@Shrike's banner p

Shrike


				

				

				

					0 followers  

					follows 0 users  

					

					
joined 2023 December 20 23:39:44 UTC
				

				

				

				

				

				

					
				

				

				
				
				

				
User ID: 2807


				
				
				

			

		

	














	


		


			



	

		

			

			

				

					

						

							
						

						

							
							

								
Shrike


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				

				
				
				

				

					0 followers  

					follows 0 users  

					joined 2023 December 20 23:39:44 UTC
				


				
					

					
No bio...

				

				

				

				

				

					

					

					
					
					

					
User ID: 2807


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
‎

			

				
				

					Hour
					Day
					Week
					Month
					Year
					
				

			


			
‎

			

	
	

	 Hot Bump Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
	



		

	






	

		
		

		
		
	

	

  







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Correct.


Now I am not saying that unbounded development is impossible and I (would argue that I) take alignment fairly "seriously" but if you look at other weapons systems we don't see unbounded development there. So our expectations should be that future weapons development will continue along similar lines. Not that that is the only course but that it is the most likely course.


You could counter-argue that over a long-enough timeline improbable events become likely, which is fair enough. But of course that is true of essentially all existential risks and does not imply that existential risk from AI is especially likely relative to other existential risks.


Does that make sense?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
My theory? This is your theory!


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I agree that an edge in AI does not translate over to dominating your rivals.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


MAD works because of second strike capabilities




You don't necessarily need second strike if you have launch on warning.




AI capabilities continuously enable dominance of your rivals.




And this is why we will never have an AI that becomes more powerful than the US government wants it to be. You see, the US has had a continuous advantage in AI technology over its enemies since the 1950s, with an escalating advantage in the 1980s. Over the past four decades of continuous advantage, it has continually dominated its rivals, and will use its continuing edge to retard hostile AI development to exactly the level of development that it deems acceptable. This also means that the US will be able to safely stop developing AI well before reaching the area where AI is dangerous, since it can simply decide to retard the progress of hostile AIs using its considerable AI capability advantage in such a way as to leave its own AI capabilities considerably more powerful. You're already living in the world with the Maxim Gun, it's just not polite to advertise it.


Or...perhaps an advantage in AI isn't everything.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Mutually assured destruction doesn't hold for AI




Sure it does. AI, as currently constituted, is more vulnerable to MAD than governmental bodies, not less.




states would like to have dominance in the area.




There's a difference between dominance in nuclear weapons and more powerful nuclear weapons.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Nuclear weapons are useful for intergovernmental conflict, but the trendline in government development, deployment, and research has cut away from more powerful nuclear weapons.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think most governments have similar incentives for, well, aligning AI to be powerful enough to succeed at its tasks, but not so powerful as to be uncontrollable.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'll let you argue the point with other people who have a stronger opinion on what textbook narcissism is.


Personally, I don't really think it matters (except possibly for his personal well-being) - his behavior is either good or bad, helpful or unhelpful, honorable or dishonorable, etc. Whether or not he meets some diagnostic criteria is of secondary importance. I don't, for the record, tend to agree with a lot of the way he's handled the Greenland affair.


But I also think most people forget Ellsberg's warning to Kissinger:




you will feel like a fool for having studied, written, talked about these subjects, criticized and analyzed decisions made by presidents for years without having known of the existence of all this information, which presidents and others had and you didn’t, and which must have influenced their decisions in ways you couldn’t even guess.




But of course there's a caution there not only for the outsider (us, or most of us I reckon), but also for the insider:




The danger is, you’ll become something like a moron. You’ll become incapable of learning from most people in the world, no matter how much experience they may have in their particular areas that may be much greater than yours.




				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


"Treaty on Russian–Ukrainian Mutual Peace"




I got a chuckle out of this (it took me a second).




My overarching concern has been that his 'movement' is so tied up in his ego it isn't clear if it CAN move on to anyone else once he's out of office, and that will be a major problem if there's no clear successor.




I think this is a huge potential issue, and I will note that it's an issue regardless of whether or not Trump is a good person or a bad person or an evil and vile person or a sort of mediocre person. Strong personalities are not a substitute for strong institutions.


