Quotulatiousness

September 25, 2025

An unanticipated danger of AI – “classified” videos for decision-makers

Filed under: Government, Media, Politics, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Until fairly recently, even the least tech-savvy among us could distinguish AI-generated videos from the real thing … but most of the leaders and decision-makers in western governments aren’t very tech-savvy and put into high-pressure environments may be uniquely susceptible to AI manipulation:

What If I Told You … One of the biggest applications of AI for misinformation hasn’t been online but in the halls of power.

Aging boomer politicians, generals, and major figures are manipulated by showing them AI videos they can’t tell, can’t pause to look at, and certainly can’t digitally examine or geolocate …

“And as you saw Mr President.”

Pay attention. All of them reference seeing “videos” that you aren’t allowed to see, of events which they claim are public record, but appear no-where and no reporting supports …

Sean Hannity was interviewing a world leader and even said “You should show the public the video you showed me it’d really change everyone’s opinion. it changed mine” LIVE ON AIR. And the world leader said some non-committal maybe, then released nothing.

These aging politicians, media figures, corporate personalities, etc. all casually reference seeing insane videos that would CHANGE EVERYTHING and would have been immediately released to sway public opinion if they existed or would have been leaked if it would have been in poor taste to be seen directly releasing them (like gore films)

But of course they aren’t released because they’re faked and the internet would immediately piece together that they’re faked with AI, video game, and archival footage from old conflicts … But the aging 60- and 80-year-olds who run the world can’t tell.

There was a case where they challenged Greta Thunberg “Would you watch this video it’d change your mind” and she refused telling them to just release it … Then they didn’t and attacked her for not being willing to view evidence contrary to her views … in a controlled environment where she couldn’t scrutinize it or check its authenticity against anything else …

It sounds insane! But if you pay attention all of these politicians, media figures, and even influencers … People who often have ZERO security clearance or any official attachment of real trust or allegiance to the governments showing them this “classified” or “controlled” footage … Regularly reference seeing footage which does not exist in the public domain, for events which are viciously contested in which any of the footage they claim to have seen would be WORLD CHANGING news … Yet all these figures are just left out in the wind repeating “Trust me bro”s for some of the most important occurrences of the past decade.

“Intentionally elevating strangers above ourselves, xenophilia, is artificial”

Filed under: Health, Media, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

In Aporia, Spaceman Spiff explains the function and value of what are called “dead man’s switches” both for railway locomotives and societies:

Image from Aporia

A dead man’s brake is a safety feature found in dangerous machines such as lifts or trains. With this mechanism, a brake is always on, preventing action or movement. A conscious choice or effort must be made to override it.

On a train, a human driver must be present to depress a foot pedal that disengages the brake so the train can move at all. If he is absent the train cannot move. If he withdraws his foot while the train is in motion — if he dies, for instance — the train stops. Hence the name.

The key feature of a dead man’s brake is that it requires energy to operate. Its default zero-energy position is OFF; only with energy can it go to ON.

Wariness of strangers, xenophobia, is the default position for most human beings. This is a hardwired evolutionary response to protect us. It served us well. It requires no energy to operate. Children quickly point out people who seem different.

Intentionally elevating strangers above ourselves, xenophilia, is artificial. We must be educated to make it happen, and explicitly taught to overlook differences. It must be reinforced to remain in operation as our instincts typically push against it.

This requires energy. In parts of the world not subject to Western educational norms, they do not teach it to children. Consequently, they do not usually adopt policies like mass immigration or asymmetric multiculturalism.

It is worth noting that xenophobia denotes a wariness of strangers, not hatred or disdain of them. In practice, our working assumption is people different from us may be a threat, and our actions should reflect this until proven otherwise.

Xenophobia is not the racial animosity the propaganda wishes us to believe, such as harming others based on visible differences like skin colour. Such extreme views are in fact rare. The underlying drive of xenophobia is caution, not aggression. Xenophilia attempts to ignore this sensible restraint, which is why it often fails without external pressure.

