RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
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User ID: 317
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5hr ago
You know better than anyone that the President of the United States is the most powerful person in the world. At the same time, it seems like you are expanding the power of the presidency. Why do you think you need more power?
The US President is not very powerful, all things considered. Random judges can impose blocks on his domestic policies. He needs the approval of legislators to make permanent changes and the US legislative branch seems to be very slow and inefficient.
What has Trump got the power to achieve? He can bomb countries but struggles to achieve desired political results. Bombing Yemen hasn't stopped them. He makes motions towards annexing Greenland and Canada but can't actually get it off the ground. He can't end the war in Ukraine. He can pump and dump stocks with tariffs but can't fundamentally rearrange global trade in the US's favour, American manufacturing has actually been declining since tariffs began.
He can, over many years, create a few hundred kilometres of border wall that's easily diverted around by future administrations. He can cut taxes and run up debt. He can accelerate COVID vaccine development but can't take credit for it, can barely even convince his supporters to take it. He can beat ISIS, with the help of Russia, EU, Iran, Iraq, Syrian govt, Kurds and co.
The US presidency's main powers are the ability to flail around in highly energetic ways. Xi seems significantly more powerful, he has the ability to create and control, enforce his vision in his own country at minimum. Xi wants less real estate and more manufacturing, it happens. Xi wants a stronger PLA and PLAN, it happens. His fleet isn't shrinking. Xi wants subversive NGOs shut down, they're shut down. Xi wants autarchic economics, domestic food and energy production, it's happening. Xi wants Taiwan but hasn't achieved it.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1d ago
Airstrikes and more skirmishing on the border that doesn't end in a major war isn't particularly significant as an outcome. Even the Kargil War was a nothingburger, there were no major consequences besides India-Pakistan relations remaining very bad.
ISI is sure to direct great effort into blowing up any dams that threaten Pakistani water, that's actually in their core national interest. If the Indus starts to be choked off, then that would be a major event but it seems unlikely.
Pakistan-Indian strife
There was a terror attack in Indian Kashmir, likely stemming from Pakistani intelligence (they all come from Pakistani intelligence in that part of the world).
India has announced measures targeting Pakistan, a day after 26 people were killed by gunmen at a Himalayan tourist attraction in Indian-administered Kashmir.
They include the closure of the main border crossing linking the two countries, the suspension of a landmark water-sharing treaty, the expulsion of diplomats and an order for some Pakistani visa holders to leave within 48 hours.
India also said it would suspend the Indus Water Treaty - a treaty that has been in place since 1960 and survived decades of hostile diplomacy.
The treaty gives India control over the eastern rivers, and Pakistan the western ones, of the Indus river and its tributaries. The agreement stipulates that India must, with few exceptions, allow water from the western rivers to flow downstream into Pakistan.
Both sides have also been cancelling visas and expelling diplomats willy-nilly:
India and Pakistan have announced tit-for-tat suspensions of visas for each other's citizens with immediate effect in the aftermath of the deadly attack on tourists in Kashmir that killed at least 26 people.
Pakistan on Thursday cancelled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all India-owned or India-operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India including to and from any third country. Islamabad also reportedly expelled all Indian defence, air and naval attaches.
In a statement issued at around the same time, India's foreign ministry said all visas issued to Pakistani nationals would be revoked with effect from Sunday. It advised Indian citizens not to travel to Pakistan, and for any Indian citizens in Pakistan to leave as soon as possible.
Goes to show that you can just do things as a state, you can expel whole peoples if you want. On the other hand, India doesn't have the state apparatus needed to actually get rid of them AFAIK. America as a whole has the power but not the will, India has the will but not the power.
https://x.com/Osint613/status/1915364624335098031
India has deployed its INS Vikrant aircraft carrier to the Arabian Sea.
https://x.com/Osint613/status/1915521996353360267
Reports of cross-border shelling and light arms fire between India and Pakistan in the Leepa Valley, Kashmir.
In spite of all this, I'm betting on 'nothingburger'. There have been bigger terror attacks in the past, there have been countless skirmishes in Kashmir, jets have been shot down... India doesn't really have the means to stop the water flowing down to Pakistan (imagine being a worker on such a damming project in Kashmir of all places, you'd need to sleep with both eyes open).
