50% of people are going to be dumber than average because in normal distributions the mean is the median. The “general population” is not smart by any definition.

What if “smart” begins at the 35th percentile, rather than the 50th? What if “gifted” is anything above the 50th percentile?

The scenario you describe actually demonstrates my point. Where anonymity is “illegal”, the only entity you can trust to protect your privacy is you.

That fact does not change when anonymity is “legal”. That fact does not change even when anonymity is mandated. Even if it is a criminal act for me to make a record of who is accessing my service, that is only a legal restriction. It is not a technical restriction. You can’t know whether I am abiding by such a law at the time you are accessing my service. A law mandating anonymity doesn’t actually protect your anonymity; it just gives you the illusion that your anonymity is being protected.

The relevant difference between your scenario and reality is that in your scenario, nobody is blatantly lying about whether your privacy is under attack: it most certainly is.

The inherent flaw is thinking that “privacy” is something that the courts are capable of providing. They aren’t. The most that government/courts could possibly do is make it illegal to generally and indiscriminately retain IP address records. But that only protects you from law-abiding privacy invaders; it does nothing to protect you from criminals who would use that information nefariously.

When you take adequate and appropriate steps to secure your privacy, it doesn’t actually matter what the courts have to say about “privacy”.

You’re keeping the people willing to make sacrifices to keep their jobs. You’re keeping the most desperate, most readily exploitable people, and getting rid of anyone who won’t tolerate your abuse.

It’s a layoff, but without having to call it a layoff.

Gentrification isn’t the problem. Rent is the problem.

Eliminate rent. Convert rentals to land contracts or private mortgages. Convert apartments to condominiums

When the residents of a neighborhood are owners instead of renters, they gain an unexpected windfall from gentrification.

How do we eliminate rent? How do we convince landlords to sell? How do we convince them to issue land contracts instead of rental agreements?

Massively increase property taxes, but issue owner-occupant credits to revert those increases. Only owner-occupants get the credit. Investors do not.

Eat up their profits, unless they switch to an investment strategy that puts the deed in the occupant’s name, such as a land contract or a private mortgage. With the deed in their name, the occupant gains equity as property values rise.

The concept of renting needs to die in a fire.

Wired, VoIP phones are viable. Landlines aren’t. ATAs convert old landline phones into VoIP phones.

Think about dill pickles.

The purpose of copyright is to promote the sciences and useful arts. To increase the depth, width, and breadth of the public domain. “Fair Use” is not the exception. “Fair Use” is the fundamental purpose for which copyrights and patents exist. Copyright is not the rule. Copyright is the exception. The temporary exception. The limited exception. The exception we grant to individuals for their contribution to the public.

“it can’t be copyright, because otherwise massive AI models would be impossible to build”.

If that is, indeed, true, and if AI is a progression of science or the useful arts, then it is copyright that must yield, not AI.

There is literally no way in hell someone can convince me what Meta and others are doing is not pirating

Then your argument is non-falsifiable, and therefore, invalid.

Major corporations and pirates are finally on the same side for once. “Fair Use” finally has financial backing. Meta is certainly not a friend, but our interests currently align.

The worst possible outcome here is that copyright trolls manage to convince the courts that they are owed licensing fees. Next worse is a settlement that grants rightsholders a share of profits generated by AI, like they got from manufacturers of blank tapes and CDs.

Best case is that the MPAA, RIAA, and other copyright trolls get reminded that “Fair Use” is not an exception to copyright law, but the fundamental reason it exists: Fair Use is the promotion of science and the useful arts. Fair Use is the rule; Restriction is the exception.

Wealth inequality is considerably worse today than at the beginning of the French Revolution.

We do have fewer riots today, but that’s primarily because we are much better at quelling them.

If you’re not seeing poverty, you’re not looking.

Americans are worse off today than the French were immediately before the revolution.

Billionaires should be doing everything they can to protect themselves from the guillotines, and/or not be billionaires anymore.

Stop trying to make Bing happen.

Priority is determined by the entity using the AI, not the AI itself. My point is that so long as the ability to create any AI is documented, an unencumbered AI is inevitable. It will always be easier to create an AI than to impress upon one the need for morality.

We are on the verge of discovering Roko’s Basilisk.

The wheel falls off. It falls off. It falls the fuck off. Turning your Tesla into a tripod, and spinning you into a dimension of pissed off you have never been in before in your life.

You want to make sure your mechanic isn’t sick on lugnut day before letting him work on your Tesla.

Therefore every AI chatbot maker needs to apply protections,

I’m pretty sure the instructions to create an AI chatbot have been published, and are available for a sufficiently capable AI to draw from. What keeps a primary, morality-encumbered AI from using those instructions to create a secondary, morality-unencumbered AI?

Good. Those clowns are doing more harm than good.