cross-posted from: https://lemmy.today/post/50862848

Aside from knights, kings and jesters, when someone mentions the middle ages you probably think of chamber pots being emptied out of windows into unsanitary streets, deadly diseases like smallpox and typhoid and women dying in childbirth. However, you were probably never told that the unsanitary conditions and diseases were mainly in urban areas which only around 10% of Europe lived in at the end of the middle ages. In fact, academics came up with a term to describe the fact towns and cities were so much more deadly than the rural countryside: the urban penalty.

Until the twentieth century, death rates were generally higher in urban areas compared with rural ones, a phenomenon dubbed the ‘urban penalty’. Urban death rates were high partly as a consequence of factors that can be considered as structural features of cities and towns.1 High population densities favoured the transmission of infectious diseases, and trade and migration promoted the importation of animal and human diseases. In addition, before the twentieth century most cities provided inadequate facilities for the disposal of the volumes of wastes generated by such densities and numbers of humans and animals, and for the prevention and treatment of gastrointestinal diseases associated with these living conditions.

The best mortality data we have is the infant mortality data from England and Wales, which shows in 1550 babies were about twice as likely to die in London than the most rural areas, while in the 1700s as the industrial revolution began and towns got bigger babies were three times as likely to die.

Figure 1b shows infant mortality rates rather than life expectancies, because the latter require much more data and are rarely available for urban populations before the mid-nineteenth century. However, levels of infant mortality were so high in early modern towns and cities that mortality in the first year of life was a major driver of life expectancy levels, at least in the eighteenth century. In London infant mortality was around 300–400 deaths per 1,000 births in the mid-eighteenth century, compared with the national average of c. 180 per 1,000. While London was then the largest city in Europe, with a population of perhaps c. 700,000, even small market towns seem to have experienced a severe ‘urban penalty’ in this period. In the towns of Alcester, Banbury, Gainsborough, and Lowestoft, with populations of 2,000–3,000, infant mortality was in the range 209–270 per 1,000 in the period 1675–1749, compared with infant mortality rates below 100 per 1,000 in the most remote rural parishes.

Did they ever teach you this in history? If you're like me then they didn't. Instead they taught you that if you lived in the middle ages a third of your children would die in infancy and you would probably die in your 30s. That last part is yet another lie based on misleading use of life expectancy estimates. In truth, the most common age of death was around 70, but due to infant mortality (and war) the life expectancy gets estimated at 35-40. Personally I think this life expectancy is much too low because of urban-centric information and how commonly past conditions are exaggerated, especially for the middle ages.

As can be seen from the graph it wasn't until around 1920 that urban infant mortality reduced to what rural levels had been in 1550. Earlier in the middle ages urbanization was even less, so what this suggests is that most people may have been as healthy as the average urban Englishman in 1920. But scaring people about how bad things used to be is much more profitable for big pharma and its a useful way for governments to keep people dependent on and subjugated to modern technology.

Source: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ehr.12964

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.today/post/50462470

Lack of social interaction causes stress and boredom in birds, especially more intelligent ones like parrots, leading to pterotillomania - plucking out their own feathers. How much more then do humans need social interaction to stay healthy? Wikipedia claims feather plucking has similar characteristics to trichotillomania - humans pulling out their own hair. This is often caused by anxiety.

Since the industrial revolution technology has been a disaster for human social interaction. First we replaced our fellow workers and even work animals with machines. Then we made trains to get further away from our own communities. Then transport became individualized and isolated with cars. Human interaction was removed from entertainment through radio, television and eventually personal smartphones. And worst of all, socialization itself became mediated via the phone then the internet, and finally it lost all humanity when people began to talk with AIs.

Is it any wonder that anxiety, depression and mental illness have been sharply rising in the 21st century, and have been rising even since 1938? The coming crisis of AI-induced psychosis is just the latest in a long line of mental health disasters caused by modern technology.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.today/post/50424637

UKHSA will explore options to work with ‘big tech’ to use live location data and artificial intelligence (AI) for a more rapid, large-scale detection and alert system during pandemics. These services will adopt a whole-of-society approach with accessible and multilingual formats, and UKHSA will work to consider and build the equivalent tools needed for digitally excluded communities.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/pandemic-preparedness-strategy-building-our-capabilities/uk-government-approach-to-implementing-the-strategy-england-only

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.today/post/49749386

If the video isn't working, try these links:

• https://cdn.videy.co/8f2f25e11.mp4
• https://streamable.com/0xj1ni (slightly better quality but only up for 2 days)

Clipped from full hour long video (around 49 minutes in): https://www.bitchute.com/video/jmhFAjqbxnQ

Europol report: https://www.europol.europa.eu/cms/sites/default/files/documents/The-Unmanned-Future-Report.pdf

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.today/post/49663892

Does technology provide more jobs than it takes away? In the modern world where most industries are constantly changing, most jobs are completely unnecessary, many are unproductive and people can move countries to find work it can be difficult to judge this claim. But we can go back before benefits, government-funded useless jobs, international travel and chaotic job markets. If we do that we can see more clearly how technology has affected the availability of jobs.