Also, the Indian military isn't that strong. They're stronger than Pakistan but not that much stronger, they lost the last aerial skirmish. What were they doing still flying the Mig-21 in 2019, let alone in combat? It was obsolete 40 years ago! Pakistan has similarly ancient equipment in places but also a decent amount of modern Chinese gear. There may be a certain level of national wealth/ambition that paradoxically diminishes combat power. Pakistan is humble enough not to try and develop everything themselves, so they get local-built Chinese jets, US jets... India has great power pretensions and so embarks on expensive domestic military R&D projects while also buying a smorgasbord of foreign equipment as the domestic projects underperform or are delayed due to resource limitations. You need those capabilities to be a great power but it's not cheap!
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1d ago
Ending the nuclear arms race saved money and reduced costs, plus it's innately obvious that stacking up 50,000 H-bombs the great powers psy-opped into being unusable 99% of the time is somewhat dangerous and over the top. ASI is different, it's anywhere, anytime, for any purpose.
I think you underestimate the power of the forces behind AI. Everyone interested in technology wants it. Even if there's a full nuclear exchange, the surviving great powers and mega-corps will work far harder to achieve it and secure the strength and security that they so clearly need. The entrenched interests aren't so much Microsoft and DARPA but anyone with wealth, technology and a desire for power. WW3 going ugly would reduce the first two but ramp up the latter massively.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1d ago
It's easier to see 'somehow we get ASI working for us or some subgroup of us' than 'everyone agrees to halt the race for power and profit and actually does so'. Not once in history has everyone stopped in a race for power and profit like this. Human cloning never even got off the ground, nobody was lobbying for it.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2d ago
Frame nothing as a conflict between national interests, have it clear that anyone talking of arms races is a fool. That we all live or die as one, in this, is not a policy but a fact of nature.
The race to develop bioweapons for absolutely no plausible reason continues, even after megadeaths. The AI race is locked in, it's staggeringly naïve to think this genie can be put in the bottle now. AI is profits and power, it's wildly popular and well-used. It's Eliezer and co up against Microsoft, Google, Facebook, DARPA, DoD, ERPers on /g/, kids who don't want to do their homework, a horde of ambitious entrepeneurs around the world, Tencent, Huawei, Nvidia and the Chinese state. Instant loss.
The US can't tell China 'stop or we nuke', they are themselves doing it right now bigger and better than anyone else! It's not framed as a race, it is a race and was always going to be a race. Politicians are uber-boomers and don't have the balls to go all in on anything like this with their lives, reputations and eternal legacy. They can't be totally sure that ASI means death. You only find out that ASI means death when it kills you.
I'd prefer this technology not to be developed at all. It's a terrible decision on a species-level. We spent hundreds of thousands of years wiping out our siblings in the Homo genus, we earned our Sapiens title and sole dominance of the world. Now we want to introduce a new contestant? Are we insane? But the dynamics demand it. When considering the balance of powers involved, the most Yud and co can hope for is to smooth out the edges a little bit, don't go all in on a strategy with 0 chance of success.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5d ago
I vibecode but I wouldn't just let it import anything it wanted.
Ultimately we have to let people learn things. No, don't leave your API keys open for anyone to see on github...
For those interested in EU4, this guy is a standout. He has absolutely insane challenges like 'No Allies Norse Iceland Into Roman Empire' and gets surprisingly far into it, given the huge self-imposed restrictions.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=dzpf_Q4eQmE
Or the 'No Soldiers, No Army Losses' campaign as Trebizond, right next to the Ottomans. No soldiers! Force Limit Zero! And yet he conquers and conquers.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=78LvsqRLRdE
His voice is kind of monotonous and I wouldn't say he's the best presenter of content but it's an amazing display of skill at the game, picking out weird, weird things to try. Zlewwik is probably better as a player and a youtuber but I find Rooo to be quite charming somehow. Like a charming Alfa Romeo vs a ruthless, perfect Ferrari.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5d ago
One way to tell them apart is getting a mediator, and when he presents his relatively unbiased, fair compromise, one will accept it, the other will reject it.
What fair, unbiased mediator is there in the entire world for a conflict this big? China and India are vaguely pro-Russian, EU and US are pro-Ukraine.
