No, I misunderstood you, and thought you were saying that being fooled by a gotcha quote was reason #3,001 to hate Europeans. I apologise.
I do think that performative hatred of Europeans has grown up on the American Right as a response to performative love of Europe on the American Left. @FCfromSSC has been very open about this and the internal dynamics behind it, and I understand, but it doesn't make it any more fun from this end. I'm a little prickly on the subject.
Turkey is... very much regarded as a necessary evil, especially after Erdogan's promises of reform turned out to be lies. Turkey is the Token Evil Teammate, the guy who is provisionally on your team for reasons of his own and you recognise he doesn't wish you well but you can't get rid of him because you need him (to defend your southern border).
From my perspective, America is moving towards that position with a speed that honestly is quite shocking to people who were alive in the 90s and who still broadly believe in the America of "Tear down this Wall!" and Hollywood and WW2 and the Berlin Airlift. I don't think Americans quite see this, and those who do tend to dismiss it as TDS*.
*One reason it looks like TDS is that many Europeans can't quite believe that America has changed in this way, and have convinced themselves that it's all the fault of one specific man and that once he's gone the 'real' America will come back. Personally I think that's the logic of an abused spouse, but Boomers love their illusions.
It's not like you have to care, of course, and plenty of people on this board have made it clear that they don't. But being broadly pro-Trump was very common for younger Reds in Europe in 2023: Farage rallies etc. were full of Trump supporters (like me) and now you can barely find any.
Corvos
4hr ago
Accepting that, isn't that partly because civilized people had always been on the positive end of population transfers?
It also effectively sweeps the Soviet Union under the rug
I'm not being snarky, but a big part of America's historic pitch during the Cold War was that you guys were genuinely better than the Soviet Union. Not just in a Capitalists vs. Commies way but in terms of genuinely caring about the relationship between larger states and smaller states. That was always a propaganda-augmented talking point, it swept a lot of stuff under the rug, but I think also the need to appear the moral superiors of the USSR constrained America in a lot of ways. America no longer seems to consider that relevant. I'd go so far as to say that a big part of Trump's appeal for Americans is throwing off the voluntary constraints that the USA placed on itself during the Cold War, eliciting predictably negative international reactions.
what is America even supposed to do with that?
Just... don't? It's totally rational for America to want Greenland. Hell, I'd love the UK to have Greenland if we could swing it. But if we offered to buy Greenland we'd get the same reaction that Trump got, and not just because we couldn't afford it.
Again, I'm not being snarky here. The world is full of things that people want and can't have. I wasn't being melodramatic talking about people's daughters: everyone understand why you might want somebody's daughter, and historically it used to be perfectly acceptable to buy one, even if you had to dress up the transaction a bit. Now it's not. And if you say, "What am I supposed to do with that? I don't have children and I'm in love with her and I really, really want her," what kind of reaction do you think you'll get?
Because this is the most peaceful disruption possible to the ideal of stable borders, and if Europe can't negotiate these things rationally it will not like when America also decides to get irrational.
I'm aware, and this is the other element. You think people have forgotten this even for a moment? Even the most idle request from America comes with the implied threat of economic sanctions or even military sanctions on refusal. Ten times so for Trump because, as mentioned, he's clearly uninterested in norms and self-constraint. That's why people are so sensitive to this behaviour from America specifically. Like, seriously, you're telling me you wouldn't have a negative reaction if Xi said those kinds of things while trying to buy American territory?
Errata:
Peaceful land deals are historically normal, the United States was built on them, Europe was built on them.
Historically normal, yes.
Do you have this same attitude when Spain asks the UK for Gibraltar?
You're asking a British guy if he's offended when Spain keeps trying to steal our territory? Of course I do. We went to war for the Falklands barely thirty years ago.
What are you expecting me to say? There are things that are commonly understood to not be for sale. You do not peer through someone's window and then ring their doorbell and ask how much they want for the plush sofa. You don't negotiate for someone's virgin daughter. You don't try to purchase the largest part of a country's territory, especially when said territory is nominally self-governing. Doing these things is not going to be greeted by interest or by a long explanation of the sociological details that lead to such requests being considered inappropriate. It's going to be greeted by an invitation to take a long walk off a short pier.
