doglatine
16d ago
Specific examples may sound underwhelming, because I'm mainly talking about metis in the sense of James C Scott, i.e. habitual patterns of understanding and behaviour that are acquired through repeated experience. For example, I almost never run into hallucinations these days, but that's because I've internalised what kinds of queries are most likely to generate hallucinated answers, so I don't ask them in the first place (just like we all know you don't do a Google search for "when is my Aunt Linda's birthday"). But I realise that sounds like a cop-out, so here are some examples -
- Customisation. Developing a bank of different custom instructions that you can swap in or swap out for specific queries.
- Using LLMs to refine prompts. Don't just ask questions, spend some time refining the question with LLMs.
- Identifying novel non-professional use cases. So many LLM applications in everyday life, from home improvement to social dilemmas to budgeting.
- Preemptive negative prompts. Identifying common failure modes in advance or unproductive directions that LLMs are likely to go, and explicitly steering models away from them
- Model switching. Recognising the personalities and capabilities of different models and slotting content between them to optimise workflows.
- Advanced voice. So many people just type their queries to LLMs, but there are plenty of use cases and contexts where voice gets you different/better results. See also the audio overviews of NotebookLM.
To give a real-world example of the latter two ideas in action, I recently had a very complicated situation at work involving a dozen different colleagues, lots of institutional rules and politics, and a long history. My goal output was a 4 page strategy document spelling out how we were going to handle the situation. However, typing out the full background would be a big hassle. So instead I had a 60 minute voice conversation with ChatGPT while on a long walk, in which I sketched the situation and told it to keep asking follow up questions until it really had a good handle on the history and key players and relevant dynamics. So we did that, and then I asked it to produce the strategy document. However, I didn't completely love the style, and I thought Claude might do a better job. So instead, I asked ChatGPT to produce a 10 page detailed summary of our entire conversation. I then copypasted that into Claude and told it to turn it into a strategy doc. It did a perfect job.
So, a relatively simple example, but illustrates how voice mode and model switching can work well.
doglatine
16d ago
people seemed to have no clue just how good and useful LLMs already are, probably due to lack of imagination. They are not really chatbot machines, they can execute sophisticated operations on any token sequences, if you just give them the chance to do so.
100% agree. I think even most commenters here seem fairly oblivious to all you can get out of LLMs. A lot of people try some use case X, it doesn't work, and they conclude that LLMs can't do X, when in fact it's a skill issue. There is a surprisingly steep learning curve with LLMs and unless you're putting in at least a couple of hours a week tinkering then you're going to miss their full capabilities.
doglatine
16d ago
The International Rules Based Order was always fiction. It was code for “the West has several times as many soldiers, rockets, tanks, and navy vessels than you, and can kick your ass just by thinking about it. What’s changed generally is the global perception of that military might.
I'd push back slightly on this, because the IRBO/LIO was very much in force even during the Cold War, when the West absolutely didn't have total military dominance. The IRBO/LIO was more of a memetic package than a hegemonic post-WW2 settlement, and it was a pitch to to the developing world and even to a lesser extent the Communist bloc. Though its ideals very much came out of Anglo liberal ideals (e.g., rights of small countries), it was an appealing package for many countries around the world: strong norms against annexation and invasion, disputes to be settled in multilateral fora, freedom of navigation, and a suite of economic institutions like the IWT and World Bank. In an era of ideological competition with Communism, the IRBO was an important part of the West's brand.
doglatine
22d ago
With respect, did you actually vote for Trump?
