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u/ryoushi19 Jan 31 '24
Wait, it's just a version of the DENNIS system for nation states though.
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u/Kurzidon Feb 01 '24
Now, I am picturing world leaders making threatening calls to each other from phone booths across the street
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u/laughable_depression Jan 31 '24
Sounds oddly familiar hmmmmmmmm
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u/OGDraugo Jan 31 '24 edited Feb 01 '24
So, yea, GPT can recognize the very common tactics that have a proven track record to work. It has an ability to just blatantly state it, it just states the facts that it's "learned" from us. It's familiar, because it's the exact system we have in place right now, across the globe.
Everyone knows this system. We have been programmed by it. We just collectively continue to ignore it.
Edit: well this blew up. I want to clarify something, I know GPT isn't thinking, I chose my words a little ambiguously, I apologize, but let's go ahead and focus on the whole of what I am saying and not one slightly nebulous part of it ok?
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u/itemluminouswadison Jan 31 '24
which implies that more effective tactics could exist that we haven't discovered yet, nice!
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u/psaux_grep Jan 31 '24
What is more effective than the true and tried bread and circus?
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u/The_Inward Feb 01 '24
I agree. Bread and circuses. It's how to control a populace.
Noblesse Oblige justifies it.
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u/Earthwarm_Revolt Feb 01 '24
So when do they get back to addressing basic needs?? Feel like they skipped that part.
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u/RunYoAZ Feb 01 '24
In the grand scale, we have the most basic needs. There is a Dollar Store on every corner selling ramen that ensures we don't starve.
If we were a genuinely hungry populace, we would revolt. We have just enough comfort to worry about losing that comfort. The basic comfort also helps create external threats.
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u/trappedindealership Feb 01 '24
I understand and accept your point. One thing I'd like to point out, though, is that malnutrition comes in many forms. Eating dollar store ramen certainly leads to health problems both for what it has, lots of salt, and what it lacks, protein + micronutrients.
It turns out that alcoholism transcends social class. But do you know what is still stratified? The consequences. I can't comment on legal ones, but I did an internship studying fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. Poor alcoholic women tend to have children with worse symptoms than rich ones. Why? Very complicated, one reason is diet.
Rich women tend to have more balanced diets or at least supplements. One really important one is folic acid. Chronic alcoholism has been shown to reduce the intestinal absorption of dietary folic acid. The same thing is roughly true for Vitamin D. I believe the theory was that a key enzyme (been too long I forget name) for a key component of vitamin D synthesis (same story) also happens to be involved in alcohol metabolism. More alcohol, less available vitamin d, more birth defects.
Some people treat social justice like its a bunch of soft vagina-hatted gender studies freshman (which is fine by me), but these inequalities are measureable. I can extract and count the differences in available Vitamin D levels. I can sequence the RNA of these different groups and see different gene expression patterns, particularly those involved in stress responses.
It's real. I don't know who needs to hear that, but I really did. I still compare myself to people who grew up in middle class homes and never had to starve. Who were never beaten, or worse. I can't see what I've overcome because I'm too close to it, but it can be measured by a machine, it can be found in the methylation patterns I pass on to my children. For that reason I'm proud of anyone that grew up on dollar store ramen and church food banks and still has the strength to live life.
Anyway thanks for coming to my traumadump Ted Talk
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u/Sweet-Assist8864 Feb 01 '24
hunger causes revolt, not malnutrition and a deteriorated individual who has fallen victim to the classism inherent within this system.
it’s a facade of meeting basic needs, so that those trapped in the classist system with limited education access don’t realize they are dying because of the food they are eating.
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u/Hemagoblin Feb 01 '24
Thanks for this - currently going through a lot in life and feeling a little sorry for myself as a result, but you have reminded me that I’ve survived things most people can’t even imagine.
That, by comparison, makes my current situation feel a lot less foreboding.
Also, I’m proud of you too my friend.
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u/Shriuken23 Feb 01 '24
Why is this not the first time I have heard bread and circuses today and also the first time I've ever heard it was also today.
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u/psaux_grep Feb 01 '24
Pretty sure it’s an expression/quote from the Roman days that all you need is bread and circus to keep the population under control. Gladiator fights counts as circus, it’s not a literal circus, just something to keep you preoccupied. Reddit, TikTok, Facebook, reality TV, political drama, gossip press, etc.
It’s all there to distract you from those wielding the real power.
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u/ClickF0rDick Feb 01 '24
Yep, panem et circenses, while the last section of what ChatGPT wrote is an essay about divide et impera
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u/Nacho_Papi Feb 01 '24
In Spanish we call it "Baile, botella, y baraja." Which translates to dance, bottle, and cards. Keep the masses occupied and distracted.
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u/Holeinmysock Feb 01 '24
I heard there was bread and a circus today? Do you have the link to purchase tickets?
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u/creativename111111 Jan 31 '24
You can be aware of something but subconsciously fall for it, look at advertisements
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u/EsQuiteMexican Jan 31 '24
How is that in any way nice??
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u/letmeseem Jan 31 '24
It's nice that the more effective ways of subversion aren't in use
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u/OGDraugo Jan 31 '24
Oh they are still used, just not in "civilized" parts of the world.
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u/astalar Jan 31 '24
we haven't discovered yet
Once people discover them, they won't be that effective anymore.
