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Nathan Peck

@nathanpeck.com

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Technologist in Software, AI, and Infrastructure Orchestration

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Nathan Peck @nathanpeck.com · Aug 25

I spent some time writing another essay in my ongoing series about humanity, consciousness, and AI.

I explore some of my recent thoughts about collapse and the future. I'm also experimenting with a new format designed to "prove" the human provenance of writing: nathanpeck.com/it-wont-happ...

It won't happen to me, and other lies we tell ourselves

“Ten decisions shape your life, you’ll be aware of five, about.” It’s a lyric from The Strokes. It’s also a surprisingly deep description of the relationship between choice, circumstance, and luck.

nathanpeck.com

Nathan Peck @nathanpeck.com · 2d

I'm thinking about this image. Each generation reduced the distance their kids could roam, despite experiencing broader freedom themselves (or perhaps because of it).

Did the parents remember close calls or scary circumstances that they wanted to protect their kids from?

A satellite map centered on Sheffield, England, showing how the distance children were allowed to travel alone has decreased over generations. In 1919, great-grandfather George (age 8) could walk six miles to go fishing. In 1950, grandfather Jack (age 8) could walk about one mile to the woods. In 1979, mother Vicky (age 8) could walk half a mile to the swimming pool. In the present day, son Ed (age 8) is only allowed to walk 300 yards to the end of his street.

Nathan Peck @nathanpeck.com · 4d

"It is estimated that more than one in five U.S. adults live with a mental illness (59.3 million in 2022; 23.1% of the U.S. adult population)." (www.nimh.nih.gov/health/stati...)

The mental health epidemic in the US started long before ChatGPT. Glad to see OpenAI trying hard to not make it worse.

Nathan Peck @nathanpeck.com · 4d

Maybe AI translations help shift that as well, for example the massive rise in Cebuano Wikipedia thanks to AI translation bots.

But the real shift we'd need to see is broader world usage of alternative services like Baidu Baike, or KakaoTalk, etc. TikTok shows that will be an uphill battle though.

Nathan Peck @nathanpeck.com · 4d

I think the dominance of English as the "language of the internet" helps maintain that English standard as well.

The question is whether the next 30 years would also see a transition away from English as the dominant language of the internet. That's a bit harder to imagine

Reposted by Nathan Peck

JA Westenberg @joanwestenberg.com · 4d

The smarter you are, the longer you can postpone being wrong.

Every hour of research delays the moment you have to face the fact that the map and the territory will never match.

www.joanwestenberg.com/p/the-map-i...

The Map Is Not the Territory (and It’s Definitely Not Progress)

How Smart People Stay Stuck

www.joanwestenberg.com

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Nathan Peck @nathanpeck.com · 4d

Sounds about what I’d have expected. The stats for mental health issues, depression, and suicidality are absolutely horrifying.

ChatGPT is surfacing a view into a massive ongoing mental health crisis worldwide. About time they tried to direct these people to help

Reposted by Nathan Peck

Dare Obasanjo @carnage4life.bsky.social · 4d

Zohran Mamdani is so scary because he is planting the idea that you can tax billionaires and use the money to help people instead of debating what services to cut to pay for tax cuts. Which is literally why the US government is currently shut down.

He is destroying decades of political messaging.

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Nathan Peck @nathanpeck.com · 10d

EU has its own issues with demanding encryption backdoors. There was lots of interesting discussion on my viral post about it on LinkedIn, with comments from EU folks saying "it's not necessarily better here": www.linkedin.com/posts/nathan...

Why AWS isn't investing in AI: The AWS European Sovereign Cloud | Nathan Peck posted on the topic | LinkedIn

Now that I’m no longer an Amazon employee it’s time to share some unfiltered opinion and speculation on AWS! Are you ready? In my opinion, the single most important thing that AWS is working on, more...

www.linkedin.com

Nathan Peck @nathanpeck.com · 10d

These techniques are good, but they still rely on the US government not interfering with the technique. If the US government says: "AWS Nitro is illegal now, we have mandated that there must be a backdoor" then there will be a backdoor, and there will also likely be a gag order about the backdoor

Nathan Peck @nathanpeck.com · 10d

The cost of hosting your data under the control of a fascist country is way higher than the cost of running your own hardware though.

I personally think the cloud is in very shaky territory. That amount of centralization is only possible in a high trust environment, and trust is on the decline

Nathan Peck @nathanpeck.com · 10d

It’s only after time outside the American bubble that you see how much everyday life there is designed with quiet hostility, sometimes in malice, sometimes just from basic indifference.

