Thomas Frank argues that the Obama presidency has been a Failure for liberals. The left wanted a more radical and left leaning president following the Bush years and the Great Recession. Instead they got a centrist hellbent on compromise and consensus. I prefer the version noted by Yves Smith:
"It couldn't be more clear that Obama’s presidency has been a massive success. The bailouts were the largest upward transfer of wealth in world history. Not single bankster executive has been prosecuted, let alone jailed, and the banks are bigger than ever. Unemployment has been kept high and hysteresis has set in. Occupy was smashed. The President can now execute US citizens without due process. The government has openly became a surveillance state, on the scale of the Stasi. And lots of faraway brown people got blown to pink mist. Now, to be fair, Obama built on the solid foundations Bush laid."
Slate's David Auerbach takes a look at the Roko's Basilisk thought experiment which has, apparently, been driving the techno-futurists crazy. It looks like this:
"What if, in the future, a somewhat malevolent AI were to come about and punish those who did not do its bidding? What if there were a way (and I will explain how) for this AI to punish people today who are not helping it come into existence later? In that case, weren’t the readers of LessWrong [the rationalist/futurist/technologist community] right then being given the choice of either helping that evil AI come into existence or being condemned to suffer?"Apparently unable to cope with the idea that their current technological skills and market rewarded genius were not the results of pure bootstrapping, they flamed the hell out of the original poster.
Nate Cohn at The Upshot does some more midterm calculus and waves goodbye to the republican wave.
Claire Cain Miller, also at The Upshot, looks at some of the Universities who are getting women into their computer science programs.
Dealbook reports on subprime vehicle loans. Strangely, the banks still seem to be happy to loan money at incredibly disadvantageous terms to individuals obviously unable to pay it back.
Looks like the poors will have to enter through a separate entrance in new "mixed use" buildings in NYC. I guess Oligarch-Americans like myself just can't handle seeing the common rabble. We prefer to live in a world free from the sight of anyone who is unlike us.
Understanding Society feeds Tyler Cowen's troll from the past week. Basically they point out that Tyler's absolutely correct and his analysis is spot on. But, he's not addressing the problem that people are actually complaining about when they worry about rising inequality.
Robert Waldman writes a quick post on how epistemic closure in right wing media may have helped Obama.
Yves Smith posts a tirade against free trade as practiced by Western governments. As usual, she argues, it benefits companies and political operators while not doing much to help the public of either trade partner. Moreover, the media is unabashedly pro "free" trade.
Over at Vox, Libby Nelson says the 'not everyone should go to college' argument is classist and wrong. She rightly points out that the argument is mostly applied to the poor and lower middle class who, like the residents of mixed use NYC buildings, we Oligarch-Americans don't want to see muddying the clear waters of our colleges and universities.
Andrew Sullivan takes a look at the spreading belief that Central American refugees crossing into the US are carrying diseases. He calls it public health nativism. I call it racism.
Andrew Sullivan also considers a recent study looking at the rate of US Government "failures" over the past several administrations. I found the reader response posted at the end to be spot on.
Robert Reich notes the recent rise in the non-working rich. Oligarch-American's prefer to call them bootstrapped from birth.
And lastly, Liberty Island an online magazine and site devoted to reviving Conservative Literature.
I saw the Roko's Basilisk article the other day, and thought that it was a fun thought experiment, but who in the hell would have difficulty with the decision? The moral position is you resist the advent of an evil omnipresent AI, regardless of whether you'll be successful. The selfish one is you do everything to help that AI out so you have a place in the new regime. Decide if you care more about yourself or humanity and decide accordingly, end of experiment.
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