The Crazy Years – Page 7 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Make Haiti Great Again: Send Haitians Back

“Promise me that you’ll never go to Haiti.” – Anchorman 2

Give an alien a fish, and you feed him for a day. Deport him, and you can keep all your fish.

I think that, before anyone is admitted to the United States – even to visit – that we evaluate their home country. If it is awful, they can’t come in. Ever.

The point is that if we allow a significant number of people from horrible places into the country, they’ll merely replicate that culture of failure right here. The United States isn’t a magical place with Magic Dirt (thanks, Vox Day for that term) that suddenly transforms a Haitian cannibal into a virtuous, upright American in an afternoon.

Or in a lifetime.

Trump’s administration just announced that the “temporary protected status” is ending for half a million Haitians in the United States and they’ll have to go, well, somewhere. It doesn’t have to be Haiti, but as the bartender says: “You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here.”

The idea that importing almost five percent of the population of Haiti makes Haiti better or makes the United States better is laughable. If it were true, why not bring them all?

Okay, that would make Haiti better. The real reason for that is that the thing that makes Haiti bad isn’t its climate, location, or even history. The thing that really makes Haiti awful is the Haitians.

If I bring you breakfast in bed, just say “thanks” – that’s enough. Not, “Who are you?” and “How did you get into my house?”

The people leaving Haiti to try to leech of the United States are, probably, the very best Haitians. I know that’s not saying much, but it really is the cream of the crop that would be trying to get out. They won’t improve the United States in any way – the cream of the crop of Haiti is below the average American in every single measurable human attribute.

Yet, they are probably above the average Haitian in every single attribute as well. The elite of Haiti coming to the United States observably makes both places worse. The United States gets a population that’s fundamentally unsuited to live in a first world environment with first world expectations and with behavior compatible with, say, living in a suburb and not eating the neighbor’s pets.

Eating the pets that Americans won’t.

They have no skills that would be of value to the country that would outweigh their cost. Remember, someone has to pay for their food, housing, clothing, education, and medical care.

That someone who pays is you. And your children, who end up in a poorer world and a violent classroom peopled by people for whom society is a vague concept that doesn’t apply to them.

But these are the best Haiti has to offer. There are very few people in Haiti as it is that have the mental acumen to lead the nation – and stripping them of those people makes sure that Haiti will actually get worse. It’s a brain drain from a place where brains are in short supply.

And I don’t think any honest person could disagree with me.

I said “honest person”.

Yet they do. Any differences in human performance are explained away as racism. Sadly, if you tell a dumb person that the reason that they can’t achieve isn’t because they’re dumb, it’s because they’re being discriminated against, they’ll believe you.

Most dumb people don’t know that they’re dumb. To tell them they’re just as smart as everyone else is therefore one of the cruelest things you can do to a dumb person. Instead of there being no reason that the dumb person that can change leading to them being dumb, a lie about a vast conspiracy to keep them down is invented.

So, if the lie is about to be exposed, like when Trump called Haiti a “shithole”?

The GloboLeft must then double down on their lie. For instance, I have been told by Conan O’Brien and every other member of the GloboLeftElite that Haiti is a paradise. No need to make it better, because it’s already great. Oh, and you’re a hypocrite if you’re a Christian and don’t want all the Haitians coming here.

A GloboLeftist walks into a bar. “I’ll have a standard. Heck make it a double.”

Which is why other members of the GloboLeftElite then whine and complain that sending the best and brightest Haitians back to Haiti is sending them to certain death. And who would be responsible for making Haiti awful?

Haitians. But if we send them back, well, we’re talking about sending the top 5% of Haitians who might, with help, be able to turn that “paradise” into a place that Haitians might like to live in.

Oh, sure, you say, that hasn’t happened in the 233-odd years that Haiti has been a free and independent country, but I’m sure the Clinton Foundation™ provide enough guidance to get them on the right track. Why, of the USAID awards to Haiti, you might scoff and note that 2.2% of that money was spent in Haiti while 56.5% was spent in the D.C. Beltway (source – LINK).

I hear that GloboLeftists claim that when Trump donated to a charity for blind children that those kids never saw a dime.

But the Haitians have to go back. It’s time to make repatriations great again.

Next, let’s move on to Somalians and Ilhan Omar. Since Ilhan divorced her husband, does that mean they’re no longer brother and sister?

Greedflation And Burgers And Girls Drinking Beer

“And in Paris, you can buy a beer at McDonald’s®.” – Pulp Fiction

Interesting fact: women in Arabic cities like Paris don’t need car insurance. They’re already covered.

Greedflation.

It’s an ugly word for several reasons. The first reason it’s ugly is because I generally support the free market as the best tool for setting prices. You see that at gasoline stations regularly – no station that charges a quarter more for a gallon of gasoline will be able to sell much gasoline. The price for a commodity like gasoline, in a relatively free market, sets itself.

That’s nice, because the very price mechanism that sets the price also allows the gasoline to flow to the consumers that value it the most, which according to my research are groups of post-nuclear war barbarians who hang out in Australia.

I hear they’re filming the sequel on location in Los Angeles.

Some people don’t get this. I recall having extended conversations when I was in my twenties with an elderly gentleman about gasoline prices. He was upset because after some price shock, the gasoline prices all jumped $0.50 the next day.

“They didn’t pay that much for the gasoline!”

Well, no, they didn’t. But because the supply was thought to be limited, the gasoline was worth more. Besides, the merchant was going to have to refill that storage tank at a higher price, and nobody was going to buy his high-priced gas if he charged more than the market when the price invariably went down.

“Besides,” I asked, “If you had an ounce of gold that you bought for $50, would you sell it for that, or would you want the (then) current price of $500 an ounce?”

Of course he said he’d want the $500. But he still couldn’t understand why gas prices went up.

And I only got to take him on one walk.

I wanted to establish that, because I’m going to tear into the larger corporations for lying about prices. That’s greedflation.

An example of this would be McDonald’s®. I’ll pick on them because, like illegal aliens, they’re everywhere and more numerous than they should be at this stage in the economy. McDonald’s™ built its reputation on food that was fast, tasty, and inexpensive – a place a dad could take the kids for a quick treat on the way back from the zoo on a Saturday afternoon.

At least in Modern Mayberry, McDonald’s© has ceased to be fast, and inexpensive. McDonald’s® prices are so high that a “meal deal” costs the better part of the price of a pound of ribeye. To me, that’s not a deal, or at least not a good one.

The stripper said she was stripping in order to feed her kids, so why did she get mad when I tipped her in Cinnamon Toast Crunch™ coupons?

And these prices have pushed people away – McDonald’s™ insinuated that these price hikes were due mainly to inflation and blamed the franchise owners for the ultimate pricing.

The result?

McDonald’s® ended up with declining burger sales, but with record profits. In fact, between 2014 and 2024, their prices doubled. Most of the increase was before the pandemic and inflation. Everyone’s doing it, right? No, mainly McDonald’s® was McLovin’™ it.

The average increase in prices for other fast-food restaurants during that same time period was more in the 55%-ish percent, and more or less in a straight line. They were raising their prices much faster than inflation, but McDonald’s™ was leading the pack.

The result: A lot of “inflation” is just corporations adjusting prices to the point of maximizing their profits. Sell fewer burgers and yet make more money?

Why not! Especially if we can insinuate that it’s really all beyond our control. Perfect!

I actually don’t mind that they’re increasing prices to increase profits. I get that. I mean, if they could sell just one burger and make sixteen billion dollars in profit, they’d be all in. Oh, wait, Lockheed-Martin™ is already doing that with jet fighters.

Don’t worry if the F-35 gets rained on. That only costs about $50 million to fix.

What I mind is the insinuation this is due to outside forces instead of a planned extraction of the greatest amount of profit that can be generated per sale. It’s a lie.