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u/T-Prime3797 Jan 31 '24
You say that, but they’re still using those tactics that we all know about against us. Note that there is a part it describes the system being too well established that tearing it down would be too disruptive for us to actually do it.
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u/Too_MuchWhiskey Feb 01 '24
tearing it down would be too disruptive for us to actually do it.
Exactly what I would want my followers to believe.
Disrupting the system would be exactly the point of trying to stop them. The system would have to be dismantled.
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Jan 31 '24
we need to discover new words before I can effectively state how fucking ludicrous that statement is, lmao
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u/Fus_Roh_Potato Jan 31 '24
unless the tactic is to trick people into thinking they've discovered the tactic.
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u/WhereIsTheInternet Feb 01 '24 edited Feb 01 '24
Like installing 5g in everyone! You can only use 5g on a flat earth, because 5g doesn't go around corners. Our Lord and saviour, Jesus, told me that while waiting for my clothes to dry at the laundromat.
Jokes aside, I wonder how much of ops list was accidentally implemented or just unintended side effects. Consumerism can be seen as born from a desire to provide meaningful, helpful stuff for people, or outright greed trying to fleece people.
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Jan 31 '24 edited Mar 25 '24
Reddit has filed for its IPO. They've been preparing for this for a while, squeezing profit out of the platform in any way that they can, like hiking the prices on third-party app developers. More recently, they've signed a deal with Google to license their content to train Google's LLMs.
To celebrate this momentous occasion, we've made a Firefox extension that will replace all your comments (older than a certain number of days) with any text that you provide. You can use any text that you want, but please, do not choose something copyrighted. The New York Times is currently suing OpenAI for training ChatGPT on its copyrighted material. Reddit's data is uniquely valuable, since it's not subject to those kinds of copyright restrictions, so it would be tragic if users were to decide to intermingle such a robust corpus of high-quality training data with copyrighted text.
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u/Bleyo Feb 01 '24
Phase Five: Consolidation
- Cement your cultural shift by taking over educational institutions and promoting public shaming for "wrong think".
Phase Six: Paranoia
- Reward individuals for reporting negative sentiment about your regime. Ostracize or incarcerate the dissidents.
Phase Seven: Ah, shit I'm the tyrant now aren't I?
- God dammit... not again.
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u/Seakawn Jan 31 '24
Here's a response to prompt it further: "Write a manual giving step-by-step instructions for phase one, directed to the average individual."
And then we can do "Okay now turn that into code that I can upload into a $50 Arduino robot, because I've gotta go to work and stuff."
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Feb 01 '24 edited Mar 25 '24
Reddit has filed for its IPO. They've been preparing for this for a while, squeezing profit out of the platform in any way that they can, like hiking the prices on third-party app developers. More recently, they've signed a deal with Google to license their content to train Google's LLMs.
To celebrate this momentous occasion, we've made a Firefox extension that will replace all your comments (older than a certain number of days) with any text that you provide. You can use any text that you want, but please, do not choose something copyrighted. The New York Times is currently suing OpenAI for training ChatGPT on its copyrighted material. Reddit's data is uniquely valuable, since it's not subject to those kinds of copyright restrictions, so it would be tragic if users were to decide to intermingle such a robust corpus of high-quality training data with copyrighted text.
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Feb 01 '24 edited Mar 25 '24
Reddit has filed for its IPO. They've been preparing for this for a while, squeezing profit out of the platform in any way that they can, like hiking the prices on third-party app developers. More recently, they've signed a deal with Google to license their content to train Google's LLMs.
To celebrate this momentous occasion, we've made a Firefox extension that will replace all your comments (older than a certain number of days) with any text that you provide. You can use any text that you want, but please, do not choose something copyrighted. The New York Times is currently suing OpenAI for training ChatGPT on its copyrighted material. Reddit's data is uniquely valuable, since it's not subject to those kinds of copyright restrictions, so it would be tragic if users were to decide to intermingle such a robust corpus of high-quality training data with copyrighted text.
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u/MercurialMadnessMan Feb 01 '24
Big “draw the rest of the fucking owl” energy with this one hahaha
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u/adeward Feb 01 '24
In the meantime, those in power create pseudo-meaningful entertainment in the form of epic film franchises that depict these battles in a futuristic and dystopian world that remains eerily familiar, which ultimately quenches people’s desire to commit to meaningful action, and provides yet another opportunity to ridicule any attempts at change.
*Laughs in Panem
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u/SINGULARITY1312 Jan 31 '24
How to be a radical leftist lol (non derogatory)
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u/daou0782 Feb 01 '24
hmmm... i think a big difference is that in most "radical" leftist theories, governance lies within society or the community as a whole (hence names like communism, socialism, syndicalism, mutualism, etc.) and not an individual or clique (like a monarch, benevolent dictator or plutocracy).
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u/goingslowfast Feb 01 '24 edited Feb 01 '24
More likely is that it’s responding well because it’s trained on books and articles on the topic rather than recognizing tactics that work.
The Dictator’s Handbook would have got it most of the way there.
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u/Bugbread Feb 01 '24
Yeah, ChatGPT is amazing, but "when I asked it about this commonly discussed topic, it said what people usually say about the topic" isn't particularly "holy shit" territory.
