#MassDelusion

2025-08-22

#AI Is a #MassDelusion Event

Three years in, one of AI’s enduring impacts is to make people feel like they’re losing it.

"Who thought this was a good idea?"

By Charlie Warzel, August 18, 2025

Excerpt: "The interview triggered a feeling that has become exceedingly familiar over the past three years. It is the sinking feeling of a societal race toward a future that feels bloodless, hastily conceived, and shruggingly accepted. Are we really doing this? Who thought this was a good idea? In this sense, the Acosta interview is just a product of what feels like a collective delusion. This strange brew of shock, confusion, and ambivalence, I’ve realized, is the defining emotion of the generative-AI era. Three years into the hype, it seems that one of AI’s enduring cultural impacts is to make people feel like they’re losing it."

Read more:
theatlantic.com/technology/arc

Archived version:
archive.ph/KBAez

#ThePlan #BattlestarGalactica #AreYouAlive #AISucks #TechBros #TechAddiction #Chatbots

Miguel Afonso Caetanoremixtures@tldr.nettime.org
2025-08-19

"What if generative AI isn’t God in the machine or vaporware? What if it’s just good enough, useful to many without being revolutionary? Right now, the models don’t think—they predict and arrange tokens of language to provide plausible responses to queries. There is little compelling evidence that they will evolve without some kind of quantum research leap. What if they never stop hallucinating and never develop the kind of creative ingenuity that powers actual human intelligence?

The models being good enough doesn’t mean that the industry collapses overnight or that the technology is useless (though it could). The technology may still do an excellent job of making our educational system irrelevant, leaving a generation reliant on getting answers from a chatbot instead of thinking for themselves, without the promised advantage of a sentient bot that invents cancer cures.

Good enough has been keeping me up at night. Because good enough would likely mean that not enough people recognize what’s really being built—and what’s being sacrificed—until it’s too late. What if the real doomer scenario is that we pollute the internet and the planet, reorient our economy and leverage ourselves, outsource big chunks of our minds, realign our geopolitics and culture, and fight endlessly over a technology that never comes close to delivering on its grandest promises? What if we spend so much time waiting and arguing that we fail to marshal our energy toward addressing the problems that exist here and now? That would be a tragedy—the product of a mass delusion. What scares me the most about this scenario is that it’s the only one that doesn’t sound all that insane."

theatlantic.com/technology/arc

#AI #GenerativeAI #MassDelusion #AGI #AIHype #AIBubble #OpenAI

Bruce Sterling @brucesbruces
2025-08-19

*Nice bloody-shirt article about AI driving literally everybody nuts here.

theatlantic.com/technology/arc

2025-08-18

From corn, to lightbulbs, to dildos; can't buy any fucking thing in #Malaysia without outrageous #pseudoscience health claims.

ALT: In Malaysia, everything from corn to UV lightbulbs to dildos can cure cancer.

(btw, the 2nd item actually causes cancer)
#knowledgecrisis #massdelusion #quackmedicine #antiintellectualism

2025-08-18

Malaysian tech insanity:
- Nothing exists other than Adobe Illustrator
- Adobe CS costs expensive annual fees
- Everyone runs pirated software

This is how I'm constantly ridiculed, discriminated, and yes, lost jobs, for refusing #piracy in #Malaysia

This is the country that now takes pride in being the dumping ground for the world's cheap data centers.

#techtyranny #massdelusion #DunningKruger #knowledgecrisis

2025-06-18

Hydroclimatic whiplash events and hypernormalisation

The Nasa report: “...is a stark reminder that a hotter planet means more severe floods and droughts. This has long been predicted, but is now being seen in reality."
>>
theguardian.com/world/2025/jun

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNor
#FossilFuels #HydroclimaticWhiplash #floods #drought #ExtremeHeat #climate #MassDelusion #reality #RealityDenial #hypernormalisation

An utter waste of time and resources to re-study something that has been studied exhaustively. All to placate rambling morons who have never once been told "Sit down. Shut up. Pay attention to the experts."