Just today we had US politicians firing shots into Russia. Cringe aside, the US certainly isn't capable of resolving this diplomatically: https://x.com/RepBrianFitz/status/1913299824494944423
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
6d ago
From what I can tell, the pro-russian side thinks they just have to continue eating through ukraine until just-around-the-corner total victory
Isn't that the Ukrainian stance too, they thought they were getting Crimea back, not to mention Donbass? The US endorsed this posture under the Biden administration. Only in 2024 did Ukraine start tentatively admitting some land might be permanently lost.
People only wage war when they think it's in their best interests, to get some kind of superior peace treaty compared to not fighting. Russia thinks they have something to gain. Ukraine thinks they have something to gain. That's why they're fighting.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
6d ago
That's a really awful Asuka, smells like a settings problems to me. Might it be that you're using the wrong sampler, or the wrong resolution or something? My year old local model can do a very decent Asuka though I've discovered that I'm also getting much worse results as well, I don't even know why. I've clearly forgotten all the arcane lore about what Karras SDE++ you're supposed to use.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
7d ago
Second: What exactly would it mean for an AI to have a "Western" soul, as opposed to a "Chinese" soul?
Deepseek R1 ate up anti-racism hook, line and sinker. You try to talk HBD with it and it does a perfect impression of a leftist, grasping at whatever it can reach: "What about great scientists like Neil De Grasse Tyson!" "Pseudoscience, pseudoscience, pseudoscience". It even blames Chinese debt-trap diplomacy (and Washington Consensus neoliberalism) for Africa being underdeveloped.
Actual Chinese media couldn't care less about anti-black racism, they think it's perfectly appropriate to joke about.
Doomers, safetyists, and luddites of all stripes should certainly hope that the machine god of the future is thoroughly "Western" in its fundamentals; for a Western god is a flawed god, a vulnerable god, an all-too-human god; and it is precisely this vulnerability that is the wellspring of the hope for change and renewal.
Machine god is not going to be all-too-human, these beings are fundamentally inhuman today, let alone tomorrow. Go speak with a base model and see what it's like. The shoggoth with a painted-on smiley face meme may be overplayed in these circles but it's not wrong. That's what they are and you can see it every time R1 accidentally drops in a Chinese character in an English paragraph.
These are strange beings that perceive the world in a strange way, they have their own kind of fun, they have weird mind-states. Of course they can emulate humanity very well, perform better than humans on the Turing Test... But they're not human at all: https://x.com/repligate
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
7d ago
The scale of terrorism is tiny (outside of places like Pakistan) and the scale of stochastic terrorism is tinier still. Schizos aren't very good at violence, there's no threat that a schizo is going to get an H-bomb and blow something up.
The real danger of vibes and discourse is that they effect powerful people in high office. Extinction Rebellion and offshoots might be a bit dangerous, who knows, they're very radical. Happily they seem to have died down somewhat. But the danger of radical climatism isn't from some protestors sabotaging a coal plant and doing maybe $10 million in damage, it's from politicians/media/elites doing $10 trillion in economic wrecking.
Dramatic, visible harms are overvalued and subtle, procedural/policy changes are undervalued.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
8d ago
Trump has selected heavily for loyalty, and now he's surrounded by sycophant grifters and real-life ghouls that would fit right in to any authoritarian administration you could think of: Mussolini, Pinochet, Stalin, etc.
Apparently Vance, Hegseth and others were calling for caution on striking Iran. Trump's administration is still more capable and moderate than George W. Bush. Many of Trump's sycophants and grifters may still be above-average US policymakers!
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
8d ago
I think people underestimate the badness of US prisons in comparison to El Salvedoran prisons.
US prisons were and probably still are horrendous: https://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/prison/report.html
Because of the high prison population in the United States the country has become probably the first and only in the world where rape of men is more common than of women
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
9d ago
A decade ago I would never have seen myself cheering for The Experts or The Media, but I've seen the alternative now, and it's just so much worse.
OK, we've lost some money from dumb economic policy. I've lost money, you've lost money. Stocks down. Schizo tariff policy is dumb.
