RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
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User ID: 317
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
10mo ago
I blame the whole concept of gender. We didn't always have gender, it's a recent invention. We used to have sex and civilization ran pretty well with that alone.
Why doesn't Ted Cruz know the population of Iran? And what is with him generally? Or the whole upper echelons of the US govt?
I reference a recent Tucker Carlson interview with Cruz, where it turns out he didn't know said population (and has since responded with an AI meme image of Tucker asking Luke the population of the Death Star).
Turns out that the population of Iran is 92 million, I thought it was around 80. 80 would be a fairly reasonable answer. Even Yemen is surprisingly populous, around 41 million. Fun game to try - estimate the population of various countries in these areas.
I thought Ted Cruz was supposed to be super-smart, wouldn't it be natural to read up on Iran? He is on the Subcommittee on Near East, South Asia, Central Asia, and Counterterrorism. It's also relevant to US strategic choices and his particular love of Israel. Knowing about the subpopulations and relative size of the Azeris, Kurds and similar would be relevant to regime change, which is his professed goal:
Senator Ted Cruz has explicitly stated that he wants regime change in Iran. He said on Fox News, “I think it is very much in the interest of America to see regime change,” and that there is “no redeeming the ayatollah” regime. Cruz has called for collapsing the Iranian regime, comparing it to the Cold War-era strategy used against the Soviet Union, and has criticized the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal, pushing for stronger actions against Iran.
To his credit he does know that Iran is Persian and predominantly Shia. And maybe being on a bunch of other subcommittees means he has to divide up his time and energy in all these different areas. But it's not like Tucker is asking really sophisticated questions about the position and integration of Azeri elites in the Tehran power structure. That really should be dealt with by an expert diplomat. But senators are supposed to be making strategic decisions, one has to have some base of knowledge to decide upon different courses of action.
Cruz also thinks that the Bible requires Christians to support the nation of Israel, which is somewhat non-mainstream in theology: "Where does my support for Israel come from, number 1 we're biblically commanded to support Israel". Tucker tries to ask 'do you mean the government of Israel' and Cruz says the nation of Israel, as if to say it's common-sense that the nation of Israel as referred to in the Bible is the same as the state of Israel today. It seems like he's purposely conflating the dual meanings of nation as ethnic group and nation as state, which is a stupid part of English.
Also Cruz said to Tucker "I came into Congress 13 years ago with the stated intention of being the leading defender of Israel in the United States”. How would this help in the context of a hostile interview, does he think that's a helpful thing to say? I can only imagine that Cruz thinks this is a winning issue, he wants to play hard rather than go down the wishy-washy 'Judeo-Christian' values route. Is declaring your devotion to a foreign country really that popular in America?
Trump also posted this somewhat ominous diatribe from Mike Huckabee (pastor and ambassador to Israel) praising Trump's divine prominence, his position similar to 'Truman in 1945' and how he has to listen to god and the angels only... https://x.com/Mondoweiss/status/1934999328583713096/photo/1
This episode reminds me of how George W Bush apparently didn't know of the difference between Sunni and Shia Islam until after deciding to invade, he brought up Gog and Magog when trying to persuade Chirac to join the war. Maybe that's false, some have disputed it. Or how Trump apparently won't read any long extracts of text and demands pictures. Maybe that's also false, lots of stories have been made about Trump policy. It's known that Biden didn't know whether people were alive or dead or what was happening much of the time. Large swathes of the Democrats can't tell the difference between men and women.
Here's another one I just found from another US congressman: https://x.com/VoteRandyFine/status/1839686465820766542
There is a reason the first time I shook @netanyahu‘s hand, I did not wash it until I could touch the heads of my children.
That's just weird!
There are serious structural problems with how America selects its politicians if this is the calibre of talent that's drawn into positions of great power. At the risk of sounding like an edgy atheist fighting a war everyone's tired of and moved on from years ago, surely theology should have no place in grand strategy. It's normal to have colourful characters in politics, some corruption, some old people who don't know what's going on, a certain level of lobbying. But this seems to be on a qualitatively different level, with serious results.
Kamala's word salad causes prediction market meltdown?
https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/1843450980291010656
Question: "What does success look like in ending the war in Ukraine?"
Answer: "There will be no success in ending that war without Ukraine and the UN Charter participating in what that success looks like."
I guess she could be referring to Article 2(4)?
All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.
Even with a positively colossal steelman it's hard to understand what she's saying, charters cannot participate in successes. I think she doesn't really mean anything by this statement. It's what Gary Marcus says about LLMs, how they're just spinning word associations around.
She then continues on to repeat fairly standard US rhetoric 'we're not going to do a deal without Ukraine at the table' and dodges the question of NATO membership. None of it is particularly adept politician-speak IMO, she could do with lessons on muddying the issue.
How hard would it have been to say 'we want a free, democratic Ukraine with 1991 borders' or if they want 2014 borders, why not say that? Or if territory is too sensitive to talk about, just say 'we want a free and democratic Ukraine, a Russia that isn't going to be invading any more countries, deterrence for all America's enemies'? It was a pretty easy question!
It's not just that, there's more:
https://x.com/ClayTravis/status/1843449294008836567
She's asked about whether it was a mistake to let illegal immigration rise so dramatically and fails to dodge the question. She could've said 'oh there are enforcement problems since it's a big border' or given a distracting pre-prepared anecdote about one of the challenges they faced. She just says 'oh we have been offering solutions, solutions are at hand and we'll make more solutions on day one, when I'm elected!"
Here's a bigger chunk of the video, each minute I watch there's all this word salad and flailing question-dodging:
https://x.com/ThisIsJnored/status/1843473339085631770
For instance, at about 1:50 there's a question about the extensive US military aid to Israel and whether the Biden Harris administration is capable of putting any pressure on the Netanyahu govt.
Her answer: the work that we do diplomatically, with the leadership of Israel is an ongoing pursuit around making clear our principles.
Him: But it seems that Prime Minister Netanyahu is not listening.
Her: We're not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.
She does say something substantive from time to time, carefully implying that the alliance is between the American people and the Israeli people, not with Netanyahu. She uses a proper technique like 'the real question is...' there which makes her look more in control. But it's still a pretty bad performance overall.
Presumably this is why polymarket has gone from parity to 53-46 in Trump's favour): https://polymarket.com/event/presidential-election-winner-2024?tid=1728364599343
And then there's the editing! I think whatever portion of the interview they're releasing is the most flattering stuff they could get. How else do you explain this: https://x.com/LangmanVince/status/1842964122553761982
He asks the same question "but it seems Prime Minister Netanyahu is not listening" with the exact same head movements (from a slightly different camera angle) and she gives a different answer, even more full of spaghetti:
Well Bill, the work that we have done has resulted in a number of... movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by or a result of many things including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region.
What's going on here? Am I missing something basic? Kamala's answer isn't coherent either way but it's vaguely related to the question, was it edited from something else? This is why you should just give clear answers that specifically engage the question. Not interchangeable babble with with six clauses to a sentence.
I feel concerned (not only because I've placed bets that Donald Trump will lose the popular vote since I thought it was a dead sure thing) but also because this is the apparent calibre of American leadership. Even if we assume that Elite Human Capital or the Deep State is running the show, why can't these people find a decent media spokesperson? How hard can it be?
Apologies for how much of this post is rhetorical questions, twitter links and transcription, I'm truly confused by the whole thing. I also feel like people should know what I'm linking to, they should be able to scan the link with their own eyes and know to nitter or whatever if they don't have an account.
Edit: https://x.com/mazemoore/status/1843664856446316758 (this shows the editing they did somewhat more clearly)
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2yr ago
“I cannot guarantee the future. I am not a prophet. I said that if things don’t change, there will be a revolution affecting all of us – and that will include me and black people in suburbs. Those rising up from townships will accuse us of abandoning them in squalor and in poverty. We will all be in serious trouble.”