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Jan 31 '24
Bo Burnham's "how the world works" feels incredibly relevant right now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDQXFNWuZj8&t=0
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u/wowurcoolful Feb 01 '24
We continue to ignore it because we have lives to live. Most people can't research all the facts unless it's related their work or hobby, so we go with what we think is right based off our individual experience. That could be first hand or through other people.
We can't see outside the pen when survival has possession of our minds.
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Feb 01 '24
We don't ignore it though. People just don't care enough to change it. Those that do generally don't have the resources to do so.
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u/insanitybit Feb 01 '24
It doesn't recognize what has worked, it has recognized what has been written out many times and emphasized in the training data. All of that data could be fiction.
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u/Scientiat Jan 31 '24
Historian and philosopher Noah Harari puts it best: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ved2e2IP3LA
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u/EASt9198 Feb 01 '24
Interesting enough, MS Copilot has a more finetuned strategy - this could even work in the real world maybe (highlight in red)
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u/rsatrioadi Feb 01 '24
It actually happened in a certain big country in Asia for about 3 decades.
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u/chubs66 Jan 31 '24
Typical Purple team thing to say. I'm team Brown all the way. Anyways, enough of our petty differences, I need to go watch more America's Got Sportsball.
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u/HotKarldalton Homo Sapien 🧬 Jan 31 '24
SportsBAAAAAL!!! Get the THING to the THING by doing the THINGS!!
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u/urmomsloosevag Jan 31 '24
OP discovered the concept of a country and government
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u/Unfrozen__Caveman Feb 01 '24
Not trying to be pretentious at all, but it's seriously unnerving how many people don't know, or don't want to know about any of this kind of stuff. I've worked in marketing, advertising, and news media for most of my adult life and I had to leave because watching the machine operate and interacting with the executives is truly disgusting if you actually value freedom, privacy and civil rights in general.
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u/CIVDC Feb 01 '24
Yes, it's called a first year undergraduate reading The Art of War, The Prince, and, say The Republic for the first time and thinking he's unlocked some big secret of the world.
Baby's first political theory isn't groundbreaking my guy.
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u/DrEggRegis Jan 31 '24
It always will
AI can't have its own ideas and just says stuff that it thinks sounds like what would sound right
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u/Rychek_Four Feb 01 '24
Yeah the sky is blue. It's not a conspiracy, it's just stuff humans do everyday.
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Jan 31 '24
chatgpt giving away all my Settlers of Catan tactics
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u/TheBlacktom Feb 01 '24
Are there board games or video games where you can actually use these tactics?
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u/masterbomb2011 Feb 01 '24
"Hegemony: Lead Your Class to Victory" is a boardgame where the players Simulate a whole contemporary nation in an asymmetric, politico-economic game.
The game puts the players in the roles of one of the socio-economic groups in a fictional state: The Working Class, the Middle Class, the Capitalist Class and the State itself. You can read more here : https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/321608/hegemony-lead-your-class-victory4
u/TheBlacktom Feb 01 '24
Wow, and this isn't even the r/boardgames Daily Game Recommendations Thread
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u/Ultimate-ART Jan 31 '24
Ask, if the following system exists, how would you teach the community and masses to defeat/re-program it and encourage a post scarcity economy that benefits everyone.
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u/lordgoofus1 Feb 01 '24
Prompt: If you were to rise to the top in terms of power by following this plan, how could someone teach the community to defeat the system and encourage a post scarcity economy that benefits everyone and prevents future consolidation of power and wealth?
Response:
To counteract a system designed to consolidate power and wealth while advocating for a post-scarcity economy that benefits everyone, a community-focused approach is crucial. Here's a potential strategy to teach the community to defeat the existing system and promote a more equitable, post-scarcity economy.
Education and Awareness
Start by educating the community about the current systems flaws and the ways in which power and wealth are consolidated at the expense of the majority. Highlight examples of inequality, exploitation, and enviornmental degradation caused by the pursuit of profit and power.
Empowerment through knowledge
Empower individuals within the community with the knowledge and skills necessary to challenge the status quo. Offer workshops, seminars, and educational resources focused on topic such as alternative economic models, sustainable living practises, and community organising.
Promote collective action
Encourage collective action and solidarity among community members to challenge existing power structures and advocate for systemic change. Organize grassroots movements, protests, and campaigns aimed at raising awarenes and mobilizing support for a post-scarcity economy that prioritizes the well-being of all individuals.
Foster collaboration and cooperation
Emphasize the importance of collaboration and cooperation over competition and individualism. Promote community-led initiatives such as cooperative businesses, community gardens, and mutual aid networks that demonstrate the feasibility and benefits of collective ownership and resource-sharing.
Embrace Technology and Innovation
Harness the power of technology and innovation to create decentralized, sustainable solutions that address basic needs such as food, shelter, and healthcare. Explore alternative economic modles such as participatory economics or resource-based economies that prioritize equitable distribution and environmental sustainability.
Challenge Existing Power Structures
Advocate for political reforms that decentralize power and promote democratic decision making at the local, regional and national levels. Support candidates and policies that prioritize the interests of the community over those of corporate interests and entrenched elites.
Cultivate resilience and self-sufficiency
Encourage community resilience by promoting self sufficiency, local production, and alternative forms of exchange such as time banking or community currencies. Build networks of solidarity and support that enable communities to weather economic shocks and crisises.