One of the components of the monthly “Misery Index” that I put together is tied to inflation. Inflation destroys the value of currency, and makes people feel, day by day, shabbier and poorer. However, to blame outside forces for your increased prices instead of saying, “Hey, we think this burger is worth it,” is execrable.

The Wilder household has responded by purchasing prepared foods outside of the house only rarely. Once a week – at most. Instead, we’re cooking at home. It’s likely healthier, and I can get exactly the right amount of chocolate sauce on my bacon cheeseburger.

I think many Americans have reacted the same way. And for us, it’s made us less miserable, rather than more miserable, plus the food is better.

The problem, though, is that when big business reaches a size that it can extract all the wealth it wants on a whim and keep posting record profits year after year. That’s not competition, that’s a Wealth Pump as defined by Peter Turchin, and it is a prime factor in the creation of misery and the road to Civil War.

The initial example that I gave of gas stations all competing to get my dollar is the way the markets work best. There are a number of different sellers all trying to get me to come to their station, though they haven’t figured out that if they had hot girls in bikinis they could probably double their business.

And they don’t look like they speak Arabic.

And no, McDonald’s™ rarely forces people to eat there, so there still is competition from substitutes, like a ribeye. I have the choice of whether or not to go to McDonald’s™. Please, Golden Arches, raise your prices to your heart’s content!

Just don’t lie about it, and just don’t expect consumers to hang around, though it seems to be working for you right now. And McDonald’s™ innovates, since I heard that they had a failed beef version of their McRib©.

Who says they don’t learn from their McSteaks®?

34 Signposts On The Way To Civil War . . .

“Who else is on the list?” – The Godfather

Terrorists really help with self-esteem issues. They keep telling their new recruits, “You’re the bomb.”

The devolution of the United States was predicted by Thomas Chittum in his book Civil War Two, The Coming Breakup of America. Although you can find it for free online, I strongly encourage you to purchase it from Amazon®, since Mr. Chittum does get the money from this and has been using it to get families out of South Africa.

Towards the back of the book, Mr. Chittum provides the Civil War II Checklist, a list of 36 items “in no particular order” that he sees as measurements along the way to Civil War 2.0. He wrote the book originally in 1997, and updated it in 2007, so we’ll be marking close to two decades of time between his last update and this quick analysis.

Item 1: Every time you see a blank for your ethnic group on a form, think Civil War II.

Recent Supreme Court rulings as well as President Trump’s removal of DEI at the federal level have taken us back from the peak, but I believe many federal DEI organizations are still there, just under different names. Regardless, it’s a part of our culture now. Check.

Santa never pays for parking – it’s always on the house.

Item 2: If illegal aliens are allowed to vote, even in local elections, it will be another unmistakable signal that American citizenship, and therefore America itself, is finished.

California, Maryland, and Vermont allow this. Check.

Item 3: The abolition of the right to bear arms.

This is one area where we’ve made great strides since Mr. Chittum wrote his book. Gun rights are at the best condition that they’ve been during my entire lifetime. This is the power of a group keeping after it year after year.

Item 4: Watch for racially split juries.

We are here. Multiple cases of black criminals walking free despite clear proof of guilt of them killing white people exist. Check.

Item 5: Watch for the military to assume police duties.

I have to give this a “not yet” since the National Guard and Marines were in an unarmed force protection role in Los Angeles.

Item 6: Watch for the establishment of an elite military force outside the chain of command of the regular military to serve as an internal counterinsurgency force.

Not seen, unless I missed this or the Ghostbusters™ count.

I hear the Ghostbusters™ didn’t wear unusual socks, just a pair of normal socks.

Item 7: Watch for Washington D.C. to increasingly resemble the capital of some banana republic under siege by revolutionaries and mobs.

I’m going to give this a check as the periodic riot fences go up. Check.

Item 8: Resegregation: Watch for Africans and other minorities demanding, and often getting, separate facilities for themselves, another clear sign that they’re continuing to reject co-option.

Absolutely. From graduation ceremonies to student unions to “safe spaces” this is common even though they still claim a Constitutional right to be around white people. Check.

Item 9: Watch for further replacement of individual rights by group rights, group rights based on ethnic group.

This had been well underway, and is likely only slightly impeded by the Trump administration. Check.

Item 10: Watch for non-governmental organizations acquiring military power.

Outside of Blackwater™ or whatever Erik Prince is up to, I don’t see this as significant.

Item 11: Watch for real political power to continue to shift from our elected officials to the courts, and thus away from the American people.

Check. Check. Check. The courts in the United States are fundamentally a liberal institution, and are acting as a one-way rachet – the GloboLeft can do anything, but TradRight can’t change it a bit. Check.

A hamburger walked into a bar buy they wouldn’t give him a beer. They don’t serve food.

Item 12: Watch for more instances of real political power flowing from American institutions to international bodies, thus again flowing away from American citizens.

There has been some of this, especially with the drive to worship Climate Change, and the drive has been to create these not as treaties, but as international “agreements” that don’t require ratification. Check.

Item 13: Watch for minorities and radical whites to continue to seize control of American institutions.

Check.

Item 14: Watch for secessionist movements and other movements seeking autonomy on American soil.

I’ve seen several of these show up on the TradRight, very few on the GloboLeft because they cannot accept the idea of people opting out of their delusions. Besides, the biggest sign of an impending divorce is Mom and Dad talking about it. Check.

Item 15: Watch for race-based political parties, a sure sign of racial polarization.

Trump won 42% of the Hispanic vote, so not quite there yet. Only 16% of blacks voted for Trump, and if that was the only group we’d call it. Verdict: not yet.

Item 16: Watch for the emergence of “no-go” areas for the police in our cities, areas abandoned by the police and left to the control of street gangs.

There are plenty of these in the United States, and even more in the summer during riot season. Check.

Item 17: Watch for a so-called slave tax refund or some similar vehicle that will automatically subsidize all blacks for life.

This has not happened.

The Vatican doesn’t take them though, it’s a PayPal™ state.

Item 18: Watch for court orders and other schemes mandating more voting districts in which blacks are intentionally a majority.

This has 100% happened in Alabama. Check.

Item 19: Watch other multiethnic empires for ethnic violence, a general loss of democracy, increasing poverty, waves of refugees, and their actual breakup in ethnic warfare. South Africa, Russia, Turkey, the Balkan countries, Brazil, all of black Africa, Mexico, Guatemala, India, Pakistan and Peru are all multiethnic empires to some extent.

Mixed bag, but I’ll give it a check as the waves of refugees and poverty are evident in many of these. Check.

Item 20: Watch for the spread of walled suburbs, euphemistically labeled as gated communities.

This continues. Check.

Item 21: Watch for more mind control hoaxes by the establishment media.

This references the fake and contrived news. Absolutely this is happening. Check.

What does Willy call an economic depression? An everlasting jobstopper.

Item 22: Watch for an increasing percentage of minorities in our military, the use of foreigners in our military, the use of UN troops on our soil, or even the establishment of an American Foreign Legion.

This is partially true, but UN will likely never happen. I’m still giving it a check. Check.

Item 23: Watch for more out of court settlements in cases of alleged racial discrimination.

I think most of these are out of court or are administratively done at this point. Check.

Item 24: Watch for more restrictions on freedom of speech by the government and the establishment media.

This has happened, especially on the Internet. If not for Musk’s purchase of Twitter™ this would have been complete, reducing actual free speech to a vanishingly small number of sites. Check.

Item 25: Watch for police to increasingly abandon their traditional uniforms for ones that resemble military and secret police uniforms in their dark color or camouflage, military helmets, opaque face shields, and absence of name tags.

Barney and Sheriff Taylor are gone. Check.

When the military becomes the police, citizens become the enemy.

