Sunday School

[TheEncogitationer]

Reg and Jake:

Switching the Ayatollahs with Ahmadinejad is decidedly not regime change, it’s just cutting off a few heads of the hydra while leaving the beast alive to grow yet more heads and to sharpen it’s claws and gargle some more gasoline. If Trump doesn’t comprehend that, Bibi definitely should.

Hoping I’m proven wrong and this story is like the old Psy-War broadcasts of Lord Haw-Haw, Axis Sally, and Tokyo Rose in WWII Da Big One.

[TheEncogitationer]

Fellow Unbelievers:

Lots more antennae raised over this story:

Experts raise eyebrows over ‘Swiss cheese’ NY Times report claiming US, Israel eyed freeing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to be Iran’s new leader
https://www.aol.com/news/experts-raise-eyebrows-over-swiss-212205094.html

A comedian on, I think The Daily Show, pointed out that they could have just freed Ahmadinejad with a locksmith and a clothes hamper sneaking him out instead of bombing his residence.

So evidently this is more “flooding the zone with shit” from someone other than Steve “The Incredible Hulk” Bannon.

[jakelafort]

This is alarming.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/05/260522023127.htm

[Strega]

Jake, I don’t think it’s particularly scary.

We have been becoming more and more visible via electronic mechanisms over the years, and eventually we will have to learn to live with this. Tin foil hats probably won’t help. So it’s futile to knee jerk against this kind of usage of WiFi, because it’s coming. Writing laws prohibiting things don’t actually prevent them happening.

Our society will change and adopt these surveillance systems as being the norm. Change is often uncomfortable for individuals, but it is pretty inexorable and we can’t do a King Canute and stop the tide.

[jakelafort]

Strega,

You’re probably in a bucolic paradise where the immediacy and rapidity of incipient technohell is a little removed. AKA Vermont.

I aint arguing that it can be stopped. Am only crying the blues up and down at a future that might have been avoided by a stronger Luddite movement. Naa no stopping the tide…

[jakelafort]

Oh, and think of the implications/repercussions of that tech.

Ya wanna assasinate someone. Gonna be easy to locate em. Might help pinpoint targets and avoid innocents i suppose. But with Muslim terrorists we are all kuffar. Great tech for thieves. Steal shit when they are not there. Great tech for rapists.

And then imagine that technology in hands of authoritarian governments and their nefarious agenda. Any Islamic nation…yikes. Hell, the way USA is heading it might be distopian here.

That is just the beginning. Tech/AI is in its infancy. Humans have proven themselves to be as a group incredibly destructive and stupid. Add in sci fi and future is so bright i gotta bend down and kiss my sweet ass goodbye.

[TheEncogitationer]

Jake and Strega:

Of course, back in the day of the Luddites, people lived multiple generations, and with multiple species of farm animals, under one roof, with everyone sharing the same dressing, eating, sleeping, and (where available) hygienic space. Urination and defecation were done in outdoor Water Closets (again, where available) or otherwise they were done everywhere inside or outside, even in luxurious palaces like La Versailles. Messages sent by passenger pidgeon or footman or diplomat didn’t have encryption unless you used invisible ink. And while there was no one Big Brother watching, everyone else was watching, including a Karen, Mrs Grundy, or Gladys Kravitz who could whip up a mob or lynching bee if you didn’t walk, talk, love, believe, or exist right.

As Paul Harvey always observed: “The ‘Good Old Days’…weren’t always good!”

For more to give a proper perspective on then and now, there’s always some great reading at:

Human Progress

Home

Granted, surveillance by Wi-Fi is a real concern, but in the meantime, wave and say “hi!” once in a while to let “them” know you know and just keep your streaming on one channel and bore the snoops to death.

[jakelafort]

Enco,

You are spot on that modernity has delivered a lot of upgrades.

On other hand how much better are the masses today compared to yesteryear? I don’t have answers to that question. It is easy to point to the Islamic world as backwards and filled with oppression and persecution. Wars all over the fucking glob. Starvation. Famine. Ignorance. I guess on balance it is probably better to be alive in 2026 than 1266.

