I came to the conclusion a while back, that if we could create some sort of system that removed bad faith actors from decision-making institutions, the way those conveyor belt machines remove bad apples/tomatoes, it would solve the majority of our problems.

Ok I am impressed by your commitment to mothing.

And the quality of LLM output varies based on the input.

Which means that the concern is the people using the tool, how they use it, and their understanding of it, not the tool itself.

Just because one person used a hammer badly, and hit their finger, doesn't make hammers bad, nor suggest we should get rid of the tool.

I strongly agree with the instinct to push back on making the protocol invisible.

People need to have a basic understanding of how the system works, to have reasonable expectations of what it can provide for them.

In the same way, we should have a functional knowledge of how our societies work.

My phd supervisor used to do it on the plane on the way to the venue.

In undergrad I always thought that the staff must be so much more organised, but I then realised they’re just better at doing stuff last minute.

Yep, this is horrific.

It’s certainly bad for anyone in Aus, NZ, SEA etc.

This move does have logic behind it though, oil sales are as big part of how the IRGC makes money, so this blockade directly hurts the people in Iran who are in control of the war.

We’re just the innocent bystanders. But no good options now tbh.

A photo of a book titled The Geography of Good and Evil.

The first contents page, chapter 2 notably being 'the solid darkness of the enlightenment'

Heh, that reminds me of this book. Chapter 2: The Solid Darkness of the Enlightenment.

Yeah, shortages are the real concern in the short to medium term.

If we get a sustained shortage of diesel, our entire economy pretty much shuts down. Which is why they're doing rationing planning right now.

This, it's so frustrating when pages try to sign me up instead of just letting me log in.

Otherwise, 1 or 4.

This is exactly what I've been thinking about in this discourse.

In my own research it's pretty clear that the numbers decision-makers use at the top don't capture all thats relevant for peoples lived experiences at the bottom.

Which raises the question, what's not getting captured by the metrics?

This is related to the fact that we judge ourselves by how others are doing, not objectively based on what we need to survive.

And marketing leans heavily into the 'you're not enough' framing, because it helps sales.

Yeah, tbh, that kinda investment would mean that it should become government owned.

Ok, I hadn’t retained that number. 3x as much as the lng plant they proposed.

Much better off spending that on the transition.

It was the last gov that did the cost benefit analysis and let it close. I’m not sure the analysis would change even now, especially as Marsden pt was for ME crude which is disrupted.

Now we should have a fibre like approach to electrification, but this gov has cancelled all that.

Yeah, I think we should have kept that capacity. It wouldn’t have saved us in this specific scenario, but the capacity did provide a certain type of resilience.

We import refined products, so origin doesn't matter so much. This would have been a concern if Marsden point was still running, but it isn't.

They are overrepresented, especially at the top, and it inhibits developing the types of relationships we need for good governance.

Election wise, for the most part people don't have the experience with narcissists necessary to understand how they operate, or the threat they pose.

It's not just about that one example at the top right now, he's representative of a deeper structural issue.

I've spent a bunch of time in decision-making institutions talking through these issues from a resilience perspective, and this is a pattern that kept coming up.

Yeah, that's fair. Doctor's should be elective.

Perhaps it's something that comes through from the legal side, but that has its own complications, in that it'd probably actually need a diagnosis.

That being said, unchecked narcissism in our governing structures is problematic as well.

I get the point you're making. Just seems like a significant blind spot that treatment is only indicated if it's negatively affecting their life.

There are clear examples where it's fine for them, because they externalise all the negative effects to those around them.

But there is a very clear distinction between being an asshole and being a malignant narcissist.

Wait, but what if it makes everyone else's life around them measurably worse?

Surely that matters?

Yep, similar issue here.

Had some extra credit disappear from my account and the only support is an AI agent who ends the convo with a useless link after you describe the problem.

Hah, you're not wrong. It's def a commitment.

But it is getting engagement. There's an article version here: skywriter.blue/@eliothiggin...

This is an exceptional thread. Well worth the time and effort.

🧵 Democracy feels like it's in a rough state at the moment across the globe, and we hear various explanations, like polarisation, extremism, disinformation, and loss of trust. But what if those explanations are mainly symptoms and we've been trying to treat them rather than the underlying causes?

I'm not sure this is an artefact of social media. Rather, it's about the quality of the room you're in.

Large scale social media is a good example though.

I'm a huge fan of this framing, cuts across a whole lot of domains.