The Second (or British) Agricultural Revolution provides one example of technological change. Did it lead to more jobs or less? Here's what I learned about this today. Most of this information comes from here and the pages it links to.

This revolution wasn't an overnight technological development which led to a temporary wave of unemployment that ended as new jobs were invented. This was a gradual change over hundreds of years which led to rising unemployment and poverty that didn't go away.

The lead up to it began in the 1400s with enclosed farms that were able to make better use of the land and crop rotations. This became more common into the 1500s and meant that fewer people needed to work on the farms, causing some to slide into poverty. The government and nobles of the time were apparently unfamiliar with non-temporary unemployment except as a result of laziness or disability. It was a totally alien concept to them. In reaction to increasing numbers of beggars and vagrants the government passed laws to punish them. At the time making poverty harsh was seen as a way to motivate people to get jobs. This approach didn't seem to work as by the end of the 1500s the government decided to change their approach and begin making Poor Laws. The first (Old) Poor Laws provided housing, money, food and clothing to those who were unable to work because of age or illness, but at the same time the able-bodied could be made to work in houses of correction as punishment for being a "persistent idler".

The British Agricultural Revolution really started to take off in the mid-1600s and by the end of the century unemployment and poverty had increased further, leading to the workhouse movement. These gave housing and employment to the poor and reserved houses of correction for punishment. But put poverty didn't end and around 1 million Britons may have relied on poor relief by the end of the 1700s. The number of able-bodied males taking poor relief was rising and again this has been attributed to the enclosure movement that increased agricultural productivity.

Because machines were taking people's jobs, there were widespread riots that destroyed machines in 1830, known as the Swing Riots. The existing system of poor relief wasn't able to handle all the poor people so in response to this and the riots the New Poor Law was passed in 1834. This made it harder for the able-bodied to get relief and made workhouses harsher to discourage leeching. The new system was a complete failure because the unemployed either went without any provisions or suffered in prison-like workhouses. There was no attempt to undo whatever had caused all the jobs to disappear in the first place.

In the end the Poor Laws gave way to country councils providing public housing, government pensions and eventually the full UK welfare state. The Poor Laws were an early example of a European welfare program that influenced the development of welfare states beyond the UK.

So considering all this, do we really think technology has helped or hurt the public's ability to get jobs?

Before the 1500s it was unheard of to be unemployed unless it was temporary or you were too old or sick to work. Now find one developed country where that's the case today. I'd wager you can't. And what could possibly be responsible for that? Is it the increased population? Globalization? I don't think so. More people means more mouths to feed and more jobs. Globalization didn't take away the jobs in Britain between 1500-1900. The most reasonable explanation is that technology and efficiency improvements have caused the lack of jobs by taking over more and more of the productive work, leaving humans with pointless jobs or no work at all. And what good are efficient systems if they put us out of work so we can't afford anything? Maybe efficiency can be bad and sometimes it's good to do things the hard way?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.today/post/48472755

Humans have always made tools - it's why we have opposable thumbs along with the intelligence and dexterity to utilize them. Spiders are likewise built and programmed to make webs, and beavers to make dams. However, tools were always supposed to be a means to an end. A human end, not inhuman end. An end that is beneficial to human wellbeing, not simply generating more money while relationships break down, happiness declines, physical and mental health deteriorate, and governments tighten their control over our lives.

Short-sighted thinking and human vices have caused technology to no longer serve human ends. It has instead become an overwhelming net negative to humanity for over a century. Time and time again, a technology has become dominant because it provides short-term convenience, efficiency, pleasure or money. But it always has a strong negative for society once widely adopted. What good is endless entertainment when you are less productive, less satisfied with life and far more likely to be depressed? What good is instant long-distance communication when you have fewer close friends and family? What good is easy access to all the written works of history when your reading level and attention span are shot from addiction to social media and nobody else can discuss them with you? What good is modern medicine when it can't fix the problems caused by modern food, microplastics and drugs in the water and ever-present radiation? And what good are cheaper products when the actual things you need for a fulfilling life can't be bought?

Despite all these problems arising from apparently wholesome technologies, new technologies continue to be promoted that have much more obvious dystopian overtones. These include self-spreading vaccines, genetically modified insects, VR headsets, sex robots, lab-grown babies and brain chips. Yet there is one threat that is greater than all of these combined - one that could end all human life completely. Generally accessible weapons of mass destruction.

The threat of extinction

You see, we know from experience that technological progress enables things to be done more efficiently, easily and cheaply. This has been the case with weapons too - killing large numbers of people has only become more efficient, easy and cheap. Instead of relying on spears to kill, we developed guns, then canons, then bombs, then nuclear weapons, each one requiring less cost and effort for each person killed. Defenses against these weapons haven't advanced even a fraction as quickly, as it is much harder to protect than destroy. Nuclear weapons have also become more destructive and easier to produce than they were originally.

