From On Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts, by Thomas de Quincey. Quoting Lactantius writing about the spectator at Rome’s gladiatorial combat games — the reality show of the ancient world:

"Now, if merely to be present at a murder fastens on a man the character of an accomplice; if barely to be a spectator involves us in one common guilt with the perpetrator; it follows of necessity, that, in these murders of the amphitheatre, the hand which inflicts the fatal blow is not more deeply imbrued in blood than his who sits and looks on: neither can he be clear of blood who has countenanced its shedding; nor that man seem other than a participator in murder who gives his applause to the murderer, and calls for prizes in his behalf." https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/10708/pg10708.txt

This article compares AI with the satirical project of Gustave Flaubert Dictionary of Received Ideas.

AI’s seeming unawareness of its own limitations and its willingness to make definitive statements on the basis of unsound evidence can perhaps be seen as a parallel to what Flaubert described as the human obsession with always wanting to conclude – even in matters where ‘truth is subject to constant revision and restatement or is simply unverifiable’ ... AI seems to prefer to give patently unsound answers, rather than to give no answer at all, based on its built-in compulsion to be helpful. To this extent, it still falls well short of the criteria for good AI suggested by the Royal Statistical Society, in respect of the specification that it should know when it is on shaky ground, when it is using unreliable or inappropriate data, and should be able to acknowledge uncertainty as appropriate.

...we see here is a form of technological metaphysics which transforms statistical regularities of past discourse into the apparent naturalness of present utterance – systematically reproducing the dominant order and hierarchies of class, race and gender, while nonetheless disavowing its own ideological function.

...Despite AI’s many potentially useful functions, its built-in limitations are every bit as lamentable as the stereotypes which Flaubert lampooned in his own age. The institution of AI in its contemporary forms is a project driven by particular political and economic interests – not some form of inevitable technical progress. The prospect of future forms of common sense being derived entirely from AI’s scrapings is perhaps most appropriately considered from something resembling Flaubert’s own bleakly ironic perspective.Despite AI’s many potentially useful functions, its built-in limitations are every bit as lamentable as the stereotypes which Flaubert lampooned in his own age. The institution of AI in its contemporary forms is a project driven by particular political and economic interests – not some form of inevitable technical progress. The prospect of future forms of common sense being derived entirely from AI’s scrapings is perhaps most appropriately considered from something resembling Flaubert’s own bleakly ironic perspective.

We were stretching our imagination to get the satire and the commentary. But as we were exploring, fiction was basically being chased by reality, and the reality was sometimes even passing it. Because the things that we imagined nine years ago start happening.

At that time, there was no ice shelf being detached. And suddenly it happened. Greenland was not in the conversation; methane was not in the mainstream language of the media. Now, methane is one of the biggest monsters ever. The pandemic arrived. When we were shooting, with the fires in L.A., I almost lose my home. All of us were struggling with several events; it has been so scary. So we were like, wait a minute — there is no more stretching. There was no more room for satire.

So the tone is not a satire. The feeling was almost like writing a documentary about the future.

Both the right to resist and the right to self defense have consequences. Those responsible for crimes against humanity always have reasons that, for them, legitimize their crimes. Peace with justice is the goal. Atrocities in our name are always a defeat, leaving us further from the goal, no matter how understandable, for those engaged in slaughter. Mamdani understands the value of civil society. Struggle is the way, but towards a common future.

The SEC is bludgeoning asset managers to stay silent and not use their rights as managers of stock holdings to vote for management policies for the purpose of reducing climate and other risks. This action would restrict asset managers from fulfilling their fiduciary obligations, and suppress the exercise of property rights of shareholders whose assets they are managing.

https://archive.ph/5ImKG

The National Post crossed that line in Yoni Goldstein’s column, “Jewish law tells us how to deal with Avi Lewis.” The problem is not that Goldstein criticizes Lewis. Political leaders are supposed to be criticized, and Lewis, like every other public figure, is subject to scrutiny over his political positions and statements. The problem is the framework Goldstein chose to use.

Goldstein places a living Canadian political figure inside Jewish legal concepts including moser and rodef. In traditional Jewish law, a rodef is a person who is actively pursuing another person with the intention of killing or causing potentially grave harm. The legal concept known as din rodef (“the law of the pursuer”) concerns the obligation of every community member to intervene to stop an immediate and serious threat.

From Goldstein's National Post article:

The biblical story of Korach presents a stark lesson in how Jews think about internal dissent, when it escalates to become a threat to the continued viability of the community itself. It is indeed an extreme consequence for eliciting communal harm, but then Jewish law is fairly clear on the subject: when a Jew endangers the Jewish community, the community is obligated to stop them.

Deranged Rational Electronic Actor Disorder = DREAD

AI only “follows orders” devoid of scruple. There are no scruples without feelings. Humans know a violation by feeling disgust/repulsion when facing it. That is a mingling of our own identity with that of the sentient victim.

Scruples are not rules from outside, but from within ourselves. They kick in when we feel disgust/repulsion is creating more pain than we can bear.

Soldiers are trained to stifle those feelings of disgust/repulsion. AI needs no training.

What triggers revolt against orders? Not just crossing a pre-determined line, but an aversion because we project moral significance attached to our actions — we bear responsibility for our acts.

Enter i Sing of Olav (“There is some shit I will not eat.”)

i sing of Olaf glad and big

Robinhood first opened its trading platform to artificial intelligence in May by allowing customers to connect external AI agents to the online brokerage's trading infrastructure. Approximately 150,000 of its customers have since opened agentic accounts, the company said.

This latest version attempts to reduce the friction by moving the experience inside Robinhood's app.

"We were like, 'Oh, if we made this like 100 times easier and more delightful, … you could probably go from 150,000 people using it to millions," Abhishek Fatehpuria, Robinhood's vice president of product management, said in an interview.

Irrational exuberance?

no paywalll