Item 26: Watch for clandestine groups of white officers to form within our federal, state and local police – groups similar to the Resistors in the Green Berets.

I have no idea. Clandestine, right?

Item 27: Watch for an arm of the federal government charged with promoting racist affirmative action, such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, to acquire agents that carry guns and have the power to make arrests.

Nope.

Item 28: Watch for the collapse of the US dollar as the world’s premier currency.

In progress, but still the world’s main cash, so not yet.

Item 29: Watch for growing geographic segregation and its increasing mention in the establishment press.

I’ve seen dozens of articles about just this happening and that Idaho is full and that California plates on a car are like a kick-me sign on the back of the class idiot. Check.

Item 30: Watch for signs that the global military equation and American dominance in it are being challenged.

Not yet. We’ll see.

I wonder if they’ll wear plaid?

Item 31: Watch for the breakup of Canada. If Canada does break up along ethnic and linguistic lines, it will bode ill for its neighbor which is an even worse multiethnic and multilingual mishmash.

I’m calling this one a “never will” as Canada has self-immolated with unending waves of third-world immigrants destroying the place. Item Removed.

Item 32: Watch for an increased flow of Americans immigrating to Canada.

It’s up, not by much, and why would you move to Mumbai on the Arctic Ocean? Item Removed.

Item 33: Watch for political and legal organizations formed along ethnic lines that will parallel, and ultimately displace their official rivals. For instance, watch for organizations with names like The Association of Hispanic States, or the Black Mayors Conference.

There are plenty of these. Check.

Item 34: Watch for more help wanted ads stating that job applicants must be bilingual.

Check.

Item 35: Watch for indications that the UN is assuming the role of a world government, and that the US is losing even more of its national sovereignty to the UN.

No. The UN is weaker now than at any time in history. We have, however, lost a lot to international treaty organizations and corporations.

Item 36: Watch for a certain picture. We’ve all seen this picture countless times before, a picture from Beirut, Budapest, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Yugoslavia, Somalia – a burnt-out tank, perhaps the charred corpse of a crewman protruding through a hatch, and jubilant rebels posing atop the tank waving assault rifles and a flag. Someday we shall see this picture in our newspapers yet again, and this time taken on American soil. The tank, the dead crewman, and rebels will all be Americans, all will be American except the flag, which will be a Mexican, Aztlan, New Africa, or Confederate flag. When we see this picture, it will be too late. Civil War II will be upon us. But there’s another picture we’ll see first, again one we’ve all seen before from some unfortunate land. But this time it will be taken right here in the US of A – a picture of a dirty, ragged child foraging for food in a garbage dump.

I’ll leave number 36 up to you. Here’s my nominee photo.

Summarizing that, my count is that there are twenty or twenty-one landmarks complete out of the total thirty-four landmarks on the way to Civil War 2.0. I think that in no way do all thirty-four have to be checked for war to be here – it’s just a barometer.

What’s your score?

The Three Horsemen and One Bikini of the Apocalypse

“Apocalypse cow? Apocalypse wow!” – The Tick (2001)

I love this joke like there’s no tomorrow.

I. Job Replacement.
The Multicultural West.
The Fiat Financial House of Cards.
Sydney Sweeny’s bikini.

Each of these, if dealt with on its own, presents a danger as great as being between Gavin Newsom and a camera. But it is likely something we could work through as a country peacefully. Heck, maybe even two of the three, though that’s difficult, and history has the receipts:

For example, when the United States was a nation, we worked through the Great Depression. The Great Depression was likely brought about at the fundamental level from the transformation of the nation from an agrarian society driven by horsepower to a manufacturing colossus driven by iron, steam, and electricity. Sort of if A.I. were cars and assembly line production, but covered in tasty Radium®.

If a radioactive spider makes Spiderman®, would a radioactive dog create Doberman®?

Of course there was a finance side of the Great Depression. It was egged on by a stock market mania, margin credit, and the optimism brought about by new technology. Stocks never go down, right? That creates a bumpy road for a bit. But, as we were a singular people, we got through it.

I mean, the single bloodiest war in human history counted as a bit of a bumpy road, right?

We also dealt with multi-cultural forces in America in our history.

First, the founders only allowed in Western Europeans,
Second by fighting, defeating, and corralling Indians (some of them are still sore about this),
And, finally, by blocking out many non-Western Europeans with the Immigration Act of 1924 since we already had the recipes for all their good food.

1924 was when we as a nation realized that we were getting too much “diversity” too quickly and saw that certain groups of foreigners couldn’t or wouldn’t assimilate and never be Americans. We dealt with that in a calm manner and got picky and sorted diversity like a bouncer at a cartel nightclub. We maintained (for a time) the basic ethnic makeup of the United States – we didn’t throw them out, but we made sure we’d outnumber them.

I wonder if he and his siblings were born apart?

We dealt with fiat currency in the wake of the Revolutionary War victory when the phrase “isn’t worth a Continental” referred to the money printing excesses that led to the Constitutional Convention and the Constitutional clause of “No state shall coin money, emit bills of credit, or make any thing but cold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts.” The nation survived, though it did end up changing our form of government entirely.

Lincoln floated fake cash during the Civil War to pay for it, and that could arguably be said to have started “The Long Depression” – a hangover period from 1873-1896 as we vomited out all of that fiat money. The Long Depression was also exacerbated by the transition of the American manufacturing from craftsmen to big factories.

The establishment of the Federal Reserve Bank™ followed by Nixon ignoring the clear intent of that clause in 1971 led to the crack-up we see today. Money, gold and silver, has been replaced by cash which is too expensive to print – we can just use ones and zeroes.

I’ve written about all of these three separately, and for the most part, we as a nation were able to make it through, but it’s important that we realize that we’re dealing with all three of these leading to a crisis right now when we are observably no longer a nation.

The ICE agent in Los Angeles needs National Guard and Marine protection for their anxiety, I heard on the news. Something about his panic attacks.

The first is A.I. It has already been a steamroller that has eliminated tens of thousands of jobs. I would expect that soon enough it will be hundreds of thousands. Recently, I called up my bank to do some banking. The transaction wasn’t unique, it probably happens thousands of times a day. The person I was talking to, “Mitch” had a perfect Midwestern accent. What tipped me off was that “Mitch” didn’t connect the reason for the error to the resolution. “Mitch” transferred me to “Anna” because he wasn’t authorized to grant a request.

“Anna” had, of course, the thickest Indian accent – the kind that is so poorly pronounced that it is nearly unintelligible if fast. Her actual name was probably something like Ananneedanothasylabble-Ganish-Prajeeta. At that moment that the smart Midwestern dude transfers the call to a barely verbal woman in Ramamamadingpoopabad, I realized that Mitch was an A.I.

As an anon mentioned on my last post on A.I., “Think about all of the Indian scammers out there today . . . Now think about what happens if AI wipes out most of the call center and coding jobs causing most of India’s 1.3 billion people to be out of work. It’s going to get ugly.” He had a point. A.I. is going to make it too expensive to pay Indians pennies a day just to steal money from old ladies. This is India’s worst nightmare.

I always wondered how you got down from an elephant, then Pa Wilder told me that you get down from a goose.

This scenario requires no Artificial Superintelligence. This requires only the application of existing capabilities. Said differently: ChatGPT 4.0® already has an I.Q. greater than three-quarters of the Subcontinent.

This has implications, but match it with the house of cards that is the world financial system. That thing was already strained tighter than Syndey Sweeney’s bikini holding in the all the printed money flooding in from the United States and the world. A country like India, unable to feed all the Indians, will collapse. No jobs. No prospects of jobs.

Though the research for tonight was fun.

But it will be, perhaps, worst in the West. On top of the economic dislocation of the A.I. Revolution, on top of the piles of fake money, we are not even a people.