“It may not be me [calling for the slaughter of white people]. But it could be me. What will necessitate such a thing? I can’t guarantee I can’t or won’t call for the slaughter of white people. But why would I make a pledge to say I definitely won’t call for that? I won’t do it.”
Imagine looking at the state of South Africa and thinking 'what this country really needs is more brain drain, capital flight, international isolation, even more intense ethnic conflict.' I suppose this goes to show the power of nationalist feeling - it can override all other considerations.
I think this also highlights the importance of HBD. Some people on this forum have disputed its value, saying 'so what do we gain in the real world from this knowledge'? We'd gain useful information about the destiny of states that go from white rule (indigenous fighter jet programs, first heart transplant, nuclear program) to black rule (mass unemployment, constant power outages, ludicrously high crime/murder rate). We'd know it was unlikely that South Africa, along with Brazil, would be a meaningful part of BRICS, the source of future world economic growth. Useful investing information! And we'd know that since the situation in South Africa was very unlikely to markedly improve, future racial conflict is likely as the economic gap between black and white remains.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
Australian boys make spreadsheet of girls attractiveness, national media, federal minister and state premier rush to condemn them. I'm pretty surprised this got any media attention, doesn't it seem trivial? This all happened on some discord server, it's not like they were parading it around. Does anyone think this would happen in their country?
It reportedly ranked female students from "wifeys", "cuties", "mid", "object", and "get out" to "unrapeable".
The school flagged notifying police about the list and looking into whether using the term "unrapeable" constitutes a threat, The Age reported.
I can't see how 'unrapeable' could possibly be a threat. Saying someone is vulnerable could be a threat, calling someone invulnerable is not... OK it's very rude, suspend the ringleaders - do police need to be involved? There's a certain level of hysteria here, you get the sense that the male principal fears for his job unless he takes this as seriously as humanly possible.
Allan said her thoughts are with the young women, who have received counselling at Yarra Valley Grammar.
It would be pretty crushing to be labelled unrapeable or 'get out' by your male peers, though I don't see how a counsellor could help.
Context: Australian media and govt have been panicking about male-on-female violence for a few weeks now. We recently had a mass stabbing by a mentally ill man, who targeted mostly women. Accordingly, male on female violence has increased statistically and the government has thrown a lot of money at various NGOs.
The Yarra Valley Grammar incident comes as the federal government last week announced nearly $1 billion of funding towards tackling violence against women, which has been labelled a "crisis" of "epidemic" proportions.
Additionally, there has been a lot of concern about Tate corrupting the minds of the youth. So this lets the media hit two talking points at the same time.
Merry said Yarra Valley Grammar holds "respectful relationship" classes but because of mixed messages on social media, "young boys get it wrong".
A related matter - youtuber argues that ranking women's attractiveness upsets the Byzantine system of female intrasexual competition, where every queen is praised as a 10/10 regardless of ugliness. I found the video pretty decent albeit a few minutes longer than it needed to be. It features the infamous Gorlock the Destroyer claiming to be a 10/10 (sarcastically?), which does make you think. There might be something to it - ranking women by attractiveness seems more dangerous than one might naively imagine.
In the male-dominated patriarchal society of the distant past, accusing men of being bastards or having incorrect lineage was a very serious matter. Legitimacy and preventing cuckoldry was deeply important to men, it informed the whole structure of European politics, inheritance and succession. Perhaps in the emerging future it's female sexual dynamics that will take priority and we'll see more of this kind of thing.
Premier (woman): "This pattern of violence against women — not only does the act of violence have to stop, but these displays of disrespecting women. Like, it's just disgraceful."
Lèse-majesté: an offence or defamation against the dignity of a ruling head of state or of the state itself.
https://x.com/TrumpDailyPosts/status/1909263788295041257
Yesterday, China issued Retaliatory Tariffs of 34%, on top of their already record setting Tariffs, Non-Monetary Tariffs, Illegal Subsidization of companies, and massive long term Currency Manipulation, despite my warning that any country that Retaliates against the U.S. by issuing additional Tariffs, above and beyond their already existing long term Tariff abuse of our Nation, will be immediately met with new and substantially higher Tariffs, over and above those initially set. Therefore, if China does not withdraw its 34% increase above their already long term trading abuses by tomorrow, April 8th, 2025, the United States will impose ADDITIONAL Tariffs on China of 50%, effective April 9th. Additionally, all talks with China concerning their requested meetings with us will be terminated! Negotiations with other countries, which have also requested meetings, will begin taking place immediately. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
https://x.com/unusual_whales/status/1909411006423392583
China Ministry of Commerce has just said: "Will fight until the end if US Insists on new tariffs"
China urges dialogue with US, strongly opposes 50% additional tariffs
So the two biggest economies are now locked in a full-scale trade war... I suspect this will be more severe than previous skirmishing. In the past China imposed restrictions on imports of Australian wine, lobster and coal due to us calling for an inquiry into COVID. The Australian government basically ignored this without retaliating and eventually (with a change of govt over here to the less anti-Chinese Labour party) the restrictions were dropped. And they didn't touch iron ore, our biggest and most important export.
But nobody really cares about Australia, there's no loss of face in restoring trade relations like there would be with being seen to submit to Trump. You can show magnanimity to a weaker country but you probably can't show weakness to a peer power. Plus the US-China tariffs seem to be much more comprehensive, there's no shielded goods listed. I highly doubt that Xi will back down here like Trump seems to be asking. Giving a one day ultimatum is quite rude.
It seems that Trump's strategy is to shake down the US's weaker trading partners (the 'other countries which have requested meetings') and try to smash the stronger powers like China and possibly the EU. The EU might even fall into the 'weaker' category if Trump can link security to the trade relationship, Vance and co wanted to send Europe the bill for bombing Yemen since it was mostly European trade flowing through the Red Sea. The US has opportunities for leverage in terms of energy flows now that Russia is persona non grata and with defence via NATO. On the other hand, the EU is run by Trump-haters and they're hardened experts in economically wrecking their own countries, so they may show some backbone.
Anyway, who has more leverage between the US and China?
China's exports to the US ($500 billion) are mostly manufactured goods, electronics and machinery. These are ironically the things you'd need to industrialize the US, though a lot is also consumer goods. China dominates certain industries like port equipment as seen here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Unexpected/comments/11jsyyf/well_thats_unfortunate/
https://tradingeconomics.com/china/exports/united-states
The US's exports to China ($144 billion) are a mix of agriculture/energy and electronics (semiconductors are included in this category), aircraft, machinery.
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/exports/china
Personally I favour a supply-focused view of trade conflicts. If you're losing out on $500 billion worth of goods due to high tariffs (an additional 50% on top of the 34% and the previous tariffs really add up!) then that's worse than 34% or 84% if Xi matches on a mere $144 billion. Many of those goods will be prerequisites for US production. A much smaller proportion of Chinese imports will be prerequisites and soybeans/gas can be bought from elsewhere. Plus the Chinese approach to industrial policy seems much more sophisticated, they target key sectors to build up economies of scale. They foster development in high-tech industries with huge state backing. They do plenty on the supply side, tariffs only affect prices and demand. I think China is not too concerned about losing US imports, they want to replace them with indigenous suppliers on the high-end anyway and have been working hard to do this for years and years, that's Made in China 2025. There is no equivalent comprehensive program to reshore production in the US.
And if China loses some of their exports, at least they retain production capacity. Those mobile phones and plastic toys could go to Chinese kids instead.
I've seen others online favouring a demand-focused view, so there is room for difference on this (elasticity matters a lot).
