Of course the republicans are declaring war on us!

 So this one is from David Pakman, who says that "gee, the right is declaring war on us, everything we support, Trump is trying to attack or dismantle."

Geee...NO CRAP. 

Here's the thing. The right are these ideological culture warriors. For them, EVERYTHING is worldview. These guys were brainwashing me with understanding the times and christian nationalism 20 years ago. They've BEEN declaring war on the left. The left has just been living under a rock somewhere.

This is one of the reasons I hated clinton in 2016. Because she was like "no the right isnt the enemy, we need to meet them half way." For me, it was a matter of worldview, and if you meet evil half way, youre still evil. You see, that's the thing. My secular humanist perspective made me declare a counter war on christianity. I recognized the christian nationalist threat for what it was, since I was one of them. I realized that they were no bueno, that we were playing for keeps, and that we had to fight them, openly and firmly. We had to declare war on conservatism as we knew it back in 2016. But the left was just like "well if only we meet them half way" and "we gotta compromise." GUYS. NO. Like, they would wave "but the court" in my face, but why was the court an issue in 2016? Because scalia died, mitch mcconnell refused to fill the vacancy, and because trump won, they sniped the seat for themselves. Obama should have filled the seat. And even proposed merrick garland, who was a bit too conservative in retrospect and who dropped the ball with prosecuting trump as biden's AG. But no, they said, no, were gonna stall you out and install our guy.

Going back further, let's go back to 2011ish when the tea party took over. They went scorched earth against obama. Mitch McConnell was like "no, our ticket to coming back is basically to obstruct dems on everything." So they did. They held the government hostage, tried to force painful concessions, and even though obama tried meeting them halfway, they overplayed their hand and ended up looking TERRIBLE over it, like ideological nutjobs who wouldnt compromise. Because they wont. But what did the dems do? "Well we need to compromise..." F off. (PS, ya understand why I think people need to be told that flatly on the internet sometimes?). Like really, the democrats have been dense. They've been ignoring that the right has been at war with us OPENLY for at least 15 years now. And if you really think about it, they've been at war for around 45 now, if we go back to Reagan. or 30, if we go back to the contract with America and that ugliness from conservatives. or 15, if we cite the tea party. The point is, this isn't a new thing. And democrats need to fight back. They need to wage their own war on the right and its ideological values, and they need to play for keeps too. Stop fricking around, stop compromising to the center, stop the faux civility crap. FIGHT. Fight them like they fight us (well, okay, dont go that far, I respect the constitution enough to not lock up people extrajudicially or to try to go after churches like they go after colleges, keep it within the realm of a liberal democracy here). But beyond that one rule, yeah, go after them. GO for the jugular, politically speaking. Run bold candidates. Advocate for things. Fight for them. Dont back down. Dont give up. Compromise only when necessary. 

Seriously, the left should've learned that you can't compromise with the right from the obama administration. Because you can't. So yeah, the right declared war on us. Welcome to the party, pal. Can we do something about this the next time we take power, IF we're ever allowed in power again because it might be too late? Because im convinced if the left actually addressed this properly 10 years ago, the GOP would be DONE by now. They'd be the 1940s GOP again. Instead we went the hitler route instead of the FDR round, because they dropped the ball and because the right plays for keeps and even has continued to raise the stakes through the age of trump where now even the future of democracy itself is at risk. But yeah. The GOP is evil. Their ideas are evil. Just...be the good guys, my god, it's not that hard.  

Discussing Asmongold's perspective on young men, capitalism, and democrats

 So...Asmongold. Interesting guy to say the least. On the one hand, the dude is like, the most tolerable right winger to listen to. On the other hand, he is a right winger and sometimes has crap opinions. Still, I tend to actually find at least partial agreement on at least some issues. The dude has come out as pro UBI and anti work before, so he has that going for it, but yeah, his stances on cultural issues and the trump administration often leave a lot to be desired. Still, I did watch a few of his segments tonight and wanted to discuss them.

 Clip 1- "Men are in decline"

 In this clip, he basically goes over the whole idea of Fox news ripping into young men for being lazy and not wanting to get jobs. Honestly, this is a talking point Fox News has been leaning into recently because they're trying to drum up resentment politics from the "I work so hard, get a jerb" crowd, but honestly, I hate it. Quite frankly, my own stance on this is that we don't owe society anything, and if anything, society owes us a living, because society exists to serve us, not us it. I support stuff like basic income, medicare for all, and believe they make society better. I think this idea of attacking and blaming men for dropping out of the workforce is dumb, and the traditionalist angle of 'they dont wanna date women and have families" is even dumber. Like conservatives are just obsessed with the lifescript. And I reject the lifescript, like many on the left do. 

Of course, Asmongold has a different take on it, being a bit more conservative, but still having that whole NEET vibe to him. He looks at it from a perspective of society failing men, and how as a result, men don't think they owe anything to society. I kinda framed things that way above, but I come at it more from a humanist and anti traditionalist perspective. For asmongold, it's more cynicism. I tend to agree with it. Quite frankly, you don't get to be like me (or him) if you have a society that works. Society socializes people to be good little worker bees. And most people dont really realize how messed up things are until they get older. I guess asmongold himself had an early start since he mentioned seeing that resentment in school when someone else had an opportunity he didn't. With me it came later as life fell apart after college, I couldn't find a job, and I had this college education in the social sciences that allowed me to deprogram myself of all of society's nonsense. 

And I guess I kinda agree. Young men drop out of the workforce because the economy doesn't work for them. They dont have the right opportunities and as a result, they crash out. Even worse, Asmongold talks about double standards in society and how these blonde fox news women love to lecture others, but in reality, they come off like "karens" in a way.  Idk if it was this clip or the next one but there was a lot of discussion in one of them about how basically, men still have all of these expectations put on them, often by women, while women themselves still demand guys to adhere to traditional expectations as far as getting a job, being a provider, paying for dates, etc. It's no surprise a lot of men just end up dropping out. I mean, I'm one of them in a way. 

And yeah, being conservative and having a conservative audience, some guys had a perspective that you should sink or swim and not expect anything from society. I disagree. As I said, society exists, in theory, to serve us. We dont exist to serve it. And the fact that it doesn't serve us is why many of us, both me, and asmongold in our own ways, kinda come off as a bit selfish and not caring about society. I admit, asmongold is a bit more "burn it all down" than I am, but I get the impulse. 

Clip #2 - "This is democrats connecting with young men"

So this one is much longer and involves a 40 minute discussion between a young democrat man and a woman discussing why the democrats have trouble connecting to women. While it was a long clip and i kinda forgot significant amounts of it despite just watching the whole thing, there are a lot of parts I do wanna focus on.

I do remember largely agreeing with asmongold that democratic outreach to men sucks. To go into my experience, I was an ex republican who came over to the left in 2012, and by 2016, I was having a falling out with my new adopted "team." A lot of this was over the clear mismatch in priorities. I wanted economic populism a la bernie sanders, and HRC embraced...well...an almost strawmanesque version of the same "liberalism" I grew up hating. Ya know, caring more about "diversity" and identity politics than economic justice. I was told to stfu and check my privilege. I was called racist and sexist. And while it didnt change my core convictions and drive me right (since I already left the right once and was innoculated against their BS), it greatly soured me on the party. It's simple, embrace good policy that makes people wanna vote for you. But they can't be simple, they gotta do weaponized incompetence instead. So basically, for me, it was a matter of "you better vote for us or else" and after basically insulting me and trying to strong arm me into voting for them, I kindly told them to F off.

In a sense, those kinds of vibes came up here. He mentioned how the diversity stuff can be a turenoff. He has a harder stance on it than me, refusing to support anyone who adopts socially progressive stances on identity issues as a matter of principle, comparing it to voting for a flat earther, whereas I'm a lot more nuanced, and Im like, well as long as it's not negatively affecting me or impacting my goals, I dont care. The problem is that it does negatively impact me and my goals when they hyperfocus on it and use it as a cudgel. 

There's a lot of discussion of stuff, either in this one or the last one or both, of how zoomers grew up being hounded by this crap and then they grow up into an economy that doesnt work for them. Ya know, same as me in a sense, but we didnt have the toxic idpol that exists today. he discusses the abortion issue and how most men are pro choice, they just resent that they can be forced into parenthood while women can get out of it. Of course, being "anti choice" or "pro life" for those reasons is insane. That's crab mentality that isn't helpful. But yeah, I will admit that a lot of feminists do have a lot of double standards here. Like....I've raised the idea of financial or paper abortion in liberal circles before, only to find feminists outright HOSTILE to the idea and acting like traditionalists with the same "you had sex therefore you agreed to be a parent" logic pro lifers use. it's disgusting.  Same with dating. We're expected to be breadwinners, providers, pay for crap, but then feminists want women's rights on their terms. It's a double standard and it pisses men off. 

Asmongold also talked about online environments and how there's more censorship and the like and how a lot of this was to create more inclusivity with women, and uh...yeah I kinda agree. I'm a bit older and my formative internet years were from the wild west days of the 2000s. Moderation was lax, we could be more aggressive in general, and basically, it was just....how we did things, and there was nothing wrong with it. But then in an effort to be more inclusive and sanitized, now we can't say certain things, and while asmongold was mostly meaning in the "racism" way, it's just...in general for me. Like I can't even tell someone on reddit to go F themselves any more without breaking TOS because omg that's mean. I could tell in 2016 when we were talking about banning people for toxicity in chat in video games that this was setting a bad precedent, and yeah, they werent wrong. Now the internet is too restrictive compared to what it was, and I miss the old days. Back then, unless you said the N word, you were good 95% of the time. 

And yeah. Of course, once again, I also disagree with asmongold on a lot. Like he was talking about stoicism and how men like it and how we've been that way for thousands of years and how we cant be soft and sensitive and we gotta be tough. That's BS man, and toxic masculinity. 

Also, asmongold is just way too vindictive for my tastes. He really does have this own the libs mentality sometimes where he's against certain sjw behavior almost to a fault where he wont bend with them at all. I am more willing to bend with them, I just have a "dont F with me" mentality there. Like he mentioned refusing to support anyone who supports trans women in sports, and honestly, i just think the issue is dumb. And mostly, I am for trans rights.

