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@thett3
Anyway it’s just a show but that’s how I look at it. When I was growing up there were a lot of Bible thumpers and a lot of them were the most hypocritical and nasty people you could ever meet. But I feel like that’s the case for any rule set and more just a failure mode of people in general. Doesn’t make religion as bad thing for the people who actually practice it
Well thett where the majority of religious people in America would vote Trump and the majority of atheists would vote Biden, how is it not the driving force in your politics?
And the next question is how is it the driving force in your politics?
I have outlined my idea here. You can say religious values about the abortion, trans etc. issues, but the republican party is the party of immigration and guns too. Those don't seem religious values. And yet 90% of agnostics, atheists and irreligious in general are voting the other way. Economy and healthcare, same thing. 90% of the irreligious are going the other way.
It just doesn't seem like the difference should be this large unless the religious difference goes very, very deep. In a way that isn't just "religious values".
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Trump's personality worked with the "religious" right.
Which is telling about your policies. Just to really hammer it in there for you.
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Surely it wasn't one rapist degenerate you guys had to advance these supposedly virtuous policies. Why not vote that other person?
Trump's personality worked with the "religious" right.
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I think what I've written here is a very simple idea and a very obviously correct one. How is it that the religious right keep electing degenerates and sexual deviants? It's because they have no real morals to speak of. They took a hall pass on morals.
Be it policies or personalities, you got no fucking morals.
Be it policies or personalities, you got no fucking morals.
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@Swagnarok
As I said, people who voted for Trump had secular motives for doing so. Namely that he was the Republican nominee who would push Republican policies.
And I'm saying he was elected because he's a piece of shit pushing piece of shit policies. Gotta be a reason for that correlation between religion and right wing politics and irreligion and left-wing politics.
I think it's because religion is a force for ill in the world.
Pretty much every prominent republican I see on television at the moment is a contemptible human being. How are you voting these guys? Where are the squeaky clean pastors?
I think it's because religion is a force for ill in the world.
Pretty much every prominent republican I see on television at the moment is a contemptible human being. How are you voting these guys? Where are the squeaky clean pastors?
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I would suggest that you also go see a therapist.
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That post Swag, try that one. That's the idea I was getting at in this thread.
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Pretty much as expected:
I think what I've written in the thread is the reason for this disparity. The irreligious aren't scapegoating their shortcomings onto silly stories and are actually self-correcting. Therefore they won't vote the obvious degenerate.
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That structure seems to lead to a whole lot of sex scandals and electing degenerates to the highest offices in the land.
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@Swagnarok
I think you should go back and read my opening post. I invite any discussion of it. I think you see a therapist about the sex hang-ups. I can't deal with it, dude.
That's a bit mean, but.
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@Swagnarok
Had the religious right nominated a pastor, you would've screamed and convulsed and cursed more fervently than normal at us, complaining that we were mixing religion and politics
You lot push wacky religious bullshit all day long. I can't see where I'd have a point worth making there.
never in his life convicted of rape
Doesn't look great for him. Pornstar wife. Weird sexual comments about his own daughter. Best friend to Jeffrey Epstein.
But what I'd like for you to do is point me to a country that was atheistic and then went from poor to rich. Otherwise you have a very weak case for what you're claiming.
How is my case weak without that? That seems a fairly arbitrary dismissal. I'm talking about today. Read the thread. Did you get stuck on the title? I have given the religion its credit where it was due.
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@fauxlaw
You read this in some buzzfeed article or something? Reading back over my honestlys and tbhs here it seems I write them when I feel I am giving some sort of offense. So am I trying to convince people I am offensive?
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@thett3
Yours too thett. I hope I didn't offend you too much with that last post.
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@Sidewalker
I would be interested to hear your opinion on this. I know you're spiritual for want of a better word. I wouldn't say I'm exactly atheist either. I am on some sort of a journey towards god. But this one falls a long way short.
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@Swagnarok
thett told me the infanticide thing before. I can admit that in the past religion may have brought about change which was good for the human spirit and for our moral evolution. In general I think high morality is a great luxury and it took a lot to get us to where we are today. On that end, I think Christianity was an ingenious piece of social engineering. In more brutal times it brought an order into social life. I think it's a very impressive thing.
That's the commodity. Sin is what you're purchasing.