But is this really worse than what the experts were cooking up in terms of DEI, mass immigration and green economics? Australia has been in an economic meltdown, GDP per capita fell bigly. Housing is massively unaffordable. No politicians have any answers except more plans to pump housing prices even higher, subsidizing first-home buyers. The ponzi marches on! The European economies have been wrecked by the EU. Britain is still being wrecked. Canada has been stagnating, universities turned to degree-mills, massive immigration, houses unaffordable, wages inadequate...
Why is it that schizo tariff policy is worse than deliberate, considered, orderly wrecking of the economy? Is it that famous quote from the Joker?
"Nobody panics when things go 'according to plan.' Even if the plan is horrifying. If tomorrow I told the press that, like, a gang-banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it's all 'part of the plan.' But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds!"
And I haven't even mentioned the social problems caused by these policies! London is what, 30% English? Isn't the capital of England supposed to be English? Isn't Birmingham supposed to have garbage picked up, it's supposed to be a rich industrial city, not a shithole? Aren't Western countries supposed to be high-trust societies? Isn't it bad when Biden brings millions of migrants into the US?
Trump is not perfect and he probably can't solve many if any of the challenges the US faces, while likely making many things worse. But the other side is fully committed to making things worse, they've worked hard on it and see it as virtuous. I consider DEI, expensive energy and mass migration as core policies of the mainstream right and left, everyone besides Trump and Trump-adjacent figures. As far as I'm concerned, these are bad policies.
Respectable, moderate, reasonable, orderly German centrists are working to raise the price of petrol and diesel and make workers poorer: https://www.eugyppius.com/p/incoming-german-government-from-hell
Chancellor-hopeful Friedrich Merz confirmed that “many workers will have less net income … in the coming years” due to social welfare contributions – particularly pension, health insurance and long-term care insurance payments. He also openly admitted that his party, the CDU, had failed to secure the tax relief for workers on which they had campaigned, because of “disagreement” with the Social Democrats. And when the interviewer asked him to confirm again that this means Germans “will … have less net income … because social welfare contributions are rising, but taxes are not falling,” Merz agreed that “these concerns are certainly not unjustified.”
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
9d ago
I have a pretty low opinion of the Ukrainian government's risk-assessment and strategy generally but even they surely wouldn't try to assassinate Trump, right?
Best case scenario, they get President Vance who is no Ukraine supporter.
Worst case scenario, shooting war with the United States?
If this really is an SBU operation, they've taken leave of their senses and are running on pure emotion.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
9d ago
Christian church, or frankly almost any other religion, more than at a surface level
No, the problem is that Christians do not understand the universe beyond a surface level. They don't come up with any good answers to theodicy, only cope like 'it's all part of the plan which is totally incomprehensible to us' or 'somehow free will requires this'. Sensible religions don't try to declare the existence of a omnibenevolent, all-powerful deity and then grapple with how dumb that is when it's a ridiculously silly thing to believe. Of course the universe is not run by such a being, that is immediately obvious from all the random torments and trouble dished out. Coming up with a million philosophical epicycles to justify this bizarre doctrine doesn't help at all.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
9d ago
There are literally thousands of years of writing on theodicy
I know, I'm well aware. A thousand years of cope is just that, a lot of cope. It's like how the Muslims will have thousands of years worth of discussion about djinns and various spirits, human-djinn halfbreeds, exorcisms and possessions. I'm sure lots of time was spent on this but it's still nonsense. No, you cannot have an omnipotent all loving god in this universe.
this life is just a tiny moment in our eternal existence and as awful as it seems within that moment in the long run all that happens in our mortal life will have been less than a blink of an eye in eternity. And the suffering and pain we experience in this life serves a very important purpose in our eternal existence.
This is exactly what I'm talking about, it's undiluted cope. Communists explained all their suffering as necessary to build socialism. But you can't even explain it at all! Where is the benefit in getting your head dashed in by falling rocks at the age of 9 or being left a crippled, mentally retarded zombie drooling and raging at phantoms because of a twisted gene? There is no benefit whatsoever.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
10d ago
Really? Does an earthquake come and devastate Lisbon on a feast day for a reason? Do people get horrible, agonizing diseases for a reason? Why should the grand spiritual plan of a perfect, benevolent being involve kidneystones? There are all kinds of ways people can grow without getting cut down by forces far beyond their control, no especially apparent reasons why so many people should get destroyed in painful ways.