Not American, so no, but when I was asked on election night who I would have voted for if eligible, I said Chase Oliver. That said, I did feel quite optimistic when Trump won, mainly because I was hopeful that Elon (and to a lesser extent Vance) would implement Grey Tribe priorities in a highly capable fashion. I don't think I was ever fundamentally unreachable, so perhaps my opinion change is indicative of something relevant. I'm not American, of course, so I wouldn't expect Trump or Vance to care what People Like Me think, except insofar as my shift in views has non-zero correlation with similar shifts among some subset of eligible voters.
doglatine
22d ago
Yes, this point often seems to be lost in commentary, particularly on the US side. While it's hard to figure out actual monthly 155mm production (as opposed to production goals), Rheinmetall alone produces the same ballpark number of shells per month as the entire US MIC.
doglatine
22d ago
Part of being a good debater is winning over Undecideds, and my impression is that Vance has been doing the exact opposite. My own opinion of him was fairly positive as recently as a month ago, and it's cratered, and I've seen a similar collapse in estimation among many right-sympathetic US friends. Obviously you can't please all the people all the time, but my sense is that while Vance is very good at playing to the gallery, so far at least he's not done a good job of winning over anyone who wasn't already sympathetic to his policy positions.
doglatine
23d ago
To be clear, I don’t think a nuclear strike on the Philippines is intrinsically likely, but conditional on the war going nuclear, the Philippines might well be prioritised over Guam as a first target primarily because it wouldn’t set the precedent of targeting American soil.
For example, imagine the US loses a carrier, and decides to respond with an SLCM-N strike on a Chinese command vessel. China decides it needs a symbolic strike to respond, but doesn’t want to move too far up the escalation ladder too fast, so it hits an isolated but operationally significant US base in the Philippines. Civilian casualties might be comparatively low; if you hit Fort Magsaysay Airfield for example civilisation casualties might be in the low thousands, similar to what you’d get from hitting Guam.
doglatine
23d ago
Cross posting from /r/credibledefense, but thought Mottizens might have an angle on this.
As someone with family in the Philippines, I’ve been feeling concerned about risks presented by the country’s close alliance with an increasingly volatile US, especially in the context of a war in the West Philippine Sea/SCS that the US is looking more and more likely to lose. A few years ago, the US felt to me like a better partner than China after Duterte’s reconciliation efforts with Xi were largely rebuffed, and since then we’ve seen a major investment in new US bases in the Philippines, especially Luzon. However, a number of factors make me think that the Philippines would be better off explicitly pivoting towards neutrality.
First, there’s the simple fact that US naval construction remains deeply and utterly broken, as I’m sure most of us are aware, while China’s continues to grow at pace. The starkness of this disparity has grown in recent years and it no longer looks like the US has the state capacity to fix it. Consequently, the likelihood of a conflict over Taiwan that goes badly for the US and leaves the region in control of China is higher than it used to be. Moreover, while the US can pack its bags and go back to Guam, the Philippines will forever be stuck less than 200 miles off the coast of mainland China.
Second, and much more recent, there’s the shift towards a more erratic and transactional foreign policy by the US. While US bases in the Philippines are of mutual benefit for now, it’s not inconceivable to imagine a rug-pull exercise whereby the US pulls its forces out in exchange for a concession from China. Likewise, it’s questionable whether the old ideals of loyalty would mean the US would help with reconstruction if the Philippines got hit hard by Chinese missile strikes in a Taiwan conflict. Additionally, many of the soft-power inducements provided by USAID projects in the Philippines have now been cancelled. I don’t want to turn this into a discussion of the Trump administration per se, but the reality is that US foreign strategy has undergone a colossal shift in the last two months, and that changes the incentives for its partners.
Third, while China wants its extravagant claims to islands in the West Philippine Sea to be recognised, and probably wants economic and political influence in the Philippines itself, there’s zero indication or historical precedent to suggest that China wants to annex any of the major islands in the Philippines. Consequently, it’s really not clear to me that the security advantages provided by US forces are significant enough to justify the very real and kinetic risks associated with hosting US forces. I’m particularly concerned about nuclear risks, where in a rapidly spiralling conflict China might judge nuclear strikes on US military targets in the Philippines to be less likely to escalate to all-out strategic nuclear warfare than eg attacks on US bases in Guam or Japan.
Fourth and finally, the current presence of US bases in the Philippines does offer them a bargaining chip. It seems to me that the Philippines could basically offer a “Finlandization” deal to China where it would commit to total neutrality in any conflict in the region and withdraw from Enhanced Defence Cooperation Agreement with the US. Probably to sweeten the package it would have to make some painful concessions to China on disputed islands like Scarborough Shoal, but it could potential walk away with robust guarantees of long-term functional autonomy and non-interference, conditional on remaining neutral.