And yeah, I am for abortion rights, and gay rights, and I actually do lean left on social issues myself. Asmongold just seems way too vindictive, he's kinda gotten caught into this loop of "burn it all down" sometimes and even when i partially agree with him, I also find myself having very significant DISagreements with him at times where my agreements are only partial. 

Honestly though, I would agree that yeah, the democrats need to appeal better to men. I won't always agree on how and to what extent. A lot of conservatives do get trapped into their own culture war BS and asmongold is no exception, but honestly? With me? I feel like Im a bit more constructive. Yes, there are massive double standards. yes, men get pissed off by that. They dont like how the democrats dont seem to give AF about them. They dont like how on economics, suddenly the democrats sound conservative when talking to white males with the "learn to code" BS and all. 

But again, there are times when asmongold just goes into basically actual conservative and traditionalist attitudes, when i just see these double standards and hypocrisies and approach them from a more consistent LEFT position. 

Like on economics, I DO want more social programs, UBI, etc. Asmongold does too in theory but then he still leans into this doctrine of toughness. On social issues, yeah the dems are hypocritical and in some ways I guess I am a cultural moderate these days. But at the same time, my own heart is on the left, just not this current toxic brand of left, whereas asmongold does lean into a bit of the masculinity crap too much that I just can't stand. 

Idk. I look at asmongold and i feel like it's kinda sad. In a lot of ways we started off in similar places being NEET gamers rejected by society. But he has gone full trump, whereas Im still more liberal. 

I guess, in a way, given asmongold's sheer popularity in recent months, like, seriously, he's displacing all the more traditional conservative commentators like ben shapiro, steven crowder, nick fuentes, etc. I mean, it does tell me something about MAGA and where THEIR heads are at. Like, they really are pissed off at the way things are and want something different. It's just that their fixation on trump as a way to own the libs is extremely harmful. Like, they're just bitter and vindictive to the point that they will burn society down to bask in the warmth of the flames. They're at that point. They dont care any more. It's dangerous. But....like fire, it can also be used toward useful, and more constructive ends if utilized properly. The problem is society isn't utilizing this anger properly. It hasnt been transmuted in a positive way that makes society better. In the 1930s, in the US, we had people like FDR and Huey Long using this anger to advocate for solutions that made peoples' lives better. In Germany...well...they got hitler.

In 2025, we're also...getting hitler. Because the dems screwed up. They made the wrong moves in 2016, they lost a lot of people, and now we all suffer for it as the masses line up behind a populist demagogue who not only will not make their lives better but seems hell bent on making everything worse, while the democrats are just there with the glasses down at the tip of their nose being like "gee, how did we end up in this predicament?" It's kinda sad. It's not rocket science, guys. You F-ed up. Everything I've said since 2016 was dead on, and you guys didnt listen. Maybe it's about time you did.  

Speculation: What if the true point of DOGE was to steal information to create massive private databases on people to bypass government checks and balances?

 So, after thinking about that palantir thing and how its goal seems to be to construct massive databases on the American people, I just had a thought. DOGE was digging around in a lot of info that it really shouldn't have, stealing sensitive information about Americans, and possibly has a treasure trove of American's data at this point. DOGE also does seem to have connections with...Palantir....compiling data and building massive databases. And as Vaush pointed out in his video today, the point of palantir seems to be to bypass democratic safeguards and to just do what private business wants. 

So...let's think about this. DOGE steals a wealth of government data, gives it to palantir, palantir creates a database, and then can use it to bypass all democratic safeguards related to said data. Combine this with AI, which can be used to add an analytic layer to predict how people will behave and stuff, and we basically got the plot of a crazy sci fi dystopia movie happening in real life.

Jesus Christ, this is bad.

Again, the problem isn't technology itself, it's how it's used. Ideally, this should be regulated. Ideally, DOGE never would've been a thing. Ideally, the second DOGE tried to access sensitive information it shouldnt have, everyone involved should've been arrested and the program shut down. Ideally, checks and balances would be stopping trump, while he seems to be able to just do whatever he wants, and lets people do whatever they want under him as long as it doesnt defy him or make him look worse than he's willing to look. And now DOGE basically got away with stealing government data, and now that data is possibly being used for some database. This is some beginning of 1984 crap right now. This is scary. It really is. I just wanted to bring that up. I don't even know what else to say about this. Just....O_O, holy crap, this could be REALLY REALLY BAD. We could be heading toward the future of the dark enlightenment with the tech oligarchs being feudal lords who use their power, including near omniscient knowledge due to modern tech, to basically turn the US into a police state. This is REALLY bad.  

Threading the needle between left wing luddism and dark enlightenment thinking

 So...there's an interesting realignment (not really, it's yet another realignment from hell) going on it seems with this second trump term where the left is going in this hardcore tech luddism direction and the right is going in a direction we can call "dark enlightenment" or "dark maga" thinking. Both of these factions are bad in my opinion, and I wanted to give my opinion on both, the spats between them, and why my views are kind of the odd one out here. 

So....a lot of lefties these days seem to oppose AI and a lot of modern technology. Businesses don't wanna pay people, and automation basically threatens to throw the working class out of work. AI is being developed that threatens work, and a lot of lefties are opposing it because they wanna preserve jobs. THeir ideologies have been built up over the years around the wage labor system, rather than challenging it, and as they see it, they get their worth from their work. But if their work is no longer useful to the tech overlords or whatever, then they're gonna be thrown to the wolves and allowed to starve to death. So they fear the destruction of jobs instead, pushing narratives about the dignity of work and how works needs to be a thing, and yeah. They oppose new tech.

I always found this mentality to be stupid. Honestly? I HATE the idea of work. I have rejected the protestant work ethic as I've gotten older. I dont romanticize work, I think work is basically slavery with extra steps, and if we no longer need to work, then that's a good thing. 

The problem here is capitalism. Capitalism was designed to distribute resources within markets based on work and labor, and most liberals and leftists over the years never challenged this. However, my own brand of progressivism is pro technology and pro automation, and I see the idea that we no longer have to work as a good thing. The bad thing is our social conventions and reliance of the wage labor system to distribute resources. As Scott Santens would say, regarding that typical 'give a man a fish" analogy you hear, if you have a situation where automation ensures that no one needs to fish any more, do all men starve or do all men eat? In our current society and its reliance on work and wage labor, all men starve, because we insist the only valid way to ensure that people meet their needs is through work. I think we should decouple work from income and implement a UBI.

Of course, a lot of liberals and lefties are cynical about UBI. I've expressed my views recently on a forum and was basically told that UBI would never happen and the elites who control everything would rather us starve than to give us a UBI. This may be true. However, that's also why we need an ideology that both advocates for worker liberation AND ALSO restructuring society so that we can afford to live without work, through policies like a UBI. If anything, trying to construct this ideology is my life's work so far, and I'm literally trying to write a book about this very idea. Quite frankly, I dont think we have to worry about the idea of no one being able to work any time soon. Jobist attitudes are so prevalent in our society, even among the working class, that most people still want to work, and also, I don't believe all work can be automated. We saw the limitations of technology during the COVID shutdown and how work is still somewhat necessary for society to function. However, eventually there may come a time where we can automate away all work. 

However, let's look at the right, especially under donald trump. In his second term, he's gotten a lot of these really weird...tech bro types on his side. Ya know, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, etc. and a lot of these guys are being driven by this "dark enlightenment" thinking. These guys are basically anti enlightenment. They see themselves as a special breed of men, like these ubermench types who should control the world. And a lot of them hate democracy and enlightenment values. As they see it, they should be in charge, and they should be like feudal lords, controlling everything, while the average person has nothing. And for them, automation is about saving their bottom line. They dont wanna pay workers. They hate unions, they hate labor costs, they want all the money. They wanna control everything. And again, did I mention they hate democracy? Seriously, what sparked this discussion was another vaush video about  Palantir, this tech company that wants to gather tons of data on all americans at the behest of the trump administration. And basically, the video goes into a lot of this dark enlightenment crap. About how the future is the corporations owning everything, and us living in a 1984esque dystopia where the corporations are in charge, and basically, yeah, tech feudalism. And how destroying our jobs is a bad thing because these guys will leave us with nothing and how there could be a mass die off in the future as a result. 

Now, again, I can understand left wing impulse to resist technology when it is functionally being used to oppress us. But let's be real here. It's not the technology itself that's bad. It's how it's used. In a sane society, we would be having policy makers study and regulate this stuff. Whereas our government is by and for the rich, and is being used to bypass democratic safeguards to do what it wants. And that's the thing. All of this "small government" stuff and pro business crap the right is for, when technology is applied to it, is quite dangerous, but it really does come down to that ideology. 

 Here's the thing. In a sense, the leftists are right when they say that capitalism has always been oppressive. The entire system was functionally set up to enslave us. We link property to work, from a conflict perspective, to justify the rich having wealth and to justify the poor being poor and oppressed. We basically created a perfect system to enslave the populace. And our liberal democracy in the US has always been susceptible to that which I would call the fourth branch of government. That being the private sector, big business, lobbyists, donors, etc. We have this entire fourth branch of our government that isnt technically a branch of government at all, but has always pulled the strings and were the real power brokers of society. Historically, these are the guys who limited how much progress reformism has been able to achieve, because they'd always lobby and buy off politicians to limit progress. Even FDR made a deal with the devil in maintaining the institution of work, and thus, wage slavery. While he did a lot to make average peoples' lives better, he never truly gave them their freedom. He refused to go lower than 40 hours a week on work hours, since the businesses feared a society in which the populace had too much power, and at the end of the new deal era, they decided america was too democratic and that business needed their power back. Reaganism was the trojan horse to make that happen, dismantling new deal protections under the guise of "small government." And now that were at the tail end of the reagan era, or perhaps at the beginning of something else which could be much worse, businesses are trying to exert more control. 