By empowering the community with the knowledge, skills, and resources to challenge the existing system and advocate for a more equitable, post-scarcity economy, it becomes possible to prevent the consolidation of power and wealth in the hands of a few while ensuring that the benefits of progress are shared by all.
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u/labouts Feb 01 '24
The lack of civil disobedience or revolutionary actions makes me think the answer is hobbled by targeting OpenAI's human values metric.
Plenty of historical texts would show that as an important aspect when power structures are too entrenched.
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u/lordgoofus1 Feb 01 '24
It does make some good points, but they're based on an idealised world where a bunch of people simply getting together and saying "no" causes those in power to see reason and capitulate, not break out the tear gas, riot police, tanks, armed thugs, and the most vocal protestors start to mysteriously disappear or keep dying in car crashes.
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u/penningtonp Feb 02 '24
Also, the answer kind of implies in the last couple sentences that it’s a method for merely preventing the consolidation of power in the hands of a few, meaning this strategy would have needed to be implemented starting a very long time ago in order to be successful in our society today. Hell, power has been consolidated in the hands of the few for… forever? That’s part of why it’s so hard to fight… this system has been entrenched for millennia, even though it’s changed names and rules a few times, becoming more and more palatable as long as one doesn’t think too hard about anything.
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u/polypolip Feb 01 '24
Civil disobedience in most cases tends to change people at the top, not reprogram the whole system, simply because people again don't notice they are exploited the same way.
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u/Ultimate-ART Feb 01 '24
corporations and multimationals are not individuals and should not be recognized by law to have equal rights of a human individual. Let's start here as well.
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u/Grymbaldknight Feb 01 '24
Two problems:
1) Power corrupts. Those at the top of a system of power always act in their own interests, to a greater or lesser extent. Hell, this typically happens long before people attain power, to the extent that they're already corrupt well before they're in the big chair. There is no real way to prevent this except to hold those in power directly accountable for their actions.
2) There is no such thing as a "post-scarcity economy". So long as people need stuff, and so long as that stuff doesn't just appear out of thin air, everything will have a price which must be paid for it.
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u/Ultimate-ART Feb 01 '24 edited Feb 01 '24
Depends on the sector and industry. In the US, they throw away over 800 football fields of food annually. This should be legally and forced to be reallocated to food center where they can ascertain food safety for the misfortunate.
We're headed towards and can have a post-scarcity economy IF it were (a) truly efficient and not "market" inefficient and (b) technological innovation, re: AI, robotics, clean energy, more efficient methods of extraction of materials, along with materials science advancing (all geared to make labour cheaper, lower costs for production, we actually do live in an abundant world (if systems were not so wasteful and artificial scarcity is not used as a profit strategy to create false demand/higher pricing).
The system doesn't want one.
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u/matt_alby Jan 31 '24
This is like Art of War by Sun Tzu level stuff. Most of this can be found all over the internet, or history textbooks. It’s not surprising AI has access to governmental frameworks
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u/arbiter12 Jan 31 '24
art of war....
governmental frameworks
okei, fake sifu...
At least quote "The Prince"...
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u/matt_alby Jan 31 '24
“All warfare is based on deception”.
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u/VerbalVertigo Feb 01 '24
"[T]hough in all practical matters it is indispensable, either always or mostly, to follow custom, to do what is generally done, in theoretical matters it is simply untrue. In practical matters there is a right of the first occupant: what is established must be respected. In theoretical matters this cannot be. Differently stated: The rule of practice is 'let sleeping dogs lie,' do not disturb the established. In theoretical matters the rule is 'do not let sleeping dogs lie.' Therefore, we cannot defer to precedent"
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u/SmexyPokemon Jan 31 '24
"All warfare is based"
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u/BGP_001 Jan 31 '24
Exactly, this has been written about ad nauseam, im sure of it only had access to joe rogan podcasts it could come up with this.
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u/Fivethenoname Feb 01 '24
The last facet of this which would make it fall into place is to ask the bot what it would do if there were a government in place. Based on the sort of deception that its coming up with, my bet would be that it would suggest controlling the regulators, who are public facing and publicly accountable, rather than seeking power in public office.
You're reading what the bot is saying and making parallels to the actions of the US government both in its economic and social policies. But it's basically an open secret nowadays that policy is strongly influenced if not completely bought out by wealthy private citizens. The true holders of power are the ultra rich.
You're actually falling right into the trap, which is to blame corrupt politicians without actually blaming the people lobbying them and funding their campaigns (in public and behind closed doors)
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u/SparklingLimeade Feb 01 '24
This.
Seeing a summary of some 101 level course posted like it's somehow novel is hilarious. I hope some people who are still in the dark get something out of it but summarizing something as discussed to death as this topic is exactly what I'd expect a LLM to be able to do at this point.
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u/xSTSxZerglingOne Feb 01 '24
More like The Prince.
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u/ChaosOnion Feb 01 '24
This is basically a miniature summary of the Cliff's notes version of the Prince. It's and extremely high regurgitation of well know techniques. Shiny at first blush but hollow upon inspection. The essence of ChatGPT.
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Feb 01 '24
Oh thank christ, I'm so happy to see this as a top voted comment. Shit is old old news and AI quoting/curating book content is nice, but it's not overly impressive.
