Cause otherwise midterms discussion will be scattered around a bunch of separate Culture War thread posts. And it's nice to have more off-the-cuff rapid reactions in a dedicated megathread.
The first thing I've noticed so far: if the exit polls are correct, Americans are very pessimistic about AI.
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Notes -
My contention is that you don't have to start somewhere. You first look at the situation and how it came to be, consider what you want to happen and if you can accomplish it, and consider the ramifications of doing it.
Trump did none of that. What Trump did is the equivalent of thinking you have a leaky roof, trying to fix it yourself with a half-assed understanding of roofing, and ending up with a torn-up roof. If you don't have the means to fix the roof, putting up a tarp is actually better.
If you don't understand what you're doing and why, it's not just a matter of not getting the economic shift you wanted. It's a matter of getting a completely different shift from rich to poorer.
My reason for saying that you need to start somewhere is that at some point, the thing needs to be actually done. The alternative is doing nothing at all. Which is where most of our problems have languished for decades. Putting up a tarp makes sense if there’s someone around who will actually fix the roof. If you are in a situation where it’s either you get out your hammer and nails and at least try, or you have a tarp over the hole for a decade, it might be worth the risk to at least try. I feel that way about most of our problems at this point. The problem has been there for decades, and nothing has happened. We’ve been “thinking about” getting manufacturing jobs back since the 1990s or earlier. We’re still thinking about maybe dealing with the absolute shitshow of college and the cost of college. We have been talking about illegal immigration for half a century. If we never do anything in hopes that someone will eventually get around to it, it won’t happen just like all these other things that the experts have done nothing about. At least this stands a chance of moving the incentive structure towards making things here.
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