I think it is dangerously tempting for the right to overestimate their victories given that a few strong personalities have swung to their side. Don't get me wrong, it is always good to have great men on your side. But even the best kings pass away.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I've got to say, sometimes it is pretty funny being on a board where two of the abiding topics of concern are, distilled down a bit, "high IQ people being wiped out by lower-IQ people" and "high IQ AI wiping out lower-IQ people."


Anyway, there's obviously not a direct correlation between intelligence and existential risk. Creatures with an IQ of 0 on a scale of 1 - 100 for intelligence are in a far less precarious position, existentially speaking, than creatures with an IQ of 100 (us). Intelligence is only an imperfect proxy measurement for power and power is what generates existential risk.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Middle ground plateaus aren't particularly likely




I don't think "the government decides to pump the breaks on AI development after it becomes powerful enough to control the populace but before it becomes to powerful to be controlled" is a particularly unlikely outcome (accepting for the sake of argument that such an uber-powerful AI is possible).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The man just wrote a public angry letter to the PM of Norway because he's mad about the Nobel prize committee




It was not a public letter, unless there was another letter I was unfamiliar with.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I am not sure this is really very surprising, to be honest. I'm not sure I can put it better than Kipling:




Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the compromise. Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.




but




She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast
May not deal in doubt or pity—must not swerve for fact or jest.




One could go a bit further and speculate that the arrangement Kipling describes:




So it comes that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer
With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her




Has broken down and been washed away, particularly as the older Christian gender norms Kipling was familiar with have increasingly been forgotten, and commensurate with this breakdown we might expect to see ever stronger evidence that "the female of the species is more deadly than the male."


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Trump has said repeatedly that it's needed for Golden Dome. This makes me wonder if the US plans to put nuclear interceptors there - Danish territory is nuclear-free, although they let us bend the rules in Greenland during the Cold War and still might.


I suppose another possibility is that we think if we owned the land outright we would be able to better bar security threats from the territory in a way the Danes can't or won't.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Transnational Thursday for January 15, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think Greenland is another case of the Donroe Doctrine being a twist on the traditional American doctrine. Obviously Greenland has been a long-term strategic objective (the USA invaded it during World War 2, and my understanding is that we just refused to leave afterwards and attempted to buy it; eventually NATO plus an operating agreement with Denmark secured our interests there). So why bang on the drum?


One possibility is that it's a weird Trump-y thing, and I definitely think he has handled the optics of it differently than most presidents. It's also probably true that it would be nice to base nuclear weapons there, if you're the US, and my understanding is that Denmark prohibits this. It's also worth keeping in mind that Denmark's stance on Greenland is "they can leave any time they want." If you're the US you would be wise to ensure that does not happen on terms unfavorable to you. I worry that the specific methodology might be counterproductive, though.


But if you go back to my post about the rise of coercive diplomacy going hand-in-glove with American status as a decaying superpower, it makes a lot of sense to me as an attempt to consolidate the hinterlands. If the US views its relationship with Europe as less secure going forward, while at the same time the threats from Russia and China have increased, attempting to shore up our defensive posture now before the situation deteriorates further makes a lot of sense.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Transnational Thursday for January 15, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
A small but I think interesting speculative, tentative (both of these things because it's honestly too soon to tell how these things will ultimately play out) note on Recent Events, first with Venezuela and (perhaps?) secondly with Iran: the "Donroe Doctrine" in practice is avoiding a specific fail state of the neoconservative (or US-led international rules-based order or whatever you'd like to call it) modus operandi.


Specifically, the Donroe Doctrine has been to avoid creating a power vacuum that could be filled by forces unknown. Instead, coercive diplomacy is applied to weaken a regime, but rather than attempting to topple the regime's leadership, the coercive diplomacy is then treated as leverage in an ongoing series of negotiations.


You can see this most clearly in Venezuela - even though that operation involved seizing the leader of the country, Trump's strategy obviously was not to pursue the removal of the rump regime. Instead he preferred to negotiate with it. Now with Iran, with potentially regime-shattering protests apparently in play, it seems that the Donroe Doctrine might be to the hang the threat of removal over the head of the regime to induce preferred behavior rather than intervene directly. (Watch me jinx things and airstrikes happen as soon as I push the "comment" button.)


