Also, no common people are needed, and the ultrarich only compete among themselves. You only need serfs if those serfs can give you something your vast robot armies and robot workers cannot give you, which won't be the case in the dystopian future.

As for nuclear bombs: not needed. You can just starve people to death if you own all the land and all the resources, and you can use neutron bombs which are far cleaner than nuclear bombs, or given enough resources you can engineer a plague/bioweapon that just targets other people and not you.

There's be absolutely NO reason to keep anyone alive, and some guys with ARs won't be able to resist.

It's unwise to draw lessons from history about past conflicts and revolutions, since this wouldn't resemble them at all. At no point in history was there ever a situation where the ultrarich didn't need serfs at all.

Does Photobucket make it clear that this is an option, or did you discover it by accident? I don't get that sense from TFA. If it was unclear, this is still a shitty dark pattern. The wording implies that in order to "relive" your images you must subscribe...

I don't think this is strictly the order of how it went in any of those cases, even though, of course, access to weapons will be heavily controlled and restricted in any country with a strong centralized government. And rivals will be disarmed.

> I know the 2A is both contentious and leads to problems (like violence), but it also gives pause and prevents overzealous or corrupt governments

I honestly believe this is a red herring. It made sense in the age of musketry and whereabouts, when the weapons available to civilians vs governments were technologically not too dissimilar, but I think in this day and age believing civilians can have AR-style rifles or shotguns and compete with a government-like army of helicopters, rocket launchers, aircraft, drones (even before we get to the AI-autonomous robots in my scenario) is completely absurd. Or even biochemical weapons if they designed to unleash them (and they could be conceivably be of the kind that damages humans but leaves the planet relatively unharmed). Even assuming guerrilla warfare, that only matters when the intent isn't just extermination, which is reasonable to assume in the current world, but what about a dystopian future?

So I think the 2A makes no difference, because the tech gap would be huge. It already is, imagine in the future.

(edit: removed a wall of text that was repeating my previous comment).

What I describe can start gradually, like arguably it may be already happening, and pick up speed after a certain tipping point. After enough automation + concentration of power and wealth has been achieved, then the masks can fall off.

And then...

> Unless expropriation happens

Exactly. If you're completely amoral and powerful, you only buy or ask for permission if the other side has something to bargain with (such as labor or violent revolt). If they don't anymore, and you have all the force in the world, why not simply take whatever you want?

So how (in this admittedly doomsday scenario that I hope won't come to pass) will a human-based society be able function?

I think it would feel better if it modeled the length of the edge, which should disturb the other horizontal slices.

(I'm talking about the classic, not sure if there's a remake).

The full quote makes it clear Kissinger was saying, in the context of the Vietnam War, that the US should come to the aid of their friends:

> "Word should be gotten to Nixon that if Thieu meets the same fate as Diem, the word will go out to the nations of the world that it may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."

From: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/56471/30861

You can feel happy about the result, you can find the house useful, but you shouldn't feel a sense of building accomplishment, because you didn't build anything.

With AI & apps there's less friction, because you don't even have to hire another human being, it's just prompting. In that sense, it's definitely closer to ordering food from an app.

In any case, in the context of TFA, there's also a sense of low quality, cheaply made. The bots making the PRs aren't reading the contribution guidelines, so that's low quality all by itself. Drowning a human reviewer with a mass of PR is also a low quality way of contributing.

The very concept of "reverse centaur" implies a balance towards the "order pizza online" side of the equation.

If you order a pizza from an app, and assume you can pick ingredients from a checklist, would you consider it "making" a pizza? Would people get the feeling of accomplishment?

As I said, I'm not looking for help here. I do know where to buy the book and I can afford it. I just haven't decided to buy it (yet) for the myriad of reasons people sometimes refrain from impulsively buying all the things :)

Also, I'm afraid of buying it and then never reading it, like it happened to the other commenter.

But I do love physical books. Even unimposing books, I like reading them but also touching them, their smell, their covers. And for art books, I think it goes without saying that the experience of the digital version is markedly different to the physical version.

I love going to a used books store and simply perusing their shelves, occasionally buying something, and a digital library simply cannot replicate this.

If I do buy it, I prefer the physical book with photos rather than a Kindle version.

I'm not actually asking for help here, just musing.

(Again, thanks for your reply anyway).

How come you didn't read it? Did you lose interest?

It's very interesting to see the filming material used for rotoscoping the characters.

I find it very funny that when they filmed the actress doing the princess (it's cool to see her doing the swirl with her skirt to face the Prince!) they were young nerdy men interacting with an attractive young actress, and they were pretty shy about it! I think Jordan Mechner recounts this somewhere, probably his book about the making of PoP.

(The book is something I really want but never decided to pull the trigger, go figure. Maybe because I already read a lot of it way back when it was a free blog?).

Ted Chiang's recent article, which received a lot of pushback from HN'ers (but not from me, I agree with Chiang) claimed for true consciousness the AI needs a physical body, and emotions (which means organs and hormones and a system capable of feeling emotions). I would also add that to behave more rationally, it should have a real sense -- not a roleplayed one -- of self-preservation and a notion that bad choices can lead to an end to its existence.