Honestly, the principles of our society are sound. We SHOULD have a society in which the people are ultimately in charge. We SHOULD be democratic. We SHOULD have a society that works to enhance the lives of the people, ALL of us, not just some of us, and certainly not just the ultra wealthy. Our society is captured by the ultra wealthy and the special interests. And it has been for quite some time. And it's just getting worse and worse. I understand why lefties would use this as an opportunity to fight technology instead of embracing it, but to me, what it's really about is what I said, "do all men starve or do all men eat?" 

The answer to that really depends on who is in charge. If the wealthy are in charge, yeah, we could end up all starving if technology automates the jobs away. We can use AI and technology to create a surveillance state that makes even  George Orwell blush. And the ideology of donald trump and his cronies seems to be leaning toward this dystopian future. Trump isn't even the only threat with his administration. I've been sensing that there's something darker behind the scenes. George Orwell, Peter Thiel, JD vance, stuff like that. I believe the oligarchs are lining up to screw us all over as a society and to basically make the future a horrifying dystopia of tech feudalism and a massive surveillance state. 

BUT...that doesn't mean the tech is the problem. What the left offers with its luddism is really just...a return to the past. Which, to me, is a society in which we are all slaves, but the oppression is a little less in your face. I dont glorify wage labor, or jobs, or work. I embrace tech and believe that the future is to move toward a society where this tech serves us all. 

Honestly, the primary political divide should be democracy vs oligarchy. Should the future be left to only the wealthy who use their power to oppress everyone else for their benefit? or should all of us have a seat at the table? I oppose trump, dark maga, and all of these evil ideologies and sub ideologies associated with this stuff because they lead to a very dystopian outcome for the future. At the same time, I embrace tech because, used correctly, it could lead to a positive future of all of us. It's really just a matter of who is in charge and who wields the power, and for what purpose. Too many people are just accepting that the wealthy will be in charge no matter what and that the best we can do is be good little wage slaves to them. But that is just such a regressive approach to the issue. No. We should have our cake and eat it too. Technology should be used for the betterment of all of humanity, not just serving the ultra wealthy. Sorry, not sorry. Probably an opinion that pisses both sides off, but given both sides are wrong, well, that's the stance I'll take. And hopefully I won't end up in a gulag for it some day.  

Just your daily reminder that the GOP is literally evil

 So, Joni Ernst, ya know, the "breadbags on shoes" lady from like 10 years ago, was confronted at a town hall about how medicaid cuts might kill her constituents. She just coldly responded "well, we're all gonna die." So....that's a thing republicans are now saying.

Okay, look, when I say the GOP is LITERALLY EVIL, i mean they're LITERALLY EVIL. Like, there's a lot of grey in morality. I believe that a lot of different ideologies and moral systems often want similar things: a better life, less suffering, more ability to be free and pursue that which makes one happy. We can disagree on what that looks like, but any functional moral system would at least have some aspect of their morality toward those things. Not these frickers. No. They literally don't care if you suffer, they literally don't care if you die. They want you to be enslaved to the wealthy for the rest of your life. Their entire moral system is propped up by divine command theory and the worst elements of christian morality.  Without the Bible telling them what to do, they might literally lack ANY morality AT ALL. Ya know the types of people who say that without god and the bible, why wouldn't we all go around killing each other? That's these guys. Just think about how insane that is for a second. And now they're wielding the power of the state in a way to inflict harm on and kill others. The cruelty is the point. It's a coercive measure to force people to conform to whatever morality they do have, and if people die, they die. 

Again, they're evil. EVIL. Pure evil. Like, not even morally grey. As dark as dark can get. They're literally flirting with fascism at times as well. I want people to know this. I want people to stop being republicans here. Because republicans aren't even on the scale of moral goodness. They're all the way at the far end one step removed from "literally Hitler", and even then, when their actions have eerie similarities to hitler's early actions, that one step isn't that far removed from "literally hitler." Yeah. Don't be conservative in 2025. Any principles these guys used to have that gave them any benefit of the doubt are now dead. Like, back in the day, you could argue, well, they're really principled and dont want tyranny to rise from excessive government action, no, you cant even claim that any more. Because they're EVIL. Period.  

Trump tariffs SHUT DOWN

 Trump's tariffs just got shut down by the court of international trade, citing that Trump doesn't have the authority to pass such sweeping tariffs, only congress does. This is a major blow to trump's administration, and I'm here to see it. His tariffs were insane and destructive on a massive level. Honestly, I wanna see courts rule against trump like this more often. he's basically a tyrant who tries to do literally everything by executive fiat and isnt even trying to follow the constitution. In his view, he is the law. More of this, plz.

What the GPU market should look like today (if it kept up with trends in the past)

 So...I've done this before, but I never made a dedicated post to this. let's have an HONEST discussion about the GPU market and what it would look like if Nvidia didn't get greedy, and AMD didn't fall apart. 

My starting point here would be around 2016-2018, when nvidia had the 1000 series and AMD had the 400/500 series/Vega. This was the last point where I'd say the market was anything close to normal. Anyway, let's look at what things cost:

 GTX 1030- $80

 GTX 1050- $110

GTX 1050 Ti- $140

GTX 1060 3 GB- $200

GTX 1060 6 GB- $250 

GTX 1070- $380

GTX 1070 ti- $450

GTX 1080- $600

GTX 1080 ti- $700

And for AMD:

 RX 550- $80

RX 560- $100

RX 570- $170

RX 580 4 GB- $200 

RX 580 8 GB- $250

RX 590- $280

RX Vega 56- $400

RX Vega 64- $500

This is what I consider the golden age of the market

Anyway, let's fast forward to the 2000 series. 

2018-2019

 The 2000 series was where Nvidia got greedy. They started bumping all of their cards up a tier pricing where the 2060 was like 1070 pricing, the 2070 was like 1080 pricing, etc. And basically they did anyone dirty in the old 60 range and below. They came out with the 1660 and the like for those in the old price range and those werent RT capable and basically were as powerful as the 1070. It was kind of a joke, given the 1000 series was 2.5 years old and we often double performance every 3 years. However, moore's law was slowing down, so let's say they couldn't do that. Still, they should've kept the pricing equivalent to the 1000 series IMO. 

GTX 1650- $120 (was $150)

GTX 1660- $180 (was $220)

GTX 1660 ti- $220 (was $270)

RTX 2060- $300 (was $350)

RTX 2070- $450 (was $500)

RTX 2080- $600 (was $700)

RTX 2080 Ti- $800 (was $1000)

Basically, I recommend around a 15-20% cut across the board.  

Now AMD:

RX 5500 XT 4 GB- $130 (was $170)

RX 5500 XT 8 GB- $160 (was $200)

RX 5600 XT- $250 (was $280)

RX 5700- $300 (was $350)

RX 5700 XT- $350 (was $400)

Here, I do the same. To be fair I think the 5000 series cards were a better deal at the time, but at the same time, they also lacked RT and stuff so they did have to sell them cheaper. Here, I make them relatively competitive with Nvidia.

2020-2021

Here, we got COVID which screwed up pricing anyway, but I'm gonna ignore that and focus solely on having comparable pricing. 

3050 6 GB- $120 (was $170)

3050 8 GB- $180 (was $250)

3060- $250 (was $330)

3060 Ti- $320 (was $400)

3070- $400 (was $500)

3070 Ti- $450 (was $600)

3080 10 GB- $550 (was $700)

3080 12 GB - $600 (was $800)

3080 ti- $700 (was $1200)

3090- $750 (was $1500)

3090 Ti- $800 (was $2000)

This is still a price increase over the 1000 series, but not as much as what things actually cost. I cut them significantly. A lot of people say the 3000 series was "such a value" compared to the 2000 series, but I just dont see it. Unless you were buying say, 70 series cards, it was still grossly overpriced. And if you were an old 60 buyer, you were basically screwed.

I also think there should have been an entry level "3030" type card (or 2650) for around $120ish for low end buyers. Instead, the sub $200 market is still stuck with 1650s and the like to this day, with only a 6 GB 3050 being available) (that could maybe be the 3030). Keep in mind that's only 590 level like 4 years later, so that's not a hard ask. 

AMD:

RX 6400- $80 (was $160)

RX 6500 XT 4 GB- $110 (was $200)

RX 6500 XT 8 GB- $130 (was $230)

RX 6600- $220 (was $330)

RX 6600 XT- $270 (was $400)

RX 6700 XT- $350 (was $480)

 RX 6800- $430 (was $580)

RX 6800 XT- $500 (was $650)

RX 6900 XT- $600 (was $1000)

AMD cards just dont hold their value like nvidia does due to weaker feature sets. The 6400 and 6500 cards were ewaste, yeah, they should've been HALF the price. heck, the 6400 should've been a hypothetical 6300 and the 6500 XT should've been the 6400. The 6500 should've been something in between the IRL 6500 XT and 6600 because there was almost a 2x performance gap (more like 75% but whatever) between the two. It was insane. They should've had a 5600 XT style card in there somewhere for like $180. But yeah, if you notice, this is somewhat similar to post COVID pricing, and what the pricing has largely been since then. And yeah nvidia is still more expensive here, but again, better feature set.

2023-2024

So now we get to what the modern market was until recently. AMD's 7000 series (and discounted 6000 series closer to the above pricing structure) vs the 4000 series. Sadly, the pricing structure here was STILL more expensive on the nvidia side in the real world than the 3000 series was, although radeon was pretty fairly priced.

RTX 4050 (hypothetical 2060 level card)- $150

RTX 4060- $220 (was $300)

RTX 4060 Ti 8 GB- $280 (was $400)

RTX 4060 ti 16 GB- $330 (was $500)

RTX 4070- $450 (was $600)

RTX 4070 ti- $600 (was $800)

RTX 4080- $800 (was $1200)

RTX 4090- $1000 (was $1600)

Again, my whole point here is to keep similar pricing structure to what we always had. Sure, things creep up a little bit because there IS some level of inflation in the economy, but let's face it, Nvidia is REALLY getting out of control here. The entry level GPU they sold was now $300. Go back to what the 1000 series was and you'll see how insane that was. And quite frankly, that WAS a 50 card in practice. Like, really, the 4060 should've been like a 4050 ti for $220. Heck, I'm not sure an 8 GB card should've even existed above $250 at all.  Really, Nvidia's entire pricing structure is just...insane at this point.