I don’t want to live like that.

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Nathan Peck @nathanpeck.com · 10d

American traffic lights are positioned for the convenience of drivers in a car-centric society.

New Zealand traffic lights are positioned so that drivers notice pedestrians at the corners, and avoid hitting them.

It's a deeply thoughtful decision that has doubtlessly saved many human lives.

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Nathan Peck @nathanpeck.com · 10d

When an American driver approaches a traffic light their eyes are centered on the road, angled up slightly towards an overhead stoplight framed against the sky.

When a New Zealand driver approaches a traffic light they are looking at the corners of the intersection, where pedestrians are standing

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Nathan Peck @nathanpeck.com · 10d

When I moved from America to New Zealand the traffic lights bothered me. They were low and positioned at the corners of the intersection.

US traffic lights seemed better: suspended overhead, centered above the lanes.

It wasn't until 6 months later that I realized how stupidly America-brained I was

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Reposted by Nathan Peck

Dare Obasanjo @carnage4life.bsky.social · 10d

Watching mainstream news sites try to come up with euphemisms for the video where Trump dumped "a brown liquid or sludge" on protestors is a great example of the sane-washing that the media has done for his administration since the the first time around.

News Outlets Won't Describe Trump's AI Video For What It Is: The President Pooping on America

Major outlets said the President dumped "brown liquid" that "appeared to be feces" in an AI-generated video. They refused to call a spade a spade, or poop, poop.

www.404media.co

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Nathan Peck @nathanpeck.com · 10d

Oh wow! Moonlighter is an amazing game. Can't wait to see what ya'll have built for Moonlighter 2!

Nathan Peck @nathanpeck.com · 13d

Shameful. United States becomes more a criminal enterprise every day: run by criminals, on behalf of criminals. www.commondreams.org/news/trump-p...

'Naked Corruption': Trump Commutes Fraud Sentence of Ex-GOP Congressman George Santos | Common Dreams

"Trump says it plainly: Crimes don’t count if you 'vote Republican,'" said one Democratic congressman. "Just like his pardons of those who violently attacked police."

www.commondreams.org

Nathan Peck @nathanpeck.com · 15d

I think it’s possible for two things to be true. There is a legitimate water issue, and it’s not primarily caused by AI. It’s caused by climate change and 50+ years of minimal to no real investment in US water systems

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Nathan Peck @nathanpeck.com · 21d

In short, my take on Wardley’s post is that if anything he’s an optimist there! I think the reality is looking like it will be far weirder and more broken.

Nathan Peck @nathanpeck.com · 21d

Additionally any chaos caused by Bitcoin is part of a broader pool of chaos caused by climate change, AI, and fascism, which will likely destroy free form access to a shared worldwide internet (and by extension, Bitcoin as the defacto currency) long before the monetary thresholds in that post

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Nathan Peck @nathanpeck.com · 21d

I think that 2013 post is too optimistic. It’s a little too neat of a story to say that Bitcoin is the cause.

I see Bitcoin as a symptom of underlying social collapse and the breakdown of traditional societal responsibility. A world without Bitcoin still has these deeper problems

Nathan Peck @nathanpeck.com · 21d

Right these assets only make sense when you have stored wealth to protect.

And you are correct: if distrust in a currency originates from distrust in the government, then that is usually a warning sign of impending inability to maintain basic levels of security and stability. Dark times ahead…

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Nathan Peck @nathanpeck.com · 21d

Additionally, latency doesn’t matter. When you are waiting 10-20 seconds for inferencing compute to complete what’s an extra 200ms around the globe?

LLM’s can and should only be running in areas of high renewable power availability.

The reason this isn’t reality is national AI arms race and greed.

Nathan Peck @nathanpeck.com · 21d

A lot changes when the government is willing to thrown around the terrorist label and use the legal system in sketchy ways.

Suddenly you realize it’s actually quite easy for them to seize all your dollar assets if they don’t like you. Gold and well managed bitcoin has physical / secrecy protection

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Nathan Peck @nathanpeck.com · Sep 27

As I recall, the original Miyawaki forests were planted in the 1970’s and 1980’s, so there is plenty of long term observation of the effectiveness in Japan.

Fewer studies for other climates and plant species, but the fundamentals are good, even if small adjustments are required for other regions