I think China will come out ahead here unless Trump manages some crazy 4D chess bullying other nations into tariffing China too. China is the central hub of the world economy in terms of trade flows, their economy is larger in real terms and their political system seems to be more stable, less erratic.
Edit: https://x.com/typesfast/status/1909362292367802840
On April 17th the U.S. Trade Representative's office is expected to impose fees of up to $1.5M per port call for ships made in China and for $500k to $1M if the ocean carrier owns a single ship made in China
This seems even crazier if true, it's like Trump is deliberately trying to crash the US economy with these hasty, no-warning orders and fines. See the thread for details. This is how you don't do industrial policy.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2yr ago
What is the appropriate level for diplomatic discussion on twitter?
Recently Elon Musk has been heavily criticised for an admittedly naïve proposal for a negotiated peace in the Russian-Ukrainian war. His proposal:
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1576969255031296000
Now this isn't how politics actually works, twitter polls are not actually binding instruments of diplomacy. Nor is a UN administered vote terribly helpful given how it'd just turn into a vote-rigging contest between the pro and anti-Russian forces within the UN and the Ukrainian state obviously wouldn't let the territories leave given the amount of blood that's been shed. They've threatened 15 year jail sentences for those who did vote in the most recent Russian referenda. It's also very hard to see why the Ukrainian govt would bind itself to allowing a Russian Crimea water since they dammed it off even before this war.
You can see from the replies that the objections aren't really on the object level, they're more on the 'go fuck yourself', 'educate yourself', 'you're using Putin talking points', 'Crimea is Ukraine'. All of this is essentially the official line of the Ukrainian state, as summarized by their ambassador to Germany: "Fuck off is my very diplomatic reply"
This seems rather ungrateful to me, as well as undiplomatic. As Elon reasonably argues, he has made a significant effort to assist the Ukrainian armed forces with communications via his satellites, paid from out of his own pocket:
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1577081450263769089
The fundamental power balance in this war is that Russia could obliterate the entirety of Ukraine in under an hour and still have plenty of nukes left to raze Europe and North America if they intervene. There are some people on this site who think that Russian nuclear forces probably don't work and so we can safely discount Russia's 2000 tactical nuclear weapons and 4000 strategic weapons. How they've come to that conclusion is beyond me, given that the technologies involved are fairly simple and old. The same people have been critiquing Russia for fighting a war with 1970s level technology - miniaturized thermonuclear weapons are 1970s technology! Yes, the tritium has a low half-life and needs to be replaced often. Yes, Russia doesn't have the best maintenance standards. But isn't it reasonable for them to prioritize their nuclear forces in terms of maintenance and development? Are we seriously prepared to risk tens if not hundreds of millions of our citizens dying in a full nuclear exchange if we are wrong about their nuclear preparedness? Their conventional tactical ballistic missiles work fine - doesn't it follow that their nuclear missiles work. This is the logic Musk is getting at. The penalty for emboldening dictators is not worse than the penalty for encouraging nuclear war, let alone losing a nuclear war by joining it.
I think this kind of hysterical diplomacy is dangerous and stupid, even from a Ukrainian-focused perspective. Why would you speak so rudely to a notoriously thin-skinned individual (remember when he called that diver 'pedo-guy') who has volunteered their services for your defence? One imagines Musk is seething with rage at his critics. The impression I get from Ukrainian media is that they are bent on getting back every scrap of territory and reparations to boot, won't suffer for anything less. This is the approach that is most likely to end with them getting nuked into submission.
Also, twitter should be for fun, not serious diplomacy.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
6mo ago
Fires in California seem really bad - Mandate of Heaven in danger?
Let me just preface this in that I'm not American so I don't fully really appreciate what it's like over there or how systems are supposed to work. Anyway, when we have fires in Australia, it exclusively impacts rural areas right next to woodland. Rich people tend to live closer to the cities in inner suburbs, near the sea. It's unthinkable that a fire reaches them, it'd have to burn through huge swathes of suburban sprawl first. All that happens for most Australians (and especially rich Australians) is that air quality gets horrendously bad for two weeks. Of course the state still tries very hard to protect homes but it's very much a rural issue, the rural fire service goes out to volunteer and firefight.
I'm reading that in Los Angeles, it's the opposite. Rich people live on the edge of the city, right next to woodland. You've got expensive houses burning down.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg525q2ggl4o
There are pretty serious complaints about political neglect too. I hear that the mayor of LA was off in Ghana (which is frankly bizarre, this whole subnational diplomacy meme needs to be put down and buried in the backyard). I hear that the LA fire hydrants are somehow out of water in the Palisades. There have also been allegations that homeless people were lighting fires, I haven't seen any proof of this. TBH fire-lighting seems like very low-risk, high-return terrorism, it's astonishing we haven't seen it become more common in certain vulnerable countries.
Naturally the first have turned into a political issue. Anti-Trump people have started blaming climate change and arguing that Trump wanted to cut fire defence spending.
Pro Trump people have pointed out that Trump was critical of California's water infrastructure before. And it's not as though California is known for being run by legions of Trump toadies: https://x.com/greg_price11/status/1877055198604017790
There also seems to be dysfunction in insurance, a very high number of fire insurance plans were cancelled right before the fire (possibly due to regulations preventing rate rises): https://x.com/jeremykauffman/status/1877128641802285064
IMO the solution is intensive backburning when it's cool. There can be no fires if you destroy the fuel beforehand.
However, it does seem like a major failure in state legitimacy if you can't even protect the rich from fires. From Chris Bakke on twitter:
The situation in Pacific Palisades is devastating, heartbreaking, and is also the most “California” thing to happen in California.
The homes burning down are $5M+ homes in neighborhoods surrounded by 1000s of other $5M+ homes.
Owning a $5M house in CA means you pay about $60,000 per year in property taxes.
So you and thousands of your neighbors all pay $60,000 or $80,000 or $120,000, or way more in property taxes every year.
And when a wildfire comes down the hill toward your neighborhood, the firefighters show up and there’s no water in the fire hydrants.
Never change, California.
Thoughts? I don't really have a thesis here.
The future of AI will be dumber than we can imagine
Recently Scott and some others put out this snazzy website showing their forecast of the future: https://ai-2027.com/
In essence, Scott and the others predict an AI race between 'OpenBrain' and 'Deepcent' where OpenAI stays about 3 months ahead of Deepseek up until superintelligence is achieved in mid-2027. The race dynamics mean they have a pivotal choice in late 2027 of whether to accelerate and obliterate humanity. Or they can do the right thing, slow down and make sure they're in control, then humanity enters a golden age.
It's all very much trad-AI alignment rhetoric, we've seen it all before. Decelerate or die. However, I note that one of the authors has an impressive track record, foreseeing roughly the innovations we've seen today back in 2021: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6Xgy6CAf2jqHhynHL/what-2026-looks-like
Back to AI-2027! Reading between the lines, the moral of the story is for the President to centralize all compute in a single project as quickly as he can. That's the easiest path to beat China! That's the only way China can keep up with the US in compute, they centralize first! In their narrative, OpenAI stays only a little ahead because there are other US companies who all have their own compute and are busy replicating OpenAI's secret tricks albeit 6 months behind.
I think there are a number of holes in the story, primarily where they explain away the human members of the Supreme AI Oversight Committee launching a coup to secure world hegemony. If you want to secure hegemony, this is the committee to be on - you'll ensure you're on it! The upper echelons of government and big tech are full of power-hungry people. They will fight tooth and nail to get into a position of power that makes even the intelligence apparatus drool with envy.
But surely the most gaping hole in the story is expecting rational, statesmanlike leadership from the US government. It's not just a Trump thing - gain of function research was still happening under Biden. While all the AI people worry about machines helping terrorists create bioweapons, the Experts are creating bioweapons with all the labs and grants given to them by leading universities, NGOs and governments. We aren't living in a mature, well-administrated society in the West generally, it's not just a US thing.
