A lot of people waking up to the idea that Trump in his second term is very different than Trump in his first term, a fact easily predictable (and predicted!) by anyone who was paying attention to him saying he was going to remove all the constraints that were placed on him in the first term.
I wonder if anyone who liked the first Trump term is going to revise their opinion on how much value the people holding him back added to his administration.
Yes, particularly the calculation of the tariff rates has increased my confidence in the claim that he wanted to do some crazy stuff in his first term but was held back because he was surrounded by competent people. I thought his first term seemed OK.
Some of the differences were due to different people in the administration. But I think a lot of it is due to changes in Trump's personality. Dark MAGA reflects the reality that the left went directly after his supporters and his family and he genuinely wants revenge.
I don't buy it. How are tarriffs "revenge?" Or the mass rounding up of people without due process?
These are absolutely things that Trump talked about doing in the first administration, people defended him on the grounds that it was all rhetoric, and used the fact that he didn't actually do these things as evidence it was just rhetoric. But every report that came out after his term ended emphasized how many people worked tirelessly to stop him from doing things because they were worried about the legal, diplomatic, and economic implications of various actions. And now all those people are gone.
If Trump had started by sending the FBI after Biden, I'd say you were correct, and we may still get there. But he started by doing all of the stuff he'd been campaigning on his entire political career, that people claimed he didn't mean.
2016 Trump focused his tariff efforts on China, and succeeded. He did talk about bringing manufacturing back to America, but at the time either believed or thought it was more effective propaganda to lay the blame more on China than other countries.
Mass deportations were also not a big part of his rhetoric in 2016. Immigration levels were much lower than the surge under Biden, so instead he talked a lot about barriers. Building the wall and all that. You'll notice he isn't talking so much about building the wall these days.
I don't think you are intentionally gaslighting me. I think its interesting how people's memories change, or maybe it depends on whether you engage primarily with one media source or another. But in the mainstream media, Trump's repeated mention of 11 million immigrants who needed to be deported during the primaries (particularly the primary debates) and his talk of creating a "deportation force" were a big deal.
Here's an interesting historical artifact, a headline published in 2016 imagining what 2017 would look like if Donald Trump were elected.
See if you can spot how many of these things, intended to be a cross between a joke and a warning, now reflect things this administration is working towards.
It's been a long time since I looked at stuff from the primaries. What I do remember is that talk about deportations died down quickly once he was elected, but the talk about the border wall stayed. The first Trump admin did relatively little deporting, but did get some border fencing constructed. I think that if Trump was as unrestrained then as he was now, he would be focused on building his wall rather than mass deportations. The wall was a popular thing to chant from supporters in the first term, mass deportations only caught on later.
Maybe. But this article (which seems to be fairly conservative friendly) argues that it was the pushbacks from blue states and sanctuary cities that stalled out the process.
"Critical Trade Theory: Any trade imbalance between two countries is de facto evidence of systemic unfair trade practices."
That was posted yesterday by a Substack writer named William Miller. Jesse Singal today makes the same overall point. He writes that Trump "sees the world strictly through the friends/enemies binary, and he apparently makes those determinations solely on the basis of the perceived “loyalty” of the actor/group/country/whatever in question...Trump decided a while back that America is “getting ripped off” by other countries. And once he decided that, the evidence was easy to find — I mean, just look at those percentages!
This style of thinking reminded me a bit of Ibram X. Kendi, because Kendi decided that everything is either racist or anti-racist, and then further decided that any racial discrepancy anywhere concerning anything was proof positive of racism. It goes without saying that this isn’t a serious approach to addressing racial discrepancies...but it was taken seriously by a lot of powerful people with money. Kendi himself gained some degree of influence and a form of power (since squandered rather colorfully), but of course not one millionth the power Trump enjoys...."
The chatGPT formula used for the tariffs was about maintaining a trade balance. This doesn't seem 'woke' to me at all. If you want a trade neutral balance or surplus, throw the formula at situations where you have a deficit.
