Hopefully this time it lasts - over the past 10+ years I've witnessed them occasionally find it, only to lose it again relatively quickly. Now the stakes are too high to repeat this pattern.
I think, part of the issue is that, as a mass of humans, we tend to be rather dumb. And they certainly don't decide on merits, in aggregate. It is somewhat questionable if they decide on merits even as individuals ( unless we expand the definition somewhat ). But it is possible I got too cynical.
It's a paradox: on the one hand, if we were dumb en masse, it's hard to see how we could have developed so far technologically and cultivated such complex societies.
On the other: I have to agree with you, there is too much of a pattern of bewildering behaviour not to.
I think what irks me is this idea that deceiving people to push them towards a specific outcome is a reliable and sound strategy, when we've seen many instances of it having the opposite effect.
Have you been on Reddit recently? Anti-AI sentiment isn't limited to technical communities, but engaged with platform-wide. The hate is the content; apart from the rampant anti-intellectualism there is very little engagement with any material discussing the technologies in and of themselves.
I don't think you know what "mobilized" means - at least, it implies an actor with ulterior motives is driving this response in people. Usually political actors or the media are accused of this.
What you're describing on Reddit sounds like a broad-based antipathy to AI, which is just... how a lot of people are feeling?
You can criticise their motivation being based in emotions or vibes instead of facts and thoughts, but unless you have evidence to the contrary, it sounds like this is just where people are at on this topic.
Of course I know what mobilised means, but with these social medias, the platforms themselves are at play in shaping the conversations. To clarify, I think this type of anti-AI sentiment should be studied as part of a the baseline social culture of the platforms. I do not have a good answer to why it flourishes on them, other than the generic framing. Perhaps its a new type of technological conservatism?
Some ideas for why people might be feeling this way:
1. People are naturally scared of major change.
2. AI has been pretty aggressively thrust on people, whether they like it or not.
3. There is a legitimate concern about widespread job loss, some companies have already claimed AI is the reason for mass layoffs.
4. Deepfakes, scams, cyber security risks, people AI psychosis or using it to commit suicide, etc - no doubt none of this helps with general public opinion.
5. Cannibalisation of the rest of the economy, e.g. RAM and GPU prices making gaming machines unaffordable, non-AI startups unable to get funding in this environment.
6. Hype fatigue - we've recently been through this with crypto.
So to me the evidence points to anti-AI sentiment being more of a reactionary response to the current status quo, rather than some proactive effort to negate the technology.
Google is still around: revenue is at £8 billion (Office for Budget Responsibility) and in decline, and NHS spending is at £2.6 billion in England, which is by far the bulk of the UK (NHS England).
"In 2024, smoking cost the public finances in England £16.5bn, more than double the £6.8bn raised through tobacco taxes." [0]
"The NHS’s expenditure on smoking-related health issues remains high, corroborated by the reported £20. 6 billion cost to public finances in the UK in 2022, with approximately £2. 2 billion attributed to the NHS" [1]
It seems NHS spending is only a part of the story. Also note that I'm only quoting cost to public finances, the overall societal costs are cited as being much higher.
First, you corroborate that my data are indeed correct.
Second, I debunked the argument that illness treatment is paid by the tax payer, when indeed the data show that this is not the case as tax revenue far exceeds cost
Then, adding fuzzier and fuzzier unrelated things and add them up all equally as "costs" (like a very widely defined "economic cost", and peolple do not exist to maximise their labour output) to tilt the balance the other way is not an honest take, it is fudging the numbers to fit a narrative.
Frankly that fits the overall thinking on this topic and others: people cannot decide for themselves reharding their own lives, things must be banned, dissenting opinions are "wrong" and must suppressed. And we are back to exactly what the article is about!
Even if they don't die from a directly smoking-related cause, smokers experience more chronic illness than non-smokers, and it tends to start earlier in life. Non-NHS costs include sickness benefits, absences from work, and reduction in lifetime earnings. And then there are the opportunity costs from whatever else they might have spent the money and time on, not to mention what they might have achieved in life had they not developed emphysema in their early 40s.
It's certainly possible to argue about the exact figures, and ASH are hardly a neutral third-party. But it's more dishonest than not to pretend that they don't exist.
What cost is "loss of lifetime earnings" because you die early while still of working age? And cost to whom? (You're dead).
How can you add that like-for-like to actual financial cost to NHS? (Which was the otiginal issue of the discussion, remember?)
Shifting the topic and trying to add random things as "cost" is fudging the numbers, so dishoneest, indeed. It is obvious and I am hoping you see it, too.
Bottom line is that smokers do pay for the cost of their healthcare so this is a fair system and people can then make their own decisions regarding their own lives (which is what a free, liberal society is about).
Well, no, the cost of their own smoking-induced illness isn't the only cost, as mentioned before what about the healthcare costs of people who pick up 2nd or 3rd hand smoke?
I think the point we are making thay you don't want to acknowledge is that the cost to society, healthcare or otherwise, simply cannot be made up for with sin taxes on cigarettes. If we tried that, a pack would need to cost like 10x or more of what it does now, and even then it's debatable.
Unless we have finer data, I would assume that 2nd and 3rd hand smoke is included in "smoking-related" so in the cost figure. It has also to be much less than actual smoking so will not massively change the NHS cost.
We have already established that healthcare costs are more than covered by existing tax.
Arguing and trying to make up additional "costs" is, again, just fudging the numbers and clutching at straws at this point...
Extraordinary claims require evidence, not snarky Google mentions. Spending amounts are for what specifically? Do those 2.6 billion account for second and third hand smoke? For smoking in pregnancy leading to problems?
Most of the price of a pack of cigarettes in the UK is tax. It is fairly well known that revenue is higher than cost to healthcare service (NHS, which is funded via general taxation), and data are public and very easily found. My previous comment with data was indeed literally the result of two Google queries (revenue amd cost) and were from official sources, which I mentioned.
You don't like the data? Fine. You want to do your own detailed research and enlighten us? Fine. I didn't comment to be cross-examined to death...
I provided data although I commented that they were easily available because "what's your source" is the usual lazy retort.
This is hostile cross-examination, not discussion. I suggest you read the guidelines before saying things like "this is HN" (although you are right that this is a commom behaviour here).
"now more kids than ever are on social media." is not an opinion, it's a statement of fact, which should be accompanied by a source, at least if you want to be taken seriously.
Unfortunately I can't say, SAI is very hush hush on what projects it has (until I chooses to announce ofc). All I can say is my (much smaller team) is working on very unrelated stuff
> Swiss people are very upset with what is going on with their military spending in US
Can confirm, as a Swiss person I am flabbergasted at how the federal government keeps pushing for the new fighter jets to be F35s, despite not only the US' currenr erratic behaviour in general, but how it has changed the terms of the purchase deal. Blows my mind, honestly.
They said sounds like a dick, seems like that provides a level of measure to calling anyone anything.
> because this is only part of the story
Care to share the other part(s)? Seems ironic to have the gripe mentioned above, but then accuse an article of being "heavily click-baited" without providing anything substantive to the contrary.
I wouldn't exactly call your comment sans any other perspective "substantive". Where is the Wikipedia discussion? And the blog post your bot allegedly wrote? Why no links to the article in question?
Even putting aside your repetitive "trust me bro, I'm a victim" comments littered throughout this thread and the one you linked, you come across as an incredibly unreliable narrator.
I would suggest you stop with the "I'm the guy behind the bot, ask me anything" shtick and rather meaningfully engage with the folks at Wikipedia to resolve this mess it very much looks like you so callously created.
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