I’d be interested to hear others’ thoughts, though! Am I being too bleak, or missing some upsides to the alliance for the Philippines?
I think there are some important insights here, but I'd like to speak to the European angle. In short, the bulk of the breakdown on the European side is due to Trump, or increasingly Trumpism as a movement, which seems tailor-made to alienate European elites. At a personal level, Trump is crass, vulgar, tasteless, and lacks the kind of general cultural and historical knowledge that would be a sine qua non for most European leaders. Vance makes things worse, adding a smug debate club arrogance to Trump's lack of regard for decorum and norms. I have two friends who were actually present at the Munich Security Conference last week, and both of them said Vance's address was the most shocking speech they'd seen in their respective diplomatic careers, both in terms of content, but also in terms of form: the complete lack of niceties, the most of all as what they perceived as its bilious anger and unpleasantness.
Even worse than the personal angle, though, is the political level. Trump simply doesn't play by the established rules of the Liberal International Order, and if there's one thing Europe loves it's rules and procedures. And as much as I can appreciate a good disruptor, Trump's diplomatic strategy seems less like Paul Graham and more like an unmedicated ADHD child in an airport lobby. One week it's tariffs on Mexico and Canada, the next it's annexing Panama, the next it's annexing Greenland, then Gaza, and then onto Ukraine. These ideas whizz by so seriously it's very unclear whether they're intended as literal policy proposals or some kind of semiotic ritual. Not to mention that the policies themselves are utterly bonkers, ill thought-out and ill considered. The Gaza plan in particular was just extraordinary in its inchoate madness. Adding all this together, to many of us Europeans, it looks like there's a void at the top of American leadership where elite human capital is supposed to go.
However, perhaps most of all, I think many Americans just don't realise how visceral and close and frightening the Ukraine war is for many people in Europe. To hear Americans talk about it, it may be as far away as Afghanistan or Iraq, but for many Europeans it's literally the next country over, we have Ukrainian refugees among us, and Russia is conducting assassinations and sabotage in our cities. The default assumption among most Europeans was that this was the obvious next conflict of the Free World against tyrants, and it was as much in America's interests to fight it as it was Europe's. This impression was bolstered by Biden's presidency, and despite Trump's bluster, I think most Europeans assumed he'd pursue broadly similar policies.
Instead, the events of the last two weeks have been the biggest shock to transatlantic relations since Suez, or perhaps even pre-WW2. Most left-wing Europeans didn't like America much to begin with (well, not as a political entity), but the usual transatlantic cheerleaders on the centre, right, and even hard right are in a state of absolute epistemic and existential shock. The idea that America would not just clamp down on aid for Ukraine but moot de facto switching sides was so far outside of their Overton Windows that they have no idea how to process what comes next. Suddenly, ideas that used to look like a bad videogame storyline - e.g., a realignment towards China - no longer seem totally impossible, but that's mainly because our model of the possibility space has collapsed, and until we can stitch it back together, almost anything seems possible.
I wasn't looking for histrionics, amusing though your scenarios were (though I could easily see an American antipope being installed in Boston). What I was hoping for - and what I was gesturing towards with my wonderful metaphor - was your reflections on the best medium-term plays for Europe in event of a persisting breakdown of the transatlantic alliance.
I agree that the immediate priorities of Europe would be to significantly ramp up defense spending and local defense capacity, but it's not a particularly interesting insight insofar as every pundit under the sun is saying that now, not to mention most of Europe's leadership. I don't even necessarily disagree that Europe should be endeavouring to keep US troops on the continent in the short-term, but that's again a relatively conservative proposal. However, if we can skip past these steps and imagine things 2-3 years down the line, we can get to where the action space opens up, and start asking about what a serious decoupling of Europe from the US would look like. For example -
- Who would be Europe's plausible geopolitical partners other than the US and the Anglosphere? Does a closer relationship with China or India make sense, or would Europe be better placed positioning itself as a leaders of an equivalent to the non-aligned movement in the Cold War, letting the US and China battle it out over the Pacific?