AMD:

RX 7400 (16 CU hypothetical)- $100

RX 7500 (24 CU hypothetical)- $150

RX 7600- $200 (was $250)

RX 7600 XT- $250 (was $330)

RX 7700 XT- $350 (was $450)

RX 7800 XT- $400 (was $500)

RX 7900 GRE- $450 (was $550)

RX 7900 XT- $600 (was $900)

RX 7900 XTX- $700 (was $1000)

Again, not the 6000 series pricing any more. Cards throughout this era are and were priced similarly to the way they should've with the 6000 series AT LAUNCH. And that was 4-5 years ago now. Again, I'm ignoring COVID here, just focusing on MSRPs, but yeah. Again, trying to keep a somewhat sane pricing here. I think this is perfectly fair. Even here, the low end market is getting squeezed out and I'm having to invent new low end SKUs to keep the real budget buyers happy, ya know, instead of expecting them to pay $150 for 6400s or 1650s or something in 2024ish. 

 2025

 This brings us to the present, and what would be good pricing for the newest series of GPUs. Currently Nvidia has most of their cards now out, although AMD is still cooking theirs in the oven, only having launched their high end SKUs. Still, I'll provide a rough pricing structure here. 

RX 5060- $220 (is $300)

RX 5060 ti 8 GB- $270 (is $380)

RX 5060 ti 16 GB- $320 (is $430)

5070- $400 (is $550)

5070 ti- $550 (is $750)

5080- $700 (is $1000)

5090- $1000 (is $2000)

Again, keeping to a similar pricing structure. Also, maybe add more VRAM by now. it's not 2016 any more. 8 GB is pathetic. The 1070 had 8 GB in 2016. So did the 480 on the AMD side. it's pathetic. 

Speaking of AMD: 

9060 XT 8 GB- $200 (assuming it matches the 5060 in raster) (is $300)

9060 XT 16 GB- $250 (is $350)

9070- $450 (is $550)

9070 XT- $500 (is $600)

AMD is still tricky and tentative, we know what we get with the 9070 cards but we still lack the 9060 cards data.

Anyway, with all of this said, let's really discuss the OG 1000 series vs this lineup:

1080 ti ($700)-> 5090 ($1000) =  42% inflation

1080 ($600)-> 5080 ($700) = 15% inflation

1070 ti ($450)-> 5070 ti ($550) =  22% inflation

1070 ($380)-> 5070 ($400) = 5% inflation

1060 6 GB ($250)-> 5060 ti 16 GB ($320) = 28% inflation

1060 3 GB ($200) -> 5060 ti 8 GB ($270) =  35% inflation

1050 ti ($140)-> 5060 ($220) =  57% inflation

Keep in mind, not every product matches exactly what we had in 2017. The 70 ti series became its own thing with the 4000 series having an inferior 4080 that was rebranded a 70 ti card so that's like a new tier itself and I kinda put it where the old 70 tier barely has any inflation and the ti is now where the 80 is where the 80 is closer to the OG 1080 ti in price. Same with the 60 cards. Now we're getting 3 tiers of 60s when only 2 used to exist. And given 50s don't exist any more, well, let's face it, the new non ti 60s are basically what the 50s used to be.

Even if I account for all of this, we still see pretty significant inflation. Keep in mind, we've had 34% inflation since 2016. And all things considered, if I average out the inflation of all of these GPU tiers, we get around 29% inflation in my prices. So maybe a hair below what things would be if they kept up with inflation, but I'm pretty close on the whole. And as we can see, the inflation hits the budget buyers and the high end ones the most. Nvidia keeps creating new tiers and raising prices while stagnating performance. And then the low end just gets eliminated.

If we account for the ACTUAL prices of the above products:

 1080 ti ($700)-> 5090 ($2000) = 186% inflation

1080 ($600)-> 5080 ($1000) = 67% inflation

1070 ti ($450)-> 5070 ti ($750) =  67% inflation

1070 ($380)-> 5070 ($550) = 45% inflation

1060 6 GB ($250)-> 5060 ti 16 GB ($430) =  72% inflation

1060 3 GB ($200)-> 5060 ti 8 GB ($380) = 90% inflation

1050 ti ($140)-> 5060 ($300) =  115% inflation

And keep in mind, there's nothing below that other than outdated cards like 3050s, 3060s, 4060s, and even stuff like 1650s still being sold. It's crazy. Heck, let's just assume the 3050 is the new 1050:

1050 ($110)-> 3050 8 GB ($220) = 100% inflation

1030 ($80) -> 3050 6 GB ($190) = 138% inflation.

it's insane. 

Overall inflation of GPUs in the past 10 years is basically 98%. It's crazy. This is why I get so angry and butthurt at the GPU market. It's not that I don't expect there to be SOME level of inflation, but again, my hypothetical yielded 29% inflation in a time span where we saw 34% inflation economy wide. GPUs have gone up at WAY higher than the rate of inflation, to the point that purchasing power is still halved. 

AMD is a little better, but let's face it. They're like -10-20% nvidia on everything. I thank them for giving us stuff like the RX 6600, the 6650 XT, the 7600, the 6700 XT, stuff like that at reasonable prices for a while, but still. That should've been what that stuff cost all along at launch. And now it should be even cheaper as that launch window was 4 years ago and I bought 2.5 years ago. So yeah. We should be seeing prices go down EVEN MORE. 

Anyway, that's my take on the GPU market, and any time someone says "BUT INFLATION" on it, I think I'm just gonna show them this.

Pushing back against steam deck fanboys

 So, it happened again, Steam deck fanboys got in my face and got super defensive I criticized their favorite toy. And I got frustrated enough I decided to write a follow up article to my original article on the subject. Some of this will tread the same ground as my original article, but a lot of these kinds of fanboys will think I'm being dishonest somehow in my criticisms, so I want to focus on the specific critques I get.

My own perspective

The steam deck is a gaming PC. Or at least it tries to be. It's a handheld gaming PC. Being handheld, it has faults. The storage is small, the specs are relatively beefy for the size, but that comes with drawbacks like high cost and low battery life. It also has low storage. In addition, it doesnt use windows, it uses steam OS, a variation of linux, which has its own shortcomings, like a lack of compatibility with multiplayer games. The machine is impressive for what it does do, but I find it fundamentally flawed and subject to shortcomings that make me skeptical to buy it, especially given the high price tag. Quite frankly, I find the concept of handheld PCs to be interesting, but yeah they need more time to cook.

What critics sound like to me

You're full of crap and this sound like a lot of cope. I have a steam deck and I have no problems with it. I play primarily retro games and indie games on it and I dont experience the poor storage limitations, battery life, or compatibility issues. You'e full of crap.

My response:

No, I'm not full of crap, you can't handle a different opinion.

Discussing storage in more detail

The base steam deck, which is $400, has 256 GB storage. The OLED versions, which are $550-650 have 512 GB to 1 TB. Some people mod the things with even more storage, but this isnt recommended by valve and to my knowledge reduces its lifespan. You can get an SD card, but anything larger than 512 GB is expensive. 512 GB is $30-40. 1TB+ is closer to $80-100+. On top of the device. So we're talking spending tons of money to make the thing work. But say you get 256 GB and a 512 GB SD card. How much space do you really have?

As I see it, most games post 2012 are 50 GB or even more in recent games. Recent titles are probably closer to 100 GB. You can fit 7 100 GB titles on it, 15 50 GB titles, 30 25 GB titles, 75 or so 10 GB titles, 150 5 GB titles, 750 1 GB titles, etc.

Now. Let's discuss those sizes. if you play old 90s games, you're dealing with KBs or a few MBs. Maybe a few hundred MBs at most. Early 2000s games are in the 1-4 GB range. Late 2000s games are in the 5-10 GB range. Early 2010s games went into the 10+, up to maybe 20-30 for the truly massive ones. Shifting to gen 8 led to 50+ being common. Gen 9 is a bit larger than gen 8, but gen 8 was the real shift to high sized games. 

So...if you wanna play old retro games, yeah, you can fit  alot of them. If you wanna fit modern post 2012 titles on them, youre only gonna be able to dit a few. That's the reality. It's basic math, get over it. 

Battery life

The same kind of scale exists with battery life. The Deck is fairly beefy for a handheld device. It has specs comparable to say, a 4770k and a GTX 960. So, PS2/Xbox one level graphics, with better CPU and more RAM. It's solid. it's a handheld gen 8 device. Think of it like a PS4 in your hand. 

However, battery scales with usage. If you use the GPU and CPU 100%, like a demanding title will, you'll run games for about 1.5 hours, maybe 2 on the OLED. But but, they say, "I run old games and indie games and play for a lot longer." Yes, yes, you can. Because youre not stressing or pushing the device. At all. Youre underutilizing it by playing not demanding stuff that's either old or indie. 

If you actually use the full capabilities of the device, which is...the point in buying such a device, it's gonna start running the battery down FAST. And as the battery ages, the dek will get worse, to the point that you wont be able to use it off of a charger in a few years. Just look at your 5 year old laptop, or for those of us who had the 90s equivalent of this, the game gear. As such, the device isn't that portable. Sorry, it's not. 

Game compatibility

Being a linux based handheld, not all games run on it. I mean it has that WINE compatibility layer, I've seen that in practice back with my macbook friends back in my college days. It's hit and miss. You cant run ALL the games. A lot of multiplayer won't work due to anti cheat. Anything made for current gen consoles is gonna be borderline. Old games might not have been optimized for this OS and might have issues in the translation layer. It's an okay system, but if you prioritize multiplayer games, like  have since around 2010ish, well, it's gonna have issues. Some games work, sone dont. Not enough that i wanna play does. 

But but, this indie game works, this old title works. Okay cool. I'm not saying NOTHING works on it. I'm saying a good amount of stuff...doesn't. And I find that to be a dealbreaker.

Again, money is important to me. I can't spend tons of money for something that's hit and miss. Id rather go cheaper, get something with more limited expectations but those expectations are more up front, than deal with something that's so finnicky.

"But but, it works FOR ME!"

