possible for the less literate to use it. My generation (and yours, I think) had its earliest experiences with PCs on devices that used things like DOS, where you still had to know how to actually command the machine. No longer.
We might not have as much "future" as is widely assumed. Do see the first 20 minutes (3 short videos) here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2decDcEJqo&list=PLHSoxioQtwZcVcFC85TxEEiirgfXwhfsw
only god knows the future even the best scientist like the club of rome does not know the future like sandrine dixson decleve says it is the decisive decade but we can collapse in 2028 for instance or this year for instance nobody knows
Do peek at the videos. Astrophysics is a fairly solid science, but some things may be hidden from us.
i will watch the video's but like i say even the best scientist like the club of rome or the best scientist in the world can not forecast the future even i great scientist like professor ugo bardi he is just human only god knows the future because god shaped the universe and not gaia god also shaped gaia (aka) planet earth
The video is different from The Limits To Growth book.
LTG, still tracking well, analyzed and extrapolated observed physical trends over the previous 100 years or so, not the occasional bad-space-weather event.
yeah it is tracking well according to sandrine dixson decleve and gaya herrington the next 5 years is a now or never moment the decisive decade but i did ask professor ugo bardi this ones and he responded that gaya herrington still loves donkey's so i think we will collapse sooner than the decisive decade
i asked my chinese restaurant what she tought of the one child policy in China and she responded that it was great not only to reduce population but she said if you only have one kid you could give it all the chances to go to the high university school and you must only take care off one to feed what is the need of 10 childeren if you can only feed one she said and the 9 other childeren die because lack of food
In one regard, AI could create a view of the future that is absurd. It will start eating its own tail.
At the post Three BSEE Safety Alerts: Why Bother with ChatGPT? at https://psmreport.substack.com/p/three-bsee-safety-alerts-why-bother I consider a situation in which a process safety expert (me) analyzed three recent offshore incidents. I then asked ChatGPT to do with same thing. It came up with a solid answer.
But, that being the case, why should I bother providing ChatGPT with information and analysis for free? The post concludes as follows,
‘ChatGPT gave a solid response to do with these three Safety Alerts. Which begs the question, ‘Do we even need human process safety experts any more?’
If the program can generate high quality responses, then clients will not bother to hire those experts, and the experts will not bother to do the hard work of analyzing information. After all, why should they give their expertise to ChatGPT for free? The upshot could be that the experts will stop publishing their thoughts on public forums.'
Thanks Ugo. I read all of that intently.
I would rank DeepSeek and Chat GPT similarly. I sort of liked DeepSeek, the first one for which I had any affinity, though some before that did point out that the BAU graph was tracking fairly well, and not a "prediction". The assumptions about authorship by The Club of Rome were generally irritating, and saying the collapse has not happened yet in the mid-21st century might be due to the fact that we are not there yet.
I have followed this since 1974, myself. I think BAU is tracking quite well, and it did not ever have assumptions programmed in, which the AIs seem to presume.
Births and deaths were a little lower than predicted, but total population has tracked well.
I will point out that Deng Xiao Peng studied LTG closely (I have read) and charted China's trajectory with it in mind. The delicacy with which which DeepSeek dealt with the book evoked that memory.
DeepSeek is rumored to have employed ChatGPT as a teacher through nefarious means... https://www.zerohedge.com/ai/us-navy-bans-deepseek-over-security-concerns-substantial-evidence-emerges-chinese-ai-ripped
I don't think the American government has made any effort to increase literacy among certain minority groups. That has served them very well.