Best explanation I've seen suggests it's a cult style loyalty test. If the plague is just bad luck and we all have to pray because we don't know what else to do, people will only follow you as long as it at least makes them feel better. But if it's that horrible witch, and we burn her at the stake... well, now we find out who's god's children and who's a heretic.

Mechanically speaking, if the goal is for people to experience lives of meaning, joy, and connection, there are ways to do it that are essentially artificial simulations, and ways to do it that are consistent with the evolutionary forces that caused us to crave meaning, joy, and connection in the first place. AKA, "real relationships."

It is not possible to construct a rationalist (falsifiable) argument for preferring one approach to the other: that entire topic falls squarely in the realm of subjective meaning, making it a post-modern rabbit hole at best.

Nevertheless, for those of us who want the real thing - our best bet is to reject further attempts by rent-seekers to push us onto the artificial simulations.

"I'm better at relating to bots than to other people, and I'm happy with that" is not a good indicator of mental health.

It'll be ... interesting ... to see what kinds of incentives are required to ensure that states go along with supreme court rulings going forward.

Automation didn't eliminate carpentry, or turn anyone into a "vibe carpenter" either, but most of us are more likely to buy and eventually throw out a few dressers from Ikea than ever pay a real carpenter for something built to last.

You know what? I was going to blow that off as semantic but it bugged me.

On the one hand - your basic argument is that driving comes with rules, which are governed by the state, and therefore is not a right but a privilege. The underlying fact is indisputable. Driving does require following rules, and no one was claiming otherwise. So at this point, okay - you prefer to use the word "privilege" in cases where there are extensive rules and regulations. There are other people who would note that "some rights come with responsibilities" and use "privilege" to talk about things normal people don't get to have, like "class privilege" or "it's my privilege to hand out this oscar award..." or whatever. But it's just words, and there's not much point in debating the semantics when the underlying facts remain the same.

On the other hand - the entire basis of post-enlightenment, rationalist thinking and western civilization is tied directly to the realization that we could even have a thing called rights if we built a society around reason and natural law, and specifically rejected rule by kings and clergy, for whom "privileges" meant special grants and permissions to people favored by the ruling classes.

It was a big deal when people recognized that we could have something called a right to life if, and only if, we hold people responsible when they kill. Same for when we established that we can have a right to property if we hold people responsible for not stealing or destroying others' property, or a right to equal protection under the law if everyone takes responsibility for both following the law and participating as citizens. As I understand it, the philosophical and linguistic roots of the distinction between a right and a privilege is built into that history. Rights were built on the ideas of rationalism and natural law, privileges were built on the idea of special favors from authoritarians.

To my mind, the rules of driving are not arbitrary, they are necessary in order to minimize the risk of people killing and injuring each other in traffic accidents. For that reason, I am perfectly fine with with states sanctioning drivers who fail to live up to the responsibilities required to make driving possible. But I also prefer the semantics of calling it a "right," because the rules should be reasoned and founded on the physical requirements of allowing people to drive, rather than a "privilege" which historically ties to the idea of special favors from authoritarians.

... but that is, strictly speaking, still just a semantic preference on my part.

Now you're just redefining the word. Whatever.

I picked up a CNA license and started working part time in order to diversify my skills and work with people a bit. I'm betting that if Nursing Assistance, as a job, gets replaced, we'll simultaneously be getting rid of the entire concept of jobs.

It does not require a lot of the kinds of thinking we normally associate with "high IQ," but now that I'm doing the work, it's obvious that we typically devalue our main advantages as humans. The work basically requires hands, spacial awareness, the ability to infer meaningful communication from people who can't always use words effectively, and a strong desire to keep poop away from basically everything.

If we get to the point where a robot can figure out what you want and then just take care of it for you, even if you barely remember where you are or what you ate for lunch, then we probably won't be bothering with an economy anymore anyway.

It's an abuse or oppressive if its taking away any of your rights. Driving is not a right, it's a privilege. It comes with strict rules and the government should be able to enforce those rules in literally any way it deems fit.

In fact if you abide by the rules of driving you will be completely unaffected.

I'm inclined to agree that violating state regulations should result in sanctions, but the premise "driving is not a right, it's a privilege" really is a huge step on an a slippery slope. If it's a right, the state has to have specific, court & jury approved reasons to sanction specific individuals. A privilege can be revoked or granted at will, without cause. If it were really a privilege, "we don't like how you filled out your voter registration card, so you have a driving curfew" would be something a state governor could just do.

When the bureaucrats get pushed out, how much do you want to bet that instead of local communities being freed up to run their own schools, we end up with a majority of them being owned outright by unaccountable corporations? Or is that what you're into anyway?

So - you're under the impression that a person can read some art history text books and then just start spewing out duplicates and remixes of those images directly? You think that's how people actually work?

Here's a distinction: human beings aren't computer programmed algorithms. If we were, photocopiers and cameras wouldn't have been invented in the first place, because we'd all have the ability to glance at anything from a friend's birthday cake to a dollar bill and then recreate it with pixel perfect clarity at any point we want for as long as our brains last. That's not what we are.

And as for giving credit to previous artists: yeah. You're supposed to do that. "Credit" is something human beings give to other human beings to acknowledge the work they put in. So if I sit down and hand-paint a duplicate of the Sistine Chapel, or start riffing back and forth on some ideas with a guy named Braque - it's not plagiarism so long as I give credit to the folks who came before.. but it damn well is if someone takes an overblown photocopier that aggressively hides it's source material and declares that it qualifies as an artist too.

Leave the cuffs at home guys.

Are you being deliberately obtuse, or ...?

The problem is not "rich people exist." The problem is "rich people running the government for their own profit." The people making decisions about how we invest taxpayer money should not have "put it directly in my pocket" as an option, because that means they have too little incentive to care about what's good for the country.

If you honestly can't tell the difference now, I guess you'll be finding out soon enough.

I'm sorry - the tech nerds haven't done anything about it?

Mastodon has been out for nearly a decade. Matrix just over a decade. Signal - also a decade. If you've been happy using platforms run by billionaires for the past 10 years and today is the day you change your mind, no problem. We all make decisions. But if the past 72 hours is the first time you're getting the memo about tech oligarchs; You've had ten years warning. What else were they supposed to give you?

It sounds like you've been flat out ignoring the critics since the days of OWS.