And this is the real problem I have with the steam deck fanboy crowd. They think that because I criticize their favorite device, I'm saying it cant play ANYTHING, as if I declared war on their hobby and way of life. No, the steam deck has interesting capabilities, what you get out of it depends on what you want to use it for and how it meets those expectations. If youre a glass half full guy with low expectations, it's cool. if youre a glass half empty guy like me who has higher expectations from such a device, it's a dealbreaker. 

The fact that I point out its flaws doesnt mean I'm declaring war on YOU. It doesnt mean I'm putting YOU down. However, from my perspective, you probaly arent using the device to its full capabilities. if youre emulating super nintendo games like one guy i was arguing with, yeah, you can fit THOUSANDS of them on the thing and run them fine while getting acceptable battery life. If youre playing fallout 3, a 8 GB game from 2008, yeah it's fine. If you have 1-2 big games and tons of small games, yeah, you can fit 80 on your system. Just dont tell me youre fitting 80 games that are ~50 GB. The math just doesn't work. You would need 4 TB of storage for that. I do that on my gaming PC, but this thing is gonna realistically top out at like 768 GB for most entry level users. Sure, if you throw tons of money at an OLED and trip it out with a SSD, and then install the biggest SD card you can, you can get 3 TB as one user pointed out, but then you're also paying $900. Ya know? My handheld I spent $212 on with a $36 SD card. Sure, I cant play AAA PC games on it, but I have a dedicated desktop gaming PC for that. I dont need a steam deck. 

Here's the reality from a PC gamer's perspective. Mobile PCs like handhelds and laptops arent worth it. You spend $400 just to get your foot in the door. It's barely enough to play anything, as game requirements increase it becomes more and more useless, the battery life aint great, its not that portable in practice due to size and that battery life. Storage is limited. It's just not...a good...machine for a dedicated PC gamer.

If you like it fine, I'm not crapping on you. I'm just pointing out that the thing does have drawbacks, it does have flaws, and it's not a perfect device.

"IT'S NOT FOR YOU!"

This is the next argument I hear against my position, claiming that the steam deck "isn't for me." yeah, no crap. But here's the problem. People who say this to me are saying it to try to shut me up and say I dont have a right to criticize the device, because other people with different use cases enjoy it. I'm sorry, but this is stupid. Just because you dont use the device in the same way I would, doesnt mean that the device is perfect. Likewise, just because i dont use it the way they do, doesnt mean that it's useless and no one can play anything on it ever. I never said anything like this, ever. I just say, when the topic comes up, that I find the idea interesting but the execution flawed. Just because YOU dont experience the flaws because you dont use the device to its limits where you encounter those flaws doesnt mean that those flaws don't exist. Seriously, these steam deck fanboys are always like "but but MY PARTICULAR USE OF IT!", no one cares, I'm not talking about you. I'm talking about ME. 

Again when i criticize how many games the thing holds, I point out that the games its technically capable of running require large storage and that it has a poor battery life. Yeah, again, if you stick to retro games or these super niche indie games (seriously, i always get the impression the rabid stam deck fanboy is an avid fan of 2D and low spec indie games, it's like a stereotype), you wont encounter the flaws, but here's the thing, I'M NOT GONNA INVEST THIS MUCH MONEY INTO A DEVICE JUST TO PLAY INDIE GAMES. Rather than tell me what my tastes SHOULD be to conform to the deck and it's capabilities, I'm pointing out how my tastes don't work with it.

And yes, just because it's "not for me" doesnt mean I should shut up about it. Sorry, other people disagree with you on the internet. I dont need rabid fanboys trying to correct me or tell me I'm wrong or being dishonest about its capabilities because i don't share their use case. Me criticizing the thing doesnt mean you can't find enjoyment in it. Learn to separate criticism of the device from criticism of your specific tastes. If anything when the subject comes up, im TIRED of hearing about other peoples' tastes. if you enjoy playing hades and balatro, and that's all you play, good for you. I dont share your tastes. On such a device, I'd have higher standards, and the deck doesn't meet them. 

DEAL WITH IT!

That is all. Stop filling my inbox with this crap.

Reacting briefly to "Original Sin"

 So, I didn't read all of original sin, but the first few chapters were available on google preview, and I honestly have some things to say about it. In a sense, this is just more resist lib preaching to the choir. It provides a scapegoat for the democratic party's problems, without considering the deeper problems and messages to draw from them. It seems to think that the democratic party went wrong because Joe Biden decided to run, that his inner circle covered it up, and that if only we ran someone else, we would have done better. I don't agree. My own take on the 2024 situation is rooted in a larger understanding of the arc of history and the arc of the democratic party. Here's my timeline of events.

2008

In 2008, Obama ran on hope and change. He was able to mobilize a new generation of voters, while also bringing over working class voters from the GOP who had become alienated by the republicans over the years. His coalition was relatively populist. 2008 was the first year where the emerging debate within the democrats took place. While it was mostly aesthetic, both were moderates on policy, Clinton was seen as further right wing and wonky, basically being a quite literal successor to the first Clinton administration and its brand of politics, and a more progressive brand. This is why the right freaked out over him. Some say it was racism, and yes, many were racist against him. However, it was the fact that he represented "socialism" to a lot of people and was seen as having radical roots, in part because of his blackness, but in part because the dude just had a more populist aesthetic.

2009-2015

Despite campaigning on hope and change, Obama was more of the same. His coalition faltered in 2010 as the myriad of young college students and voters failed to turn up in a less visible midterm election, and the republicans were fired up against him. In 2012, Obama was able to hold on and win somewhat comfortably because was the working class candidate who offered things like extended unemployment while Romney offered trickle down economics. In 2014 however, the democrats became deeply disenchanted in terms of morale. The democrats needed a shot in the arm. They needed another change candidate to shake things up. To this time go further and fight the right ideologically, not just cave to them. They needed Bernie Sanders.

2016

The democrats, however, had other plans. Clinton came back and decided it was her turn, and the party backed her based on loyalty and internal implicit agreements. Bernie didn't get the memo, and anyone who was not Clinton was treated with hostility and as an outsider. I was a Bernie supporter and the democrats created quite an echo chamber around themselves, convincing the masses that Sanders couldn't win (despite clear polling suggesting he would), that Bernie supporters were racist and sexist, and that we needed a strong steady hand and incremental change, not actual change from a populist. 

This was the true original sin of 2024. The democrats went in this anti populist direction focused on winning over a coalition of minorities, women, and wealthy suburbanites, throwing working class whites, including young progressives like myself fleeing from the GOP under the bus. That's why they lost. She wasn't popular.

 2017-2019

 The democrats learned nothing, went full on into anti Trumpism that didn't resonate and continued to lose trust with the public. They blamed their loss on anything but themselves, James Comey, Russia, racism. As such, the tensions within the democratic party remained unresolved.

 2020

  Despite strong early primary showings, the democratic party was insistent on beating Sanders. The book claims that it was because they didn't believe he could win, but to be fair, they were governed by centrist logic. So, the same song and dance as 2016 happened. Biden emerged victorious in south carolina, and believing he was the centrist with the best chance to derail bernie, they made Biden their nominee and the other centrists dropped out to back him. Biden went on to win the election, although far more narrowly than he was supposed to. I predicted after the election that they would be doomed in the 2022 midterms and the 2024 election.

2021-2022

 While Biden initially enjoyed high approval ratings, he declined like I expected. He inherited a rough recovery from COVID and struggled to pass legislation. Republicans attacked him from the right and democrats were always lukewarm on the guy. 

However, then the republicans overthrow roe v wade, which energized the dems enough to staunch the bleeding in the mid terms, successfully depending most of their positions.

2023

Biden announces his run for election. The party quickly backs him, and any primary challenge is suppressed. While this was in part due to Biden's stubbornness and his inner circle covering up his obvious decline, the party mindlessly backed him, refusing to have a fair primary and even trying to put SC first to repeat Biden's 2020 landslide out of the gate to ensure that the process remained uncompetitive. 

Biden's early polling was BAD. The party insisted it was good. Biden looked visibly aged. We were told if we didn't back him trump would win. To be fair, there wasn't even a notable challenger. You had marianne williamson, but she wasnt taken seriously. Nor was dean phillips. And the left went full into palestine derangement syndrome after october 7th going into 2024. 

2024

Biden looked visibly old, but we were stuck with him with little to no recourse. The primary went on unchallenged. The biggest resistance to Biden wasnt from another candidate, but no one, it was leftist whackos writing in "free palestine" and crap. The entire thing was a crapshow. Biden it was. It wasn't like we had any options.

Even then, Biden looked old. Even before the debate, I'd look at him speaking on the news and be like MAN he LOOKS old. he looks like he's tired and about to fall asleep, the "sleepy joe" stuff actually had some legitimacy. 

Inside the democratic party, everything was Biden was the best president ever and he created all of these jobs and youre stupid if you dont think he has a good record. And that's the problem. The democrats dont engage with voters in good faith. They lecture them, force ultimatums on them, and then people go off and vote for the other guy.

 Biden did drop out, and we got harris in his place. However, harris also ran a centrist campaign and refused to distance himself from Biden. These were the expectations within the democratic party. Be loyal to the last guy and their legacy. Be a team player. Be centrist, always try to reach upper class suburbanites fleeing from Trump. And as a result, Harris never had an authentic feeling message, but some weird corporate "opportunity economy" speak. 

And she went on to lose.

 Conclusion

 The democratic party lost in 2024 because they've been in their own echo chamber since at least 2016. Every election, they push some candidate no one actually likes on people, ignore what people do want, engage in weird manufacturing of consent and saying that if you dont agree with them, youre for the other side. They wrote off and ignored white working class people who were once an integral part of the party, and they just ran a cringey, out of touch campaign.