Ignoring people's desire not to give you something, up to and including refusing to rule out taking it by force, then makes that 100x times worse.
If you must have a long discussion on the long-term effects of postwar American third-worldism, and how WW2 affected people's understanding of the appropriate relationship between large strong nations and smaller weaker ones, especially ones who were already loyal allies, and how economic interests (don't) trade off against sacred values, I suppose we can, but frankly I don't want to and I doubt it will make any difference to you.
Corvos
23hr ago
The literal English meaning of "native Brit" is, of course, someone born in Britain
I'm sure this wouldn't have been considered the literal English meaning of "native Brit" in 1900. And it's not how we use the word "native" now either. Or is everyone born in the USA a "Native American"?
See, I get that, when put politely.
I think it's a bit sad, and I do think that to some degree it lines you up with "if it please you m'lud, grandpappy was a Kenyan terrorist" Obama and "did I mention I'm Irish" Biden in the queue of people happy to drop a long-term ally in the cacky for internal political reasons. (I know it looks different from the American side).
But if that is how you feel, I'd prefer America just separate. It's the current attitude of "we despise you pathetic cucks, now give us the land we want and buy our helicopters and pay us eighty bajillion dollars or we'll bump up tariffs even more and if you think of cooperating with China we'll destroy you, though even the Red Chinese are more impressive than you, cuck" I object to. I'm as pleased as anyone that woke is severely weakened, but I wish it hadn't come with all the other stuff.
And there is the trademark American response to being told no. Congratulations. We have successfully laid bare the source of Trump's recent diplomatic problems.
I'm not even being sarcastic, really. This is literally it. This is how it went down, recreated live.
Corvos
1d ago
unless the concept of wanting to negotiate a land deal is inherently disrespectful
See? You do get it, even if you don't agree with it.
Corvos
1d ago
Yes, but there's a time and a place. To take a deliberately extreme example, a businessman who declines to rule out raping your wife isn't keeping his options open; that's not an option you're supposed to have. Or to want, for that matter.
Corvos
1d ago
I don't think anybody serious would propose that the Louisiana Purchase is absurd.
Did anyone ask the Cajuns? Nowadays the idea of just buying another part of a country is considered inappropriate.
Hong Kong returning to the Chinese
the reunification of East and West Germany
You are proving my point. All of your examples are the rectification of borders after an act of colonial aggression, or sorting out some weird issues where it's not clear how a border runs through a town and some buildings end up where they don't want to be.
Like it or not, that is very different from, "I have loads of money and a big stick. You have land. I think you see where this is going, but it can go easy or hard. Your choice."
Corvos
1d ago
I actually get very tired of people claiming to take offense at fundamentally normal behavior
Alternative hypothesis: you may have a very unique idea of what constitutes normal. The modern first world has a very, very strong norm of borders not moving, for obvious reasons. What Trump has been doing with Denmark and Canada is like shitting on the pavement and then being surprised that everyone's offended or mocking: doesn't everyone shit? Yes, but in a very different place and manner.
It's not normal to spitball about annexing territory, and hasn't been normal to negotiate the possibility since the 1940s, especially when you accompany those 'negotiations' with obvious threats.
I can believe that. I guess what concerns me is that institutionally the same machinery has to apply to me and to Nutty Alice, and there seems to be a strong presumption that the role of a doctor is to constrain the patient and that a patient researching their own condition is essentially misbehaving. From there it's only a hop, skip and a jump to "people shouldn't be able to get medical advice from AI, and doctors should ignore it when they do".
Whereas instead we could work hard to make AI better at obtaining clinical histories and to make feedback loops with reality via diagnostics faster and cheaper. Maybe cutting Nutty Alice off if she exceeds some kind of monthly limit.
