The recent introduction of the Chinese AI platform DeepSeek has freaked out the Tech sector of the stock market, with $1 trillion in losses on the day of the announcement. Suddenly, people perceive that America is falling behind China in artificial intelligence. So now, the push is on to take artificial intelligence to the next level to try to outdo competitors. This is the rationale for Trump announcing the Stargate Project, a $500 billion investment.
In our capitalistic mindset, we always need to keep progressing. Is progress always necessarily a good thing? Indeed, the standard of living that we have today is due in large part to technological progress. However, are we in danger of succumbing to the law of diminishing returns?
During World War 2, the U.S. was worried about Germany developing an atomic bomb. So, the race was on to get ahead of the Germans. A secret program called the Manhattan Project was set up, and with a group of international scientists, the bomb was developed at Los Alamos, New Mexico. The culmination was the detonation of the test bomb at Alamogordo, New Mexico, then followed by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Next, thanks to spies in the Manhattan Project, the Soviets were able to build their own nuclear device and detonated their fission bomb in 1949. Fearing that the Soviets would catch up and gain parity with America, the next step was the development of a thermonuclear device (hydrogen bomb). America detonated this device in 1952. However, surprise, the Soviets accomplished the same feat just a year later.
Nuclear tests in the atmosphere continued, and in 1961, the Soviets detonated the largest bomb ever, the Tsar Bomba, a 50-megaton monster that had more explosive power than all the bombs in World War 2. To put it in another context, it was 2,000 times more potent than the Nagasaki atomic bomb.
So where does one go from here? Do you keep building larger and more destructive bombs, all in the name of progress? The dark comedy Dr. Stangelove alluded to the ultimate, a Doomsday Bomb, which the Russians were believed to possess. Ultimately, the movie reveals the end game–a dark, foreboding future for humanity.
Humans have the attitude that more is better. If a portion of something is good, then the whole thing must be good. Any new technology must be good for us, correct? Well, not so fast.
What have we been through since early 2021? It was a new technology, Messenger RNA, a gene therapy masquerading as a vaccine, which was going to solve the problem of a respiratory virus. The problem was that we were sold a lemon. It was not effective, but it was actually dangerous.
The history of vaccines throughout the last 100 years demonstrates the philosophy that if you believe something has some benefit, then it flows that more of the same has even more benefit. That is false when it comes to the human body. It wasn’t that long ago that children would have received no more than seven vaccines by adulthood. Today, you can multiply that by 10, including vaccinating pregnant women. Here, there is definitely the law of diminishing returns.
You may believe that some of the early vaccines were beneficial. There is some argument that most of the benefits regarding the reduction in deaths from infectious diseases are related to improvements in sanitation, hygiene, and the introduction of antibiotics. But let’s say vaccination offered some benefits. Injecting children with so many that they overwhelm young bodies doesn’t make sense, and we are seeing the terrible effects.
When antibiotics were introduced, they were life-saving for severe bacterial illnesses. Then doctors started prescribing them like candy for every sniffle that a child came in with. The result has been the overuse of antibiotics. This has caused other problems, including mutations to superbugs. This process is not progress but reverting us to a less healthy state.
We can see the trend if we look at life expectancy in the past 143 years.
From 1880 to 1980, life expectancy rose from 39.4 years to 73.7, almost doubling. This was due primarily to the modernization of living standards, including public health, and the introduction of antibiotics. Today, not many freeze in their homes or die of heat stroke. Central air conditioning and heating allow us to keep room temperature optimally.
From 1980 to 2023, a 43-year span, the increase in life expectancy in the U.S. has only been 5.6 years. Why is that? We have more advanced medical technology, more vaccines than ever, and more of virtually everything. However, Americans are sicker than ever from chronic diseases, including obesity, even in children. Unfortunately, technology like the smartphone has created many health problems in children.
Robert Kennedy Jr. has been discussing this trajectory of American health for years. Americans spend more on healthcare and have more at their disposal, yet they are among the sickest people on the planet, and life expectancy has flatlined. It’s not by accident.
The ultimate in delusional thinking about progress in the health field was the introduction of mRNA ‘vaccines’. These are not really vaccines but gene therapy. The medical ‘experts’ and their useful idiots––the politicians––through the use of fear, thought they were going to save humanity from a scourge, which really wasn’t a scourge we hadn’t seen before. So, how did this progress work out?
All the drugs on the chart were recalled, and their usage stopped, except for one, the one with the highest death toll––the Covid-19 ‘vaccine’. The 37,544 death toll reported to VAERS is just a fraction of the total deaths since most aren’t reported to VAERS.
So now we come to what I started with, Artificial Intelligence. How far are we going with this? We’re assured it’s going to greatly benefit humanity. Where have we heard that before.? Suppose the future machines will be exponentially more powerful than we have now. How can we guarantee that they will not take over humanity? There are no guarantees. But we are told this is progress and must be one step ahead of the Chinese. When will it end? Will humanity self-destruct? Will we end up in some matrix, like in the movie, or under the control of a HAL like in 2001: A Space Odyssey? So, pardon me if I’m a bit sceptical about unfettered progress.
To be honest, sometimes I’m glad I’m 62 and not 32!
Great post Ely. Very good information and history,thank you
I feel like they need to have a handbook for people who don't understand their thinking called:
"Annihilation Innovation"
Users Guide to Implementing and Understand the best practices to Global Demise.
I am grateful to hear something that makes perfect sense while living in a schizophrenic world, Ely.