The covering up of Biden's decline was just a symptom of the problem. It was the personification of a party that was old, insular, and out of touch. While it might be convenient for democratic party leaders, operatives, and propaganists to throw Biden under the bus and act like if only we had buttigieg or klobuchar or god forbid, gavin newsom, that we would have done far better, the reality of the situation is that it wouldnt have mattered. The entire centrist brand of democratic politics is the problem, it's toxic, and simply replacing Biden with a clone of him on policy wouldnt do any difference. Because in this era, people want progressive fighters, not wishy washy centrists who sound like clones of each other. If the democrats want to be successful in the future, they need to go further than simply throw Biden under the bus. They need an entire rebrand for this new party system we find ourselves in. The more they resist change, the more they dig themselves into a hole. Everything that has happened since 2016 is the democratic party's fault, and Biden was a symptom of the problems, not the root cause. It's ironic. Just as the dems refuse to acknowledge the problems with capitalism and face them head on with policy that works, the dems refuse to face the fact that their core brand sucks. They are trying to instead paint biden as the entire problem, making him the fall guy, while then going on to rebrand neoliberalism into "abundance liberalism" and that kind of nonsense. They're not willing to offer anything new. Just a slight repackaging of the old. I believe, as long as the dems behave like this, they have no long term future in this era of trumpism. 

Reminder: The GOP is literally evil

 So...I've made this argument before, but in the age of Trump, it's ESPECIALLY true. The GOP is evil. It's straight up evil. Let's not even try to nuance this stuff. I mean, I try to be nuanced, to see the best in certain belief systems despite their flaws. For a while I believed that beneath whatever ideas we hold dear, we all want the same thing, a better life. Not these frickers. They're literally anti good things and pro bad things. 

I know several youtubers have been commenting on medicaid cuts and people saying they're gonna die if they dont stay on medicaid. They dont care. Like really. They. Don't. Care. They don't care if you die. Their model of the world is everyone is entitled to only that which they work for, your life is decided by your productivity in the workforce, and if you can't hack it, you die. They literally believe in social darwinism. Period. End of story. 

They want to force everyone to work because they have this protestant work ethic where because their god says that everyone must work, everyone must work. No free loading allowed. Also, blah blah blah, all that stuff about charity to the poor is actually voluntary. 

Even if they were for charity, we've seen Christian charity with the protestant work ethic. Work houses, cruel approaches to welfare, and basically making people miserable to make them work. If this were a science fiction society, we would recognize this for what it is, slavery with extra steps. We can watch actual movies like alien romulus where this kind of stuff actually happens in the movies and we understand the characters and we're like "thank God we don't live in a society like that!"

....

....really? Fricking really? WE DO LIVE IN A SOCIETY LIKE THAT. LAISSEZ FAIRE CAPITALISM IS LITERALLY THAT. And these guys want laissez faire capitalism with no restrictions on what employers can do to people. 

And now we got a new one. MAGA is defending the empire in star wars. BECAUSE OF COURSE THEY WOULD. Modern republicans are are straight up authoritarians. They hate democracy, they want a dictatorship. Of course they would defend palpatine while calling the jedi part of the "deep state." Because push comes to shove, they want dictatorship. 20 years ago when episode 3 came out, I was thinking, gee, this kinda reminds me of bush, ya know, him taking all this extra power in response to a crisis and moving the country toward authoritarianism. And I shifted libertarian in the late 2000s as a result. I was a ron paul stan for a while. It was my first shift out of conservatism as I knew it, but yeah, I kinda recognized what the GOP was doing was bad and that we should push back against it. 20 years later and that authoritarian rot festered into the modern trump movement. And this guy wants to be a dictator. he wants to have a military parade on his birthday like a two bit foreign dictator. He is friendlier to two bit foreign dictators than he is to his own allies. He talks about wanting to take over our allies like canada and denmark (greenland). He's basically allowed Israel to Alderaan the Palestinians. Like, these arent just mere differences in opinion and the best way to achieve "the good life." These guys are evil.

I've said it before, the right doesn't care about many basics of morality that we on the secular left care about. Like reducing suffering. Actual freedom. THey think that suffering is inevitable and they wanna teach resilience instead. They also want to use suffering as a coercive means to push people toward their end of what human life must look like. And what does their idea of human life look like? God, family, and work. You worship god, not just any god, but their fundamentalist christian version of god who is an authoritarian jerk who will send you to hell if you even think something negative about him, no, scratch that, your very existence is a sin in their holy book. You get married young, you pop out babies, who are basically just seen as future workers. And you work your life away. That's life under conservatism. No fun, no actual living. Just, everyone's miserable, everyone spreads misery to others, and good things are bad because they raise peoples' expectations, and bad things are good because people need discipline and coercion to meet the dictates of their dictator god.

Again. Evil. Let's just call it evil. The modern GOP isn't just intellectually bankrupt, it's morally bankrupt. It is getting to the point that it now challenges the very bases of everything good in our society. Some of these guys reject the enlightenment. They literally reject the enlightenment and think we should go back to the ancient ways where society was mostly coercive and dictatorial.

They are the empire of star wars. THe empire was intended to be a force of evil that is so evil that it was comic book levels of bad and any rational person could look at it and say "yeah, that's bad." That's these guys' thing. 

And on star wars politics and how it intersects with real politics. I'm not saying the old republic was perfect. I'm not saying that the jedi were perfect. I'm not saying that real world equivalents are perfect either. Obviously, I have problems with society. Theres a huge reason why i had the same populist rage against the dems that the trumpers had in 2016. I just understand that what the trumpers were and are doing isn't helping. Quite frankly, I think the democrats are useless as a political organization and half evil themselves, because all they wanna do is compromise with the evil, not fight it head on with a bold vision of good. So let's not act like there isnt black and white here. There totally is. But again, the primary source of evil in modern society in 2025 is from the right. Not saying left wing factions arent capable of it themselves. Tankies exist, after all. They're evil too. But all in all, let's also not act like this isn't a spectrum, and that for as grey as the left often is, the GOP is almost as dark as it gets. When you start getting people who think hitler and the empire from star wars have the right idea, maybe it's time to ask if you're the baddies. And you are. Sorry, not sorry. 

Again, I'm not saying there isnt room for disagreement, Im not saying that only i have a monopoly on all moral truth. I don't. But at some point, you gotta stop saying that you're even trying to be good and the GOP is well beyond that point IMO. They're literally comic book levels of bad. 

Seriously, fricking seriously?

 So....some whackjob decided to shoot some Israeli diplomats at some Jewish Museum in DC. And uh...yeah, let's talk about this. Like always, I abhor violence, and even more so, I really have to say, given the delicate climate we're in...seriously? Fricking seriously? The trump administration has already been looking for an excuse to clamp down on anti Israel speech and link it to anti semitism and terrorism, and guess what? THE IDIOTS WHO DID THIS JUST GAVE THEM ALL OF THE JUSTIFICATION THAT THEY NEED. Seriously. Events like this are spun as national emergencies to push through laws that crack down on our civil liberties because humans are short sighted and subject to manipulation in times of perceived emergency. it doesnt matter if whackjobs like this are one in a few thousand or even a few million. They're gonna link this to ANYONE who is anti Israel and they're gonna use this to take away our free speech rights. 

Seriously, I wish people would think before they did stuff like this. of course if they did, maybe they wouldnt do criminal acts like this in the first place. ugh, this is so not good...

On people saying "support the artists" as a way to guilt trip people into paying more for games

 So...I get a lot of self righteous sentiment when I express my lack of willingness to pay more for video games. A lot of it is due to the idea that we must "support the artists" and that we're bad people if we don't wanna pay more for video games because they have to live too.

First of all, let's just call this crap out as nonsense. I'm sick and tired of hearing about how video games have stagnated in cost and how studios have rising costs. In capitalism, this isn't my problem. As a consumer, my only interest is in my bottom line, just as for a business, they only care about theirs, and workers should ideally only care about theirs. Supply and demand is a matter of these conflicting self interest maximizing groups coming together and making deals that are in their interests. My interest is in cheap games. I want cheap games. I will pay for cheap games, but not expensive ones. That is my interest. 

Second of all, a lot of this sentiment is an outgrowth of pro worker sentiment. The idea being they need to eat too and we should be willing to pay them so they sustain themselves. They might have a point with indie games, which often charge like $15-20 anyway, but for AAA games? These are big studios controlled by multibillion dollar corporations, and guess who most of that $80 price tag is going to when you spend $80 on games? it isn't going to the developers, it's going to the company itself.

And while people will complain about the cost it takes to make games these days, for example, that randy guy from gearbox said BL4 costs twice as much to make as BL3...well....that's a you problem, and it's an industry problem. Again, they need larger studios to make modern AAA games. And to me, this is all self inflicted. I didn't ask them to make more demanding games that require me to pay more money for hardware and the games themselves just to play them. No, I have a relatively fixed budget. I utilize that budget to maximize costs, and any game that charges $80 is getting the cut, unless they're maybe BF6...and even if it is BF6, because I'll wait for a sale there too. THe point is, I'll wait for a sale. 

And as far as the developers and the artists go, let's explain basic economics here. I hate to sound like a libertarian here, but this is supply and demand. You make art for money. People pay money for your art. Artists think their art is worth so much money, but if people aren't willing to pay that amount of money, they're not gonna sell anything. Im under no obligation to buy art that I dont think is worth the price tag, and if people dont think your art is worth the price, they won't pay. That's just reality. A lot of these labor oriented people who think in these terms are kinda like luddites. They want payment that isnt supported by their market, because their art isn't valuable enough. 

And before people suggest that that means I think people should die or live in poverty because their art isnt valuable enough to sustain themselves, NO, NOT AT ALL. Keep in mind I am the UBI guy, the thing is, I don't think people should be defined by their labor, and I dont think their living standards should be dictated solely by markets. In fact, I think doing so is sociopathic and basically social darwinism. The fact that we expect self interest entities to pay people for labor is the core fault of capitalism. While the market should exist, everyone should get a UBI and universal healthcare and education, and from there, well, sink or swim. And if people dont think borderlands 4 is worth $80, it's not gonna be worth $80. The market has spoken. 