The average person too now has more ways than ever to kill others cheaply, using a gun, a car, or even a cheap drone with weapons attached. Individuals can even design, share and build their own weapons and weapon modifications at home using 3D printers. It therefore seems that if technological progress were to continue indefinitely, and humans continue to exist and have a small measure of freedom, a weapon capable of ending all human life on the planet would eventually become easily accessible to the average person. Then all it would take is one particularly angry, evil, inebriated or mentally ill person to put such a weapon to use and humans are no more.

That prospect might seem like a long time away, but it almost certainly isn't. You see, AI is now able to form coherent sentences and images. Fairly soon it will likely be forming coherent virus genomes and nuclear blueprints. It has already become better than humans at specific scientific tasks like predicting protein folding. AI doesn't need to achieve super intelligence, general intelligence, sentience or the singularity. It only needs to get close to human intelligence in some areas of science or engineering and then anyone with money to provide it materials may be able to accomplish decades of progress in a single year.

Some fields may require expensive physical or biological experiments to arrive at a generally accessible weapon of mass destruction, but others likely would not. For example, the creation of self-replicating robots would not require any exotic materials or scientific experiments, just clever design. If these robots use common materials that occur in nature or human settlements then they could quickly outnumber and exterminate all humans. To give another example - we have already modified harmful viruses to make them more infectious to humans, and some pathogens are 100% fatal to humans. Therefore, we are probably not far from being able to design a pathogen that would be capable of infecting and killing every human on the planet.

In conclusion, if ordinary people are free to develop AIs, open source AIs can (and will) be developed without alignment to any particular ethics, and anyone wishing to end humanity can attempt to fulfil their wish. Consequently, the attempts will continue until they succeed in extinguishing humanity or humans are so decimated worldwide that they're no longer able to run such powerful technologies.

The totalitarian trap

As technology gets more advanced it's going to be increasingly obvious how dangerous it could be in the hands of a bad actor. Therefore, governments will no doubt introduce restrictions on the public's access to technology - e.g., by criminalizing development or use of an AI without government certification and attempting to monitor all computer activity, even offline, to prevent the illicit activities. This will advance the surveillance state while enforcing an oligopoly over AI and other powerful technologies, centralizing power into the hands of a few who run the governments and big corporations.

No government or small fraction of the population can be trusted with such great control over technology, which could easily (and definitely would) be used for totalitarian subjugation. Technology is the ultimate power in today's world, and those without control over the technology would have no possibility of overthrowing the few who could effortlessly use AI to direct a vast army of robots, personalized propaganda regime, individual brain wave monitoring and constant video surveillance analyzed in real time. It is simply unrealistic to imagine the most powerful technologies being limited to the hands of a few and not being abused for mass domination.

Eventually, this course of events also leads to a near extinction event as over time the few with power are replaced by their offspring or there are internal battles for dominance. With changing hands of power and high stakes conflict it's only a matter of time until one group decides to end it all or something goes wrong and power falls into less judicious hands.

So what's the solution?

It is evident there must be restrictions on technology if humanity is to exist in 100+ years from now. But these restrictions should not be enforced from the top down by governments or any other group of a few. Not only would this lead to a huge centralization of power and near (if not total) extinction of mankind, but the public would clamor for the technology they are denied and see exploited by the few.

Having rejected centralised restrictions on technology then, the alternative we are left with is decentralised restriction. This could include boycotts, agreements, social stigma, parallel economies, civil disobedience and more, with the goal of limiting the development, distribution or adoption of anti-human technologies. For this strategy to be effective at stopping the development of AI and other dangerous technologies, it would likely require a majority of the population in each of the most significant countries to be convinced they are a serious existential threat to humanity.

The number of people to be of this opinion has been growing in recent years as technology has become more advanced and dystopian, so this goal may in fact become feasible as things get worse. However, most of those people currently do not see this solution to the problem, so do not have strong incentives to take action like boycotting AI or developing parallel systems. Many think that Pandora's box has been opened and cannot be shut. But that's not the case. The future of humanity is for humans to decide - there's nothing that can't be undone if enough people want to undo it.

"There's no way this could ever work"

Nobody thought it would be possible to end slavery either until it happened, or end the Roman Empire, or end Catholic dominance in Europe. The cult of technological progress at all costs is just one more thing that is dominant today, but it didn't use to be, nor is it our inevitable future. It may seem like a long shot, but we have to fight it by growing our numbers before it's too late - there is no better option. Rather than giving up or pretending everything will be fine, there is in fact something we can actually do that will at least push humanity in the direction away from disaster. Namely raising awareness of the problem and being part of the decentralized solution. Doing this may actually be rewarding and personally beneficial, as you will learn to be more independent, form new communities, and save yourself from the exploitation and mental deterioration that comes with much of today's technology.

As a final note, remember this is a battle for the survival of the human race - as many people as possible need to be brought on board. Therefore, we cannot risk to be divided over other issues - as important as they may be right now, they won't matter if mankind isn't around anymore. So whoever you are - wherever you may be - you have been placed in this important time for a reason. We hope you will join us in saving the world!

~(Image~ ~source)~

Article: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2516885-ais-cant-stop-recommending-nuclear-strikes-in-war-game-simulations/