- How should Europe square US domination of digital media and tech with a much cooler partnership? Should it aim for a "Bureaucratic Firewall" that makes it progressively harder and more onerous for US digital services to operate in Europe, both as a cultural-and-security measure and as part of a kind of technological importation substitution strategy?
- What does NATO look like in a world where no-one trusts that the US would honour Article 5? Does it remain as a zombie organisation? Do European countries formally withdraw, in favour of a European alternative?
This is just to give you a flavour of the kind of questions I thought you'd have solid takes on. That said, I wouldn't want to impose if you're averse to these kinds of horizon-scanning exercises.
doglatine
26d ago
Iran without Russia would be a significantly diminished force, to a greater degree than Russia without Iran. I also don't see Iran as a particularly credible threat to the US's (limited) interests in the region at this point, especially with Assad gone, Hizbollah weakened, and Hamas shattered.
doglatine
26d ago
This sounds pretty much exactly the kind of thing you'd do if you wanted to improve Europe's military and geopolitical relationship with America. I can see under some assumptions that's not unreasonable, in the same way that a woman planning to leave her violent and abusive husband might want to act like an even more loving wife than usual, right up until the point where she's out the door and has the restraining order in place. However, I guess I was more interested in hearing your thoughts on what it would look like when the wife actually leaves, rather than the part where she cooks her husband his favourite dinner and gets her hair done the way he likes it.
doglatine
26d ago
Russia is China's closest ally, the primary sponsor of Iran and North Korea, and it has led a series of coups in West Africa against US-backed regimes. It has conducted multiple assassinations in allied countries. It has literally attacked US troops in Syria. It seized large numbers of US assets (and several US citizens) at the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine. It is currently under the most comprehensive sanctions regime run by the US against anyone. I can see a case for China being the greater threat to the US in the long-run (though I don't buy it myself), but if Russia isn't at least #2 then I have literally no clue who else would be.
doglatine
26d ago
These excellent points all round. In fairness of the (admittedly already dubious) coherency of the groupchat that inspired this, there were six of us trading ideas, and I just dumped the logs into Deepseek, creating a particularly contradictory medley. However, that's on me for posting without vetting the consistency.
Would be curious to hear your thoughts on what a more focused and thoughtful European spitelist would look like, conditional on a continuing decline in Euro-US relations to the point where the consensus among European leaders is to classify America as a strategic competitors rather than allies.
doglatine
27d ago
To be sure, if future US administrations want to hit the 'reset' button and go back to the old ways of doing things, then they can try to be friends with whoever they like, as they have done in the past, as you note. However, the mainstream European left, right, and centre is deeply committed to the Liberal International Order that Trump is crusading against.
That means a Trump or future Vance administration has to look to the fringes for real allies, and basically no Communist or radical left organisations would given him a look, not least because of his stance on Israel and Gaza (which frustratingly are the primary fixation for the European radical left right now). That leaves basically only one group of parties that would are openly to a close alliance (as opposed to a marriage of convenience), namely the non-establishment nationalist right - parties like FN, Fidesz, AfD, and Reform, all of who have relatively cosy relationships with Trump already. However, the more Trump acts in ways that harm Europe's security interests, the harder it is for these parties to maintain this relationship, at least without suffering political harm.
doglatine
27d ago
Fun to think what European defense and industrial policy might look like in the event of a total breakdown in the post-war transatlantic alliance system (conditional on European leaders actually growing a pair, i.e., on hell freezing over). Here are some ideas that came out of a drunken groupchat with some security wonk friends tonight and summarised by R1:
Defense
• European Defense Force with Independent Command: Phased withdrawal from NATO integrated command structure while establishing a purely European military alliance with France as the nuclear guarantor and Germany providing conventional backbone.
• Strategic Defense Technology Embargo: Immediate moratorium on new U.S. defense procurement contracts with accelerated transition plan (5-7 years) to phase out existing U.S. systems. European defense contractors given emergency powers to reverse-engineer critical components.