But this is still the hook. Tempering inherent sin was the highest attainment it aspired to. A thousand years on, you elected a rapist as president. Religious right in Poland recently elected a pimp. Republican politicians in general are mired in sexual scandals. I think it's very obvious that today the more irreligious a country, the more moral.
Atheists generally don't feel the need to ask anyone's forgiveness, be that God or man, because they're in denial about the dark side of their own natures. Said denial, of course, does nothing to actually make them better people. The first step to fixing any problem is to admit that you have one. Granted, not everyone who so admits goes on to fix the problem, but neither do all but exceedingly few problem deniers.
Total rubbish. Everyone has base desire and we all know it for what it is. Until Christianity comes along and tells you it's something you slip a couple of bucks to the priest about and carry on. Prohibition? Christianity peddles debasement itself. A very impressive thing.
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Compulsion. I might say not to take anything I say too personally, but that'd defeat the purpose.
Anyway this site is mental illness for me like it is for you RM. Just I spend less time on it.
Anyway this site is mental illness for me like it is for you RM. Just I spend less time on it.
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@AdaptableRatman
Don't think it's much good for me either. I pop around to tell the Americans they're disgusting me every now and again. Not all are, some fine folk here, but that's honestly why I turn up I reckon.
I'll be gone again shortly. I got real life to tend to.
If I could do anything else about it I would, but again, I got a life to tend to.
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@AdaptableRatman
I am genuinely sorry to see you back on this website dude. It ain't good for you.
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@FLRW
I thought that was incredible as well.
If you think the antichrist is a thing, how is it not this fucker?
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Never said he was. Trump's an obvious egomaniac. There's no shred of a conscience in there.
I'm just talking at all the weirdly religious young people on here. You don't get that in Europe. I do wonder what makes the difference.
America, leading the world in religiosity and school shootings. Something in the water I guess.
I'm just talking at all the weirdly religious young people on here. You don't get that in Europe. I do wonder what makes the difference.
America, leading the world in religiosity and school shootings. Something in the water I guess.
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It's really really obvious that this is what Christianity is selling. For millenniums. Freedom to sin.
Find another sort of peace with yourself than telling yourself silly stories.
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I think this is a fairly shitty study tbh, but just to give a little extra meat to the post: https://www.psypost.org/feeling-forgiven-by-god-can-reduce-the-likelihood-of-apologizing-psychology-study-finds/
It does also get at the edges of something I have understand for a long time though. And which is obvious, honestly. It wasn't hard to get.
The whole humans are inherently sinful story, ask forgiveness and be forgiven, gild the church in gold, is obviously to give carte blanche to the person who buys in to do whatever shitty thing is in their heart without ever having to give a thought to who and what they are afterwards. They're a Christian.
This is something the American right are putting on full show today. And for as long as I've ever argued with them tbh.
That's the commodity. Sin is what you're purchasing.
There is no god presiding over this farce. Next time you ask forgiveness think maybe if I was a little less shit a person I wouldn't have to.
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obligated to defend the US and Israel if that happened
This one sure is interesting. I've been in 20 cities across Europe in the last few years. I see Ukraine and Palestine colours and marches for both everywhere. I'll go for a drive downtown right after I post this and that's what I'll see.
What's the obligation exactly?
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You just bombed a country because Trump wants to swing his dick around with Putin and the other class clowns.
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Like you said, he lived a full life. RIP if true.
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@thett3
Interesting change come over you I think. Maybe you'll be offended by the idea I had of you, but you're not the anxious kid I remember.
I think it's possible to be completely racist without being contemptible. There is something of existential threat in it. Just something a little spooky, right? For example, it's a weird idea to me that Islam is outbreeding the western world. Or the Aussies hating the Chinese. I can get that too. Dam ready to burst sort of stuff. That's a billion people speaking an indecipherable language and emotions who are extremely industrious and with a history of extreme brutality also. I mean I have worked with a lot of English speaking Chinese and I have found them all lovely and fun people. But alien is alien until it isn't. It's Tolkien's orcs. What I'm saying is, I get being anxious about this stuff. Humans are an incredible tumult.
I guess god just wanted us all to kill each other. Why else would he give us all different team jerseys to pick each other out by? Nothing to it but to commit to the race war. Hey, I see you guys have revived the SS over in America. That's definitely a good look. I think it's fun your mind went to Germany in this thread, thett. That's gotta be some tickling self-awareness right?
