I see a lot of posts on social media from technologically minded people who condemn the homeless, point fingers at homeless encampments, and post long videos about addiction and homeless people in various states of destitution. Many of these technologically minded people seem to want to do AI. Why not use one to solve the other?
What could be the benefit of posting on social media about it, other than making ourselves feel good by comparison?
Any good physicist will tell you, on a fundamental level scientists cannot tell the difference between the smelly feet of a homeless person and the smart head of a CEO in Silicon Valley. I learned from an Oxford physicist working at CERN that according to the latest science, we and all creation are one and the same thing. It's a profound realization that we can use to better our civilization.
We have two big problems in America and the first is alienation.
In America, alienation is part of the fundamental fabric of our society. In an enormous country full of immigrants and no strong social ties, just like myself, it is easy to replace familial bonds with material bonds.
We stop loving far-away friends and family and we love things that never trouble us like handbags, and we worship things that serve and enhance us like silicon chips. That's why I frequently see "luxury goods" carefully tucked away from the elements while human beings wallow in the gutters.
We worship complete strangers who pretend for the cameras and on television to be in trouble or poor, we look with compassion at famous people's struggle with addiction, yet we point fingers on social media at people with real problems. I mean this doesn't make any sense.
We beg for attention from the algorithms that optimize for ads, not moral standards, and promote alienation. Social media needs better shoppers not better people.
Because our economic activity is optimized towards profit we allow for people to suffer and pick their open wounds and sores on the streets. I guarantee you people picking their open sores on the streets would love nothing more than to have a simple stable job, to execute and to be occupied and preserve their dignity and self-worth.
This leads us to the worst problem in America, the lack of jobs.
We lack simple jobs because American corporations due to their profit-optimizing algorithms have sent them abroad. Now even the jobs that distribute goods made abroad have disappeared due to the global marketplace where we buy directly from the factories abroad.
What can a person without a social network and love, lack of compassion from society, a broken social services system, mental challenges, and a very competitive job market do?
There's tons of money in social services but they are dominated by people with very little knack for innovation. Social services are marred by stagnation and not better than the poor houses of the 1800s. There's very little oversight and the money gets lost in the black holes of inefficiency and stupidity.
Very few smart and talented people go into solving real social problems.
There are 100,000 homeless kids in New York. We don't need our enemies to wage war on our country, we do the genocide to ourselves. Clever Americans on the other hand with vast resources seem to be using their genius-level brains to solve for decorated barges.
I mean I get it, cavort a bit so people see you, and put back to solving America's real problems. What else could possibly AI have use for?
I urge all the super smart people with AI and other technological ambitions to look into social services because there's tons of money in them but very little ambition, and innovation.
Instead of posting on social media long videos of addiction and destitution - think about how to corral the vast amount of social services money that gets lost in the government inefficiencies, and pure evil that operates New York homeless shelters for example.
We have vast resources that go wasted in this country and inefficiencies in distributing excess and good will.
In New York, you can literally find money on the street. Food rots in the dumpsters, sidewalks are full of furniture. Huge office buildings and retail stores sit empty. Our doctors go to poor countries to help while people are in need a block away. People's houses are full of clothes and basements of stuff they never use. People search to offer their time or services to pay back to society. Many people in America would love to volunteer or help and donate their time or goods but won't venture alone on the street without any training, resources, or structure.
Our alienation from the human condition, our precarious affluence, fear of mortality and disease, has caused our compassion to be directed primarily at pets online. Go on Reddit with a picture of an injured cat and you can see we are actually very good people.
I don't think the screen is the distorting mirror because I have heard complaints in person, especially from well-educated New Yorkers who don't see and smell the pee from well-bred dogs but always complain about the homeless.
You have seen the lines in front of the homeless shelters, you have seen the tent cities, poverty, and addiction. Strangely our compassion for addiction ends with wealthy people from television.
You have read about the vast sums of money thrown at social services while NYCHA housing complexes have rats and violence scuttle in the apartments.
Due to my teaching, I have seen many kids in New York eager and able to excel with computers but due to social circumstances will never get an internship in a fostering environment, and in their future looms fast food jobs.
When I worked for the Census Bureau I saw families struggle in abject circumstances I cannot even describe here.
Where has the 85000 per capita GDP gone? See the dots and the gaps here. I mean use it or lose it, our capacity is there.
I think it is an inefficiency problem and not a deficiency of compassion. I see uncommunicating vessels that are dying to connect.
Have AI figure this out.