The concerning part is Trump potentially thinking that tariffs alone would correct this balance with the economy humming smoothly for it. An unmanaged economy can adjust to tariffs on the fly without too much pain. But the US economy has been heavily managed for around a century and could easily crash and burn. Now, a "controlled" crash may be the best outcome when you have interest payments on debt spiraling out of control, but is Trump even trying to do that? God only knows.
>An unmanaged economy can adjust to tariffs on the fly without too much pain.
I don't see how this is true. It takes time to adjust to tariffs because you have to build new factories or set up new shipping routes to substitute for the tariffed goods, and making the market more free isn't going to let you build a new factory overnight. And in the meantime, you're simply poorer because you've made everything more expensive.
(And some goods may not be substitutable at all - e.g., crops that don't grow well in the US's climate.)
It doesn't matter if there's one company or ten, so long as they all depend on the same inputs, they're all going to have to find the same substitutes.
Also, antitrust regulation is a form of managing the economy, one that the US has been fairly lax on lately.
Antitrust actions can literally result in a company being broken up into smaller companies.
Also, as I said, I don't see how the number of companies makes a difference. How would it help to, say, have ten different auto companies instead of one, if they're all importing the same steel and aluminum?
That has not been true at all. Standard Oil was a huge monopoly that arose in a barely-managed economy. Monopolization is a natural outcome of unmanaged free-market in any area where economies of scale apply.
Standard Oil arose to grab a large market share, but this had already started to decline significantly by the time anti trust laws were passed to partition it directly.
Oh this brings memories and explains a lot. I too was young once and read mises.org. Can’t believe this crock of shite is still around. It must be exhausting to be always wrong about everything and yet keep slogging the same crap year after year. I’m sure the dollar will collapse any day now, same as 20 years ago.
Sorry, I’m trying not to be sarcastic usually, it’s just hard when I see the same poisonous ideas continue to be flogged despite having been discredited by reality over and over again.
Ask me about measles vaccine “causing autism” next :)
The second headline refers to a once-eminent surgeon who in middle age decided to get rich hawking bullshit dietary and anti-aging supplements on TV, ran for the Senate in a state that he didn't reside in, etc.
This age we live in, oof. Guess today will be a good day to again apologize to each of my children for the shitshow we're leaving to them.
[Sadly for my eldest, Italy just cut way back on its longstanding citizenship-for-descendants-of-Italians program in part because there's been a flood of Americans like him applying for it.]
I had mentioned here that my brother was trying to do the same thing. I saw a NYT article about Italy making it harder so he probably is stymied also. I was hoping he would succeed and pave the way for me to become an EU citizen too. Oh well.
Inspired by the AI 2027 post, I want to ask. How worried should I be about AI driven doom, how can I spot if it's coming, and what on earth can I do about it?
Here’s how you can spot it coming: when you call a plumber to replace your garbage disposer and a robot shows up with the new one and installs it all by itself in 10 minutes - start worrying.
near 0%, there will be plently of other dooms and ai is going down a dead end and the ai corps sure are acting as if its a cash grab and not the technology that will make the winner king.
You can spot it coming by someone making a trillion dollars from the stock market and everyone else refusing to play anymore and data centers being attempted arson but murder drones paroling so it doesnt work
Really interesting post by Hanania today about how populism inherently leads to bad governance, whether it's the left or right doing it. Also notable is that he explicitly admits that he made a mistake about Trump. It's pretty rare for people to publicly admit mistakes like that.
Another bit I found interesting that I hadn't heard before:
---
Lee Kuan Yew famously said that in a multiracial democracy, people vote for their ethnic or religious group. This is indeed a general trend, but when leaders lean too much into identity, we understand that this poisons discourse and thought, which is why we call them demagogues. In the US, ethnopolitics is more acceptable for blacks than any other group, and blacks tend to elect extremely corrupt politicians. As of late 2009, all active ethics probes in the House of Representatives were into the behavior of black members, which led to charges of racism. Since 2019 alone, the black mayors of New York City, Baltimore, and Jackson have been indicted for corruption related charges.
