A Turning Point

This has got to go down as one of the first Internet enabled social media inspired assassinations, Charlie was not a pure politician per se but neither was he only a media guy with a podcast. Lincoln and the Kennedys and Ford and Trump were political targets. But they were political targets more than anything else. Reagan was the first of the hybrids...his fame was a media based (movies and TV) intro which was a springboard into things political.

Ditto Trump and the fierce partisanship (not new) then went from heated to white hot to temperatures needed in a fusion reactor....but Charlie Kirk wasn't running for office. He was not yet a politician but he clearly had an out-sized impact on the political scene. It was his misfortune that he so brilliantly took advantage of both the new (social) media and the 1st Amendment to so advance his agenda, so skillfully and with such fervor that once his opponents on the Left realized the degree to which they had no affective nor effective counterpoints to his arguments was when he became a mortal threat to them.

He had to be eliminated.... In an age of thrill seeking egomaniacal Leftists this means that the Megyn Kellys and Joe Rogans and VDHs and Ben Shapiros are in more danger now than any of us had ever realized.

We feared it. We knew it could happen ...and now it has.

God help us all.

Dr.Guido (View Comment):

This has got to go down as one of the first Internet enabled social media inspired assassinations, Charlie was not a pure politician per se but neither was he only a media guy with a podcast. Lincoln and the Kennedys and Ford and Trump were political targets. But they were political targets more than anything else. Reagan was the first of the hybrids…his fame was a media based (movies and TV) intro which was a springboard into things political.

Ditto Trump and the fierce partisanship (not new) then went from heated to white hot to temperatures needed in a fusion reactor….but Charlie Kirk wasn’t running for office. He was not yet a politician but he clearly had an out-sized impact on the political scene. It was his misfortune that he so brilliantly took advantage of both the new (social) media and the 1st Amendment to so advance his agenda, so skillfully and with such fervor that once his opponents on the Left realized the degree to which they had no affective nor effective counterpoints to his arguments was when he became a mortal threat to them.

He had to be eliminated…. In an age of thrill seeking egomaniacal Leftists this means that the Megyn Kellys and Joe Rogans and VDHs and Ben Shapiros are in more danger now than any of us had ever realized.

We feared it. We knew it could happen …and now it has.

God help us all.

And Matt Walsh, a man who has done more to fight the tranny movement than probably anybody.

The argument the left is going with seems to be something like he spread hate speech so he's not a sympathetic figure. What's not clear is whether this is an argument for him to be arrested because he's going beyond the bounds of free speech or that he deserved to be shot.

We can stipulate, for the sake of argument, that he was a racist, homophobic, bigoted, Christian nationalist.

So what?

How is that the equivalent of shooting someone?

Getting into a debate about his legacy seems to be a mistake.

The symbolic contrast of a man in a debate vs. a man using violence is powerful. There's little ambiguity around the morality of what happened here.

And that's why Dems are struggling to talk about this.

Let them flounder. They don't need our help.

I think most of the people who have celebrated this assassination online are in such a bubble that they think they are in the mainstream. They don’t foresee bad consequences for themselves. That used to be a reasonable assumption, but I think there is a culture shift that has even reached into the HR departments of private companies.

I do think it is crossing a line to try to get people fired for saying very bad things. I think the people who are doing the reporting see that line has already been crossed. A big example is the baker who does not bake the cake.

On AI, I remember way back when I was a computer major in college. AI was a subject of discussion, but it was primitive. ELIZA was cutting edge. (Ask AI about ELIZA). I am amazed at what can now be done.

FredGoodhue (View Comment):

On AI, I remember way back when I was a computer major in college. AI was a subject of discussion, but it was primitive. ELIZA was cutting edge. (Ask AI about ELIZA). I am amazed at what can now be done.

I too remember those days, and for a time considered a career in AI. (In the earliest days, we didn't have a "computer major" (a math major was the closest), but a computer department and major did get added before I graduated.) Those were also the days in which we were already considering the risks and dangers of AI. Since you mentioned ELIZA, I remember particularly a class that focused on this classic textbook, first published January 1, 1976. (The following is excerpted from Google's AI summary.)

"""
A seminal older book on the philosophical and ethical implications of computer technology, and human responsibility in its use, is Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation by Joseph Weizenbaum.

Published in 1976, this book is considered a classic in the field of computer ethics and arose from Weizenbaum's growing disillusionment with how society was embracing and misusing computer technology.

About the author and background
Joseph Weizenbaum was an MIT computer science professor who created ELIZA, one of the earliest conversational chatbots, in 1966. He was dismayed by the strong emotional connections and human-like qualities people projected onto the simple program, and his experiences led him to write the book as a criticism of artificial intelligence.
...
"""

That book was already raising what I consider to be one of the most important legitimate concerns about AI. Instead of worrying about the overblown SkyNet hype, the real danger is that we move away from human reason and judgment toward entrusting a mindless AI's powerful calculations with important decision making with potentially dangerous consequences -- and we won't understand what calculation will result when some unexpected edge case comes up and the "answer" leads to harm.

A contemporary example is trying to let LLM AIs provide counseling to troubled people, with the actual result that the AI encourages them to end their life. I believe one such case has already led to a lawsuit.