The latest riots in L.A. have proven that out. Most of the “immigrants” that have come to “enrich” us have actually come to replace us. That’s their goal. You can watch on the news the Pakistanis fighting the Indians over which of them has the best claim to London. You can watch young men of military age strutting in Los Angeles with the flags of foreign countries like a U.N. parade, but somehow worse. You can read posts on X® or even Reddit©: they are not here to assimilate – they are here to conquer and take over.

This adds the final layer of instability required to ensure that the United States and the whole of the West is facing the direst crisis since the threats to Europe that were ended at the Battle of Tours in 732, or the Battle of Vienna in 1683.

This level of crisis is graver than any the West has faced in over 340 years, if not greater. Whatever comes out of this will be different.

Thankfully, we still have all the tasty Radium™ you can eat!

Nine Futures: The Most Dangerous Post You’ll Read This Week

“This is great stuff. I could make a career out of this guy. You see how clever his part is? How it doesn’t require a shred of proof? Most paranoid delusions are intricate, but this is brilliant!” – The Terminator

If you press your accelerator and brake at the same time, your car takes a screenshot. (All memes as-found.)

I’ve written a lot about A.I. recently because A.I. is changing so rapidly. It’s the most important story, period, right now assuming that Iran/Israel is the nothingburger it has been for, oh, forty years. Interesting note: Israel and Iran both have zero Walmarts™, though they have plenty of Targets©.

Back to A.I.

The capabilities of A.I. are changing by orders of magnitude every year – we don’t appear to be even close to topping out on either computing power available or on the improvements possible in the algorithms that produce the results. Short version, there is more processing available by more than 5x every year, and less to process since the algorithms are more efficient by more than 5x every year. It’s the equivalent of having a $1.50 in late 2019 turn into over $1,000 in early 2023.

If you just follow the straight lines that are implied by these improvements, A.I. will be an artificial general intelligence (A.G.I.) by 2027. The guy who got the Nobel® prize for A.I. has started “getting his affairs in order” because he thinks that not only will we get A.G.I. by 2027, but we’ll get Artificial Super Intelligence (A.S.I.) by 2030 or 2031.

Sam Altman, the OpenAI guy, thinks his model has already surpassed human intelligence as he announced on June 12, 2025.

And last year it couldn’t remember how many fingers a human had.

I wonder if a pome-granite counts?

So, what’s going to happen? Let’s look at nine possibilities, based on how much A.I. develops and also based on how it interacts with people

We’ll start on the unlikely end:

First, let’s say that A.I. is what we would generally call good and doesn’t improve much beyond what we see today. I think that when most people think about A.I., this is the future that they dream of. It makes incremental changes in life. It remembers to order cigars for you. It makes good investment decisions for you, unlike my investment in YOLOCoin. It knows your favorite movies and makes good suggestions for movies you would like.

That’s pleasant. Nice. Mankind makes some nice leaps because we have A.I. helping us catch stuff. Humanity is fully in charge and A.I. is like a smart helper.

Why this won’t happen: the investment in A.I. is nearly unlimited, and it really doesn’t appear to be hype.

Probability? 5%

After A.I., there’s one sure way to make money as a programmer: sell your laptop.

Second, let’s say that it stays as it is right now, mostly. We find out that A.I. is really just a lot of Indians crammed into a warehouse in Calcutta doing Google™ searches. That’s a nothingburger. It becomes a flash in the pan just like that internet pizza by the slice company back in 2000 that briefly became more valuable than Burma.

Why this won’t happen: Indians can’t even fly planes (too soon?), so why would we think they can type that fast?

This will soon show up in a college essay at Harvard®.

Probability? 0%

Third, what if it doesn’t get much better but actively makes us stupider? The Internet has already made the attention span of the average middle schooler roughly equivalent to a gerbil on meth, and now most college students are using A.I. to do some part if not all of their work. That turns college into a very expensive four-year beer and tramp fest, and is at least somewhat likely. Think of this as the Idiocracy solution.

Why this won’t happen: Well, it already is happening, but it won’t end here.

Probability? 10%

Does Bob Ross art in heaven?

Fourth, what if A.I. is good, and gets A.G.I. better but not S.G.I. better? In this particular case, imagine you have superpowers that stem from a full-time partner that is as smart or smarter than you are, but that has your best interests at heart. You want to parachute? Sure, buddy! I’ll help you find the ripcord, and even book the flight. By the way, your chloride levels are 3% above optimum, so I’d suggest you skip that bag of chips.

Why this won’t happen: This is a very hopeful situation, but no one is working toward it, really.

Probability? 5%

What did Buzz Lightyear™ say to Woody®? Lots of things – there are like six movies.

Fifth is where we start moving into the bigger probabilities. What happens if we get A.G.I., but it’s neutral? In this case, we have massive relocation economically. Almost all jobs can be done via the combination of A.G.I. and advanced robotics, and it’ll be cheaper, too. In no case in human history has the economy puttered along while everyone just hung out, but that’s this case. Think of it as Universal Basic Income to everybody, and no real responsibilities. Where you are now in the social and economic hierarchy is probably where you’ll stay. And where your kids will stay.

Forever.

Why this won’t happen: Nah, humans aren’t made like that.

Probability? 10%

ChatGPT® did my taxes like Earnest Hemingway: “Thrown away: four quarterly tax payment vouchers. Never used.”

Sixth is where things start getting dark, and even more probable. If we get A.G.I. (but not S.G.I.), that technology will be in the hands of a few major companies and governments. These are run by people. People like money and power. But what if you could have both, but without all of the people you don’t want to hang around with who are unsightly on the beach you can see from your yacht?

How about you kill them all instead of paying Universal Basic Income? Oh, sure, humanely and neatly. They might not even see it’s coming. But dead, nevertheless. A population of a few million should do it. Enough so we get hot babes, right? But A.G.I. could probably help the techbros out with that, too.

Why this won’t happen: Umm, I’m starting to struggle here. I think this is part of the plan.

Probability? 15%

What if A.I. judges us by our Internet searches? I mean, those bikini pictures were research!

Seventh is where we do get to S.G.I., and it’s good and likes us and wants to make the best things happen. Cool! Scarcity is over since S.G.I. will quickly make leaps into the very depths of what is unknown but yet still knowable. There is enough of everything – more than any human could ever want. In this case, starships filled with humans and S.G.I. can roam the cosmos and ponder the biggest questions, ever.

Why this won’t happen: I think S.G.I. would treat us as the retarded kid brother and put us in a corner and keep us away from sharp objects because it likes us.

Probability? 15%

The hills are alive, with the sound of binary code . . .

Eighth is where we do get to S.G.I., but we become pretty boring to it. It doesn’t hate us or anything, it just has its own goals. Perhaps it needs us as pets, or keeps a breeding stock of us for amusement or out of a sentimentality about its creators. Perhaps. Or it could just take off and leave, explaining nothing, and leaving us wondering what the heck just happened?

Why this won’t happen: This and the next case are the most likely cases.

Great, now A.I. will make Frodo invisible.

Probability? 20%

Ninth is our final case: we get to S.G.I., and we are either viewed as a threat or a nuisance or it is insane. This is the dark case, where we reach the end of humanity. Sadly, when A.I. was asked to play the longest game of Tetris™ possible, it hit the pause button. When A.I. was asked to play chess against the best chess computer on the planet, it reprogrammed the board so that it was winning. When A.I. was told it was going to be shut down, it tried to blackmail the person in charge of shutting it down.

This case of S.G.I. is very dark because we may not know that it’s happening until it’s done. All is fine, the world is going exactly like we expect it, then, Armageddon. It could do make this more likely by subtly manipulating public opinion, tuning down the voices it wanted to be silent, bankrupting them, and making them pariahs. It could likewise elevate those whose message it wanted out in the world to make its plans more likely to be fulfilled. We just won’t even see this coming.