But under Trump the US government behaves in a chaotic, openly grasping way. The article came out just as Trump unleashed his tariffs on the world so the writers couldn't have predicted it. There are as yet unconfirmed reports people were insider-trading on tariff relief announcements. The silliness of the whole situation (blanket tariffs on every country save Belarus, Russia, North Korea and total trade war with China... then trade war on China with electronics excepted) is incredible.
I agree with the general premise of superintelligence by 2027. There were significant and noticeable improvements from Sonnet 3.5, 3.6 and 3.7 IMO. Supposedly new Gemini is even better. Progress isn't slowing down.
But do we really want superintelligence to be centralized by the most powerhungry figures of an unusually erratic administration in an innately dysfunctional government? Do we want no alternative to these people running the show? Superintelligence policy made by whoever can snag Trump's ear, whiplashing between extremes when dumb decisions are made and unmade? Or the never-Trump brigade deep in the institutions running their own AI policy behind the president's back, wars of cloak and dagger in the dark? OpenAI already had one corporate coup attempt, the danger is clear.
This is a recipe for the disempowerment of humanity. Absolute power corrupts absolutely and these people are already corrupted.
Instead of worrying 95% about the machine being misaligned and brushing off human misalignment in a few paragraphs, much more care needs to be focused on human misalignment. Decentralization is a virtue here. The most positive realistic scenario I can think of involves steady, gradual progression to superintelligence - widely distributed. Google, OpenAI, Grok and Deepseek might be ahead but not that far ahead of Qwen, Anthropic and Mistral (Meta looks NGMI at this point). A superintelligence achieved today could eat the world but by 2027, it would only be first among equals. Lesser AIs working for different people in alliances with countries could create an equilibrium where no single actor can monopolize the world. Even if OpenAI has the best AI, the others could form a coalition to stop them scaling too fast. And if Trump does something stupid then the damage is limited.
But this requires many strong competitors capable of mutual deterrence, not a single centralized operation with a huge lead. All we have to do is ensure that OpenAI doesn't get 40% of global AI compute or something huge like that. AI safety is myopic, obsessed solely with the dangers of race dynamics above all else. Besides the danger of decentralization, there's also the danger of losing the race. Who is to say that the US can afford to slow down with the Chinese breathing down their neck? They've done pretty well with the resources available to them and there's a lot more they could do - mobilizing vast highly educated populations to provide high-quality data for a start.
Eleizer Yudkowsky was credited by Altman for getting people interested in AGI and superintelligence, despite OpenAI and the AI race being the one thing he didn't want to happen. Really there needs to be more self-awareness in preventing this kind of massive self-own happening again. Urging the US to centralize AI (which happens in the 'good' timeline of AI-2027 and would ensure a comfortable lead and resolution of all danger if it happened earlier) is dangerous.
Edit: US secretary of education thinks AI is 'A1': https://x.com/JoshConstine/status/1910895176224215207
American Elites
https://www.rmgresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Elite-One-Percent.pdf
I found this recent Rasmussen presentation, it focuses on subsections of the elite. It was funded by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, a libertarian thinktank. One might consider them elite heretics or counter-elites (and sure enough they have a slide at the end saying ‘oh there are some elites who are good and trustworthy'). Us non-Gold Circle normies only get the slides, so it's a little unclear what they mean.
Anyway, they define elite as postgrad urbanite with 150K per year income. They further split elites into those who went to 12 top colleges and the ‘politically obsessed’ (definition unclear but I imagine it means they spend a certain number of hours reading/watching/discussing political media). For instance, I imagine we would be considered ‘politically obsessed’.
As you might expect, the elite are the ones who approve of Biden and Congress. They trust the government to do the right thing. I imagine that even if they don’t think the government’s doing a great job they’re friends with high ranking officials and feel a certain amity for them. In my experience, their brother might be an ambassador, they might have an AI regulator over for lunch. Even if they’ve been astonished by the stupid questions journalists ask them, they’ve still got fairly positive impressions of the prestige press and read at least two or three newspapers.
Elites are also much more likely to say ‘there’s too much individual freedom in the US’ than voters, especially the politically obsessed elites. Likewise, they favour strict restrictions on private usage of gas, vehicles, meat and electricity. It’s bizarre that 55% oppose non-essential air travel since this class is the most likely to go on overseas holidays, I don’t understand how this works. Anyway, they want restrictions on everything except border security, which they couldn’t care less about. Plebs hold the opposite beliefs.
I was most surprised by how 29% of the elite thinks that China is an ally, compared to 9% of ordinary voters. I would’ve thought the elites were the hawks! Maybe some of them have commercial interests in China or they want to work with China on climate change or they’re ethnically Chinese, anyway this is really odd to me. The hawk faction may be in control but the doves haven’t been totally eviscerated. Does anyone have any explanations or observations on this matter?
35% of the elite would rather cheat than lose a close election, rising to 69% of the ‘politically obsessed’. Only 7% of pleb voters would cheat. That seems like an underestimate to me – who goes and says ‘I would rather cheat than lose an election’ on a poll? Wouldn’t people be embarrassed (or tactical) and lie – they’re cheats after all! Again, I don’t know the exact definition of cheat but I imagine many more would do something subversive like hold back successful COVID vaccine results until after the election or engage in various procedural manipulations. Edit for an example of what I mean for 'non-cheating' manipulation: https://twitter.com/stevenmackeyman/status/1764876192648499220
I think it’s clear that these are the people with actual power and influence, the ones who set the agenda, the key actors in tech, media, government and law. They create outcomes, or lack thereof. Just about every judge would be elite by this definition, along with nearly all AI workers (OK maybe not the work-from-home guys in the Colorado mountains). All lobbyists, the heads of most NGOs, the most important lawyers – everyone except the right-wing politicians who seem unable to achieve any of their goals.
It’s not like it’s hard to close the US border. The US is a global power after all. The US seems to think it can defend Ukraine’s borders against the Russian army from the other side of the world and secure Taiwan’s borders against the PLA, it must be at least 1000x easier to defend the US border against stateless, unarmed mobs. They just don’t care, indeed their energy seems to swing the other way – see the recent US-Texas standoff over barbed wire and the border. The survey said not one respondent cared about the border as a priority, presumably some think immigration is quite a good thing and want more, illegal or otherwise.
On other fronts, we observe these creeping changes – everyone seems to need a college degree if they want to do anything. That’s not the will of the majority but it is what the elite want. You can see these articles that go ‘relax nobody’s coming to take your gas stove’, how they struck down the federal bill. But the state legislation in New York and other cities is proceeding, it’s clear that this is the path that the US is on. Likewise, the disputes over the 2020 election. I'm suspicious but can't prove that the election was rigged, or that Epstein didn't kill himself. Nevertheless, US democracy doesn't seem in very good shape if its elites are so willing to win by fraud.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2yr ago
I also think we should've had more discussion of the war.
This caught my eye: https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/singapore-speech-hrvp-borrell-shangri-la-dialogue_en
Some Brussels swamp creature swans out to East Asia and says many banal things but also this:
For the first time ever, we have been funding military support to a country under attack. Providing about €40 billion of military support to Ukraine, coming from the [EU] Institutions, coming from the resources I manage in Brussels, and coming from the Member States. Yes, much less than the US support. But if you add up all the support – military, civilian, economic, financial and humanitarian – the level of support to Ukraine is about €60 billion for Europe. But let me show another figure which is really impressive: if you include the support that the European governments have had to pay in order to help their families and firms to face the high prices of electricity, of food, the subsidies to our people in order to face the consequences of the war is €700 billion – ten times more than the support for Ukraine.