If you look back past the raid in Venezuela, you can see signs of this as well. Trump was comfortable drone-striking Qasem Soleimani, but not as part of a scheme to overthrow the government of Iran. Trump has always talked about working with Putin (or Xi, or Kim Jong Un, or what have you) even when he was taking direct adverse action against them (most notably against Putin).


I suppose there are a number of things one could say about this, but one observation I think I would make is that this is not new way of doing things, and in fact it's been practiced quite recently ("stop doing this or we will launch another 50 Tomahawks at you" is a pretty typical message for US presidents to send), so it's not an innovation per se. At the same time, in the recent past, there did seem to be a general vibe of "we want to remove the bad guys and let the good guys take over" even if we were only engaging in coercive diplomacy, and that vibe seems less present now.


The other one is that this way of doing things is actually well suited to a world where the US status as a superpower is challenged. Paradoxically, as the days of monopolarity slip into the rear view mirror, instances of US gunboat diplomacy may proliferate. This is for (at least) two reasons: firstly, as soft power slips away, the US will need to exercise more hard power to maintain credibility. Secondly, nation-building is an expensive and long-term commitment. Black-bagging dictators really isn't! By plentiful use of coercive diplomacy, the US might be able to achieve far-reaching effects at much less cost, letting it focus more budgetary effort on areas of major geopolitical focus.


Finally, I think there's a clear danger here: if you have a successful string of black-bagging, drone-striking, or otherwise exercising coercive diplomacy against people who annoy you, it can grow intoxicating and seductive. This is obviously a threat of nation-building as well, but a string of quick, cheap, successful operations can lead very quickly to an expensive failure if you keep rolling the dice. And, well, Donald knows better than anyone: nobody likes to lose.


But I'm curious if this sketch rings true to others. What am I missing?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Sorry I didn't get to reply to this in a more timely fashion.


I'm happy to accept for the sake of argument all of your criticism of Trump, but it's unclear to me how Trump not doing any of that is going to influence an ICE officer who was hired by the Obama administration when he's considering whether or not to shoot someone, any more than the whistleblower safeguards would.


You're laying out a lot of reasonable concerns about the Trump administration's actions, but the one that it seems to me could have prevented the shooting - the straw that broke the camel's back, here - was deciding to not send ICE into Minneapolis. Trump could fire Homan and Noem and go after Hatch Act offenders tomorrow and still send ICE agents into Minneapolis. And of course it's not clear to me that a different President wouldn't have sent ICE agents into Minneapolis.




Based on accounts from Central American women that ICE took into custody, the Southern Poverty Law Center concluded that the January raids “trampled legal rights, subjected mothers and children to terrifying and unnecessary police encounters, and [tore] families apart.” Their report alleges that ICE agents often failed to show warrants or ask for permission before entering the homes of the migrants they sought. At the time of the raids, many of the targets were complying with the rules and regulations set forth by immigration courts, such as wearing electronic ankle bracelets and keeping up with court appointments, according to SPLC’s report. Separate news accounts show that ICE agents picked up young people on their way to school. Against protocol, they even entered “sensitive locations” such as churches, Vice reports.






The effect of these raids on the immigrant community has been well-documented. Kids have been taken out of school. Their families have stopped going out—even to buy food—turning typically bustling immigrant locales into ghost towns, Esther Yu-Hsi Lee at ThinkProgress writes. Even in immigrant-friendly cities like New York, communities are paralyzed with fear.




This was written in 2016 about the Obama administration.


Furthermore, Congress recently voted to increase ICE's budget to accommodate a larger enforcement capability. So it seems to me that the system breakdown that led to this moment was not merely an arbitrary Presidential decision - it was due to our democratic system of government working as advertised. Trump was elected on a strong anti-illegal-immigration platform, Congress, in the course of its Constitutional duty, approved the funds to carry that out, ICE agents were deployed to enforce the laws, and that's what led to the shooting.


I think it's probably fair to criticize the techniques that ICE is using to enforce US immigration law. But ICE using smarter or softer-touch techniques doesn't, it seems to me, guarantee that a shooting won't happen, although it could reduce the odds.


