https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditSimulator/comments/3g9ioz/...

Biological systems are hard.

If we were to involuntarily take someone into society's care, the process must be benign with a good outcome. As things currently are, the exact opposite (or a system so thoroughly financialized as to be almost the same) is present. The capacity to reverse this seems non-existant.

Most calls right now to reinstitute involuntary commitment are the same thought process that results in the societal rot present in how we deal with poverty, homelessness, and addiction; they just want them even further removed from themselves so they don't have to witness it.

You seem to believe that these are adverse, uncommon, and unintended outcomes rather than part of the machinery of the troubled teen industry, the school-to-prison pipeline, poverty, and capitalist/protestant propaganda in general. Involuntary commitment would be a threat and weapon in the current political environment, as in the thread OP where the same was used in Francoist Spain.

Perhaps you should investigate your own biases and emotions toward the people chewed up and spit out by society before calling out a comment as "emotional" and "anti-social".

The part relevant to the OP:

FH: Well, one of the threads in the story is to trace a possible way a messiah is created in our society, and I hope I was successful in making it believable. Here we have the entire process, or at least the large and some of the subtle elements of the construction of this, both from the individual standpoint, and from the way society demands this of you. It’s the references in there, you know, that the man must recognize the myth he is living in, because the creation of an avatar is a mythmaking process. We’ve done it in our…in recent times. Look at what’s happening to John F. Kennedy.

WM: O, sure.

FH: Who was a very earthy, real, and not totally holy man…so here we have a likeable person, now, you see…

WM: Yes.

FH: But real in the flesh and blood sense who by the process of emulation becomes something larger than life, far larger than life, and I’ve just explored all of as many permutations as I could recognize in the process.

WM: Oh, I-I caught overtones of Lawrence of Arabia in the thing, for example.

FH: He could very well become an avatar for the…for the Arabs.

WM: Right.

FH: If Lawrence of Arabia had died at the crucial moment of the British…

WM: Say, when Allenby walked into Jerusalem.

FH: Yes. If he had died…if, for example, he had gone up and killed the people who were destroying his breed, walked into that conference and said, Gentlemen, I have here under my javala a surprise, Bang! Bang! Bang! and he had been killed…

WM: He’d have been deified.

FH: He would have been deified. And it would have been the most terrifying thing the British had ever encountered, because the Arabs would have swept that entire peninsula with that sort of force, because one of the things we’ve done in our society is exploited this power…Western man has exploited this avatar power.

> The union announced the deal Saturday morning, saying, “it warrants presenting to the members and is worthy of your consideration.”

> The union plans to vote on the deal on Wednesday. Nearly 95% of workers voted to reject the last tentative deal, which the union’s leaders recommended.

Okay, that's kinda funny lol.

It's a bit worrying how much the AI industry seems to be focusing on the superficial appearance of success (grandiose marketing claims, AI art that looks fine on first glance, AI mimicking peoples' appearances and speech patterns, etc.). I'm just your random layperson in the comment section, but it really seems like the field needed to be stuck in academia for a decade or two more. It hadn't quite finished baking yet.

The example is obvious marketing hyperbole, of course, but it's just not going to happen beyond a superficial level unless we somehow create some kind of time-travelling panopticon. It's marred by lack of data (Feynman died in 1988), bad data (hagiographies of Feynman, this instance included), flawed assumptions (would Feynman even be an appropriate teaching assistant for everyone?), etc.

I wonder if AI fans keep doing this thing in hopes that the "wow factor" of having the greats being emulated by AI (Feynman, Bill Gates, Socrates, etc.) will paper over their fundamental insecurities about their investment in AI. Like, c'mon, this kind of thing is a bit silly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=og2ehY5QXSc

https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/n8g2om/redd...

Personally, it's pretty easy to find posts on reddit that pair a vague question with an image. I imagine that there are normal people that could be posting these, but it's such easy engagement bait that's both trivial to create as well as use as cover to recycle old comment threads for karma.

> ... And it seems to me that the sickness of this young man, and of those who resemble him, is much like that of a traveller, who, longing to visit some city and having just about finished his way there, lodges at an inn outside the walls, where, upon some trifling impulse, he is averted, and so both makes his previous effort useless, and deprives himself of a view of the wonders of the city. And of such a nature are those who engage to do the other commandments, then turn around for the sake of gathering wealth. I’ve seen many who will fast, pray, groan, and display every kind of pious exertion, so long as it costs them nothing, but who will not so much as toss a red cent to those who are suffering. What good do they get from their remaining virtue? For the kingdom of heaven does not admit them; for, as it says, “It is easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God” (Lk 18:25). But, while this statement is so plain, and its speaker so unerring, scarcely anyone is persuaded by it. “So how are we supposed to live without possessions?” they say. “What kind of life will that be, selling everything, being dispossessed of everything?” Don’t ask me for the rationale of the Master’s commandments. He who lays down the law knows how to bring even what is incapable into accordance with the law. But as for you, your heart is tested as on a balance, to see if it shall incline towards the true life or towards immediate gratification. For it is right for those who are prudent in their reasonings to regard the use of money as a matter of stewardship, not of selfish enjoyment; and those who lay it aside ought to rejoice as though separated from things alien, not be embittered as though deprived of what is nearest and dearest.

https://bekkos.wordpress.com/st-basils-sermon-to-the-rich/

https://theintercept.com/2023/06/20/lexisnexis-ice-surveilla...