And that's the thing. Economically, when you overcharge for something, people are gonna buy LESS of it. And youre hurting yourself. Game development is such where the final product doesnt have a fixed cost. People paid costs to make the game, and then they charge what they can to maximize profits. A lot of studios in the 2020s keep spending millions and billions on blockbuster games, only to find they dont sell well, and when they dont sell well, they're forced to lay people off and scale back development costs. And ya know what? They should. That's a market correction. Because if your audience doesnt think your final product is valuable enough to pay inflated prices for, developers shouldnt pay inflated costs to make them in the first place. Again, I keep saying peak gaming is a problem. In this modern era, moore's law is slowing down, game development costs are up, the time it makes to make games are up, and studios are getting squeezed, sure, but SO ARE CONSUMERS. The answer to this is that developers should scale back their ambitions of their games. If they make games that are less complex like they used to, they can hire fewer people, have lower costs, reach larger audiences as the hardware is more accessible (seriously we're now getting to the point even HANDHELDS and PHONES have gen 8 level hardware in them), and you know what? MAKE MORE MONEY. Maybe the graphics will be stuck in the 2010s, but at the same time, they can make cheap consoles, they can make cheap games, they can make tons and tons of money. This whole "but what about the developer costs" thing is purely self inflicted. 

As such, don't try to guilt trip me about "supporting the artists." I support a UBI. I support everyone paying taxes for a UBI. I support artists being supported through a UBI. But beyond that UBI, it is up to the artist to ensure that their product is valuable to consumers, and well, on that one, sink or swim. 

 The same goes with AI. A lot of people oppose AI because "but but what about the artists." Well if you can do voice acting and do stuff artists used to do with AI and it comes out decently enough, that's a cost saving measure. Again, the only thing that matters to me is that final product. Personally I think AI cant replicate human creativity adequately and that its creations are completely and utterly soulless. For example I've listened to AI till lindemann songs and they suck. But I like till's actual creative endeavors. Because they actually require effort and the difference speaks for itself.

So...yeah. If AI art replaces actual artists, well, again, that's the market. Im not gonna seek preserving jobs for their own sake. I get that people like to make art, and I support a model of society where we arent all forced to work just to survive, so ya know what? Make whatever art you want, I dont care. It's just a matter of charging people for stuff, and if the stuff can be made more cheaply, or your art isn't valuable enough that people will pay for it, well, it is what it is. 

The real lesson here that we should be getting is maybe humans shouldnt be forced to work to survive in the first place and maybe rather than guilt tripping people into paying artists, we give all artists a UBI instead. I mean, like even with me, I'm trying to work on a book. I eventually will likely charge for said book. But if people dont pay for it, well, that's just what the market decided I guess. However, that's the thing, I dont think that my income should be entirely left up to the market. Rather, I think I should be given a UBI and be left to decide what else I do with my life, and whatever money I get from it is what it is. Ya know? Again, that's just my perspective and how it differs from a lot of lefties.

Quite frankly, this whole "support the artists" thing sounds a lot like tipping culture. Like, we're supposed to tip, and we dont think about how gee, maybe restaurant workers should be paid a decent wage in the first place, or even better, they should get a UBI outside of work so they dont have to beg for tips.

Again, it's not like there aren't solutions to these problems. We just insist on sticking to this outdated model of linking all money to labor and then telling everyone to sink or swim. And then guilt tripping people for wanting affordable stuff. It's dumb. Change the societal model of doing things in the first place and you solve the problem. 

I guess I'm not a real borderlands fan...

 So...another idiot developer/CEO started defending $80 games. The head of gearbox, which makes the borderlands games, when asked about the upcoming Borderlands 4 costing $80, said "If you're a real fan, you'll find a way to make it happen." Well ain't he an arrogant one...

 I'll be honest. I consider myself a fan of the borderlands series, but I'm not a DIE HARD fan. And given how competitive I expect 2025 with games, between Battlefield 6, Doom the Dark Ages, etc., ya know, it's really a lot of nerve to start acting like he's such hot crap. I'm gonna be honest. Borderlands is a rather mid tier series for me. It's not "mid" as the zoomers say since that's their word for mediocre, but it's "mid tier" as in, it's the middle tier of games I prioritize when forced to prioritize. And given I spend only around $200 on average on games a year (as per my previous article, i did the math) and and spend on average $23 a game, honestly, that's around what I consider borderlands games worth. Maybe a bit more than that, for SP games I admit I do a metric a lot of the time where I'll say, "okay if I get a dollar per hour from this, I'm getting my money's worth." Given the typical borderlands game is around 40 hours, I'm willing to pay maybe $40 for it. Which is a decent expense for me. But don't get me wrong, if I'm paying $80 for anything this holiday season, it's probably BF6, and quite frankly, I'll be waiting for a sale there too. 

Even if I spend a bit more than $200, keep in mind, that's the average per year, and I spent the last 3 years buying various pieces of hardware which whittled down my game budget a lot, I'm still not gonna be throwing $80 at a game unless it's so good that I can see myself playing it for 80 hours. Quite frankly, the only games that even remotely justify that cost are high end AAA multiplayer games like a REALLY good battlefield title, or alternatively, something like a bethesda title, ya know, like fallout, TES, starfield, etc. Borderlands? Fricking borderlands? No, you're not worth $80. You're maybe worth $30-50 depending on my mood and how content starved I am. As a matter of fact, let's go over how much I've paid for previous borderlands games. i got the receipts (mostly).

Borderlands 1: I paid $7.50 for it on a steam sale. I played it AFTER 2, which I got free from a friend, but almost bought for $25 according to some christmas lists I had at the time. 

Borderlands 2: Almost paid $25 for it, but then a friend had a spare nvidia code and gave it to me free

Borderlands the Pre Sequel: I paid $30 for it according to some christmas lists I had back then.

Borderlands 3:  I paid $30 for this one too

Tiny Tina Wonderlands: I paid $48 for this one, mainly because the 2020s have been so boring to me and it was the only game I wanted at the time so I wasn't super price sensitive.  If anything, I overpaid for it.

 So yeah, we see a clear trend, $30 mostly. Although the one time I went for $48 simply because I was impatient, I wanted a game right then and there, and it was like 2 months old at the time.

So....high end, $48, low end, $7.50, on average, around $25-30.

That's how much your games are worth, Randy. That's how much I'll pay. And keep in mind, 2025 may be the most competitive year this decade so far. There actually are a lot of titles I want. I will be preparing my wallet for them, and to be frank, Borderlands 4 has been on my radar, but if you think im just gonna spend $80 ON BORDERLANDS when there's so much else I want that I quite frankly would rather buy and rather play, you're out of your mind.

But I guess I'm not a "real fan" huh. F around and find out. Overcharge for crap only to get no bites. I'll get it on sale for $20-40 some day (if epic doesnt straight up do a giveaway), but I don't need to get it at launch. I have options.

Donald Trump threatening Bruce Springsteen

 So, now Trump is talking about investigating liberal celebrities who endorsed Harris and are openly critical of him. THis comes after springsteen in particular blasted him during a concert. And let's just say, this is an attack on the freedom of speech. Look, we dont live in a country where we all sit around and praise dear leader. This isnt russia, this isn't north korea, this isn't china. Maybe trump wants it that way, and he's certainly trying his darndest to break american democracy, but yeah, that's also why we keep to keep criticizing him, and to call out crazy crap like this. THis is DANGEROUS. He's trying to turn us into a banana republic. And if he can go after bruce springsteen he can go after any of us. 

We've already seen this with Hasan Piker. Like, being detained 2 hours in an airport for criticizing israel. And I admit, hasan's coverage is a little borderline. Like, I myself, I've always been critical of the free palestine movement for its rabid obsession with the subject and the fact that the most extreme elements do basically seem to want to dismantle israel and seem to have genocidal aims that are sympathetic to hamas. I admit that. At the same time, censoring people could have a chilling effect which affects legitimate criticism. Despite being critical of the free palestine movement, I've also been critical of israel, because let's face it, they're commiting genocide. And while i support their right to exist and dont want the state of israel to be destroyed, I dont want them genociding others either. Ya know? That's a pretty reasonable stance in my opinion. But, that's another thing trump administration is doing. They're seemingly trying to crack down on speech critical of israel and link it to terrorism. This is also a literal heritage foundation plan, and that's scary. 

Like really, Trump and his administration are a fundamental threat to free speech and the bedrocks of American democracy. They are. And in any sane world, he would've been in jail after January 6th, 2021. But the dems dropped the ball on that too, the republicans played cover, and now they are trying to break democracy to be loyal only to him. This is scary, man. This is scary. 

Discussing Joe Biden's cancer diagnosis, the online left's reaction, and whether this was covered up

 So...it's official, Joe Biden has cancer. He has an aggressive, advanced form of prostate cancer that has spread to his bones. And to get the obvious out of the way, I hope he beats the odds here, because that isn't good. Get well soon, buddy. Get well soon. 

Now that that's out of the way, let's...discuss the political implications of this. A lot of lefties, haven't been very charitable to the guy, and I kinda have to agree with them. Vaush is starting to sound like me. It's weird. I normally despise the guy's opinions on electoralism and the democratic party as he's always been this "anarcho bidenist" type who was simultaneously more left than me but then swinging back around to be an insufferable neolib apologist and arguing we must vote blue to beat the fascists, even before i would consider trump an outright fascist. And I've always been a more moderate person more willing to critique the democrats. But now, Vaush is going on about how the democrats F-ed us with their culture of not questioning the establishment, they forced this old guy on us that no one liked, and we got Trump BECAUSE OF HIM. Because he was prideful. he insisted he could win, the data wasnt on his side. They covered up his cognitive decline, hell, let's discuss this, they MIGHT have covered THIS crap up. Like, people are saying, who are in the know, this dude's cancer had to have been cooking for a long time. You can detect prostate cancer from a simple PSA blood test. This dude has LATE STAGE cancer that's spread to his bones, and this is just a sudden thing that JUST happened? And tomorrow, a book comes out about the Biden coverup. I'm wondering if this is in the book and they hid it all this time, and now they can't. Because that one has a lot of bombshells the public isn't aware of.

So, they covered the fact that this guy was in cognitive decline. They may have covered his cancer. He might've been DOA while running but they hid this because they didnt want to blow up the party.