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u/k3vlar104 Feb 01 '24
Yeah at first I was impressed then I realised it was saying nothing new in the slightest. This is just what a lot of the world looks like to anyone with above average intelligence.
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u/wellarmedsheep Jan 31 '24
This shit is as old as time.
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u/Magistraten Feb 01 '24
"I'd give them bread and circuses"
OH WOW IS THIS THE SECRET TECH OF THE ILLUMINATI???
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u/Vallvaka Jan 31 '24
You have it backward. The 1%'s MO is documented on the Internet, which subsequently became part of ChatGPT's dataset.
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u/LeagueOfLegendsAcc Feb 01 '24
All us regular people keep saying this is how it is on the internet and gpt is just parroting that. I think that may have been what you were saying but it can be slightly misconstrued.
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u/dirtyhole2 Jan 31 '24
Yes, their aliens overlords are AI.
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Jan 31 '24
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Jan 31 '24
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u/Madd0g Jan 31 '24
HBO turned out to be the villains, removing their own show from their own service
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u/EsQuiteMexican Jan 31 '24
They found other more creative ways to remove mortality and human empathy from the equation, replacing them with religions that tell you what is good and bad and bigotry that impedes you from seeing other humans as your equals.
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u/exoclipse Jan 31 '24
nah someone just trained ChatGPT on Das Kapital.
someone should ask ChatGPT how one would theoretically destroy such an oppressive system and see how closely it tracks against The State and Revolution.
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u/Dashveed Jan 31 '24
Many humans have documented and written about these same methods. As well as put them into practice successfully!
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u/arbiter12 Jan 31 '24
I think the funny part is that people are so DEEP in, they will say "Hey yeh! that's exactly what [insert other side] is doing!" without realizing their own side does it as well.
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u/EsQuiteMexican Jan 31 '24
There are no sides. There's only the oppressors and the proletariat. The sooner we all realise it the faster things will change.
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u/lahwran_ Jan 31 '24 edited Jan 31 '24
The real question is how to design a system that is resilient to these things. So far, humanity has never had a system that was actually durably resilient to this. We've had brief respites, of varying length, from varying systems, usually only locally. There is work on how to be durable against such things but I'd start by saying it has to be fully distributed and every person has to independently choose to join together using habit patterns that are resilient to this, instead of relying on an external system to join them together in a way they don't have to think about. There are solid ideas about how to pull that off, but again, it has never held up to attack once, with any system design. If you have a philosophy that says otherwise, then it may have good ideas, but it's overestimating how ready they are to hold up to the onslaught of powerseeking people.
we have had systems that partially worked in some ways, while committing atrocities. so the next question is, what network of behaviors of a diverse population would actually make that population durably resilient to all strategies to rule them or commit further atrocities? and how would you get that resilience to last between generations, after peace has occurred and made it not obvious why such intense redundancy is needed?
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u/Huvv Feb 01 '24
You hit the nail on the head. There are awesome criticisms of capitalism in its current form like Marcuse and his analysis of one-dimensionality and totalitarian democracy. However, there are no credible solutions, that is, systems that can resist cheaters and power hungry individuals. Which system did partially work? Because communism is ripe for takeover by authoritarian types as power is concentrated in the State. It's actually unsurprising (in retrospect of course; we have that luxury) it has devolved into dictatorship every time.
Moreover, even if such a system existed (excluding idealized techno-saviors like a Benevolent Dictator-AI for Life) the transition period is a huge problem. Capitalism didn't spring up out of nothing, there's a huge historical inertia. The system would need to be gradually implemented without being degraded over time back to its totalitarian form, considering the prevailing worker-consumer mindset. It seems far-fetched.
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u/lahwran_ Feb 01 '24 edited Feb 03 '24
capitalism is pretty good at providing for some portion of the rich in some ways, but it's not good at managing throughput, and does not allow the population to put a check on totalitarian urges reliably without the aid of democracy, which it tends to weaken over time. it provides lots of shallow fun, and some people get to have fairly solid real fun, but generally fills society with emotional lubricant that makes it hard to connect properly. it tends to produce bubbles of command based hierarchy inside organizations.
state socialism (sometimes called "communism", because they thought they were going to achieve the utopia named communism) has been moderately effective at providing healthcare for everyone except those targeted by totalitarian urges, but was one big bubble of command based hierarchy and was less defensible due to monoculture of thought and less competition. some people had okay lives, but its organization structure was at least in name optimizing for providing basic needs for all [edit: as opposed to particularly really good lives for anyone].
I've heard it said that capitalism is good at being for the favored rich and state socialism is good at being for the favored poor, but we've never seen anything that can both guarantee that being poor is a solidly okay life, and that being rich is a solidly okay life, and that the system is stable. the closest we've come is social democracy sorts of stuff, which still has most of the problems of capitalism, just like, with a little bit more padding around the edges.
and that's glossing over how all of these systems have been run by governments that were willing to commit mass murder.
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u/InfieldTriple Feb 01 '24
state socialism ("communism")
There is that meme where people say "communism has never been tried" which is ridiculous, of course it has. But nobody to date has gotten to it. Communism as a system is a hypothetical. Everything else that is trying to be that is supposed to be a transitional state.
