Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Criticizing AI; and more!
Archived at: pluralistic.net/2025/12/05/pop…
1/
⇧
Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Criticizing AI; and more!
Archived at: pluralistic.net/2025/12/05/pop…
1/
Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •I'm on a tour with my new book, the international bestseller *Enshittification*!
Catch me next in #Madison, CT; #Hamburg and #Denver!
Full schedule with dates and links at:
pluralistic.net/tour
2/
Pluralistic: Announcing the Enshittification tour (30 Sep 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.netCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Criticizing AI: My speech for U Washington's Neuroscience, AI and Society lecture series.
mamot.fr/@pluralistic/11566747…
3/
Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr)
Mamot - Le Mastodon de La Quadrature du NetCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Hey look at this
* Politics and Capitalist Stagnation unpopularfront.news/p/politics…
* An Analysis of the Proposed Spirit Financial-Credit Union 1 Merger chipfilson.com/2025/12/an-anal…
* Zillow deletes climate risk data from listings after complaints it harms sales theguardian.com/environment/20…
* After Years of Controversy, EU Chat Control Nears Its Final Hurdle: What to Know eff.org/deeplinks/2025/12/afte…
* How dollar-stores overcharge cash-strapped customers theguardian.com/us-news/2025/d…
4/
Politics and Capitalist Stagnation
John Ganz (Unpopular Front)Edelruth, PBS Passport Holder
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •I love this succinct definer: "classical social democratic politics—the era of generous redistribution and worker protections"
From the Ganz "Politics and Capitalist Stagnation" article linked in your post.
Edelruth, PBS Passport Holder
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •1. Buying the book the second it comes out.
2. "Seven AI companies currently account for more than a third of the stock market ...""
My jaw just hit the floor. This pop! is going to hurt.
Edelruth, PBS Passport Holder
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Paused to say, AI doing imaging evaluations has worried me since I first heard of it, and now you have given a whole other ($ milking) shape to the concern, and I don't know how to finish this thought.
Nightmares ahead.
stephen m 🍞🌹🇵🇸
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Such a great piece! Looking forward to the book too!
It hit so many things that are so important, I particularly like this part
#AI #AISlop
James Fairbairn
in reply to stephen m 🍞🌹🇵🇸 • • •@marxistvegan
oh nice analogy! Coincidentally I just spammed out a thread about the category mistake and how it leads us (or at least, AI researchers and some AI "critics") to worry about something that will never happen, instead of the thing that has already been happening forever
mastodon.exitmusic.world/@jame…
James Fairbairn (@james@mastodon.exitmusic.world)
James Fairbairn (Mastodon)kleines Filmröllchen 📞5534
in reply to stephen m 🍞🌹🇵🇸 • • •@marxistvegan
Great speech, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves:
> The AI Safety people say they are worried that AI is going to end the world
I’m just going to stop you right there and point you to some of Robert Miles’s essays: youtube.com/@RobertMilesAI
because it’s not about that, and he (much better than I could) will give you several reasons to care about AI Safety before AGI is even plausible.
Robert Miles AI Safety
YouTubestephen m 🍞🌹🇵🇸
in reply to kleines Filmröllchen 📞5534 • • •@filmroellchen
Thanks for sharing this and I will take a look.
I will say I think what is important and that Cory raises quite well is understanding the power dynamics of this, which is we need more unions and more negotiation on this from the workers side that is the true safety to the workers no matter the industry.
Nicole Parsons
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •When does "alternative money" just become the equivalent of worthless coal town company scrip?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_…
Coal barons **hated** FDR for outlawing company scrip in 1938.
dol.gov/general/aboutdol/histo…
Now company scrip is back again. With all its pernicious uses.
When a company can fire you just before you vest your stock options, were you really paid for all that under-the-table overtime?
1/
Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938: Maximum Struggle for a Minimum Wage
DOLCory Doctorow reshared this.
uis
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •> And I'm here to tell you they are wrong:w rong because
Typo
Cory Doctorow
in reply to uis • • •Paul Walker
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •baibold
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •The saddest part about losing sectoral bargaining is that the only way we're going to successfully campaign to get it back is a full general strike, where *every* sector shuts down with the specific demand to repeal Taft-Hartley.
It ties back into how in a world of perfect law enforcement, social progress becomes impossible. The optimal amount of crime in society is not 0.
Cory Doctorow reshared this.
Fitz Bushnell
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •"It's because in a creative market dominated by five publishers, four studios, three labels, two mobile app stores, and a single company that controls all the ebooks and audiobooks, giving a creative worker extra rights to bargain with is like giving your bullied kid more lunch money."
I gotta work that into a conversation sometime soon.
Cory Doctorow reshared this.
Fitz Bushnell
in reply to Fitz Bushnell • • •Plus:
"AI is the asbestos in the walls of our technological society, stuffed there with wild abandon by a finance sector and tech monopolists run amok."
Evocative enough to make me cough.
Orion (he/him)
in reply to Fitz Bushnell • • •John Griffith
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •I need to think more about it