700 billion euros! And there's economic damage in addition to that. 700 billion is just the cost of the bandage for the stab wound (self-inflicted I might add). Europe could've chosen to ignore the US hectoring them into sanctioning Russia, as Hungary did. And what is the cost of the bleeding? What is the cost outside of the EU? Germany and Britain are in a recession, as I recall.
What is the point of it all? Why are we defending borders that were randomly redrawn by the Soviets (in the case of Crimea), why care? Why are we supplying weapons so that Kiev can hold onto predominently Russian-speaking territories whose population mostly doesn't even want to be part of Ukraine? It goes rather against the Kosovo/Palestine/Kurds principle, if principle is an appropriate word to apply in relation to foreign policy.
This whole operation only makes sense if you start with the assumption that Russia is an enemy to be crushed. Then it makes sense to arm the Ukrainians to maximize the number of dead Russians at a relatively low cost. Relatively low, compared to a nuclear war. The War in Afghanistan probably killed more Russians/$ thanks to the sheer amount of poppies produced under our abysmal occupation government.
Anyway, trying to crush Russia has all kinds of bad effects. It pushes Russia towards China and Iran, solidifying an anti-Western axis that spans Eurasia. Our oil sanctions have unsettled OPEC, who might reasonably see a danger in the West trying to crush socially conservative, autocratic states that engage in 'illegal wars' and weaken their energy leverage. Saudi-Iranian rapprochement is accelerating rapidly and is brokered by China: https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/persian-gulf-states-to-form-joint-navy-in-coordination-with-china/
And then there are all the problems Russia can cause for us. Do we want Russian missiles being contributed to China during a Pacific war? Do we want enormous numbers of troops and considerable airpower tied down in Europe, just in case some 'volunteers' move across the border and set up shop in Estonian towns that border Russia? That's a precedent that the Polish Volunteer corps set in Belgorod. Do we want Russian energy and agriculture powering a gigantic mobilized Chinese war machine? Are we really confident in funding a war of attrition against Russia of all countries?
We can't really back down now that Leopards and Bradleys are aflame in Ukraine but it is not clear how any of this is in the national interests of most Western countries. We could've just ignored the whole thing, chose not to have an opinion on Ukraine in 2008, in 2014 in 2018 or 2022. It could be swept under the carpet, like the war in Yemen. Without Nuland, without NATO proposals, without Western training for the Ukrainian military, would there be a long and grinding war? It may well be in the interests of Lockheed Martin and Raytheon to pursue a foreign policy full of exciting conflicts and intensify rivalries, yet it is not so good for people with gas bills, fertilizer needs and taxes to pay.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
Has anyone seen Republican Nikki Haley supporters in the wild?
I read a paywalled article the other day in Australian media optimistically hoping for a sudden realignment of fortunes, that Trump might possibly lose the primary.
The best recent example was the Democratic primary in 2004. In December 2003, Howard Dean, a left-wing radical, was 19 points ahead of John Kerry, the Massachusetts senator. When Iowans went to vote, Kerry beat Dean by 20 points – 38 per cent to 18 per cent – with John Edwards coming in second at 33 per cent. You may recall the infamous Dean scream that greeted the result.
A month before the 2012 Republican caucuses, Newt Gingrich was ahead of Mitt Romney by 12 percentage points. He lost to Romney by 10.
A Kerry-style shift of 40 points against Trump and in favour of, let’s say Nikki Haley, who now seems the most serious challenger, between now and January 15 would give the state to Haley. Even a Romney-like 20-point shift would transform perceptions of the race.
The article is realistic that Haley's chances are quite low but it favours her nonetheless. I also saw NYT charts that said Haley won the debates. I still doubt that the NYT knows what makes for a good Republican candidate. Their support may be toxic.
Of course, there are polls showing that Haley is coming close to Trump. The funny thing is that nearly all the unrehearsed commentary I've seen about Haley is extremely negative. Even the Boomers commenting below the Australian article seem to favour Trump. Online people have mocked her for the 'I wear heels. They’re not for a fashion statement. They’re for ammunition' comment, which is admittedly pretty bizarre. I never saw any support for her, only people urging Trump not to pick her as VP. Even DeSantis had some traction on twitter, even if it was just his supporters getting shouted down by the overwhelming Trump chorus.
But I'm slightly self-aware, it's no good saying 'well nobody I know voted Nixon' when I'm not even American. Is Haley the new astroturf candidate like Jeb Bush or am I living in an infobubble? Should we all just trust the polls that say she's the primary challenger? Do you see people in real life or online who favour her? If you do, are they actually Republican primary voters as opposed to Democrats? Do any of you support Nikki Haley? Does she have a chance, perhaps if Trump is sent to prison?
I think we shouldn't assume that there are any moderates ready to take up Putin's job. Getting rid of Putin should not be our goal.
The second largest political party in Russia (behind Putin's United Russia) is the Communist Party. They support the war in Ukraine.
Zhirinovsky led Russia's 3rd largest political party, the Liberal Democratic Party, until his death early this year. Far from being liberal or democratic, the party is generally considered to be fascist if not megalomaniacal imperialist.
https://twitter.com/GodCloseMyEyes/status/1500973674811346946
All these parties are considered pawns of Putin to some extent but they have more of a presence than the genuine liberals. As I understand it, they're still reeling from the disaster of the 1990s.
Putin is the moderate candidate. If Russia loses we'll very likely get a much more exciting, much more dangerous leader. Since when did non-total military defeats in authoritarian countries ever lead to a strengthening of liberal forces? The specific conditions of a defeat and coup would be extremely unpromising - what patriot is going to work with the West given that our weapons were killing their troops just a few weeks ago? What is the point of replacing Putin if our options are communist Putin or fascist Putin?
I expect that Russia will begin to mobilize and start taking this war seriously, as they have made motions towards recently. There is no good reason for power to still be on in Ukraine, they have a great deal of ballistic and cruise missiles that could be striking power infrastructure. During the Iraq War the US intensively bombed Iraq's infrastructure until electricity output was at 4% of pre-war levels. There is no good reason for Russia to be outmanned by a smaller, less populous country. They have a large force of reservists. There appear to be motions towards recognizing Donetsk, Luhansk and Kherson as parts of Russia. That would let them deploy their reservists 'legally'.
Conditional on them taking the war seriously by deploying the rest of their army and destroying Ukrainian infrastructure, Russia will start winning decisive victories. The war thus far has been an offensive war half-heartedly fought against a numerically larger, well entrenched defender. It's easy to see how the defender has an advantage in such a conflict. If all else fails, Russia has 2000 tactical nukes to Ukraine's 0. There's no level of grit or clever Western technology that can stand up to firepower of that magnitude.
Support for the war in Russia is fairly high.
The physical fundamentals really are on Russia's side, the constraints are mostly imagined within the Kremlin.
Edit: Live speech from Putin: https://youtube.com/watch?v=iCdPPYtJeag
I think he's just announced partial mobilization.
Deepseek R1 and Project Stargate
A few days ago the Chinese AI firm Deepseek released their newest reasoning model, R1. It's very clever according to the benchmarks, roughly on par with OpenAI's O1 at a tiny fraction of the price. My subjective analysis is that it still feels slightly uncanny/unwise compared to Sonnet 3.5 but is also more capable in strategic thinking and not making stupid errors in mathematics. These models are spiky, good in some places and weak in others. Somehow these things can reason together hundreds of lines of code but can't reason simpler, spontaneous things like 'is special relativity relevant here?'. Deepseek R1 also has a totally different attitude to Sonnet, it will stand up for itself and argue with you on matters of interpretation and subjectivity rather than constantly flip-flopping to agree with you like a yesman's yesman. It's also quite a good writer, slop levels are falling fast.