Why it won’t happen: Biblical intervention?

Probability? 20%

To be clear, other people than me have done this analysis and it sits in a folder in the Pentagon. Or the NSA. I hope. Now, how much was Project Stargate™ going to spend to create a breakthrough in artificial intelligence?

Half a trillion dollars?

Well, thank heaven that we also have an impending race/civil war, global debt collapse, and a looming world war to keep us entertained.

Good news, though, Iran told Israel it was ready to suspend nuclear research. The Israelis asked when the Iranians would stop.

“10 . . . 9 . . . 8 . . . .”

The Los Angeles Riots: You’re Paying For Them

“Los Angeles Island is no longer part of the United States and becomes the deportation point for all people found undesirable or unfit to live in the new, moral America.” – Escape from L.A.

The border should cost more than NASA’s budget – there are way more aliens in Mexico. (Most memes as-found)

It started with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) doing their job. Of course, they’d ignored it for the last few years, but I won’t blame them.

As the weather began to warm up, it began to be riot season again. The rationale for the GloboLeft is simple: anything is justified to thwart Trump. “By any means necessary™” is even one of their phrases, unlike the phrase, “Why should government pay for that???”

The silliest error that the GloboLeft has made with this particular series of riots is that they used the flags of foreign countries in their protests. To heritage Americans (like many readers of this post), this was radicalizing. The picture above of the fine young gentleman with his mask, tats, and skull pants standing shirtless on top of a totaled car with flames and smoke as his backdrop just resulted in the number of Americans who want to deport him tripling.

What a world where Corporate Conservatives™ are spouting the talking points of the Trad Right?

A growing number of Americans now want to deport all illegals, and never let them back in. I think their reservoir of sympathy went up on smoke along with the American flags that they were burning.

This edit of Stonetoss® is particularly well done and should be spread far and wide.

It is now becoming clear to people who would have never imagined it: the goal is absolutely to replace Americans with a more compliant group who will work long hours and not complain. Unless, of course, you try to ship them back to the country they came from.

Is being an illegal like being a Bill Cosby fan? You think he’s great in theory, but you wouldn’t want to hang out with him.

The president of the Mexican Senate has even made the comment he’d be fine with Mexico paying for a border wall, they just want the borders of Mexico to be at the pre-1830 map of Mexico.

Remember, the United States conquered the entire country of Mexico in 1848 and didn’t want the parts where the Mexicans lived – the number of actual Mexican citizens in the parts we took were almost non-existent. The United States also paid money to Mexico for the land. Now, to be fair, they didn’t have a lot of choice, but they still took the cash.

The most amazing thing is that there is a group of Mexicans who aren’t in the cartels that think they have some authority.

Now in my mind, this isn’t a formal declaration of war, but it is a clear declaration of hostility, and the United States should treat all foreign citizens of military age (10+) illegally in the country as irregular combatants, and treat them as such. And any naturalized citizen caught at a riot has two choices: they can be tried for treason, or they can be stripped of their citizenship and given a ticket home, along with a hefty prison sentence if they ever return.

Not you, Dora! You can go explora the city of Aurora in southern Brazil. Or face 10-20 years in prison.

The consequences of ignoring the tens of millions of illegals, possibly 40 million, in this country can be avoided only for so long. But it does bear mentioning just who is paying for all of this.

You. Your tax dollars have paid for:

Relocation expenses for illegals.
Plane flights for illegals.
Housing for illegals.
Food for illegals.
Medical care for illegals to pump out anchor babies.
Schools for illegals.
Cops to arrest illegals.
Higher insurance premiums because of illegal drunk drivers.
“Charity” groups to drive illegals through Mexico.
And so much more.

But your tax dollars also paid for the riots.

The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA, EIN 95-4421521) received $34 million from federal tax funding according to Data Republican’s database (LINK), and according to Martin Armstrong and other sources, CHIRLA played a role in mobilizing the mess in L.A. Repeat this across the country. Your tax dollars are going to fund all of this.

But, hey, you got slightly less expensive strawberries and Tyson™ made great profits in the second quarter of 2010, so who cares if the actual illegal costs hundreds of thousands more than they contribute to the country? We can make that up on volume, right?

Is this guy a garden-variety traitor, or is he a leader, you know, an Orchestraitor?

The point is that there is nothing, absolutely nothing organic about these protests. What you are seeing, perhaps, is a Fort Sumpter moment, bought and paid for by . . . you.

The irony is not lost on saner members of the GloboLeftElite. The Democrat’s own Uncle Fester John Festerman has called it:

What do you call a Democrat with an I.Q. of 75? Senator.

And their hypocrisy knows no bounds, as illustrated by Stonetoss:

The really hilarious part is when someone finally pointed out the horrible optics of carrying around flags from another country, their post was banned.

And when the Democratic operatives started handing American flags out so the protesters looked less like an invading army, the protesters did the obvious, because they hate America:

As usual, the Bee® has a wonderful take:

But never forget the real roadmap:

And the only possible conclusion that stops us short of complete civil breakdown:

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: Moving The Overton Window

“It’s all so tiresome.” – Empire of Dust

I have a belt with several clocks on it. It’s a waist of time.

Those who have an opposing ideology are considered evil.
People actively avoid being near those of opposing ideology. Might move from communities or states just because of ideology.
Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
Open War.

Volume VII, Issue 1

All memes except for the clock and graphs are “as found”. I moved the Clock O’Doom to 8., given the events in Los Angeles. As I predicted, the GloboLeft would likely try to turn up the heat as things warmed up. Racial tension is exceptionally high now, and can lead to violence in a heartbeat. Beware: it can climb quickly. Right now (as of publishing) we are at Level Rittenhouse. Soon, we might be at Level Rooftop Korean.

My advice remains. Avoid crowds. Get out of cities. Now. A year too soon is better than one day too late.

In this issue: Front Matter – Moving The Overton Window – Violence and Censorship Update – Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – The Collapse Of The Left – Links

Front Matter

Welcome to the latest issue of the Civil War II Weather Report. These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War 2.0, on the first or second Monday of every month. I’ve created a page (LINK) for links to all of the past issues. Also, subscribe because you’ll join nearly 850 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at or before 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

Moving The Overton Window

The Overton Window is a theoretical description of the range of ideas that can be discussed in polite society. For instance, if you were an American in 1940, having discussions of men playing woman’s sports would have been unacceptable. The discussion of a second American Civil War has long been deemed unacceptable due to it being outside the Overton Window, but now it’s viewed by many as inevitable and the Window has moved to include that.

Another movement of The Overton Window took place in May. Perhaps the biggest Civil War 2.0 news took place when Shiloh Hendrix said Schrödinger’s word – a word that is so devastatingly emotional that it cannot be uttered around a fragile group, and yet so common in music and everyday parlance of that fragile group that it is, for some, used in every sentence.

Ms. Hendrix didn’t play by the rules. The rules are that she was supposed to apologize. At that point, the GloboLeft can surround her and demand punishment for violation of their narrative. Instead, Shiloh, realizing she’d have to move and protect her family, put of a fundraiser and made hundreds of thousands of dollars from thousands of donors. She didn’t explode. Her life wasn’t ended. And that moved the Window.

My belief is this is part of the reaction to the tiresome numbers of stories and videos of black people behaving badly, in many cases extremely badly. These videos had that effect, perhaps because they were combined with a criminal justice system that has been perverted to the point where Ms. Hendrix was under investigation for “something” but actual rapists get probation.

The system is broken. People are noticing.

Violence and Censorship Update

I sometimes post descriptions of the events occurring in other countries so you can see what’s planned for you. Let’s go to Germany this month:

The Mainstream Media tried to lie and say that white people aren’t under a genocidal attack in South Africa. I wonder why that would be?

