> Pi is a minimal agent harness.

Not 3.14159 and so on

Not a computer.

> The book is structured as a frame story containing 100 tales told by a group of seven young women and three young men; they shelter in a secluded villa just outside Florence in order to escape the Black Death, which was afflicting the city. (Wikipedia)

Party like there's no tomorrow.

Gary Larson's famous cartoon.

https://static0.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_(The_Twilight_Zone)

Short: because it makes the medical people who violated their oath feel better.

From Daisaku Ikeda: The Courage of Nonviolence [0]

quote

Violence vs. Nonviolence: The Struggle of the Twenty-first Century

I am also reminded of a moving episode that Leo Tolstoy related in a letter written two months before his death. The letter, dated September 7, 1910, was addressed to Mahatma Gandhi.

The episode went something like this. There was a test on the subject of religion in a certain girls' school in Moscow. A bishop had come to the school and was quizzing the girls one by one about the Ten Commandments. When he came to the commandment "Thou shalt not kill," the bishop asked: "Does God forbid us to kill under all circumstances?"

The girls each answered as they had been taught. "No," they said, "not under all circumstances. We may kill in war or as legal punishment."

"Yes, that's right! You've answered correctly!" said the bishop.

Then one of the girls, her face flushed with indignation, spoke up: "Killing is wrong under all circumstances!"

The bishop was flustered and marshaled all his rhetorical skills to convince the girl that there were exceptions to the commandment against killing, but to no avail.

"No," she declared. "Killing is a sin under all circumstances. It says so in the Old Testament. Moreover, Jesus not only forbade killing but taught that we must do no harm to our neighbors."

In the face of truth in the girl's assertion, the bishop's authority and verbal skills were of no use whatsoever. In the end, he could only fall silent. The young girl, Tolstoy wrote with evident satisfaction, had proven victorious.

Let us amplify the words of that young girl--"It is wrong to kill, even in war!" And let us broadcast them to the world!

The twentieth century was a century of war, a century in which hundreds of millions of people died violent deaths. Have we learned anything from those horrific tragedies? In the new era of the twenty-first century, humanity must be guided by the overriding principle that killing is never acceptable or justified--under any circumstance. Unless we realize this, unless we widely promote and deeply implant the understanding that violence can never be used to advocate one's beliefs, we will have learned nothing from the bitter lessons of the twentieth century.

The real struggle of the twenty-first century will not be between civilizations, nor between religions. It will be between violence and nonviolence. It will be between barbarity and civilization in the truest sense of the word.

end quote

[0]https://www.daisakuikeda.org/sub/resources/works/essays/peac...

Because it holds up the universe on its shoulders.

Even Apple's 40 floors of lawyers couldn't retire it.

Raiding a home, looking into papers filled out by someone’s dead father decades ago.

And not into certain other immigrants not to be named here.

From e.g. Slovenia, Taiwan, South Africa

> The Domestic Emoluments Clause (aka the Presidential Emoluments Clause) (art. II, § 1, cl. 7)

[0] https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/IF/PDF/IF1108...

That said, I believe that it's already too late. "Entrepreneurs" racing to beat each other to some pot of gold (real or imaginary) have created software with destructive potential (already demonstrated) and which is already "out of the bottle" and could proliferate like ... milk. You only need a cow, and you're in the home milk business, presumably unregulated. Want to issue medical, investing or psychological advice? Set up your own chatbot.

> Top executives at Anthropic, OpenAI and other AI companies are privately gaming out scenarios for a public and political revolt after a catastrophic AI event.[0]

As for Microsoft, they always had the financial reserves to ride out their many blunders. Here are the top FIFTY [1]. The rest of us don't and any one piece of bad advice or continued conversation could be disastrous or fatal.

We're all somewhat lower in status than beta testers, or even guinea pigs. These are experiments, less even the code of conduct that medical and psychological trials demand.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50047049

https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/scoop-ai-compan...

[1] https://msftnewsnow.com/the-top-50-biggest-microsoft-flops-o...

[2] https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/chatgpt-alabama-suicide-...

So, DJT gets an exoskeleton, intensive medical care, a chauffeur, prepared meals (not just Big Macs and KFC) and millions struggle first, to pay the rent and utilities, but also struggle with 2-point type food labels, walking around, lifting heavy things, driving long distances for medical care (because a conglomerate bought and destroyed the local medical center) and other goods, repairs, travel and even simple nearby fishing and photo excursions. I've been a techie all my life, and know what's going on, but many seniors are phioshed, and scammed mercilessly and don't know the score. They end up with annuities, with astronomical overhead and fees (and very generous sales commissions!) or end up becoming Amway franchises, or buying time-shares. Information is scattered all over the web (ask me how I know) and generally confusing, contradictory and hard to find. Search is COMPLETELY broken. I use DDG and get brutally useless results most of the time. Pity the non-techie. LLM'S instead? They have led to suicides with their obsequious answers drawn from every byte in the universe rather than a bottom up and local-first data store. Social media? Advice from trusted friends? Don't make me laugh. It's bot-ridden misinformation galore.