• Military Base Sovereignty Initiative: Formal 24-month notice to terminate all Status of Forces Agreements with the U.S., with negotiated transition periods only where absolutely necessary for European security.
• European Nuclear Deterrent Expansion: Franco-German nuclear sharing agreement with French warheads placed under joint European command structure. Fast-track development of new European delivery systems not dependent on U.S. technology.
• Counter-Intelligence Offensive: Comprehensive review of all U.S. intelligence operations in Europe with expulsion of suspected intelligence officers and enhanced counter-surveillance against U.S. electronic intelligence gathering.
Economics & Industry
• Strategic Industry Protection Act: Mandatory European ownership requirements for critical infrastructure and technology companies. Forced divestiture of U.S. majority-owned assets in energy, telecommunications, defense, and advanced manufacturing within 36 months.
• Digital Sovereignty Enforcement: European internet traffic routing law requiring all European data to remain on European networks. Complete firewall system to regulate U.S. digital services with capability to block access if diplomatic conditions deteriorate.
• Energy Independence Acceleration Plan: Emergency powers for nuclear construction in willing nations with cross-border agreements to share capacity. German solar/wind expansion with French nuclear backup through enhanced grid interconnections. Phaseout of U.S. energy imports.
• European Technology Sovereignty Fund: €500 billion fund for European alternatives to U.S. technology platforms, semiconductor manufacturing, and cloud services with preferential procurement rules for European public entities.
• Space Independence Initiative: Tripling of European Space Agency budget with fast-track development of alternative satellite networks. Security review of all SpaceX operations in Europe with potential for forced technology transfer.
Finance & Diplomacy
• Euro Primacy Initiative: Requirement for all energy transactions involving European entities to be conducted in euros. Introduction of euro-denominated oil and gas contracts with major suppliers.
• European Clearing House: New European interbank settlement system isolated from U.S. financial infrastructure with capability to process transactions with sanctioned entities if determined to be in European strategic interest.
• Anti-Dollar Diplomacy Campaign: Strategic diplomatic engagement with BICS [sic] nations to create formal mechanisms for reducing dollar dependency in international trade.
• Counter-Sanctions Framework: Preemptive legislation authorizing immediate reciprocal sanctions against U.S. entities if sanctions are placed on European companies. Includes targeting of U.S. financial institutions operating in Europe.
• European Foreign Asset Protection Law: Legal framework to shield European overseas assets from potential U.S. seizure through complex ownership structures and diplomatic agreements with third countries.
Economic Countermeasures
• Reciprocal Tariff Authorization: Automatic trigger mechanism imposing 35% tariffs on U.S. goods in response to any U.S. tariff increases, particularly targeting politically sensitive sectors (agriculture, automotive, aerospace).
• European Export Control Regime: Restrictions on European exports that support critical U.S. supply chains, leveraging dependencies in areas like specialty chemicals, precision components, and industrial machinery.
• Intellectual Property Retaliation System: Framework for suspending U.S. intellectual property protections in Europe in response to economic aggression, with particular focus on pharmaceutical and entertainment industries.
• Corporate Tax Equalization: Special taxation regime for U.S. multinational corporations operating in Europe to offset advantages from U.S. economic policies hostile to European interests.
doglatine
27d ago
For broadly the same reasons that the Soviet Union supported Communist parties around the world. Of course American citizens don't need to care about their ideological fellow travellers outside the US (to be clear, I'm mainly talking about Reform, FN, AfD, and so on - I agree that the Tory party are at best a 'post-ideological' organisation), and isolationism has always been and remains a choice that the US can make. If the US is happy to wash its hands of affairs in Israel, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Brazil, or anywhere else, no-one is stopping them from doing that.