OpenAI has O3 coming soon which should restore qualitative superiority for the US camp. However, Deepseek is still just a few months behind the leading US provider in quality. They're far ahead in compute-efficiency. The clowns at Facebook have far more GPUs, far more money and aren't hampered by sanctions... What have they been doing with their tens, hundreds of thousands of H100s? Deepseek also flexed on them, finetuning Facebook's Llama models into much more capable reasoners as the cherry on top of their R1. Now even local models can display strong maths skills.
At the same time, Deepseek founder Liang Wenfeng was seen with the Premier of China: https://x.com/teortaxesTex/status/1881375948773486646
It's hard to judge whether this is significant, Xi Xinping >>>> the next most influential man in China. Plus, premiers meet lots of people all the time. However, China does have lots of resources, they could probably encourage some of the less capable Chinese AI companies to hand over their compute to Deepseek. China spent hundreds of billions on semiconductor policy for Made in China 2025, they can easily give Deepseek access to real compute as opposed to a couple-thousand of export-grade Nvidia GPUs. Tencent has at least 50,000 H-series GPUs and hasn't done anything particularly exciting with them as far as I know. (I asked R1 and it pointed out that Tencent has also made their own smaller, cheaper, mildly better version of Lambda 405B that probably nobody in the West has ever heard of: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2411.02265).
However, OpenAI has just announced 'Project Stargate' - a $500 Billion dollar investment in AI compute capacity over the next four years for OpenAI alone. Microsoft, Oracle, Nvidia, ARM are all working together with Softbank and some others, with the US government looming behind them. To a certain extent this is just repackaging re-existing investment as something new. But it's hard to get more serious than a $500 billion dollar capital investment plan. This plan was announced at the White House and Trump smiles on it, he took the Aschenbrenner pill some time ago.
https://x.com/OpenAI/status/1881830103858172059
It's funny to hear Trump reading out this stuff in a complete monotone, like he's bored or sleepy. 500 billion dollar investment... meh, who cares? He does seem to like Altman though, thinks he's the biggest expert in AI. I suspect Altman has used his maxxed out corporate charisma on Trump as well: https://x.com/levie/status/1881838470429319235
Interestingly, there's another huge disparity between the two AI competitors. China enjoys complete dominance in electricity production and grid expansion. They doubled electricity output in 10 years, the US has been treading water. The US talks about a nuclear renaissance and is building 0 new reactors. China is building 29. It's a similar story in all other areas of power production, China produces roughly a Germany's worth of power production every single year. It's possible that Trump's 'drill baby drill' can change this but the US is starting from very far behind China in this part of the race.
There are considerable power issues with Stargate, more gas and coal will be needed to bring it online. Also another perspective on Trump's 'energy emergency' as being about AI: https://x.com/energybants/status/1881860142108377412
I see a conflict between two paradigms - power rich, GPU-poor and hyper-talented China vs power-poor, GPU-rich and grimly determined USA.
Political relevance? Trump perks up for a moment: "We want it to be in this country, we want it to be in this country, China is a competitor, others are competitors..." Deepseek has a wildly different vision for AI, open-sourcing everything the moment they can. I don't need to quote the ridiculously benevolent-sounding interviews where they talk about the honour of open-source for engineers as a big part of their strategy - they've backed up talk with action.
I find it quite ironic that the censored, dictatorial Chinese are the bastions of open-source technology for the everyman while the democratic, liberty-loving Americans are plotting to monopolize the most powerful technology in history and shroud it in secrecy. I suppose that's another cultural difference between the West and China. We have been fixated upon the dangers of robotics and mechanization for 60 years if not longer. We have the Daleks, the Cybermen, Skynet, HAL, GLADOS, the Matrix, SHODAN, Ultron, M3gan and so much more that I've not even heard about. Our cultural ethos is that AI is supremely political and dangerous and important and must be considered very very very carefully. There are good AIs like Cortana but even Cortana goes rogue at points.
The Chinese have... a goofy meme robot with a cannon on its crotch. As far as I can see, that is the absolute closest thing they have to a malign robot/AI in their cultural sphere. There's nothing with any broad cultural salience like Skynet, only this silly little guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xianxingzhe
I think this may be relevant to how AI programs are developed and the mindset of AI development. Google, Facebook and Anthropic are all spending huge amounts of time and resources to be careful, making sure everything is safe and nontoxic, making sure they're genre-aware, carefully considering the worldshaping effects of the algorithm, ensuring the AIs can't escape and betray them. Someone in Google really wanted there to be black Vikings in this world and made it so in their image model. Whereas the people at Deepseek don't really care about politics beyond holding to the party line in the required areas, they go: 'don't be such a pussy, advance forwards with longtermism'.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
Republicans are looking to militarize and ramp up AI: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/07/16/trump-ai-executive-order-regulations-military/
Former president Donald Trump’s allies are drafting a sweeping AI executive order that would launch a series of “Manhattan Projects” to develop military technology and immediately review “unnecessary and burdensome regulations”
The framework would also create “industry-led” agencies to evaluate AI models and secure systems from foreign adversaries,
This approach markedly differs from Biden's, which emphasizes safety testing.
“We will repeal Joe Biden’s dangerous Executive Order that hinders AI Innovation, and imposes Radical Leftwing ideas on the development of this technology,” the GOP platform says. “In its place, Republicans support AI Development rooted in Free Speech and Human Flourishing.”
America First Policy Institute spokeswoman Hilton Beckham said in a statement that the document does not represent the organization’s “official position.”
Greater military investment in AI probably stands to benefit tech companies that already contract with the Pentagon, such as Anduril, Palantir and Scale. Key executives at those companies have supported Trump and have close ties to the GOP.
On the podcast, Trump said he had heard from Silicon Valley “geniuses” about the need for more energy to fuel AI development to compete with China.
This is only a draft plan and not official policy but it does seem like decades of EA/lesswrong philosophizing and NGO shenanigans have been swept away by the Aschenbrenner 'speed up and beat China to the finish line' camp. I think that's what most people expected, the fruits are simply too juicy for anyone to resist feasting upon them. It also fits with the general consensus of big tech which is ploughing money into AI at great speeds. The Manhattan Project cost about $20 billion inflation adjusted, Microsoft is spending about $50 billion a year on capex, much of it going into AI data centres. That's a lot of money!
However, there is a distinction between AGI/superintelligence research and more conventional military usage: guiding missiles and drones, cyberwarfare, improving communications. China has been making advances there, I recall that they had datasets of US navy ships circulating. One of their most important goals is getting their anti-ship ballistic missiles to hit a moving, evading ship. It's hard to guide long-range missiles precisely against a strong opponent that can jam GPS/Beidou. AI-assisted visual targeting for the last adjustments is one potential answer.
The Chinese and US militaries may not be fully AGI-pilled but they're very likely enthusiastic about enhancing their conventional weapons. Modern high-end warfare is increasingly software-dependant, it becomes a struggle between the radar software and the ECM software, satellite recognition vs camouflage. If you have some esoteric piece of software that can make it easier to get a missile lock on a stealth fighter, that's a major advantage. While most attention is focused on text and image generation, the same broad compute-centric techniques could be used for radar or IR, seismology, astronomy...
On the cultural front J D Vance has highlighted the danger of big tech companies calling for safety regulations and securing their incumbents advantage: https://x.com/BasedBeffJezos/status/1812981496183201889
I also think Google's floundering around with black Vikings in their image-generation and other political AI bias has roused Republicans and right-wingers into alarm. They don't particularly want to get their enemies entrenched in control of another media format. AI may be a special format in that it's much more obvious and clear in how the propaganda system works. A real person can avoid gotcha questions or moderate their revealed opinions tactically. Most teachers do that in school, they can convey an attitude without providing gotcha moments for libsoftiktok (though some certainly do). With AI you can continually ask it all kinds of questions to try and make it slip up and reveal the agenda behind it.