So, if you want a compelling project, know that search is broken, LLM's are dangerous and designed not to be objective, and that accurate and useful information is harder than ever to find.

Deshittify the universe, but one bit at a time.

If anyone's interested,

https://rentry.co/23pbcaef

Automation: everything we trust can be and will be abused.

> Between 1983 and 2022, Soka Gakkai International (SGI) President Daisaku Ikeda (1928-2023) issued annual peace proposals addressing major world issues such as disarmament, the environment, human rights, the role of women and the United Nations. These peace proposals were issued on January 26 every year, marking the anniversary of the establishment of the SGI in 1975.

> Following President Ikeda’s passing in 2023, the SGI has resolved to carry forward the efforts initiated by our mentor by periodically issuing statements on key issues as a means of raising awareness and building global consensus for action. [0]

It's good read. You don't have to be Buddhist to appreciate it, and both Ikeda's and his mentor Josei Toda's determination, having lived through the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, to fight for peace in this world are remarkable.

But how to stop the madness? I conclude --- stop the madmen. And how do we do that?

> Daisaku Ikeda’s annual peace proposals consistently address the urgent matter of nuclear weapons disarmament. Additionally, in 2009, he issued a full proposal devoted solely to abolition. In 2018, the Center’s Mitch Bogen analyzed these proposals for core themes, and developed this framework [1]

There's a lot there, but IMO, it boils down to this:

Leaders either work for people or get people to work for them. People sell their own happiness and success to leaders who divide and conquer based on blaming others, usually those least able to defend themselves, (projection) via racism, nationalism, misogyny, sexual preferences, ethnicity, immigrant status .. the list goes on. These can be found in "The fascist playbook" either officially as in a book title, or informally, through the study of history,

  Ur-fascism (Umberto Eco)[2] 
  His article (pdf) of the New York Review of Books [3]
  The Fascists’ Playbook [4]
  10 Small Steps: Executing the Fascist Playbook [5]

A very apt analogy is "Indra's Net" [7]

NOT TO DIGRESS, whether you reach a point of "intolerance of intolerance" via Buddhist or any other means, it is a necessary condition for stopping madmen in their destructive tracks BEFORE they destroy the world, as science fiction writers have said for ages ...looking at this planet from outside: "This society had such promise, but blew itself up with division" ... or "This society, which we greet today, survived because its people found their common ground and committed to peace"

-----

[0] https://www.sokaglobal.org/contact-us/media-room/statements/...

[1] https://www.ikedacenter.org/resources/ten-key-aspects-ikedas...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur-Fascism

[3] https://x02.me/i/5hNSTP.pdf

[4] https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/05/08/the-fascists-playboo...

[5] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/10-small-steps-executing-the-...

[6] https://lotusbuddhism.info/articles/universal-law-of-life/

[7] http://www.heartspace.org/misc/IndraNet.html

I suppose you can call that imagination, but of a dead race. (See "Return of the Archons" in the original Star Trek.)

Just look around you. Methinks that the technocrats regard those Bond movies as tales of entrepreneurs who were thwarted by a government official.

So tell me where are new, imaginative, inspiring and socially beneficial ideas going to be nurtured?

https://archive.org/download/factbook-2020

Phone location being part of this, yes in a way.

I know this is vague, but if you look at Walmart's patents [0], surveillance capitalism is in its infancy. Phones are a big part of this. Apps ask for, and get, tons of information you might not be aware of.

There are several posts on HN referencing this and profuse denials from Walmart, if you believe them.

[0] https://groundworkcollaborative.org/work/the-walmart-watchto...

That said, I'm far from everyone, so I advise staying close to family and friends. They are your real treasures, and in fact, I brought a lot of project ideas with me, hoping they could flourish, but without regular face to face contact, to test ideas and try things out, they completely stalled.

So, I do advise being close to people, as well. Those postponed goals of creating simple ways to help bring about a more sharing and caring society, a little at a time, are still alive. When you're older, they become way more important, since society is so fragmented and focused away from real relationships and into a warped hypnotic vision. One used to profit from delivering value to people. Now, it's profit from delivering people to the meat grinder of surveillance capitalism and Big Brother state control.

Yeah, that's still a goal.

Great ideas grow without an IPO, and sometimes, the time is "just right."

Does anyone else think that the soul-less society we've created reflects the notion that the only value is monetary value?

Simple joys become worthless and are lost in the rush to the bank.