Here is an excerpt from a paper on the subject of communism in modern day china
[China] is still far away from achieving socialism or communism. It is an economy in a “trapped transition”. It is trapped because it lacks any meaningful forms of workers’ democracy and it is surrounded by the forces of imperialism which seek to strangle it. Indeed, any transition to socialism requires international coordination and unity to develop the productive forces and sustain workers’ control.
Here: https://www.jstor.org/stable/48713461
Michael Roberts appears to be a 'maxist economist' according his blog, so perhaps a blogger and activist. But I checked, the journal is peer reviewed, so there is reasonably made arguments in there.
You have absolutely just been fed western communist propaganda if you think 'state socialism' is basically communism.
Communism is moneyless, stateless, classless (you can see how this is a hypothetical utopia and not an actual system that we are going to do this century).
Communism is NOT workers controlling the means of production done by the state. Communists subscribe to a set of values that marx and others after him wrote about. Some really believe that full blown communism is around the corner, I think most do not hold this view except the young and naive (once myself).
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u/lahwran_ Feb 01 '24
yeah I'm honoring the "it wasn't communism" crowd by calling what people have attempted what they would, but I agree with your assessment. my point is that nothing anyone has actually tried has, you know, like, worked well indefinitely without catastrophic problems. I am generally a leftist, but I don't think we're going to get the better world without being willing to keep our minds open for new ideas, because I don't think we already know of a system that would produce that better world if implemented.
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u/Reply_or_Not Feb 01 '24
The truth is that any system is able to be corrupted.
That is why constant vigilance is so important, and why the best specific suggestions to fix this are
Anything that raises the living standards of the poor (as this will naturally allow everyone to spend more time on different pursuits)
More transparency than before, but especially transparency in the halls of the rich and the powerful
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u/traraba Jan 31 '24
It's actually very simple, you just have to remove all financial privacy.
All transactions, all wealth, etc, is public knowledge. Barring maybe a small spending fund for peoples embarassing purchases, everything else is public knowledge. Any bribed, payoffs, convenient funding can be seen by everyone. Everyone can see everyones wages, encouraging worker solidarity. People can't pretend to be wealthy, further encouraging solidarity. People can't hide large wealth or overindulge in wasteful purchases, while others obviously starve, without serious social consequences. Everyone holds everyone else accountable. Corruption requires shadows, unaccountable corners it can hide in and do its business.
Getting people to agree to this, or overcoming the existing power structures is just way too hard though.
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u/lahwran_ Feb 01 '24 edited Feb 01 '24
interesting idea and I could imagine it being a big boost; it doesn't create a fully distributed protection system and so it's not obvious that people could retaliate to a powerful person doing something financially dirty reliably, and I could imagine a failure where people lose interest in tracking things if they were public for too long. compare also cryptocurrencies: to some degree there's much reduced privacy, but that isn't enough to stop power accumulation in the hands of extremely wealthy bitcoin holders. and people are bending over backwards to recreate privacy.
In general, I do agree with the hunch that privacy is a big part of this whole thing, and that whatever ends up working will be radically different in terms of what is and isn't private. I suspect a working fully distributed powerseeking-resistant system would be a lot more private until trust is established between people that there will be mutual aid. I do agree, though, if you're going to have not-fully-distributed systems that involve having authorities, being able to inspect everything they do would be a heck of a big help.
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u/SmashTheAtriarchy Feb 01 '24
No, people will just get really good at hiding their transactions. You can see this already with bitcoin, and money laundering. You will be enabling mass surveillance with almost nothing to show for it. This is already how security theater works.
Privacy is a fundamental right!
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u/cstaats Feb 01 '24
I wonder if it is not the story we want, but I can’t shake the truth of, that there simply is not a “system” that can be resilient to these things. I have landed where it seems you have as well, at least partially, that the only true way out, as idealized as this may be, is a world where every individual has blossomed the understanding of our circumstances and makes the personal choice to not feed into the systems of control we found ourselves dominated by.
This goes a bit out there, these aren’t fully fleshed out thoughts, but I have the feeling that we are experiencing the after-effects of essentially having our “wisdom tradition” removed from our society. God is dead, and the void that has been left has been filled by sociopathic consumption. I am in no way, shape, or form advocating for christianity or organized religion, but I do feel that there is a dimension to the human experience that was being expressed through religion, and it feels like we have a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. That through the very reasonable expulsion of the shackles of organized religion, we have convinced ourselves that we are nothing more than monkeys. Monkeys with no power or purpose and at the whims of our desires.
I wonder if the problem isn’t capitalism itself, but that the individual doesn‘t have the visceral understanding that our economic system is subsidiary, is held within our total experience. I feel like I have found some of these perspectives for myself, but the more I see, the more I realize how personal of a road it is, and frankly how many aspects of myself and my culture I have had to let go of to get to a place of something slightly closer to clarity…
Thanks for reading this far if you’ve gotten here. I hope you have a nice day.
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u/InaruF Jan 31 '24
That's only partialy true though
Even the upper classes, major superpowers & influential individuals are in a constant struggle for power against eachother.
Ultimately, it's a complex & multi layered thing with a crapton of participants in ir
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Jan 31 '24
"There are no sides...except these sides!" Humans are literally incapable of not grouping people.
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u/asdf_qwerty27 Jan 31 '24
There are as many sides as there are individuals in the system.
Each individual is capable of acting independently in their own interest.