I don’t think anybody can prognosticate exactly how the near future will unfold but i am betting it is gonna be highly fucked up. I also think there will be a significant number who reject the future and live off grid in the wilderness.

[TheEncogitationer]

Jake:

If it’s any assurance, (and I say this as someone who has had off-grid fantasies and who is ambivalent about AI):

The prognostication of the Criswellian can only accurately be a trade-off Sowellian,
But with volitional cogitation and mastication, the trade-off need not be Cromwellian nor Orwellian.

Perhaps the AI could be programmed to direct cameras and sensors only where the human eye can legally go and only read records in the public domain.

[TheEncogitationer]

Jake:

Karen Hao seen from inside the beast the danger of making AI a god, as well as the great possibilities if AI is focused in the purposes for it’s use.

I saw up close the dark reality of OpenAI’s race to create God
Madeleine Spence
Saturday May 23 2026, 7.17pm BST, The Sunday Times
https://archive.is/Qghwf

[TheEncogitationer]

Fellow Unbelievers:

Some good news: Members of MAGA who supported war with the Mullahs are starting to share the rational critique that Trump has botched it and hasn’t achieved any of his professed goals:

‘MAGA is done’: Trump’s own base turns on president over emerging Iran deal
David McAfee
May 23, 2026 7:34PM ET
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-maga-2676935655/

[jakelafort]

Enco,

I don’t think they are hiding it as AI.

[TheEncogitationer]

Jake:

Enco,

I don’t think they are hiding it as AI.

They are trying to follow Arthur C. Clarke’s dictum that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”…But they only have the grandiosity of magic without yet any of the omnific benevolence or competence.

Big Papa Leo’s hokus-pokus input and Chris Olah taking the knee wouldn’t make things better either:

Pope Leo, Anthropic co-founder call for church-tech ethics partnership at ‘Magnifica Humanitas’ release
https://www.ncronline.org/vatican/vatican-news/pope-leo-anthropic-co-founder-call-church-tech-ethics-partnership-magnifica

Big Papa Leo won’t stop until AI proclaims him infallible, not just on matters Ex Cathedra, but all matters In Toto.

Get this:

Yet the pope went on to identify risks of unchecked technological development, including “increasingly autonomous weapons systems practically beyond any human reach to govern them effectively” as well as “algorithms that can block access to healthcare, employment and security on the basis of data tainted by prejudice and injustice.”

Big Papa Leo wants all this solved, yet he can’t bring himself to condemn the Mullahs and Jihadis of Iran and elsewhere in the Islamic World and hasn’t yet acted to stop the abuses by Clergy in his own Church. Who’s tainted with prejudice and injustice here, Leo?
🙄

And here’s what Chris Olah says while on bended knee:

Olah said that the church’s voice is needed to “ensure the gains of AI are shared globally,” since its development is “concentrated in a handful of wealthy nations,” echoing themes from the encyclical.

“It is an unsolved problem, and it is the kind of problem the church has historically refused to let the world ignore,” he said, calling on religious communities, civil society, scholars and governments to “take this seriously, to look closely, and to push events in a better direction.”

“We need informed critics who will tell the labs when we are failing,” he said. “We need moral voices that the incentives cannot bend.”

Look, TechBro! Anthopic is your creation! Why don’t you decide how AI and it’s gains are used? And, of course, have responsibility for any misuse?
🤔

Somebody needs to fire up the pixilated cloistered monk scrolls and design room drawing boards.

[jakelafort]

Enco,

I did not read the whole article cuz i just started feeling better after a minor health issue.

But it reminds me of the unholy alliance between Islamists and lefties.

[TheEncogitationer]

Jake:

I hope you’re better now.

I have yet read the Pope’s full Encyclical on AI and I’ll have to brace myself for vertigo to try. Those things get wordy and Gish Gallop-y.

[Author]

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