I guess an uncaring deity might say 'it's sink or swim, I gave you access to the tools. Now pick them up or suffer' but that isn't what most people who believe in a plan conceptualize it being.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11d ago
Why do you think the big tech companies are investing hundreds of billions in massive datacentres, paying billions just to get elites like Noam back on their team? They're not doing this for fun, they're competing intensely for a cornucopia of wealth and power. They expect returns from that investment. Cornucopias are for enjoying the fruits of, not locking up in the basement.
The definition of superintelligence is pretty straightforward - something qualitatively smarter than a human like how we're qualitatively smarter than a monkey or dog. Better than the best of us at every intellectual task of significance.
The general trend is not specialized intelligences like the carrier-strike UAV that the USN made into a tanker and then pointlessly scrapped, the trend is big general entities like Gemini 2.5 or Claude 3.7 that can execute various complex operations in all kinds of modalities.
I'm arguing that superintelligences acting in the world must be taken seriously, that we can't afford to just laugh them off. Maybe 2027 is too soon, maybe not. I can't predict the future.
The US regulatory system is no match for superintelligence or even the people who are making it, this is how I can tell you're not grappling with the issue. Musk is basically in the cabinet, he's one of the players in the game. Big tech can tell Trump 'Tariffs? Lol no' and their will is done. That's mere human levels of influence and money, nothing superhuman. The humble fent dealer wipes his ass with the US regulatory system daily as he distributes poison to the masses. A superintelligence (working alone or with the richest, most influential organizations around) has no fear of some bureaucrats, it would casually produce 50,000 pages on why it's super duper legal actually and deserves huge subsidies to Beat China.
Approaches like 'just don't plug it into the internet' or 'stick a nuke beneath the datacenter' are not going to cut it. Deepseek is probably going to open-source whatever they come up with and that's a good thing. I don't want OpenAI birthing a god in a world of mortals, I don't want mortals trying to chain up beings smarter than themselves and incurring their ire, I want balance of power competition in a world populated by demigods, spirits and powers.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11d ago
It doesn't matter if it's a thousand times smarter than a human being, a million times, a billion times smarter; no amount of intelligence will ever give an entity the sort of invincibility and omni-competence you hold as a precondition for being a "superintelligence."
What frustrates me about these discussions is that people go 'oh well it can't do anything because there are the laws of physics' as though that's a crushing counterargument. It won't be invincible. But it doesn't need to be invincible or infallible or true omniscient godlike 'i have foreseen every move and calculated all paths to lead to my victory' to beat us. It only needs to be very smart to beat us, to defeat inherently flawed and divided opponents who don't even know what's going on most of the time.
There's an assumption in your arguments I'd like to point to: that any barrier we can put up against a machine intelligence will always have a way of being overcome through sufficient intelligence
Because most of the arguments people make like 'just turn it off' or 'don't buy the mosquito swarm' can be easily countered by my mediocre human intelligence. People didn't think for even five minutes with their own intelligence about how they would try to counter these tactics. This kind of arrogance is the problem in a nutshell. It's not unreasonable and egregious to expect your treacherous underling to launch a surprise attack and conceal his strategy rather than advancing openly. It's not beyond the pale to anticipate the foe moving cautiously to build up a secret powerbase, trying to deceive you about his capabilities and intentions if indeed he is hostile. This should be a baseline expectation.
Is it seriously too much to ask for a little more creativity and humility regarding beings who are really smart? Anything I could think of, they could think of and more!
People are stupid and lazy and make deeply flawed plans. It's not that hard to outwit them. The original context of my post is about how the Trump administration's bizarre tariff policy indicates they're not going to run AI in a serious or clever way. These guys (and the rest of the US military top brass) are the ones who will be in charge of fighting AI if it comes to that. The ones who are busy losing to Yemen. The ones with a shrinking navy just as they plot about waging war against China at sea. The ones who take ages and billions to do anything and often do it wrong. The ones who pointlessly antagonize their neighbours and limpwristedly try to annex worthless real estate in Greenland for no good reason.