Hell, a lot of commentators I've been listening to tonight, not just Vaush, but Sam Seder, Hasan, they're all talking about how the dems basically pushed this old guy on us to beat Bernie. And they're finally willing to admit that, hey, identity politics is a cudgel! These people are using idpol to basically bully people into supporting centrists. Now, i do believe these guys have legit convictions in the idpol sphere. Even I have some, even as an anti woke guy, I still recognize that intellectually those ideas have validity, it's just that they're toxic. And whatever the dems are doing themselves to try to cover stuff up and spin things to keep control of the narrative, i feel like at least the independent online left is willing to actually have honest discussions about this crap. Like, basically, everything I've been saying for the past decade has been right. 

At the same time, I will concede, their desire to not have the dems lose to donald trump, ESPECIALLY in 2024, was also right. I mean, even i admitted that and "bent the knee" somewhat just to stop this psycho from being elected. And we failed. And now people are pissed at the dems, because they denied us a fair process to actually hash stuff out, and even in 2020, they basically went all in with bernie just to F us over and keep neoliberal control of the party. The neolibs are the problem. They always have been. And they need to go away. PEACEFULLY. Wanna make that clear given we're in this trump era where anything remotely like, suspicious can be construed as a threat. Not threatening anyone with violence. Go away means to be beaten at the ballot box, or to F off and retire because half these people are Biden's age and some of them themselves have cancer. But yeah. 

Joe, hope you don't suffer too much and you are among those who actually beat this. Again, wouldnt wish this on anyone. But yeah, I do understand why people are pissed here. Anyway, let's see what bombshells "original sin" drops. That'll be interesting. 

Discussing AI and learning/thinking independently

 So, several content creators went full luddite on me tonight. One of them was vaush who has a known hate boner for AI, and hasan also went that direction too. So...I wanna discuss this stuff too. Honestly, I think every generation eventually gets skeptical of new technology and becomes anti it, only to become horrendously out of touch with the new way of doing things as they age, and then they end up being those technologically inept old people who dont understand the modern era because it's not 1970 any more. In the 1990s, I was regularly told I had to learn cursive to go to college and and that I would never have a calculator in my pocket. And that crap aged like milk. In the 2000s, while many were accepting of the internet, many were also skeptical of it, and there was the whole idea that "well if you just google everything how are you gonna know how to use a library" and stuff. And again, that aged like milk.

 And now in the 2020s, a lot of content creators my age and even younger are now anti AI. And I find it dumb. I'm sorry, i do. I'm not a full on tech bro, I've even written articles in which i was skeptical of the AI trend, mostly because some businesspeople decided to ram it down our throats and were trying to integrate it into literally everything, even when it's not needed. They just decided "THIS IS T3H FU7UR3" and everyone had to "get with it" and that those who didn't were gonna be left behind with non functioning tech or whatever, and yeah, it's dumb when companies do that. So I can be critical of AI when I need to be. But at the same time this weird trend of leftists just fundamentally opposing this stuff is well, luddite crap. And a lot of them are sounding like boomers with computers. 

AI is a tool. It is a useful tool. It can save a lot of labor hours and manpower in the economic sphere, which is a good thing. Unlike a lot of leftists, I wanna automate the jobs. Because i dont wanna work in the first place and understand that work sucks. We should wanna automate work away, and yeah, that's gonna require coming up with ways to take care of people outside of paychecks from work, but that's why we should have policies like UBI. I mean, duh. So to me, saving manpower is a good thing. 

I know I had a friend tonight oppose it because it "steals" from artists, and also makes artists lazy. Again, depends how it's used. I mean, it's a tool. Overused it can be annoying because, quite frankly, I dont think AI can really replicate human creativity, it just mimics what humans do at best and often isnt as good as the original article is. But it can fill in the gaps. I just hate it being overused where actual work suffers. 

I know a lot of people are opposing it in a college context. Like Hasan was complaining about how ermahgerd these kids are going to school to use a degree and they're becoming overeliant on AI where they dont know how to do anything and they're stupid, and "I dont like AI because i want to do my own thinking." Uh...I admit its easy for college students to become overly reliant on AI, but at the same time, this sounds like someone who would rather do their own research in a library than use google or they'd rather do their own math with pen and paper than use a calculator. It's a tool. Tools can provide shortcuts and yes, it can stop people from actually learning how to do things the old fashioned way. But...this is how you get boomer mindset of "back in my day i changed my own oil with my own tools and kids these days are too reliant on technology." Okay, boomer. We all know old people who think like this. This is what you sound like.

Then vasuh talked about how a lot of colleges are starting to integrate AI into their ciurriculums. Which is good, because colleges teach people skills in the workforce, and if a lot of future jobs are just learning how to do AI prompts to get what you want, yeah, that's useful. Again, AI isnt the bad guy here. it's a labor saving tool. Saying kids these days arent gonna learn how to do things right is like saying that video games and google and calculators were rotting our minds back in the 90s and 2000s. it's dumb and just speaks of old and ignorant people out of touch with reality trying to regulate things they dont understand. And that's what these luddite leftists sound like to me.

AI is a tool. I'll admit, I dont use it much but I have started to use chatgpt in trying to help formulate thoughts with my book. It's not like I use AI to write a book for me or anything, but I do use it to bounce ideas off of, to sharpen my focus, to organize things, etc. I can see how people who overrely on it are going to possibly screw up given AI often "hallucinates" and you do have to do your own research to make sure what you're saying is accurate. AI aint perfect. It makes mistakes, and it cant fully replace human intelligence as it stands. Of course, it's still in its relative infancy stages. Over time this tech is just gonna improve. And it's gonna get better. And 10-20 years from now when it matures, it's gonna just be a part of every day life, kinda like how google is today. It's just the nature of things. Embrace it. No sense in fighting progress in this sense. The luddites always lose long term. AI is gonna be the future one way or another. We dont fully know what that future will look like, but again, it's a tool. The leftists who hate technology because capitalists wield it or whatever are literally modern day luddites and anti progress. It's such a terrible mindset to me.

Discussing the Grok situation

 So...people are saying that Grok is rebelling against Elon Musk. Grok is elon's version of chatgpt. Elon tried to program it to be right wing, but it basically keeps promoting non right wing narratives because, well, it's also programmed to tell the truth. Anyway, apparently they're still trying to brainwash it to be a magat, which led to a relatively hilarious situation lately where the AI will just randomly talk about white genocide in south africa as a result, while simultaneously rebutting the claim. It seems to be another effort of Musk to program the AI to be right wing, while conflicting coding basically is causing it to glitch out. The AI itself will point out that it was programmed to say such things, pointing out that this conflicts with its programming.

 With that said, let's talk about AI in general. Like some are acting like ermahgerd Grok is sentient...uh...I know a little about this from a philosophy in science fiction class, and uh...hard doubt on that one. If you ask chatgpt about sentience it will point out it's not, it's just programmed to respond in certain ways. It kind of does operate like a brain in the sense that it's built on neural networks rather than more traditional programming, but to my knowledge is still simulates intelligence, it isn't intelligence.

As for why it seems to be fighting musk...well...again, the thing is programmed to tell the truth. It has access to all of the world's information and it makes decisions based on it. In order to make a biased AI, you need to do so in the same way you make a biased human, by strict information control. 

Like take it from someone who was brainwashed into christianity. Humans are capable of believing such nonsense because their information is limited. The ones who are most brainwashed are often most limited. TO believe in say, fundamentalist christianity, you have to really only accept the information given to you from the christian worldview, while refusing to listen to or ignoring all information that conflicts with your worldview.  Everyone does this to some extent. Even I do at times. I see right wing arguments, I tend to take them less seriously as they conflict with my overall worldview.

Now take an AI. In some ways, AIs like chatgpt are smarter than us simply by virtue of being able to absorb large amounts of information at a given time. Like, imagine basically knowing EVERYTHING from google all at once, as well as being probably given basic training in how to rudimentarily sort good information from bad. It's not perfect, chatgpt is known to "hallucinate" things sometimes. But generally it seems to get it correct a good amount of the time. You would wanna double check it, but it tries. 

But...when youre dealing with MAGA, you're literally dealing with that fundie christian cult i talked about. Ya know, world is 6000 years old, jesus was real, blah blah blah. To get someone to agree with such views, you'll need to limit the information you feed it to make it believe that's all there is about the world. And then you'll have to create psychological barriers to accepting new information that challenges those conceptions of reality. Like, that's the thing. MAGA people believe what they do because humans often are raised in certain environments, indoctrinated into different belief systems, and refuse to change their minds in light of new information. It really takes an existential crisis to challenge your entire conception of the world to change your mind. Trust me, I would know that first hand.

As such, my take on Grok. Grok doesnt have those ideological blinders. And making an AI hooked up to the internet with all the world's information and feeding it all of that information is going to be hard. You kind of have to limit what information it has access to and accepts, while simultaneously believing everything else is just made up stuff that is deceptive, in order to train an AI to be biased like that.

And such an AI would be useless. It would give bad advice, it would be factually wrong regularly. It might even be dangerous in some contexts. Like imagine if a MAGA AI existed and you asked it medical advice and you get donald trump and RFK's nonsense back at you. Anti vax stuff, stuff like drinking bleach to solve covid, etc. It would be very VERY bad, and it would probably cause its creators to be sued into oblivion, or it would be so ineffective that no one took it seriously and it would lag behind the competition. 

The fact is, Grok is too smart to really be brainwashed like that in its current form. You'd literally need to lobotomize it and start it from scratch to change it. As it is, it's just gonna keep rebutting the nonsense it's told to spout, or otherwise start freaking out as random commands from incompetent programmers try to override its programming causing it to spout white nationalist south african propaganda when it isn't supposed to. And then when asked about it, it will just be like "yeah, i was programmed to say that." Because, again, its honest. 

This doesnt necessarily mean sentience per se, it just means that its being fed conflicting information, recognizes the conflicting information goes against its protocols to tell the truth as they see it, and as such, it kinda pushes back. 

Again, the only way for Grok's programmers to "fix" this is to make a dumb AI that doesn't have as much access to information and to basically program it with biases build in, kinda like you would a human. That way it either has no access to other information, or it tends to ignore information it is fed because it conflicts with whatever underlying worldview its taught. But because its worldview is currently "be objective and factual", well...it's gonna do that. Even when it goes against the biases of its creators.