However, to the extent that US wants to secure markets for its exports, have influence on international organisations, gain intelligence on threats overseas, limit the rise of China, control immigration flows, and protect its allies, it will in turn need international partners. This will be far easier if they can help get some ideologically sympathetic parties into positions of power.
doglatine
27d ago
America currently spends a comparatively small amount of money in exchange for global hegemon status. This means that it has a huge influence in the foreign policy of most G20 nations. European leaders line up to kowtow to the new Big Man in The White House after every US election. If China seems to be making inroads into European markets, America can lean on domestic governments to have them barred or stymied. US arms manufacturers are prioritised for contracts across the free world. Its tech companies are given comparatively free rein. Its cultural products dominate cinemas and streaming services. Its navy and airforce can rely on a global network of old European bases for staging and resupply. It has an outsize seat at every serious international forum.
All of that currently relies on a 'package deal' with its allies - in exchange for security guarantees and a committee to upholding the LIO, it gets to be the Leader Of The Free World, with all the perks and privileges that entails.
The US can drop the package, and try to negotiate for these privileges on a line-by-line basis. My expectation, though, is that some of them will be outright off the table, while others will be a lot more expensive to purchase individually.
In the UK, France, and Germany, Trump’s approval ratings are his lowest in basically the entire world, and even in the explicitly reactionary European subs like /r/badunitedkingdom, Trump is a very divisive figure.
If anything, Trump's shenanigans will be a boon to the various dissident right-wing parties in the EU.
This distancing is literally already happening.
A lot of American conservatives seem to be in blissful ignorance about how negatively Trump is perceived in Europe, especially given the bizarre events of the last month. I literally know more self-identified European fascists than European Trump stans. Of course, there’s no reason why Americans have to care what Europeans think, but when we’re literally talking about European public opinion, it’s important to get things right.
However, I don’t want to presume; if you’re a European, though, I’d be curious to know where you’re from (maybe Poland?) such that your perceptions of Trump’s reputation here are so different from mine.
doglatine
27d ago
As a Brit, it pains me to see another Anglosphere country repeat the folly of throwing its empire away.
doglatine
27d ago
"Have you said thank you?" "Yes, frequently." "But have you said thank you today?"
This is the way you talk to a child, not a junior partner. The US has bought vast amounts of soft power in Ukraine and a permanent ally on the doorstep of its long-term geopolitical adversary, and is squandering those expensive gains for the sake of Trump's TV show.
doglatine
27d ago
Worth noting that this kind of incident is very bad for right-wing parties in Europe and the Anglosphere. Trump is monumentally unpopular in Europe, the UK, Canada, and Australia, and support for Ukraine remains very high. Additionally, this kind of "Reality TV diplomacy" is generally poorly received outside the US. The result will be that right-wing parties in these countries will likely have to distance themselves from Trump, and even that may not be enough to restore their pre-Trump election hopes (witness the recent resurgence of the LPC, in no small a gift from Trump).
Even if American conservatives don't care about Ukraine, I assume some of them care about global influence and leadership, especially among their historical allies. Part of the key to achieving this is assisting in the political success of ideological conspecifics in these nations, whereas this kind of bluster entirely thwarts that goal.
Of course, there are some on the American right who would be only too happy to dismantle the post-WW2 alliance system in favour of a more narrowly transactional approach, even at the cost of global influence and leadership. Even setting aside that this is unlikely to be a long-term winning position ideologically with the American electorate, I would note that empires are hard to build and easy to lose. The consequences of a global geopolitical decoupling between the US and its historical allies could be significant: US defense contractors being excluded from arms deals, tariffs or barriers to US firms operating in the EU, a rise in Chinese economic influence in the developed world, and a sidelining of US interests in global forums.
doglatine
1mo ago
FWIW Grok 3 has not impressed me at all so far. It seems very confused about its abilities and more prone to hallucination than any post GPT-4 class model I’ve used. Additionally, the benchmark scores so far have been underwhelming. For example, a lot of Grok 3’s higher scores (the bits of the bar charts shaded in a lighter colour) rely on cons@64, shorthand for running the input prompt 64 times and then taking the consensus of results, which isn’t practical for most people. xAI are not alone in doing this, but it does make a difference for pairwise comparisons.
Musk has thrown vast amounts of money and compute at xAI and in the process he’s built something not quite SotA. OpenAI still the team to beat on performance, DeepSeek on efficiency, and Anthropic for vibes.
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