These instincts are deeply embedded within us because a cautious approach is a strong foundation upon which to preserve our lives and our cultures. It is the reason we have a nation and a culture in the first place.

Xenophilia, then, is a dead man’s brake. It requires energy applied to something that would not typically occur in nature. It makes us ignore differences in order to get along. Or so the theory goes.

Update, 26 September: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Please do have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.

Streaming subscriptions rising far faster than official inflation rate

Filed under: Media, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

I haven’t been a regular TV watcher for a long time, but I still watch the Minnesota Vikings meaning that I need to pay for a streaming service … which has definitely been going up every year at a significantly higher-than-inflation rate. At The Honest Broker, Ted Gioia shows that this is now a very common thing indeed:

It’s not every day that I get an email from Apple. But yesterday the Cupertino leviathan reached out to me.

Can you guess why? Do they have some cool new gadget that will make my life better? Are they opening an Apple Store in my neighborhood? Does Tim Cook want to take me out to dinner?

None of the above. Apple is raising my subscription price for Apple TV by a whopping 30%.

Apple is not alone. The very next day, Disney announced a similar move.

This is the fourth straight year that Disney+ has forced a price increase on viewers. The ad-free subscription price has almost tripled in just six years. During that same period, Disney’s movies have gone from bad to worse — but you pay more to stream them.

The company is truly tapping into its inner Scrooge McDuck. Inflation is just 3% now (according to official, if somewhat dubious, sources). But the ad-free subscription to Disney+ was jacked up 14% last year and is now getting another 19% boost.

Take a look at the larger picture, via this chart from Daniel Parris of Stat Significant (a friend of The Honest Broker). This stuff is reaching greed-is-good levels of abuse.

Meanwhile, the number of scripted shows commissioned by these streamers has dropped significantly. So the audience is asked to pay more for less.

David Friedman on markets, governments and whether we need either?

Filed under: Economics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Adam Smith Institute
Published 16 May 2025

​When markets go awry, who is to blame? Some blame greedy profiteers, whilst others blame governments for tinkering with incentives and supply chains. Where does the truth lie? And what role should the government play when markets go wrong?

​​​Professor David Friedman is a physicist, leading free-market economist and Professor Emeritus of law at Santa Clara University. The son of Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman, David has authored many textbooks on free-market and libertarian theory. In 1973, he published The Machinery of Freedom, which has been ranked by Liberty magazine as one of the “Top Ten Best Libertarian Books” of all time.

TIMESTAMPS

0:00 – Intro
1:00 – What is a market failure?
2:44 – Restaurant analogy
4:15 – Negative externalities
5:00 – Positive externalities
5:50 – Malls
6:55 – Radio
7:40 – Price System
8:48 – Why most economists aren’t libertarians?
9:26 – Government action is a political market
12:30 – Secure property rights for future benefits
15:27 – Stalin
16:15 – Military examples
18:20 – Teaching
19:47 – Desert example
20:55 – Conclusion
22:19 – End

QotD: The Clinton years

Filed under: Humour, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

… in a weird way I feel bad for the young folks who never got a chance to experience life under Bill Clinton. Back then, we — as a society — still acknowledged that there was such a thing as “the truth”. You know, statements about the world that actually correspond to the world in a meaningful and systematic way. Watching Bill Clinton lie was great practice. You young folks are used to everyone, everywhere, in power being an utter sociopath, but it was a novelty back then.

Bill Clinton, some wag observed, would rather climb to the top of Mt. Everest to lie to you than stand still and tell you the truth. He lied when it was to his advantage, and he lied when it was to his very obvious disadvantage. He lied when there was absolutely no point to lying — indeed, like climbing Mt. Everest, when it took enormous effort and real planning to lie. He lied just for the fun of it, and if you saw him do it enough, you realized what that little smirk on his greasy, chicken-fried mug actually was: Orgasm. Bill Clinton got off on lying. That’s why he did it. Every press conference the man ever did was frottage.

Severian, “Party like it’s 1999”, First Questions, 2022-01-13.

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