But yeah like I was saying. You used to just seem an anxious sort. The Christianity fit in there too. So worried about things a million miles away. That's how I'd characterize it. And as much as I have pretty much disagreed with you on everything ever, I never could hold it against you. Racist in the human way. But this shit is wild:
I do actually find Trump and the current GOP pretty grotesque but there’s no way I’m doing anything but voting straight ticket republican in every election I can until the Dems have credibly dispensed of this type of nonsense.
These are an incredibly contemptible bunch of people.
And this:
And this:
Yeah I mean it seems to be fading thank God but the left is pretty openly anti white in a disgusting way.
frankly is real fucking dumb bullshit.
Throwing a little money and opportunity the way of broke Mexicans and black people is not an existential threat by any stretch of the imagination. Unless it's a million mile stretch.
Happy race wars, mate.
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RoyLatham styled himself as the world's oldest anime fan. Hard to imagine it tbh. There wasn't an ounce of fun in any post of his I ever read. And for his part I don't think he thought very much of me. But I was always a little in awe of him as a kid.
16 years ago I watched Great Teacher Onizuka on his recommendation. Just never fit for me.
Maybe he was more fun in his debates. I never read any of those.
16 years ago I watched Great Teacher Onizuka on his recommendation. Just never fit for me.
Maybe he was more fun in his debates. I never read any of those.
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You get a chuckle at that you sadsack?
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Go on, you have more retarded shit to say. Don't be shy.
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Should have made that judge president of the United States.
Instead of a billionaire.
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We must let billionaires have entirely their own way or they will leave us!
Battered wife syndrome as politics. Will you ever shut your dumb mouth?
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DemocracyBut democracy, defined as a simple majority of the voting public being allowed to make the government do whatever they want, isn't much if any better. If you have a large middle class then democracy can perform very well, since this is truly rule by the "wisest". The middle class is mostly self-sufficient while also being egalitarian-minded and not in a position to lord over others. It has the most vested interest in economic growth and opposes both welfare robber states and stagnant plutocracies. They care about the well-being of their local communities, unlike many of the poor, while also not being rich and cosmopolitan enough to just take a plane out of the country to Switzerland or Dubai if everything collapses on itself. The poor can't afford taxes, and the rich know how to avoid them, so it's the middle class who shoulder much of the national tax burden.But the problem with democracy is twofold: first, when the poor comprise a voting majority, they will seek to enrich themselves by using the government to steal from anyone who has more. Perhaps they'll employ self-deception so that they don't consciously realize how shitty and selfish their actions are, but either way if no one has the power to tell them "no" everything will crash and burn after a while. In this environment also, language of class conflict will take hold and social cohesion will unravel, meaning the rich and middle class (what's left of it) will stop thinking about how to positively contribute to society and focus instead on protecting themselves. Second, even where there's a large middle class, many of them will sympathize with the plight of the poor enough to want to help without being noble enough to donate their own fortunes to charity. They'll form a coalition with the poor and institute the welfare state.
This is a pile of bullshit. The truth is, everyone has a right to the world's (or a country's resources). Either everyone does, or no one does. If an electorate is largely poor while some have "fortunes" that only speaks to a broken system of wealth creation and wealth distribution. If the measure of the success of capitalism is not how efficiently it creates AND distributes wealth amongst the people, then we are living in a nonsense world. It is essentially implicitly a part of the social contract that of the resources you control you will generate and distribute wealth to other people. If not, you are no good to anyone and can be dispensed with. Why should a people honour that your daddy had the wealth before you? That is not a sensible basis for a society. A sensible basis for a society is one where we are all more or less equal, all have something to call our own for the time we are here, none are hungry, none are left out in the cold. That's fucking obvious.
Capitalism has been an incredible vehicle for the advancement of the human species, but there is such a thing as late stage capitalism. Capitalism was the gold rush. It was men with pickaxes and ambition in a wide open world. It was good for us all to let them stake out plots as their own to work. It was good for us all that they would pass down what they had and what they knew to their children who came after them. It generated wealth for us all. Central planning would have been too cumbersome and would have required more transparency than we could have managed then. And for the most part it was unneeded. The world was wide and open and full of treasures waiting to be discovered.
The landscape has changed. That vast and boundless frontier has given way to an economy where wealth is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few. What once spurred innovation eventually cemented power. You don't just need ambition to succeed anymore, you need permission. You need to be let into that wealth. That is, if I just accept that wealth is yours. Why should I? What good are you to me? That's the fucking point of democracy.