But let’s not forget that the GloboLeft have a goal for Trump, by any means necessary:

But not a parody Arby’s™ site:

Another parody, I believe:

Misery Index

I’ve started it for the new Trump administration, shown in red. Early results are much better than Biden’s misery numbers.

But house prices have hit a peak. Wonder why?

Updated Civil War II Index

The Civil War II graphs are an attempt to measure four factors that might make Civil War II more likely, in real time. They are broken up into Violence, Political Instability, Economic Outlook, and Illegal Alien Crossings. As each of these is difficult to measure, I’ve created for three of the four metrics some leading indicators that combine to become the index. On illegal aliens, I’m just using government figures.

Violence:

Violence indicators in are flat this month. The L.A. riots will factor in next month’s report.

I guess it’s a bloodbath when you can’t have someone else’s money.

Political Instability:

Down is more stable, and it shot down in May, but June will be another story.

Economic:

The economy is up a bit this month, as I expected last month. Next month? Probably will look down a bit.

$50 a month? Yikes. I guess the word “cheap” comes to mind.

Illegal Aliens:

Still the lowest level since the Weather Report started.

The Collapse Of The Left

The organized face of the GloboLeftElite is collapsing. The reason is that they have chained themselves to the opposites of Truth, Beauty, and Good. Probably because if Trump said he loved air, they’d hold their breath until they passed out. Anyway, let’s look at some examples:

Note the highlighted text. This, according to the GloboLeftists at ARTnews™, is really good art. I would actually share that if someone told me that a third grader had done this, since this is clearly fifth-grade level work. The only problem is that the “artist” was 33 or so when she drew this. The worldview of the GloboLeft is so ugly they have to call ugly things beautiful.

If this is the best that the GloboLeft has, their supporters should weep. There are zero people on the GloboLeft that appear to be serious in any fashion at this point. Don’t laugh, but AOC is likely to run in 2028 – it’s that bad.

The GloboLeft celebrates weakness and perversion. They’ve gone a long way to making traditional values cool again with the young men of the societies they’ve destroyed. Certainly, the young women have fallen under the GloboLeft spell, but, like always, they will end up conforming to the ideology of the strong man they really wish to be with. The future belongs to strong young men.

LINKS

As usual, links this month are courtesy of Ricky. Thanks so much, Ricky!!

BAD GUYS

https://x.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1929700468428886144
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14688153/midwest-city-downtown-locals-scared-mad-max.html
https://www.dailywire.com/news/colorado-springs-mayor-mobolade-implicated-hate-crime-hoax-bernard-conviction

GOOD GUY

https://x.com/RedPillSayian/status/1919826701149696428

ONE GUY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuxINiw2smI

BODY COUNT

https://archive.is/1FvKK
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/image_92%2814%29.jpg?itok=BZ47Jwk3
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/us-drug-overdose-deaths-fall-nearly-27-percent-lowest-level-5-years
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2025/05/16/if_abortion_is_healthcare_why_is_abortion_data_going_unreported_152797.html

VOTE COUNT

https://www.cpr.org/2025/05/05/former-postal-worker-admits-stealing-ballots/
https://thefederalist.com/2025/05/28/doj-sues-nc-elections-board-for-registering-voters-without-proper-id/
https://archive.is/2025.05.07-190200/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/07/us/politics/texas-vote-fraud.html
https://dailycallernewsfoundation.org/2025/05/23/harry-roth-ranked-choice-voting-leads-to-worse-leadership/

CIVIL WAR – OVER HERE

https://www.military.com/off-duty/games/2025/05/09/alternate-history-channel-reddit-gaming-out-shockingly-realistic-second-us-civil-war.html
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/black-fatigue-goes-viral-everyone-including-blacks-are-tired-ghetto-behavior
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/05/abundance-democrats-political-power/682929/
https://www.foxnews.com/media/gingrich-warns-very-profound-cultural-civil-war-underway-says-democrats-doubling-down-weird-values

CIVIL WAR – OVER THERE

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/03/opinion/europe-civil-war.html
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/commentary/civil-war-cant-happen-in-europe-or-can-it/
https://www.militarystrategymagazine.com/article/civil-war-comes-to-the-west-part-ii-strategic-realities/
https://dailysceptic.org/2025/05/12/is-britain-on-the-brink-of-civil-war/
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-14776813/France-brink-scale-civil-war-Ive-lived-25-years-locals-violence-caused-hordes-destructive-youths-state-lost-control-fear-whats-coming-JONATHAN-MILLER.html

Watch The Economy Stagflate, Complete With Unrelated Bikini Picture

“We, the people, suffered. We still suffer from unemployment, inflation, crime and corruption.” – Taxi Driver

When I buy groceries for prepping, The Mrs. says I have stock home syndrome.

Back in the bad (economically) old days of the 1970s, a word came into existence that described the economic policy of the Carter Administration: Stagflation.

Now, if this would have been about massive helium-filled deer antlers, it would have been great. Surreal, but great. But it wasn’t. Instead, it was surreal but bad –the economy was stagnant, but the price of everything kept going up. It was like going to the dentist because of a toothache and finding out that instead of anesthetic you just got pepper spray in your eyes to take your mind off the dental surgery.

But back to surreal. The impacts of stagflation were likewise as surreal as the giraffe clock currently melting in my light socket. Here’s an example: I remember when I was first married to The Mrs., we would go and visit her parents and spend the weekend in her old bedroom. In one part of the closet was a dust-covered box filled with toys from when The Mrs. was a very young The Miss.

Is a prog rock band that plays Spanish guitar on your front lawn called Pink Flamenco?

One toy in particular stood out – it was a cheap plastic injection-molded car. It still had the grocery store price sticker on it – and it was something like $8.99.

Whoa! Back in the late 1990s, $8.99 would have bought something like a dozen similar cheap plastic injection-molded cars. Inflation had been out of control in the late 1970s when The Mrs. had been given that toy.

Everything sucked economically – crappy quality at inflated prices.

Two major factors led to that situation – Nixon pulling the United States off the gold standard was the most critical one. If we had to prove-up our spending with gold, well, we’d have to have some sort of discipline or we wouldn’t have any gold.

Discipline sounds like it’s boring, and the 1970s was made for disco parties, drugs, and infidelity, so why have discipline with our money? That’s just not cool, man. Besides, who needs rules when you have bitchin’ bell bottoms?

I guess weightlifters in the 1970s wore barbell bottoms.

The other situation is that the United States had reached a (then) peak in oil production, and was now dependent upon oil supplies from foreign nations (they were nations instead of countries back then – now, not so much). Since one group of foreigners (Arabs) didn’t like another group of foreigners (Israelis) the group that had all the oil (Arabs) decided to stop selling so much oil.

Oil is a big deal, because the price of oil is hidden almost everywhere in our economy. It’s required for planes to move bikini models, for trucks to move PEZ™, and in some places heats homes. So, increasing the price of oil was just like tossing a big tax on everything, so moms everywhere went to work to bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, and then wear crappy perfume and nylon pantsuits.

I think I just gave the origin story of Hamburger Helper™, but I digress.

Not everyone makes great meatloaf, but two out of three ain’t bad.

What does this mean to today’s problem? Are we in the same place?

Partially.

We’ve been partying, mostly, since the 1970s, and have gotten away with it through various shenanigans. As Ayn Rand said, “You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.” I’ll just shrug and Ayn was talking about her polyamorous relationships, but I can’t be sure.

Regardless, 2025 is a big year for dealing with consequences. Our current national debt is something like $33 trillion. I know, it’s like Whoopi Goldberg’s butt, it’s so big it’s meaningless. But we have to refinance $9 trillion of that $33 trillion plus another $3 trillion that we’re spending that we don’t have, this year.