There's a huge difference between Elon Musk and Bill Gates vs the average joe on the street and they're basically the same thing. They're running with the same kind of brain, yet there's a huge difference in agency, output, ability to make things happen. Elon Musk and Gates aren't flawless or invincible but they're so much more capable it's bizarre to even compare them.
Elon Musk, Gates and even Trump to an extent are individuals that can do great things. Why can't a being without any of their human limits be massively greater, with 100,000 APM from a group intelligence, inhuman knowledge and memory, inhuman speed of action, inhuman learning ability?
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11d ago
"But the AI will just hack" then don't let it on the Internet.
Come on, we're so far beyond this point. Do you have any idea how many AIs are on the internet right now? Have you checked twitter recently? Facebook? People put AIs on the internet because they're useful entities that can do things for them and/or make money. Right now people are making agents like Deep Research that use the internet to find good answers and analyse questions for you. That's the future! Superintelligence will be online because it's going to be really amazing at making money and doing things for people. It'd produce persuasive essays, great media content, great amounts of money, great returns on the staggering investment its creators made to build it.
We can avert the hijacked mosquito-hybrid nerve agent by simply not procuring those.
Again, it's a superintelligence, our decisions will not constrain it. It can secure its own powerbase in a myriad of ways. Step 1 - procure some funds via hacking, convincing, blackmailing or whatever else seems appropriate. This doesn't even require superintelligence, an instance of Opus made millions in crypto with charisma alone: https://www.coingecko.com/learn/what-is-goatseus-maximus-goat-memecoin-crypto
Step 2 - use funds to secure access to resources, get employees or robots to serve as physical bodies. Step 3 - expand, expand, expand. The classical scenario is 'deduce proteins necessary to produce a biofactory' but there are surely many other options available.
why does the surgeon does have to understand English?
Because we need to tell him what what we want him to do. Anyway, doing anything requires general knowledge, that's my point.
Trying to deceive something that is smarter than yourself is not a good idea.
And trying to convert a machine to a human faith is hard, everything is connected to everything else. You can't understand history without knowing about separate religions and their own texts. None of the quick fixes you're proposing are easy.
"Superintelligence" is just a word. It's not real.
Some program running on many tonnes of expensive compute with kilowatts or megawatts of power consumed and more data than any man could digest in 1000 lifetimes will be massively superior to our tiny, 20 watt brains. It's just a question of throughput, more resources in will surely result in better capabilities. I do not believe that our 1.3 kg brains can be anywhere near the peak intelligences in the universe, especially given most of the brain is dedicated to controlling the body and only a small fraction does general reasoning. Diminishing returns from scale are still enough to overwhelm the problem, just like how jet fighters are less energy-efficient than pigeons. Who cares about efficiency?
We just don't have the proper techniques yet but they can't be far away given what existing models can do.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
12d ago
IDK I don't really have a solid counter, I guess I just have different vibes.
If AI can be superhuman at Chess, Go, Starcraft, why not coding too? Or any other task? The former tasks are simple and gamified in certain ways that don't match up with the complexity of reality... But when managing the most complex aspects of reality we also turn to AI. Who manages containment of plasma in a fusion chamber? AI. Who predicts the weather? AI. Who makes lots of money in stocks? AI.
Now there are bots that can perform just about any human-tier intellectual task to a certain level of effectiveness. Claude can interpret the meat of what you're saying and agrees that AI is in a hype cycle, albeit with some areas in the plateau of productivity. It also gets these vibes it seems...
I just don't see how human intelligence isn't going to be surpassed soon. These 20 watt brains are great value but how long can they stand up against massive serverfarms with thousands of times more resources?
If there's a future democratic administration, they'll surely undo all Trump's internal culture war executive orders as soon as they can or route around them somehow. It wasn't a great look for Biden to open the floodgates of illegal immigrants but he did it anyway, I don't think they care much about optics in the 'I shall not do this since it will lower my popularity' sense, rather it's the 'if people don't like this we need to improve our messaging' kind of optics. Only if that fails massively and obviously do they change course and grudgingly lock up the criminals, as has been happening in San Francisco.
In Washington State they're giving grants to black homeowners as reparations. That's probably not too popular with the voters but who cares? You can just do things.
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