Trumpism can be seen as identity politics for alienated white people. It is not a coincidence that the right has been becoming more accepting of corruption at the same time it has become implicitly ethnonationalist. Morality based movements care about the ethical standards of politicians and more intellectually inclined movements care about ideas. Populism is about blaming others for problems, so it has less mental energy to put towards policing the behavior of members of its own movement. Often, it makes tribalism into a virtue.
I had been reluctant to read the guy because of the ‘former racist’ thing but I think he nailed it in a response to a comment last week:
“If you think anything Democrats have done in terms of violating norms is in the same universe as Trump, if you think his actions and character can even be spoken of in the same terms as anyone else, you’ve lost the plot. Your diet of information or reasoning ability is so bad you simply can’t be reasoned with. “
TBH I think turning the US from c. 85% white to c. 50% white within a single human lifetime is more unprecedented and norm-violating than anything Trump's done. Granted that was a bipartisan violation rather than a strictly Democrat one, but still, the Democrats have been much more enthusiastic and open about it than the Republicans.
I'm no historian, but I'm pretty sure that when white people took control of the Americas, they didn't do it by peacefully joining Native American tribes, gradually outbreeding them, and taking power through the democratic process. There was, you know, some violence involved.
Are you suggesting that White Americans are or somehow should be afraid that they will killed en masse, with the survivors put into reservations or into whatever non-explosive descriptor we can use for Palestinian confinement to Gaza and the West Bank?
All four of my grandparents were Ellis Island immigrants. My current PCP is second generation Hmong, my dentist is second generation Vietnamese. I'm not troubled at all.
"Does ethnic diversity erode social trust? Continued immigration and corresponding growing ethnic diversity have prompted this essential question for modern societies, but few clear answers have been reached in the sprawling literature. This article reviews the literature on the relationship between ethnic diversity and social trust through a narrative review and a meta-analysis of 1,001 estimates from 87 studies. The review clarifies the core concepts, highlights pertinent debates, and tests core claims from the literature on the relationship between ethnic diversity and social trust. Several results stand out from the meta-analysis. We find a statistically significant negative relationship between ethnic diversity and social trust across all studies. The relationship is stronger for trust in neighbors and when ethnic diversity is measured more locally. Covariate conditioning generally changes the relationship only slightly. The review concludes by discussing avenues for future research."
I am in the same boat re. his racist past, but since Scott recommended his blog I decided to give it another chance. The good news is that some people clearly can change, recognize their errors and own them.
My part-way idea is that there should be a bicameral legislature; one house is elected in the usual equally-weighted sort of way, and the other house is elected by votes weighted by the amount of tax you pay.
So no retired people? Or how do you judge net? Do you count all government spending as part of the calculation? Because then almost no one would count - the US is spending far more than it takes in as taxes, so on net barely anyone is positive.
Again, how are you calculating net. Retired people are benefiting from roads, from money spent on defense, from medical research, they have pay interest on their "share" of the debt and so on. That all costs money. Or are you only counting direct transfers? Because if so, this kind of system would be ridiculously easy to game.
Medicare alone would push most retired people over into the net-negative column as taxpayers. More than 90 percent of all Americans 65+ are enrolled in Medicare now, and the FICA taxes they individually paid into that system cover only 5 to 25 percent of the benefits they get from it.
As long as your limiting the franchise, limiting it to people with a college education seems more reasonable. Or if you think college is evil, base it on an IQ test.
OIC....well in a nation that's passed exactly one purely-administrative Constitutional amendment during the last half-century, I'm with FLWAB: good luck with that one.
DJIA -3.01%, S&P 500 -3.34%, Nasdaq -4.37%, Russell 2000 -3.99%
The weird thing was watching the market climb yesterday, I guess the trading algorithms got conditioned to Trump chickening out and discounted the possibility that the mad king is actually mad.