Europe as of late has turned into an authoritarian shithole and I wouldn't hold them up as a model of democracy
This also is fucking retarded. You lot are dumb cunts and the whole world is laughing at you.
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Another interesting interview here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUnFgu8kH-4From 5:00 on. Emotions as anticipations of results is interesting. That sounds like it goes back to temporal difference learning. But again, same message. Don't be fooled.
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Have some fun for a few years. My twenties were a total wipeout but now I'm on the other side of them and I've landed squarely on my feet. It's a good time down in the Last Chance Saloon tbh. Just want to make it home safe. Might find some real perspective down there too if you're lucky. Dunno if I did lol. But I am happy.
Or do whatever you're gonna do. Life is real easy until it isn't. And then like Epicurus says, what is terrible is easy to endure.
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@ebuc
That's a lovely video. I always enjoy a Penrose interview, he's so grandfatherly and kindly. That dude interviewing him is a bit of a doofus tbh, I think he showed him tremendous patience.
9:00 sums it up. Computers have gotten so powerful that people have lost the thread of what they're doing. But they're still just computing same as always.
But LLM's really are nothing special.
This was probably fairly arrogant of me earlier. It's definitely an incredible achievement what LLM's can do. Maybe the word "special" gives away something of a superiority complex in me also about my place in the universe. But there is still something missing. Penrose uses those same words somewhere in this video also. We haven't a clue.
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RL is probably definitely the most interesting area in AI, but I dunno how broadly or easily applicable it is. I like the math in computer vision.
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@Critical-Tim
Knowing this, I'd say that AI LLMs are getting more impressive and capable, making them as much a human mind as a camera is a human eye. They are fundamentally different, but they have the same functions. Would you agree?
Actually my AI masters was with a focus on computer vision, it's very cool stuff tbh. I think it's the most interesting area in AI personally. But I don't think I would agree with what you've said above, at least not completely. I think neural nets and the various learning algorithms are the mind's mechanisms for learning and we understand and can use them and they're ridiculously powerful with the increased throughput that machines afford. But the really mysterious part is whatever mediator sets these learning mechanisms to specific tasks. Stockfish has no idea why it wants to win a game of chess. It is not incentivised to win a game of chess. It is still programmed to win the game of chess. Likewise LLM's are still programmed to spit out the most sensible next word given a provided "context" of previous words. It figured out the next word itself by massive number crunching, but it is still just programmed to spit out that word. It's just a very deep function. Same old computer programming. More powerful now that we're letting the functions write themselves effectively, but they're still just functions.
I mean maybe I'm more at odds with rbelivb here than you, but mind and consciousness are still just as mysterious as they ever were. Nobody even has a hint of how we might actually incentivise machines in a truly autonomous way. That's where the consciousness or agency would come in. You can read that "Reward is enough" paper, it's fairly fucking sparse. I dunno. I mean for my guess about what goes on in the mind it's innumerable competing models overseen by some mediator which is the self, the thing which is affected and shaped by the learnings of those neural nets. It's something that cares. Things matter to it. Answers matter to it. Nobody has the first hint about how to replicate that. A parrot saying "Polly wants a cracker" and actually wanting the cracker is still a thousand times the marvel that ChatGPT writing you a bullshit poem is.
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I don't think I'm wrong about AGI. I think life on earth was ludicrously impressive before it ever got smart. That's the part that's missing if machines were ever to get intelligent. Our AI is putting the cart before the horse. Biological life was a wonderland of an environment for real intelligence and awareness to arise in. But who knows.
But LLM's really are nothing special.
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@rbelivb
@Critical-Tim
@Critical
I'm a software engineer with a masters in AI. I have built dozens of these things. The only thing "unpredictable" about it is the black box nature of neural net derived weights because they go so deep and probabilistic sampling. But it's still just a function. You might as well be ascribing consciousness to a matrix. Neural nets are just more data structures and algorithms.
@sdavio
I mean neural nets are modelled after our neurons. It is just more data structures and algorithms. I have even read a paper before which I think fairly well proves temporal difference learning (used by RL agents) is the exact way humans learn, by updating expectations of reward based on prediction errors. We have machine minds for sure, I will readily admit to that. And more I think we have cracked human intelligence. It is neural nets. Our brains and bodies are full of neural nets. But they don't think and they don't feel, they just arrive at the answers we want them to, because we set them to. LLM's are just a big matrix of numbers we sieve words through. You might as well say an array is conscious.