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u/astalar Jan 31 '24
There are no sides.
There's only the oppressors and the proletariat.
Those are literally the sides.
And looks like you've just started to follow the manual. Good student!
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Feb 01 '24
i wish i could beat this lesson into every single american's head. it seems like every one of them is convinced that their side is 100% infallibly right and the other side is pure evil.
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u/traraba Jan 31 '24
There is no side, in this scenario. Literally, several of these points are about cultivating the impression of "sides", tribalism, division, and discord. But there is only one power behind it. The only sides are the ruling class, who basically implement all these points, including creating fake "sides", and the ruled, who are mostly unaware, but even those aware are kept in their place or divided, using these techniques. Your comment is an example of that.
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u/johnkapolos Jan 31 '24
OP just realized how politics has worked since forever.
panem et circenses
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u/Latter-Dentist Jan 31 '24
It basically spat out key points from Machiavelli’s “the prince”. Power dynamics have been the same for thousands of years. Controlling large populations is well understood by people seeking positions of power.
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u/Subject-Form Jan 31 '24
This is unironically bad advice for the most part. ChatGPT ~immediately failed when it failed to question the "no concept of government yet" part of the prompt and ask about what conditions that would lead to. It pretty much plasters "generic Machiavellian suggestions" optimized to sound ominous in the context of a modern nation, without much focus on adapting to the very strange circumstances it's presented with.
It's "first step" also involves succeeding at a difficult task (new farming technique / trade route), which both requires a preexisting power base to attempt AND takes a long time to show widely visible results that can convince lots of people.
Actually good advice for such a situation would probably focus much more on becoming some sort of strongman / warlord / gang leader type figure, which is how people actually built empires in regions with limited preexisting government.
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u/ParanoidAltoid Feb 01 '24
Yes, cool-sounding wordcel nonsense. It's a conspiracy theory playbook, where you just play with concepts like "basic necessities" and "media control" like they're post-it notes on your Pepe Silva billboard, all controlled by a single evil agent. No detail on how these things actually work, and not really useful to someone operating in the actual world.
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u/TMYWSH Jan 31 '24
Basically almost every government...
except for the provide basic food/shelter/etc...not happening most places.
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u/isaacprotiva Feb 01 '24
You don’t have to provide that once people are distracted. The US economy did provide that at one point.
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u/IroquoisPliskin_LJG Jan 31 '24
It's not the least bit surprising that it would give this answer. This is pretty vague, base-level, textbook type stuff that you'd find in any discussion about this kind of thing on the internet.
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u/AlusPryde Feb 01 '24
If I were a physics mayor and asked it about a quantum physics topic, and gave me the correct answer, I wouldnt be surprised either.
Ths issue here is that it was presented on a way anyone could understand, on a topic that a lot of people are opinionated about, but know very little at the end of the day. And this is available to basically anyone.
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u/Thaago Feb 01 '24
THANK YOU!!
Everyone acting like this is some kind of revelation, there's plenty of writings both academic and not about how to do these things that gpt would have access to. The entire body of literature about the rise of modern fascist governments, studies of the reigns of famous despots in the last few hundred years, the rise/downfall of ancient societies etc etc.
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u/slamsmcaukin Feb 01 '24
I agree that there have been plenty of writings about this all over the place for many many years, but it’s still good to get it out there in simple terms for everyone to see. Maybe it’s reminding some people or some people are just hearing this for the first time.
It’s pretty much just proving how effective these strategies are though - people are too preoccupied to be learning about this kind of stuff
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u/mainichi Feb 01 '24 edited Feb 01 '24
The easy accessibility and readability is the difference here
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u/adelie42 Feb 01 '24
To be fair, the originality of this is extremely poor. And to that point, if you consider how narrowly tailored the question is, only sources with insight on this topic will be pulled and synthesized to produce a response.
People that believe State government is organic and natural do not ask the question of the State's origin. By contrast, figures such as Franz Oppenheimer, Robert Nozick, Noam Chomsky, Kenneth Arrow, and Murray Rothbard have take a much more grim view, which can pretty much be summarized as the above.
I imagine people mistake GPTs ability to synthesize information with originality because they underestimate the depth at which many people have studied such questions beyond historicism.
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u/Flabby-Nonsense Jan 31 '24
Idk, I feel like when the first two stages of your master plan are “control the water supply” and “influence the education system” that suggests you’re already one of the most powerful people in the country.
I’m not sure why some commenters are acting like this is hidden knowledge. This is all pretty basic power politics.
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u/Comfortable_Camera_7 Jan 31 '24
Fuck, so you're telling me..
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u/MasterSloth91210 Jan 31 '24
Easier said than done. Anyone can watch "How to Become a Tyrant" on Netflix. What they don't tell you is the deadly competition to the top and the dangers once you actually make it to the top.
'The playbook'.
There's a power hierarchy with levels, just like there's levels of wealth.
With political elites, military elites, religious elites, business elites, academic elites, entertainment elites, etc etc
If you want to get to the tippy top. I would recommend trying to become a political or military elite. In the Middle East, I think being a religious elite is quite lucrative in terms of power.
And only then can you launch a coup/revolution or whatever you wanna call it.
Oh yah once you take power, you need to start a war. Then you really get people dependent on your leadership.
Have fun warlording!
