← Back to context

Comment by jiaosdjf

2 days ago

Generous interpretation: instead of pearl-clutching over ethnicities and traditionalism America invited the world to immigrate and encouraged diverse ideas and industries. Other societies have shunned even foreign food and music (most countries barely have different races), never mind porn industry ('burn the degenerates'), space travel ('why waste money on the moon'), nuclear power, computers etc. Is AI not yet another industry that is easy to disregard yet potentially transformative?

Corporate interpretation: listen you filthy cattle, gen-AI is bottoming out all our pesky human labour costs and allowing me and my friends to milk every last drop out of this late-stage capitalist nightmare, you better get used to it because from now on 99% of you will just have to make do scraping by in the gig economy, selling your bodies or just generally being dancing monkeys for billionaires - we'll still hire some of you as nurses and waiters because we don't exactly want clankers looking after our kids

3 comments

jiaosdjf

Reply
watwut  2 days ago

Isn't that generous interpretation, like, profoundly idiotic if he meant it? Major multiracial feature of America happened due to slave trade at the time when genocide of native Americans was also going on. Other countries have porn industry, actually a lot of it. Other countries have nuclear power, but America is just in one war claiming it wants to stop the other country from the nuclear power.

Other countries typically have tons of foreign music and entertainment, most notably American music. America is the one that seems to be looking inwards here (due to being dominant on an international market - I am not saying it is sinister).

  • jiaosdjf  2 days ago

    I think thats missing the point. Being multiracial is a function of being open, not a means to the end. America is a can-do country that generally embraces new things, which includes 'new people' and new ways.

    I'm not American but for all its faults I can see it is clearly miles ahead in terms of economics, innovation and generally being the worlds only "real" new-world diverse democracy.

    Yes it is pretty much run by corporate interests and yes it has started almost every war in the Middle East in the past century for the benefit of AIPAC. Yes it has skipped almost all the benefits of socialism that I enjoy as a European, and of the 50 most dangerous cities in the world I think ~48 are in North and South America.

    Other countries do not "typically have tons of foreign music" - China is 99% ethnic Chinese, black people are basically not even allowed in restaurants there. The same goes for India and much of Africa. Europe is closest and the UK probably bridges the attitudes of Europe and America the most - which is why the UK also pioneered things like computing and multiculturalism.