Welcome back to the Stove Top weekly newsletter. As usual, each edition has a few brief stories and finishes with a mix of interesting links, hot takes, and good reads.

Enjoy.

AI The Knowledge Accelerator

I’m a vocal skeptic about AI being positive for humanity, but I read something this week that made even me a bit excited.

The article is AI and The Burden of Knowledge by The Generalist. The general idea (lol get it) is that humans are simultaneously:

• The only species that can transfer knowledge from one generation to the next.

• Mortal.

What this means is that knowledge compounds with each passing generation. This is obviously a good thing, but it also makes it increasingly difficult to reach the frontier of innovation. In 1900, it took around 30 years to reach the frontier. Now, it takes around 40.

That wouldn’t be a big deal except for the fact that people have to deal with the whole dying thing. Thus, as knowledge compounds, people have less and less time to innovate at the frontier, which the article refers to as the “burden of knowledge”.

One solution would be to solve for mortality. If we lived for longer, that would give us more time at the frontier. The problem with this, however, is that the elderly aren’t exactly a hotbed for innovative ideas, as anybody who pays attention to politics or sports knows.

So, The Generalist posits the idea of AI solving for the burden of knowledge, which will surely happen if development over the coming years goes anywhere close to expectations. Basically, superintelligent AI = no burden of knowledge, as the AI knows everything and has a limitless capacity to learn.

Obviously, this means that AI would become the dominant power on Earth, and we don’t know what that would mean for us. The article throws out some ideas on how to at least mitigate this threat, such as inventing the cure for death and turning ourselves into high-performing cyborgs via brain chips like Neuralink. But I don’t really buy these. If AI were to become dominant, we just got to hope it likes us.

What I do buy, however, is the idea that we need AI to solve the burden of knowledge. Technological innovation is how we’re going to keep society progressing, and in the face of threats like climate change, it might be the only thing that keeps us alive.

If the choices are certain death via climate change or possible death via AI, give me the damn AI.

A Win For Free Speech

If you wanted to sound smart over the last 6 months, then all you had to do was make fun of the Twitter Files. Perhaps it was because Twitter is run by Elon. Or maybe it was because they didn’t have the same shock value as other leaks. Or, perhaps it’s because the media didn’t want to acknowledge that the government was actively engaged in censorship.

Whatever the case, a lot of people laughed at the Twitter Files.

Well, those laughs have now turned into outrage as a U.S. judge has blocked tech officials from meeting and communicating with social media companies about “protected speech”. Basically, Biden and his cronies can no longer pressure Facebook and Twitter to take down posts they don’t like, which the judge called “arguably the most massive attack against free speech in the United States’ history”.

I don’t know if I’d go that far considering the Alien and Sedition Acts and Sedition Act of 1918 existed, but still, it’s not every day you hear a judge talk like this.

You would think the judge is doing a very very good thing by protecting our free speech, but many of the left are upset. They make sure to note that the judge was appointed by Trump. They talk about how the government could no longer “notify the platforms of troublesome content” and “combat false and misleading narratives”. And, of course, they talk about child sex abuse, because they always do.

All this is just code for saying “the government can no longer block speech we don’t like”. This is how things should be, but this is not how the censorship wing of the left (and right, but mostly the left) thinks. To them, free speech does not mean say whatever you want, but say whatever you want as long as I approve of it.

Trust me, I know. I went to a very liberal college. I once saw a liberal political science professor get damn near canceled just because he published a student’s opinion blog that went against the hive mind. Mind you, he never said he supported the ideas in the blog. All he did was give the kid a platform to speak after everywhere else on campus turned him down. That was enough to get him in trouble with Big Brother, and the kid had to be moved off campus out of fear for his safety.

Ultimately, the desire for censorship isn’t a desire for safety or whatever else they say. It’s a desire for control and power, as they know democracy dies in darkness.

The judge here helped stave that darkness off for a bit longer, and for that he should be celebrated.