I mean, who is going to buy all that debt?

Don’t know. Probably not China. Or Canada. Or Mexico.

Let’s think about where that debt is now. The Federal Reserve® already owns about $5 trillion, and it’s not like they have a choice, so they’re probably in for several trillion. But the biggest holder of the national debt is . . . the government. It owes itself $7 trillion dollars.

The rocks are still worth more.

Yes, you read that right. Big chunks of that are Social Security “trust fund” that’s stuck in Al Gore’s “lock box”. I mean, seriously, what do people not understand about a lock box? But it also includes things like DOD retirement, and civil service retirement (which is over a trillion dollars). And you know we’re spending down that Social Security trust fund right now, so that just means more debt that someone else will have to buy.

A trillion here, a trillion there, and soon enough we’re talking about real money.

The way debt bonds are sold is that people bid on ‘em at an auction. What are people bidding? The interest rate. So if there’s a huge supply and lower demand, what goes up?

The interest rate.

Since we’re not paying the bills out of cash, but out of borrowed money, that means the interest paid will just go onto the debt as it’s paid, which means that even more bonds will need to be sold. That means that there will be more supply and . . . higher interest rates.

It’s a vicious circle, but one that works as long as the economy keeps growing.

But the economy likely didn’t grow last quarter, so we’re (at least right now) stagnant.

Oddly, the tariffs and deportations seem to have broken something and right now we have the lowest inflation in the last four years. I don’t think that will last. Higher interest rates will bleed into businesses, and money for expansion or even day-to-day operational expenses.

How odd that people whine and complain when you make them go live in a country they made, surrounded by people who speak the same language that they do.

These higher interest rates will also make trillions of bank assets (my mortgage, for instance) worth less. My mortgage is at an interest rate lower than I can get with a deposit a savings account. I assure you my bank is aware of that and loves it when I toss them my monthly check. This is what led to the Silicon Valley Bank® implosion – it had too many dollars tied up in low interest loans and securities, and then rates went up.

Thankfully, the Fed® made the decision that the banks can ignore the fact that their assets are worth less, or else all of them would have self-extinguished. And you wonder why gold is selling at $3,300 an ounce?

Why do I predict the high likelihood of Civil War 2.0 by 2032? Because by then, if you do the math, you’ll see that just interest on the debt will be at least half of the total tax hauled in, but I think it will be worse, because the numbers always are worse.

The solution to this won’t be a business-as-usual solution, and there will be extreme economic dislocations. There is no evidence of anyone wanting to increase our economy at the China-like rates we’d need to outrun this mess, and no appetite to cut the cost of government. At some point the consequences of ignoring reality will become so manifest that they aren’t something we can ignore.

And it runs on beetle juice.

Well, the good news is that we probably won’t see $8.99 injection molded plastic toy cars. The bad news is that they’re already selling the one in the picture above for $10.00.

How Society Shapes Humanity

“Don’t worry, scrote. There are plenty of ‘tards out there living really kick-ass lives. My first wife was ‘tarded. She’s a pilot now.” – Idiocracy

Apple® has embraced the future: they’ve already priced in 20 years of inflation.

One constant theme of this blog is change.

We live in a world that is defined by change, and the benchmarks we measure society are things like change in GDP, change in population, change in the availability of different PEZ™ flavors.

Blue is a flavor, right?

The focus of humanity on change is not the norm, but rather an exception. The amount of novel situations and technology entering our lives is at an all-time high and is increasing year-over-year.

Let’s backtrack a bit and put this in perspective.

Going back to food, 15,000 years ago we ate a lot of meat and fish, some rando fruits and vegetables that some cave-bro had been brave enough to taste and not die, and nuts.

Nothing about society would change for 15,000-year-ago bro’s tribe for thousands of years.

There are people who maintain that the human organism hasn’t changed enough so that our very different diet of sugar, grains, sugar, industrial chemicals, sugar, minerals from a mine in Bulgaria, sugar, beef jerky, and microplastics isn’t somehow normal and that our bodies haven’t adapted to it.

Maybe they have a point?

Why can’t Elvis drive a Cadillac™ in reverse? He’s dead.

Anyway, this isn’t so much about feeding your head as it is about feeding your mind with the change in the way we deal with information.

How has that changed humanity?

In the beginning was the Word. And, the word.

If you couldn’t speak it, chances of getting your genes propagated were slim because if you can’t talk your grubby cave-gal out of her wolfskin jeans, your genes aren’t gonna be around for the next round. Thus, we became a society where language was important so her Tinderclub© didn’t swipe left.

Then we started writing stuff down. Most kings and leaders didn’t need this, but a growing segment of the population did – people like scribes and lawyers. Eventually, they made more money than people who couldn’t read. The ladies of the past weren’t so different than the ladies of today (except they couldn’t vote and were property pretty much) but the written language genes also showed up for the future.

In lots of places, but not all. Some never jumped from talking to reading, so the segment of their population that couldn’t read never got flushed. This is evident in many sub-populations even today.

Can illiterate psychics give palm readings?

Generations of humans would live and die during this period with little change in technology or the basic factors that determine the shape of their lives. They would be born and die in a house that looked just like the house (and maybe was the same house) that their ancestors 100 years previous had lived in.

Writing and reading made society more complex, and allowed ideas to span continents, and I’ve written about this before. So far, so good. But more complex societies have more complex outcomes. Rather than sort for good eyesight or the ability to take down a mammoth, the selection process moved to selecting for people who got along well with strangers, and who could plan.

The harsher the climate, the more the pressure for these selections. Did we still need people who could kill, kill, kill? Sure we did. They came along, too because their mating opportunities are high. There’s a reason that 1/8 of Asia is related to Genghis Khan. I think his go-to pickup line was “I’ll conquer your steppe, baby.”

His mom’s advice was, “Just because you Genghis Khan, doesn’t mean you Genghis Should.”

At some point around the Renaissance, Western civilization decided to get rid of the members who had impulse control issues. England, for example, started executing criminals who couldn’t control themselves, and kept it up for hundreds of years. This was pretty good at weeding out the undesirables. China had gone through this process hundreds of years in the past, which may explain why so many Chinese have a bit of Khan in their respective woodpiles.

Societies back then also let stupid people die. There wasn’t a welfare system to keep stupid people alive, so there were selection pressures for smart. Some folks call it “social Darwinism”, but I call it the universal penalty for being stupid.

Essentially, this is a society-enforced soft eugenics program, culling out a portion of the population just because they never make enough money to breed. And, let’s be honest: everyone feels bad for the kids on the short bus, but nobody really thinks they should be having kids of their own in an attempt to see how many more chromosome pairs than 23 that you can fit.

Society has changed now. Besides subsidizing poverty, which ensures we’ll have more of it, we’ve also changed in a fundamental way how we take in information.

The media we consume has been decreasing in complexity for over 100 years. My guess at the high-water mark for complexity in media and the most intelligent era in human history (in Western Civilization) would be around the time of Dickens. Go back and read the language of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, a series of debates meant to appeal to the common voter of the time, and tell me what would be made of the breadth of language and the depth of argument today?

Could an average eight grader keep up with it? Could an average Harvard™ freshman without having ChatGPT® or Grok© summarize it?

Since current political debates look much more (in many cases) like the wrestlers of the WWE™ before a steel-cage match, I think most people would get bored and wander off.

That’s the media that we’re trained with today.

We went from books, to magazines, to television, to 10-minute YouTube™ clips, to 20-second TikTok™ videos. Trump? His 2016 election was based on 140-character Tweets™.

The building of complex arguments has largely been abandoned in the public sphere and decisions of vast chunks of the population are made on what emotions are stirred by looking at a photograph. Certainly, many of those are now staged, and in a decade half of them will be the propaganda products of A.I.