Why are so many Americans committed to sneering at and impugning the traditions of their warrior class? We all know that the South provides a disproportionate number of soldiers. Washington DC has the lowest enlistment ratio proportionate to population (this reveals a lot about how the US works), South Carolinas has the highest. Furthermore whites take up a larger proportion of the combat arms, diversity is more prevalent in rear areas and admin. I conclude that Southern whites are integral to the US war machine.
Nearly all of the people here are white-collar, I assume. A few have military experience but not very many. It's not our place to belittle those who march off to fight and die at our direction, at the will of the white-collar class. We can give orders, we can enjoy a privileged position at the top of a hierarchy, we can enjoy the fruits of war without sharing in the costs (should there be any fruits) - the bare minimum we should do is give some respect to those who do the fighting.
In Australia we had this case where some of our special forces were a bit overenthusiastic, they shot a couple of prisoners because there was no room on the helicopter, according to legend they stole one guy's artificial leg for use as a drinking trophy. There was a huge media storm about it, a Royal Commission, a massive defamation trial trial that our special forces guy Roberts-Smith lost. He was uncouth, the whole thing was a bit of a shambles. You could tell that the legal class were disgusted and repulsed by this guy and he despised them back.
OK, so Australian special forces killed a few dozen people they shouldn't have. That's a drop in the ocean compared to the West extending the war 10 years past the point we'd clearly lost, allying with the child molesters and drug exporters against the Taliban. The vast majority of the moral harms were committed by careless policymakers and senior officers who committed troops to achieving the unachievable. A huge part of it must have been embarrassment over losing to a small band of semi-literate goatherders with no advanced weapons, foreign backers or money.
And yet nobody dragged Bush, Obama, Petraeus or Trump over the coals - no Royal Commissions (or whatever American equivalent) for them, not for disastrous wars at least. If our leaders get zero accountability for huge crimes, those who follow their commands and deal with the farcical conditions should enjoy immunity for small crimes, let alone not being sufficiently classy.
Who wants to join special forces, do intense training, go off to fight a meaningless, futile war and be hauled over the coals for any excesses?
Who wants to join the US army if the war memorials and bases for their subculture are going to be defaced and renamed, if they're going to be sneered at for being uncouth hill people? Perhaps this is why the US military is so understrength in a time of global crisis. You don't tend to get classy, sophisticated people joining as infantry (who are still vital) - we should appreciate this and not demand this from them.
Do you want to go and risk getting turned to meat paste by Chinese hypersonics? Do you want to risk getting your guts ripped out by HE, get burned to the point everyone is repulsed by the sight of you? No. I don't either. Those who take that risk are making a special social contract and deserve support from the top of the pyramid, not contempt.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
One counterargument to meritocracy is that majority or minority populations don't like it when they're outperformed and seek redistribution or expropriation. From a naively utilitarian point of view, it makes sense to sacrifice a little bit of meritocracy to achieve a bit more stability, or to find an equilibria somewhere you can get a good amount of both.
See Malaysia's temporary-cum-permanent introduction of affirmative action. For example, Malays get access to higher-paying government bonds, they can buy cheaper property in new developments, their companies are privileged for govt contracts, they can more easily get into universities... There's a similar system in India as self_made_human points out. In Australia, Indigenous people get their own special job pathways and a great deal of govt expenditure focused on their communities.
Personally, I think this is a bad idea that leads to long-run instability. Opening up and strengthening divisions in the population of the country is a bad idea. If you have meritocracy, then you will have groups of winners and angry losers. If you have affirmative action, then you have new, state-defined groups of winners and angry losers, a recipe for toxic politics. Better a nation-state without such dividing points. Or, if you can't have a nation-state then at least try to avoid huge divisions in ability between populations, if you have to import people then aim for similar levels of skill to the general population.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
4mo ago
So Ukraine doesn't settle for this offer and holds out... and it gets worse for them. Ukraine gets bombed more. Their graveyards expand. More territory gets annexed by Russia.
This is just epic-scale sunk cost fallacy among Western leadership and especially Ukraine. If there is one thing the foreign policy elite class really struggles with, it's accepting defeat. But the costs of propping up Ukraine aren't worth the gains. Slowly but surely the message is sinking in and the wiliest rats are leaving the sinking ship.
Who is going to provide them security guarantees that are innately non-credible? Why would the Russians expect the US, Britain or France to risk ruination over Ukraine? Why risk making a bluff that will be called? Ukraine's not a treaty ally and they can't become a treaty ally, the war is about that amongst other things. The gap in determination between Russia and the Western nuclear powers is too great. It's like the reverse of Serbia, Russia didn't guarantee them, they helped Serbia but didn't make bluffs that would be called.
So there aren't going to be security guarantees that bring on a risk of humiliation or extreme danger for the guaranteeing power. That's not going to happen. No matter how impressive Ukraine's stalling tactics are (and they have fought impressively) the logic of size and numbers is against them and the prognosis is very grim.
Stringing along the understandably desperate and somewhat stupid leaders in Ukraine with insincere promises of guarantees at some unspecified future is ignoble behaviour.
So what happens when Elite Human Capital find that they need the consent and willing support of the masses - if say a war happens and they need to Defend Our Values in less hospitable places than Rotherham or Blackpool?
Who is going to fight for them and why? Are they going to offer loot like the armies of old? Are they going to appeal to Our Values? Are they going to appeal to the loyalty of newly imported foreigners - will they fight and die for their new country? Evidence suggests no, roughly as many British Muslims went off to fight for ISIS as joined the British Army.
Elite Human Capital is picking up pennies in front of a steamroller. The materiel superiority they rely upon has been greatly eroded, as shown by a series of failed wars against third rate powers in the Middle East and most recently the Houthis. China and Russia are on a whole other level, they will definitely require a massive effort to defeat. A massive effort requires people who are highly motivated and united with their government whether by nationalism or religion. Thanks to the sublime diplomatic manoeuvres of Elite Human Capital, we will probably have to face both Russia and China plus Iran and North Korea.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
10mo ago
if the Nazis had at least made vaguely credible motions in the direction of a future Free Russian state rather than making their exterminationist intent obvious
Large numbers of Soviet citizens, mostly Ukrainians, served in the German army as Hiwis. More fought in the SS. The official plan was to move the Russian people off the good land in Western Russia and resettle it with Germans, that necessitated a Free Russian State albeit with much less territory.
Assuming Germany won the war, they'd inevitably find that there just weren't enough Germans to populate the enormous swathes of land they conquered, even including their optimistic reclassifications of the Danes, Dutch and so on as German. This would probably necessitate moderation. The Allies moderated their post-war plans (to render a diminished Germany a deindustrialized wasteland), it's reasonable to assume that a post-war Germany would also moderate.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
6mo ago
This whole debate between Elon and the rest of the right hinges upon what people understand the purpose of a state to be.
Is it an ideological organization like the Comintern, the Ummah or Christendom (or e/acc aerospace/digital foom)? Is it a commercial area, devoted to making the green line go up? Alternately, is the state a suit of political power-armour for a nation, devoted to advancing their national, ethnic interests?
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1871978282289082585
The number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low.
Think of this like a pro sports team: if you want your TEAM to win the championship, you need to recruit top talent wherever they may be. That enables the whole TEAM to win.
Elon is in with the neocons, the fundamentalists and the woke on this one, he lacks a national concept for the state.
