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A ladder of assertions about abilities of your rival X 1. X can’t do it 2. X can do it, but not as well as us 3. X can do it as well, maybe better, but not innovate 4. X can innovate, but only incremental, not bold leaps 5. X can bold-leap but no moral compass so will fail
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The interesting is that X = China and X = AI are basically identical arguments. By the time you get to Stage 5, you’re essentially arguing “the gods are on our side”. There’s a Stage 6 after you’ve already lost: 6. The indomitable _________ spirit Blank = [human, western] etc
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Replying to
yeah james got into that angle briefly in his 3rd and last part before he abandoned it it's like there's 3 layers: the backend which can be algorithmic or human, the middleware which is a legibilizing structure, and the frontend which is a rehumanizing UX
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Replying to and
Now I'm also thinking of the "white guy frontman in China" syndrome where they hire random white tourist guy to serve as investment front-end to sell western financial institutions on china investments. Subtle forms of turking are all around us all the time.
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Replying to and
The “hire a white guy” practice in China is usually done by Chinese companies to sell *Chinese* customers/investors on China investments. The white frontmen (& women) would likely be too easily found out by fellow Westerners anyway.
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