#massdelusion #vaccinessavelives #idiots

halo.nu/@theguardian_us_news/1

William Lindsey :toad:wdlindsy@toad.social
2024-07-18
The cover of the July-August issue of Christianity Today, posted today on X by Russell Moore, editor in chief of the magazine
William Lindsey :toad:wdlindsy@toad.social
2024-07-18

Charles Marsh in his book Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (NY: Knopf, 2014), p. 176, on the situation in Germany in June 1933 as Hitler consolidated his power.

#Trump #Republicans #FauxReligion #MassDelusion #authoritarianism #strongman
/11

A passage in Charles Marsh, Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (NY: Knopf, 2014), p. 176, on the situation in Germany in June 1933 as Hitler consolidated his power
William Lindsey :toad:wdlindsy@toad.social
2024-07-18

"A big chunk of the public actually wants an authoritarian leader. This is true worldwide, according to research, and no less so in what many Americans like to describe as the world’s greatest democracy."

~ Susan Milligan

#Trump #Republicans #FauxReligion #MassDelusion #authoritarianism #strongman
/10

newrepublic.com/article/183866

William Lindsey :toad:wdlindsy@toad.social
2024-07-18

"Republican candidates and activists often try to sell synthetic blends of faith and politics. It’s a move that makes the political cause seem greater and more consequential—that its significance is eternal, not temporal. The assassination attempt against Trump sent this tendency into hyperdrive."

#Trump #Republicans #FauxReligion #MassDelusion #authoritarianism #strongman
/9

William Lindsey :toad:wdlindsy@toad.social
2024-07-18

"Since arriving in Milwaukee, I’ve heard convention attendees and speakers articulate a position that many Charismatic and Pentecostal Christians have held since early 2016: Trump was sent by God to carry out his will."

~ Joe Perticone

#Trump #Republicans #FauxReligion #MassDelusion #authoritarianism #strongman
/8

William Lindsey :toad:wdlindsy@toad.social
2024-07-18

Like everything that Trump touches, the tone of all of this had an unreality to it that can only be described as camp, further proof of something we already know; that there is no event grievous enough to flip these clowns into serious political people, fit for stewarding the most powerful country on Earth.

~ Emma Brockes

#Trump #Republicans #FauxReligion #MassDelusion #authoritarianism #strongman
/6

theguardian.com/commentisfree/

William Lindsey :toad:wdlindsy@toad.social
2024-07-18

"After the shooting, there was no mention of a platform. There was no reference to the political party. Trump had not simply survived crucifixion. He was not only resurrected. He became his own second coming. He was washed in his own blood. Divine intervention proved he was destined to return. All that is required from followers are declarations of faith."

#Trump #Republicans #FauxReligion #MassDelusion #authoritarianism #strongman
/6

William Lindsey :toad:wdlindsy@toad.social
2024-07-18

"The attempted assassination of Donald Trump has transformed the theology of Trump. He has long portrayed himself as an innocent lamb falsely accused, the target of slings and arrows to bear the suffering of believers. Now the bullet and the blood of Butler, Pennsylvania, have sanctified him for the faithful and brought forth a new gospel."

~ Sidney Blumenthal

#Trump #Republicans #FauxReligion #MassDelusion #authoritarianism #strongman
/5

theguardian.com/commentisfree/

2023-10-13

Just spent an hour on the road, for 10mins of grocery shopping at the nearest market just 1km away. Mostly because people are assholes.

There are no usable walkways, and personal mobility vehicles are illegal.

Getting real sick of being told this is perfectly normal and nothing to complain about.
#Malaysia #MassDelusion #NationOfCriminals

@faab64

I agree! It's truly sad and upsetting.

Religion is #MassDelusion that harms us all, and for some it brings death, grief and destruction.

#AntiTheism

#AntiReligion

#NoGodsNoMasters

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