Furthermore, your post claims that ICE agents are trained to avoid walking in front of cars. If that is true, it seems fair to me to criticize the officer for walking in front of the car. But it seems unfair to blame the series of events on "the system" given that the system in place would have prohibited his conduct (if your claims are true.)


I guess I am still trying to drill down on where you think the system failed exactly in this case. Is "the system" democracy? That would certainly make sense of your complaints about the allegedly corrupt conduct of the Trump administration.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think this cuts both ways though. Cultural preferences will drive genetic personality traits.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


so getting ahead of the curve and allying ourselves with the Iranians who have already endured and sacrificed so much is smart.




I am very seriously concerned that overtly intervening will cause the protest movement to lose face and legitimacy. Merely offering verbal support to a revolutionary movement and or even arming it generates less risk of creating an appearance that it is merely an American puppet regime than airstrikes or a ground intervention. Now admittedly this is a position I hold from ignorance, but we have reliable evidence such as outside polling showing that e.g. a majority of Iranians support US airstrikes against the regime, then I have not heard of it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
1915 is a bit out of the 70 year time-frame; I was referring to Operation Uphold Democracy.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yeah, it's just a good design (at least for certain tasks), I think.


Supposedly it's based on the Israeli Harpy which in turn (it is theorized) was based on a German-American anti-radiation missile, but that might just be carcinization.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think it's too soon to say in Venezuela.


"Played out in the US' favor" isn't the same as "played out in the other country's favor" but did our intervention in Haiti actually make the country worse?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The intervention (where we prepared an invasion, showed the ruler of the country a videotape of paratroopers en route, and then he decided to step down) seems to have played out in the US' favor in the sense of accomplishing our objectives at low cost.


I suppose it's fair to question whether or not the benefits from that were worth the cost, but OP didn't ask if regime-toppling exercises had solved all of the problems of the countries we toppled, just whether they had played out in the US' favor.


Probably some of those other ones should be on my list...


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The steelman for bombing working is that if you take out the C&C or communication nodes of the enemy and perhaps hit a few troop concentrations they will scatter, loose coordination, and then fall to pieces before the troops that are already on the ground (the protestors). Coordination is extremely important and if you deny that to the enemy they might collapse quickly.


FWIW I tend to think the US should stay out.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Thank you for the substantive comment. A few thoughts:


Firstly, the excerpts that you listed (and the NYT article as a whole, if you're not reading it closely) gives the impression that the IGs are just disappearing into the void. But I don't think that's true – for instance, Trump fired Phyllis Fong and replaced her with John Walk; Michael Missal was replaced by Cheryl Mason, Thomas Bell was confirmed as the IG for HHS, and it looks like (although I didn't do an exhaustive search) the other IG slots are filled by acting IGs. So while the implication seems to be that Trump is slashing the nation's oversight, it seems that he is replacing personnel. Obviously whether that is good or bad is probably something people will fight over, but it's not the same as just deleting the IG apparatus.


Secondly, it's not clear to me how the whistleblower protection positions are supposed to safeguard from "bad shoots" by ICE, particularly since federal LEOs had quite a few controversial shoots under presidents following Nixon. (It's actually not clear to me they work very well if at all, but I might be overgeneralizing based on an incident I heard about in a personal context once where someone's attempts to reach out were brushed off.) Certainly the problem with the most recent ICE shooting wasn't that someone needed to blow the whistle on it.


Finally, I'm not sure I would characterize it as "naive" to follow the Constitution. It also seems like at least one appeals court (as per the Times) agrees with Trump that he has the legal ability to remove these IGs, at least in some cases, so it's likely not some weird of oddball theory. Instead it is (unless I am mistaken, but this is admittedly a somewhat-informed guess) being done under the theory that the chief executive can, as a matter of Constitutional law, appoint his own officers and Congress has limited ability to stop him from doing so.


I once made a comment about how Trump is taking in one hand the powers that have been slowly ceded to or accumulated by the President and with the other hand seizing the powers that had always been the President's but that had lain dormant for some time under the new arrangements. This seems like an example of that in action.