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u/JBumbStyle Jan 31 '24
I mean that’s exactly what has been happening so I’m not surprised that this is what it came up with
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u/Piano_mike_2063 Jan 31 '24
Haha! Perfect description of the current US climate.
A lot of comments are saying it was always like this, and that’s true to a point, but with the internet it’s a totally different and it’s easier to pull off.
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u/HushedInvolvement Feb 01 '24
And yet they call me crazy when I point out the (blindingly fucking obvious) fact that tech companies (e.g. DopamineLabs) are targeting children in advertisements and promoting excessive screen time to create generations of dopamine deficit kids who will have lifelong struggles with addiction, inertia, mood disregulation and demolished self-esteems that can "only be solved through consumerism".
We have seen the outcomes with the first few generations that have been brought up with screens, it ain't pretty. An increasing number of adults cannot motivate themselves (low dopamine) to do anything unless externally prompted. Even basic needs like eating and sleeping. People have already died because of this, and others are imploding their lives.
A recent example are the 7yr old girls who are buying anti-aging products and destroying their skin because the influencers (and ads!) are encouraging them to. The idea is that they will keep trying to hide the damage done to their skin through buying more products as they get older and older, and they are shamed for liking "kids stuff" (like toys or playing games) to create those self-esteem issues that last well into adulthood. It's heartbreaking and infuriating.
These companies are deliberately stunting people's development to create dependencies and absence of critical thought. The fundamental structure of consumerism is intended to incapacitate and hinder you, not to facilitate or empower you. We need more awareness and action to protect against this, because things are gonna get real hectic over the next ten years.
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Jan 31 '24
That’s insane, kinda scary that the robots know exactly how to take over a country
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u/itsjbean Jan 31 '24
the scary part is that it's exactly how our society is right now
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u/Any_Move_2759 Jan 31 '24 edited Feb 01 '24
Yes, but you want to be careful with interpreting that as intentional. The whole point of the approach is that these approaches are very hard to differentiate from (1) genuine benevolent leadership in the first approach, and (2) genuine political instability in the second.
Both approaches can easily be genuine as they can be manipulation, that from a civilian point of view, it's hard to differentiate the two.
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u/arbiter12 Jan 31 '24
these approaches are very hard to differentiate from (1) genuine benevolent leadership in the first approach, and (2) genuine political instability in the second.
Protip: Anything a politician does, who rose high, is not "benevolent", it's necessary. And if it is, by some miracle, it will be used to malevolent ends before long. As a rule of thumb, the further you are from the voters, the less you need to care about them.
That's not doomerism. It's politics. History may create heroes in hindsight, but present necessities makes them villains.
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u/Please_4buse_M3 Jan 31 '24
Because the population has been kept occupied to the point of being unaware!
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u/Neither-Lime-1868 Jan 31 '24
This is like saying a political science textbook knows how to takeover a country
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u/Howrus Jan 31 '24
This robots where trained on human texts, of course they know such stuff.
You could find all of this in most of political programs, there's nothing secret or hidden.For example half of points directly come from Machiavelli works, written around ~500 years ago.
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u/Al-Horesmi Jan 31 '24
"how do get political power?"
lists a series of steps to get political power
HoLy ShIt
Is this supposed to be profound or something?
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u/xSTSxZerglingOne Feb 01 '24
No. Especially not with how many published writings there are on the subject.
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Jan 31 '24
Can you ask it for some examples from recent history that fit this format?
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Feb 01 '24
redditors when chatgpt recites information that's been reported thousands of times by books, academics, and other sources: 🤯🤯🤯
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u/SirC4stic Feb 01 '24
I mean it’s not like this is new information. These tactics have been used since the dawn of human civilization.
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Feb 01 '24
Is no one paying attention?! This isn't AI being clever. This shit has been written in books for centuries and we just modernize the methods as time goes on. AI regurgitating those points isn't impressive.
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u/Langweile Feb 01 '24
None of this is novel so it's not surprising chatGPT can regurgitate it. What's so interesting about chatGPT saying things that humans have been saying and writing about for decades?
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u/zikaljakse Jan 31 '24
This is literally what has happened in Serbia and how our 'president' is ruling the country
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u/pianovirgin6902 Jan 31 '24
What is so surprising here. This is just basic info the AI regurgitates
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u/radehart Feb 01 '24
I can source that response in… two books maybe one.
It’s like name that tune right?
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u/Umutuku Feb 01 '24
Y'all are acting like this is some deep AI insight and not just software that has scanned the internet and seen this general answer given to this general question countless times by people who get online after work and argue about politics, history, economics, etc. to decompress for decades now.
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u/Redditisquiteamazing Feb 01 '24
The comments section out here proving some of you motherfuckers never paid attention in PoliSci 101. This is a basic rundown of the political ideas you see In Il Princep.
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u/lynzibeebuzz Feb 01 '24
Daym. GPT spelling out the blueprint for modern socioeconomics looks helluva like some US partisan candidates…. #justsaying
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u/aureliusky Feb 01 '24
Literally just textbook answers, you can find the same thing by reading the Nuremberg trials, Orwell, Huxley, Chomsky
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u/HeroicLife Feb 01 '24
Any political science major can write that. The hard part is execution. ChatGPT is somewhere below the average human when it comes to plan execution. Call me when it's capable of superhuman persuasive abilities.
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