There probably aren’t aliens who are smarter than us via biological evolution. The cost of a large brain is just too high. It costs a lot in energy of course, which generally causes evolution to disfavor it. Child birth and care are extremely expensive for large brained creatures. Human babies need to be born in an extremely helpless state just to get their massive head through the canal. Then there is more than a decade of relative helplessness that the parents must put off survival tasks to handle. This article describes yet another disadvantage - accelerated cognitive decline. If there are aliens more advanced than us, I’m 100% sure they’re synthetic.

ScienceAlert

The Larger Brains of Humans Come With a Tragic Cost, Study Finds

Intelligence has allowed our species to not just survive, but thrive across a range of environments.

Perhaps socialism and restrictions on speech are actually the wrong track, and it’s not “Nazis voting harder.” https://www.axios.com/2024/09/02/german-far-right-state-elections-eastern-region

We’re getting closer to this fork in the road. California is about to pass its AI regulation laws that will place responsibility on model developers when the models are used for “nefarious” purposes. Releasing open source models will be legally riskier. View quoted note →

The most likely forecast for the next few years is MUCH higher spending, higher taxes, stricter speech regulations and 80% of the population being for it all, indifferent or not uncomfortable enough take any action. Without #bitcoin and #nostr there’d be little hope. Fortunately we do have these powerful tools!

You’d think we would see lots of huge coinjoins from whales after Harris’s threat of unrealized gains taxes. But we don’t because they’re just going to comply.

Alternative title: “AI Giants Work With Feds to Crush AI Startups and Open Source Models” https://www.axios.com/2024/08/29/anthropic-openai-models-us-ai-safety-institute-biden

I almost want to see where they draw the line between meme and “misinformation” in their proposed speech regulations.

Having the tools available is just part of the solution. Probably the hardest part is willingly developing/making use of them when being jailed and taken from your family is a possibility. Hope to see lots of people make it past the “examples made” to discourage us. View quoted note →

If there’s a head to cut off … View quoted note →