More broadly, and with what I hope is appropriate tact, I guess I see this as another skirmish in the long-running war over whether doctors should be respected servants or priests. It's simultaneously true that doctors have genuine expertise and it's often sensible "not to [flatter their patients' biases] due to the negative outcomes associated with that", while also being true that from the patient perspective doctors' anti-sycophancy training seems to be dialled so high that the relationship feels antagonistic. The default response to patients with their own opinions seems to be "no" rather than "yes, but".
To put it another way,
"suffering sometimes is part of life. If you have a viral illness you need to wait it out and take care of yourself most of the time, the doctor will not be able to do anything and rarely is it worth confirming which URI it is,"
is true but doesn't seem to me to be striking quite the right attitude for a relationship that I conceive of as client and service provider.
A lawyer who tells you, "mate, it's not worth suing, even if you win the damages won't be worth it" or a plumber who tells you, "plastic pipes sweat a bit in the cold, it doesn't mean there's an issue" is worth their weight in gold. A lawyer who tells you, "all landlords steal your deposit, come back when you've got real problems" or a plumber who says, "pipes do that, call me when there's an actual leak"... not so much.
With respect to viral illnesses, I might have a better opinion of anti-virals than the doctor does, or I might suspect it's actually something else and want a test to check even if the doctor thinks I'm being silly, or I might just be really really interested in URI strains. In that scenario I think it's more productive to give me access to cheap good advice and make my wishes easier to fulfil than to litigate whether or not I'm permitted to have them. If Nutty Alice needs special accommodation I'd rather we tried to lay down some rules for her specifically than constrain everyone.
Caveats: some issues genuinely need gatekeeping, such as coordination problems like antibiotics or medical interventions with genuine health risks. I'm talking about a change in the relationship during diagnosis and exploratory treatment, not opening up the medical cabinet to all comers.
Caveats the second: I have experience with the British private system but not the American one (which might be quite different).
Intuition pump: debugging is usually the slowest and most annoying part of fixing any problem. Making each debugging attempt cost hundreds of dollars and take 20 minutes max and have a 25% chance of being refused outright is very inefficient.
Yeeees, you're probably not wrong, but if you reverse the viewpoint to get the patient's experience for these examples you get:
dealing with an anxious patient who repeatedly asks the AI until they get the answer they want
The doctor repeatedly dismisses your concerns.
assholes
The doctor dislikes you.
rationing care (which the AI has no facility with)
The doctor agrees you would benefit from something but refuses to give it to you anyway
And when you put it like that you can kind of see why so many people use LLMs. I think this is one of those 'the only way out is through' situations where it would be far more useful to improve the availability of testing while also training the AI to fluidly guide people through quick home diagnostics, so they can get solid evidence. The alternative seems to be sticking with the current situation of, "pay the doctor $500 dollars for twenty minutes of thought and hope desperately he/she doesn't think you're a whiny crybaby or too convinced of your story'.
Corvos
3d ago
Handling contract negotiations with employers. It's far faster and cheaper than lawyers, more straightforward with you, and can draft replacements for contract language you don't like rather than just telling your employer you don't like it and getting back something substantively similar.
With writing the human intent is important. The point is to read and understand your thoughts, not what an AI has synthesized.
This is only one way of conceiving writing. It's equally fair to say that the point is to read something interesting, useful and thought-provoking. Personally I like films and love books but have never had the least interest in actors/directors and only the faintest interest in authors. I just like good stories. I accept that some people feel differently, but the idea that reading/writing is meant to be a kind of meeting of souls is really very foreign to me.
Corvos
3d ago
My fear is opposition to this creep is a gut-level intuition that is harder to articulate than water usage fears or job replacement, or the dignity of artists or whatever. And so it goes unarticulated
Sounds rough. You should try getting an AI to articulate it.
(I joke, of course)
Corvos
4d ago
It’s not about revealing Wormtongue (which is a nickname anyway), it’s about giving Theoden the courage to do what he already knows needs to be done. Wormtongue is providing a plausible excuse to do nothing, that’s all.
Corvos
5d ago
I don't think that you have spent any meaningful time in Europe, have you? Like it or not, Europe was profoundly shaped by post-war American ideology aided by American money and American consultancies and American foreign policy, and you can see it wherever you go.
Can you give more background?
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