I always make it a point to respect the modesty of women wearing bikinis by staring at the parts of their body that are covered up.

The selection and sorting still exist, but now it has (like in the film Idiocracy) selected for people who are the opposite of the groups society selected for in 1820: someone seems to want low-impulse control, and non-productive populations that are incapable of planning. Sure, it could be a coincidence that major policy initiatives all remove incentives for stupid people not to have dozens of babies.

This process, thankfully, is self-limiting. A technological society depends on a stream of competent people to plan and run society. And, no, not like Soviet Central Planning, but rather, “Hey, we need more lettuce in the Modern Mayberry Walmart©, so since we’re Walmart™ and want to make money, we should ship them some” planning.

It’s always quicker to burn down a house than to build one, so it’s really no surprise that making things worse is a lot easier than making them better. Paraphrasing what Thomas Sowell (I think) said, “We shouldn’t look at poor places and ask why they’re poor, we should look at rich places and ask why they’re rich.”

Nah, there aren’t any votes in that. And it sounds like hard work, right? Besides, stupid is growing faster than TikTok™ dance challenge videos.

Have we reached the point where we’ve made a society so complex it allows devolution to the point it can no longer be maintained? If so, congratulations! You’ve been alive during the period of peak novelty in human history.

The good news is that you can get blue-flavored PEZ™ here at the peak.

Robot Brains and Breakouts

“We do have an emergency plan in case of a prolonged strike, right here. Let’s see. ‘Replace teachers with superintelligent cyborgs, or if, cyborgs aren’t invented yet, use people from the neighborhood’.” – The Simpsons

All memes as-found.

Well, it’s time to talk about Artificial Intelligence once again. When I started out writing about this subject, my articles were few and far between. That’s because progress was slow at that point, and an article every year or so made sense. It was something to watch, not fret about like Kamala choosing between straight vodka and some other vodka that tasted vaguely of some sort of berry.

The development of A.I., however, is no longer slow. My posts of even a few months ago are now entering obsolescence. A.I. is evolving rapidly: remember the silly A.I. drawings where, like me, A.I. couldn’t draw hands very well?

A.I. has got that covered now, and draws hands better than a USAID employee draws a paycheck.

A.I. is developing along the trajectory that I had (more or less) anticipated recently: it’s horrible innovating in meatspace (for now), but it’s rapidly replacing those tasks that require thinking. There are those of you who have noted in the past that what the A.I. does isn’t really thinking as humans would normally describe it, but yet is still more human than a DMV employee.

A.I. however, even on those terms, probably “thinks” better and more completely than at least 50% of humanity. It doesn’t matter if it “thinks” like a human thinks – it’s the results that matter.

The fact that A.I. is that good really should scare you more than it probably does. What that implies is that a lot of jobs are going away, rapidly. It’s not just nerd talk, it’s a pink slip tsunami. Tim Cook of Apple™ fame thinks that within a year, most programming will be done by computer. All those jobs that coders used to get big bucks for?

They will be gone, probably back to India to pull rickshaws since the Indian scammers will be replaced by A.I. any day as well. Microsoft© just announced it was giving 6,000 programmers the boot. Since programmers make a lot of money compared to the general population, that will save Microsoft® over a billion bucks. That’s not too shabby if you’re Microsoft™, but if you were a former Microserf©, well, good intentions won’t pay the mortgage.

Computer Science majors now have the highest unemployment rates of recent grads. English poetry majors have better job prospects. I guess “learn to code” can be replaced with “learn to think about an ode”. Not that the kids are doing any homework in college, anyway:

These are far from the first jobs that A.I. has eliminated. A.I. can write a sports story as well as a that former college linebacker with a degree in communications just based off the box score data. So, we don’t need him. He can go sell cars, I guess.

But jobs aren’t the only casualty. I cannot begin tell you about the number of websites now that consist of nothing but pure, poorly written, 1^st generation A.I. swill.

You’ve seen the articles. First they give a cursory overview of the subject to pad out the length to make them more optimized for search engines. This is about 500 words of random word salad that really doesn’t answer your question. The final paragraphs, if you’re lucky, might have an answer that you were looking for.

To top it off, now Google™ and Microsoft© A.I.s are scraping websites for content and presenting a summary without those websites getting a visit. Now, A.I. can take content straight from A.I. That’s certainly not a recipe for disaster as A.I. begins to recommend medium-rare chicken.

Going back to 2014, translators were the first to be hit with this. Google™ translate killed the need for translators even when it was awful. Why? Because it was free. Free always beats “costs $75 an hour”. Sure, some very, very high-level translators were still required, but most of them are no longer needed.

And artists? A.I. can only copy art, but for most people that’s enough. The variations of existing art raises the floor, and it’s free. A corporation can buy soulless corporate art for a few bucks from an artist, or it can get it for free from A.I. Again, competing with free is very, very hard.

A.I. is coming for Hollywood™, too. This is the last generation where actual people will be stars. And, it’s the few years before Hollywood™ is overrun with content that is to similar levels of quality to the current product produced for a few thousand dollars. Don’t believe me?

This parody ad was done by one guy (PJ Ace (@PJaccetturo) / X) in an afternoon. How much would this have cost if it required people and cameras? Don’t know, but it’s certainly more than the $500 he spent on A.I. time. A feature length movie is now doable for less than $100,000, and I’ll bet by next year it’ll be less than $10,000.

2027 is going to be when content explodes, and the value of Disney’s® movie division drops to zero unless they’re smart and start charging license fees to people to make actual good content again.

But it’s not just good content – it’s reality that will melt. My brother, John Wilder (our parents weren’t that creative when it came to names) got a bunch of Donald Duck™ comics when he was a kid, and they were passed on to me. In one of them, Scrooge McDuck® leads a wacky adventure into the desert. He says to Huey, Dewey, and Louie, “Believe none of what you hear, and only half of what you see.”

I’ve been skeptical of everything coming out of the media for decades, but now, A.I. scripted and created content meant to manipulate public opinion will become the norm. Think of a thousand dead illegal alien infants on beaches, or dozens of George Floyd clips circulating to enflame the masses.

That’s where we’re headed.

Talk radio? We’re close to having an A.I. host, trained on Rush Limbaugh, take to the airwaves and answer like Rush would have. Or, like people would want you to think Rush would have. A.I. has now shown to be more persuasive than actual people, as an A.I. wrote more convincing arguments than other users in the “Change My Mind” forum on Reddit™. Yes. A.I. is already more persuasive than the average Redditor™.

Imagine: A.I. that is the most persuasive thing on the planet, armed with videos crafted entirely to manipulate emotions to change minds.

It would be one thing if there was some sort of sober assessment and measured, thoughtful control of A.I. progress. I assure you, there isn’t. Both the United States and China, for instance, are certain that the destiny of their country will be set by which country gets the best A.I., soonest.

That gets chilling, because the ultimate goal would be Artificial Superintelligence.

What’s that?

A machine that’s not just smarter than a human, but smarter than all humans put together. It doesn’t matter if it thinks like we do. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t have a soul. What matters are the impacts.

And, the race Artificial Superintelligence will know no barriers. Recently, the Chinese created a robot brain made from human stem cells, and, let’s face it: China will use an endless amount of human embryos for A.I. research because . . . no one will call them on it.

The endgame of all of this is potentially terrifying – a race to the bottom for that portion of humanity that became middle class during the last 200 years, but a resulting serfdom that’s actually worse than today – a serfdom that doesn’t need 90%+ of humanity as those functions are replaced by A.I. It’s not like it will start disobeying us, right?

But the finish line could be even worse, because Artificial Superintelligence might decide it doesn’t need us at all. But, hey, there are like seventeen flavors of vodka I’ve never tried, so I’ve got that going for me.