Ron DeSantis, The Idiot

Now that I’ve dunked on the left, it’s time to turn my attention to the right. Specifically Ron DeSantis, who recently did something so stupid it makes me wonder how he puts his clothes on in the morning.

The Twitter account “Proud Elephant” (naturally) posted a propaganda video for DeSantis so outrageous (and objectively hilarious) that I’m 99% sure it’s just a troll. It depicts Trump as the beacon of woke ideology, specifically to trans people, and then contrasts that with DeSantis, where news headlines of his opposition to trans people are mixed with various fictional characters one could perceive as “alpha”.

It’s a ridiculous video. Inexplicably, DeSantis’s campaign reposted it:

The man is absolutely out of his mind.

If you want to make the case that biological males shouldn’t compete in female sports or that little kids shouldn’t get hormone therapy, that’s one thing. You can have a productive discussion about that. It’s a whole other thing to flex that you are a danger to trans people.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. DeSantis, along with most Republicans, are hopelessly out of touch. In DeSantis’s case, he knows it and is clearly leaning into it. Thus, you get ads like this.

It might be a smart political strategy in 2024. There is no big tent coalition for DeSantis to beat Trump, so he’s leaning into firing up the base as much as possible. But the base is only getting smaller. There will come a day when Republicans have to make overtures to the droves of people in the middle.

But that wooing isn’t going to work if they keep doing dumb ass shit like this.

Extras

• Even your Plan B and HIV test purchases aren’t safe from Facebook’s watchful eye.

• The TSA is expanding its facial recognition program.

• We got motherfucking flying cars now.

• Colorado and Connecticut, friends of data privacy. 

• The FTC is finally working on a ban on fake reviews.

• The French government continues their crusade against personal privacy, this time with a proposal to inject domain-blocking lists directly into web browsers. There’s no way giving the government the power to blacklist any website could go wrong, right?

• If that wasn’t tasty enough for you, Macron (France’s President) also floated the idea of cutting the rioters’ access to social media.

• Unfortunately, vertical farming just doesn’t work right now.

• Self-driving cars are surveillance cameras on wheels.

• Maine is the first state to decriminalize prostitution. I don’t know why this isn’t canon yet. Making things illegal doesn’t stop people from doing it, it just makes it more dangerous. Legalize it and safely regulate it.

• The same logic applies to drugs, especially ultra-positive ones like psychedelics.

• My home state of NJ came through big time when the NJ Supreme Court rules that the cops must have a wiretap to monitor private social media postings. The state’s government still sucks though.

• Gen Z is…not optimistic about money.

• Gizmodo and Kotaku are going to start pumping out AI content. In other words, the writers at these publications might as well start packing up their desks.

• At least AI can mess with the robocall telemarketers.

• 25% of 40-year-olds in the US have never been married. That doesn’t seem good.

• Columbia has found that society-wide economic inequality can not be explained by individual choices.

• Americans don’t live for very long, and it’s really weird.

• Never trust your boss.

• We have to stop caring so much about the Ivy League.

• China is escalating the chip war with the US, this time by limiting the exports of the essential metals gallium and germanium. So naturally the US escalated back.

• Aaaand so did the EU and Japan.

• Wars always lead to an expansion of the surveillance state.

• Is it finally the Space Force’s time to shine?

• The transition to clean energy sounds good, but it’s not really happening yet. Another reminder that we really blew it with nuclear.

• Stop using Google Analytics.

• Adult friendships are hard.

• This isn’t going to make people like billionaires more, not like they care as they laugh to the bank. And honestly, I don’t blame them.

• It’s so easy to get people pissed these days.

• The Dutch are banning phones in class. That should be a rule everywhere.

• DEI requirements for college faculty are so so so so stupid.

• So are legacy admissions.

• As are adversity scores. Just let more people in for fuck’s sake.

• Gas might be getting more expensive soon.

• Europe doesn’t get many things right, but striking down the ability of Meta to obtain user data without consent is absolutely one of them.

• The war against social media continues.

• Tech bro and longevity freak Bryan Johnson is certifiably mentally ill.

• The US is still the best country in the world.

Until next time, ✌️

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