u/nand2xnor

https://www.steelman.press/people/palmer-luckey/articles/incentives

I've heard Palmer Luckey's argument about the US needing to be the "world's gun store" and not the "world police" many times but only after reading this did I see the connection between that and cost-plus contracting.

If I understood it correctly, essentially all of the cost-plus waste, wasted foreign aid, and decades of grift destroyed public trust to the point where being the "world police" is the only option.

Or am I misunderstanding him? Is he saying being the "world's gun store" is just the best we can do right now?

https://www.steelman.press/people/dario-amodei/articles/work

This is the first time I've encountered this specific argument. From how I understand it:

If AI automates 50% of jobs while leaving the rest untouched, half the population gets declared useless and the other half doesn't. Basically a caste fracture. But if AI exceeds all humans at everything at once, society faces a collective reckoning instead. The worst outcome isn't maximum job loss, it's a breakdown into useful / not-needed.

This is especially interesting in light of the fronteir models being restricted...

Will it cause a broader displacement to happen because the models are gatekept for a few years OR does it make the partial displacement even more severe because a limited number of people have access to the frontier (his zeroth world economy idea)?

Curious, what do y'all think?