I think consciousness began in the chemical soup of pheromones, dopamine, cortisol and whatever else. That was the original brain-body communication. The eyes saw a threat. The brain released a chemical which told the legs to run. Somewhere along the way something started feeling those chemicals. Later it was afforded intelligence to chase after the chemicals it preferred. That's what consciousness is. And no matter how impressive our computers are, evolution is an infinitely more powerful computer and has been running solid for a billion years, refining life in an environment so ludicrously complex we couldn't simulate even a fraction of a millimeter of it. I'll be honest, I don't think there will ever be AGI. But computers will do some crazy shit. I get that it's easy to be fooled by LLM's. They're weird. But it really is just next-gen predictive text.
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This is 100% a programmed response. It's a marketing ploy.
You don't need to understand much about LLM's to know that AGI or any form of emergent behaviour is never going to arise out of them. It is very simply a supercharged predictive text, a map of human language which gives you the most common next word given a set of words every time. There simply isn't any room for emergent behaviour or actual agency or self in that.
I mean, I get that it can be a bit spooky. Maybe you'll wonder if that's not all humans are doing too, putting one word after the next. It's seemingly pretty much as intelligent as any human you'll have a conversation with. But we invented language. The words mean something because of us. It really isn't that impressive a feat to take a statistical analysis of our use of language and give us a good next word. I could look over some Latin text and pick out some of those patterns in minutes. I could write a script to do it, that would find common combinations of words. That is still what's at the heart of it. LLM's manage to make sense for some couple of hundred words because neural nets are massively number crunching, those weights are a very complex map of our languages. Instead of a good next word to one previous word, we get mappings to a good next word from a number of previous words. I mean, there is nothing magic in this at all. It is all very common sense. It's just very impressive the depth to which neural nets can map language.
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I've earned my pomposity, boyo.
How? You're mum on that for some reason. Keep farting on about what you have. I believe you have it. I'm not impressed. I'll have it too in time, but earned.
You studies look like the studies of one left to leisure by a large inheritance. To make nothing of it. Wasteful.
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GP, a gleeful piece of shit human being.
Good for you Lemming, honestly man. You got clear eyes on American politics now.
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Shut up you fucking loser. What is your sad little life on this website making flea bite posts all day long at people who don't like you.
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Beyond delusional if you think this projects power. There's a sleeping beast stirring in Europe. The world is waking up to the undependable bunch of babies Americans are.
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I just watched this. Two absolute clowns.
I just got back from Rome. The whole city is lit up in Ukraine colours, marches for Ukraine and a Ukrainian bella ciao resounding in the streets.
No idea what you clowns are thinking watching this interview, but the rest of world is disgusted. Zelensky left that room with his head held high and has the world behind him for it. That's the truth of it. Two bitches crying at a man in their own living room surrounded by their security. Appalling fucking stuff.
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@Lemming
What I decided, is that I feel terribly embarrassed for America, by that meeting.
Embarrassment is an endearing quality.
Good man, Lemming.
Good man, Lemming.
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100 lbs of gold
Horse shit, the lot of it. A ludicrous brag from the hieroglyphics guy. What, did you pull it out of Tut's tomb?
As for Musk, I hear jealousy of wealth.
I have no jealousy of Musk. If I'm not well-liked, I'm well-loved. Outside of that I'm a top percentile earner for my age bracket. I'm doing all right. Had a lot of fun along the way. I'm happy at work and I'll retire comfortably. Bought a beautiful couch today actually. More comfortable than 100 lbs of gold I bet.
I, unlike you, understand that an economic system must be a system for wealth creation and wealth distribution. If it's failing at either of those, it's not worth a damn and we should scrap it. It is perverse that Musk should take such an enormous slice of the pie while others are left with crumbs or nothing. It is a ludicrous audacity that we have allowed him that he should be demanding an accounting in email of our being worth the crumbs.
You're a pompous old bore.
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I think we have Elon Musk write us all an email justifying his access to such an extreme share of our shared and finite resources. What good is that to our shared society? That's the real bottom line.
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I swear I've looked through OP's catalog of work on Amazon and it was all duds. Are you not an inheritor to a ridiculous Mormon fortune who has lived a wasteful life? Your studies certainly don't seem those of a practical man.
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