No. I simply believe that the internet would be superior as a basic service with very limited corporate involvement. I believe the internet would be superior if it were like a basic, government-supplied service so that websites would be created by individuals, and small to medium-sized businesses. It would be more democratic, and it would not have the same problems created by massive networks. No Twitter, no Facebook, no Google.
Yes, we would not have certain "cool" features like Google Earth, but I still think the world would be superior without large-scale corporate involvement and without AI-created pure trash.
Are you aware that nothing is stopping you from only visiting websites made by individuals, and medium-sized businesses? In fact, you can also choose to use cool things like Google Earth, AND choose not to use shit things like Twitter, Facebook, Google Search etc.
Are you aware that I am not talking about my personal well-being, but the well being of society? I've never had a Facebook, and in fact I visit maybe 3-4 internet sites. I don't engage much personally as I think most of what is on the internet is garbage.
What I mean to imply is that large corporate internet activities are detrimental to society. If all I cared about was myself then I would not even be typing now at all. But I have seen many people negatively affected by corporate internet manipulation and I think it's a bad thing.
The same applies to everyone else. Nothing was stopping them from using the crap bits of the internet, yet they did it anyway because that's what they chose to do.
The same applies to literally anything: food, exercise, etc. people choose the worse option because that's what they prefer. If you take that option away from them, then they will choose some other, similarly crappy option.
The problem is not that people have options, and some of the options are crap.
The problem is that people are physically and mentally lazy (I include myself in this), and will tend to choose the easier, but crappier option most of the time. How do we fix human nature? I don't know, but taking away people's choice isn't going to help the matter.
That's rather defeatist, isn't it? People choose things in the way you describe because they are playing the prisoner's dilemma.
Actually, taking away people's choice does help: that's called government regulation. You can't open a factory and dump mercury waste in the water in the U.S. because there is regulation. And regulation has existed in much stronger forms in the past in various guises, such as with native societies and the Amish.
So yes, taking away choice helps. We need to take away the choice to pollute, to use AI, and to form large corporations. It will help and make everyone's lives better.
Buried in the last paragraph: “The chance of temporarily reaching 1.5°C has roughly doubled compared to last year’s predictions, said WMO. This is mainly due to using an improved temperature dataset to estimate the baseline rather than sudden changes in climate indicators.”
Knowing that a probability has doubled doesn't strike me as particularly useful here. If it doubled from 1e-6 to 2e-6, then it's still almost certain that it won't happen. If it went from 0.5 to 1.0, well, that's a different matter entirely....