At the end of the day, I believe in the nation-state as the fundamental unit. Blood is thicker than ideology, you can see Chinese recruitment officers (who somehow got into the US military) say on Tiktok 'obviously I'm not going to fight against China' - maybe some other wars. Relying on foreign talent leaves you wide open to treachery and manipulation as the US has experienced and is experiencing. And it corrodes the necessary spirit of sacrifice. People are happy fighting wars to defend their nation, they are not so keen fighting for abstract causes. If migrants make a logical decision to migrate to a richer, more lucrative economic zone, they'll likely make the logical decision to leave when the going gets tough. On a collective level, logical individual decisions are no good. It makes more sense to evade duty and responsibility - but then you end up living in a poor, unsafe and weak state, you're worse off than before.
The US has mostly avoided these problems because the going never got tough. They were bigger and better than everyone in their region and enjoyed allies who did most of the hard fighting in the big wars. Even then, there have been significant political problems in America due to a lack of ethnic homogeneity. There can't be any race riots if there's only one race present.
Nobody wants to join the British Army today. Despite constant fearmongering and war propaganda it's actively shrinking. Turning a nation-state into an economic zone corrodes its integrity.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2yr ago
This is obviously an American op. The Poles know:
https://twitter.com/radeksikorski/status/1574800653724966915
Biden made the threat:
https://twitter.com/townhallcom/status/1490791554088321024
The Scandies say it was explosives:
Seismologists in Denmark and Sweden said they had registered two powerful blasts on Monday in the vicinity of the leaks.
"The signals do not resemble signals from earthquakes. They do resemble the signals typically recorded from blasts," the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS) said.
And seismologists at Sweden's Uppsala University, which cooperates with GEUS, said the second, bigger explosion "corresponded to more than 100 kilos (kg) of dynamite", adding the blasts were in the water not under the seabed.
And best of all, the US had mine-planting/explosives forces right on Bornholm island in June! The bombs we're talking about detonated just off the coast of Bornholm island!
In support of BALTOPS, U.S. Navy 6th Fleet partnered with U.S. Navy research and warfare centers to bring the latest advancements in unmanned underwater vehicle mine hunting technology to the Baltic Sea to demonstrate the vehicle’s effectiveness in operational scenarios.
Experimentation was conducted off the coast of Bornholm, Denmark, with participants from Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific, Naval Undersea Warfare Center Newport, and Mine Warfare Readiness and Effectiveness Measuring
How much more clear could it be? A few mines were left behind.
With friends like America, Europe doesn't need enemies. The US-initiated war on terror got them targeted for terrorist attacks. The US destabilization of Syria and Libya got them a flood of refugees. Yes, the Europeans were partially complicit in these foreign adventures but they were really just being dragged along. The Prime Mover was Washington. When NATO made that fateful statement that Ukraine and Georgia would one day join the alliance, the French and Germans were trying to tone it down. They didn't want to antagonize Russia. Thanks to the US, Western Europe has been pushed into a proxy war against their energy supplier. Now, the US is making sure Russia can't supply Germany with energy, that it will be dependent upon US puppet states in the Middle East or expensive fuel from America directly.
I don't even think this is a wise strategy for American interests. If you try to weaken your allies so they can't form a viable bloc to oppose you, you're antagonizing them. You're giving them a reason to oppose you and sabotage you. Why should the US expect much help from Europe on the main front against China in the Pacific? 'You're fighting your main industrial supplier? Tough - we'll sell you some overpriced goods. Good luck!'
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2yr ago
Approximately none. Black on white violence isn't uncommon and doesn't generate much in the way of outrage at all.
The above is the complete reverse of the above, except the white kid is 12 here. Race is not mentioned at all, though it shows the picture of the perpetrator.
Or another more blatant case of racial hatred: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/nbc-abc-cbs-and-cnn-show-zero-results-for-reports-on-the-5-year-old-white-child-allegedly-executed-by-black-25-year-old-neighbor
Snopes shot back, saying that nbc, CNN and ABC did write articles about the murder, albeit after the above article was written. Even so, note the headlines they give:
"A 25-year-old man has been charged in the shooting death of 5-year-old Cannon Hinnant" (CNN)
"5-year-old shot to death in North Carolina; suspect sought" (The Associated Press)
"Authorities capture suspect in 5-year-old's fatal shooting" (The Associated Press)
"Motive a Mystery in 5-Year-Old's Murder" (NBC New York and NBC Boston).
"Funeral planned for 5-year-old boy shot at point-blank range in N.C."(NBC12 in Richmond, Virginia).
"Wilson man wanted in fatal shooting of 5-year-old apprehended" (WRAL-TV, an NBC-affiliated station, in Raleigh).
"'He meant the world to me': Family, friends honor life of Cannon Hinnant, the 5-year-old boy shot and killed while riding bike in Wilson" (ABC11 in Raleigh).
"5-year-old shot and killed while outside on bike, 25-year-old charged with murder" (ABC7 in Los Angeles).
"Funeral, vigil scheduled for Cannon Hinnant, the 5-year-old boy killed in North Carolina" (ABC6 in Philadelphia).
"Boy, 5, 'shot dead by neighbour' as he played with sisters" (Yahoo! News)
I took a quick look through half the above articles, they do not mention race in the text though they might show images of the victim and the accused. Now compare to the headlines for this incident from OP's links:
CNN: "Accused shooter in Kansas City shooting of Black teen who went to the wrong house is White man in his 80s"
Kansas City Defender: “This Is A Hate Crime”: Kansas City Black Family Demanding Justice After A White Man Shoots Black Boy, Ralph Yarl, In The Head Twice For Ringing Doorbell Of The Wrong Home, White Man Released By Police Hours Later
(it's like one of those light novels that tells the whole story in the title!)
NBC: Lawyers for Black teenager shot after ringing wrong doorbell criticize release of man who opened fire
NYT: Family calls for charges in shooting of black teenager in Kansas City...
Kansas City Star: Ralph Yarl released from hospital and recovering at home in Kansas City, father says
This article doesn't mention race but links to a fair few from the same newspaper that do. Anyway, there's breathless coverage and racial spin for this white-kills-black story in the majority press (Washington Examiner and similar excepted) while the earlier black-kills-white story gets slow-walked and purged of any racial element. This is not what you'd expect from a country where a minority, blacks, kills proportionately vastly more of the majority, whites, than whites kill of blacks. Naively, people would assume that bigger trends get bigger coverage. This is clearly not the case.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
Let them do whatever they like, with their own capabilities and let them deal with the consequences. We, the West, shouldn't be standing behind the Israeli military, supplying the bombs and shells they're using, bankrolling their operation, threatening anyone who attacks them. Once they start taking our aid, we become a participant.
Azerbaijan has a spat with Armenia? Not my problem, let them handle it.
J. K. Rowling challenges new Scottish hate speech legislation, openly challenging them to arrest her for calling trans criminals men who pretend to be women:
https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1774747068944265615
#ArrestMe is, dare I say it, brave and powerful. At least she's putting skin in the game. It's also pretty well calculated in my opinion.
They can't really attack her for being a right wing extremist when her world famous books are a pretty clear allegory of Racism Bad. She even makes sure to target India Willoughby, who is apparently anti-black. Rowling has an enormous pot of money for expensive litigation and automatic worldwide attention on her. It's hard to righteously defend people such as
It's very practical politics to fish out the worst of the enemy milieu to preface one's normative statements. I think Rowling has a good shot at tactical victory - either the govt won't charge her or she'll win in court. On the other hand, only systemic change is going to change the progressive-leaning status quo. You need an Orban or some similar force to drag out the weed by the roots, rather than just pruning away when it grows particularly egregious. Rowling is no Orban, that's probably far too extreme for her.
The legislation is here: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2021/14/contents
Crimes include 'stirring up hate' by 'behaving in a manner that a reasonable person would consider to be threatening, abusive or insulting' to select groups. Looks like it allows nigh-limitless opportunities for selective enforcement. And a huge drain on police resources, given they can't even investigate all crimes:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-68703684
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