I see this as a good time to buy. It might be good to diversify to EU stocks a bit though, particularly healthcare/defence (but I would still only do that through index tracking ETFs).
My prediction is:
1. Trump tanks US economy badly, keeps talking about how it is transitory a part of a great leap forward (or was that a different country?) etc.
2. Trump admin loses the midterm elections. Probably badly, but even a small loss is enough to significantly tie its hands as their majority is razor thin now. I think this is almost inevitable because people will lose jobs in most voting districts which are not safe MAGA anyway and prices will increase across the US:
a) People in the American rust belt might start seeing a creation of new jobs but not in enough quantities. This is because less than 2 years is not enough time to move production overseas and foreign investors will be reluctant to make such large decisions unless they really become convinced that mercantilism is now a long-term US policy.
b) Even if there is a significant number of new low-skilled labour jobs in the rust belt, these are already securely MAGA Republican areas and getting your congressman elected with a surprlus of 50 000 votes or 100 000 votes makes no difference.
3. Trump refuses to change course and will get bogged down in congressional and legal disputes. Republicans lose the next elections unless Democrats become completely suicidal and double down on the identity politics bullshit instead of shifting towards centrist views. At this point, and if Democrats abandon the identity politics, even libertarians will prefer them to the mercantilist MAGA Republicans.
4. Most (though probably not all) Trump tariffs are lifted (4 years from now) and the indexes jump massively in anticipation.
The low point in stocks might be now or it might be 6-12 months from now or something like that. I don't think it is going to be more than that. If Trump plans ahead at all he might even operate with the notion that the midterms are likely lost and will want to shoot all the bullets now.
The only other realistic scenario seems to be the "Democrats are irredeemably stupid" one.
Even if the old factory is a rusted-out piece of junk, it's often easier to get regulatory approval to "rebuild" an old factory in place than to build a new factory at a greenfield site. I don't think there's much chance we'll really see a massive increase in US manufacturing capability during the remainder of Trump's term, but if I were going to try and play in that game I'd definitely be prioritizing old industrial sites.
I might still fill them with robots and high-skill immigrants and leave the OG local workforce to wallow in poverty. But it would be politic to try and find *something* for them to do.
That is a good point. I was assuming this would be because of the old factories and know-how. But know-how is probably no longer there and the factories, if they still exist, are probably not in a good shape and you are better off just building from scratch.
So it would just be because it is a place with a pool of (relatively) low-wage workers. But I am not sure if that is enough. You also want somewhere where logistics is easy and also ideally where local government gives you some benefits (tax exemptions etc.).
Either way, setting up new factories really takes a long time, so the only place where this can have a positive impact on employment before the US midterm elections is somewhere where factories still exist and operate but perhaps run on at half capacity. So that would probably be the rust belt.
Are there actually many still existing factories running on half capacity? Seems very doubtful to me.
And I would guess any new manufacturing will go to the sun belt, not the rust belt. Younger population, less unions, more business friendly state governments.
The factory I worked at was running with 70% the employees with quite the burn out rate and when it had the flexiblity it was running lines with less intensive products preferring a pure "health" slop product to something complex because the difference of having 2 poeple vs 5 was going to effect how smothy all other ran; even tho it was fucking terrible and the complex products were shouldve actaully existed
Regarding (2) (a), consider also the effects of automation. These jobs are never coming back, even if the manufacturing does. Any new manufacturing in the US leans very heavily on automation, which you should expect given the high labor costs.
Could a weak or deflating US dollar reduce labor costs to make them competitive with automation? If there was ever time such a shock could happen, it would be now.
I am just deciding between buying US ETFs or European ETFs. I have most of my savings in US ETFs, so I think that I will now perhaps diversify a bit to German indices or something (Merz seems to be the first good chancellor in a while and he is business oriented, plus there will be quite a surge in the defence industry now, a lot of it in Germany).
On the other hand, US stocks will be hit harder now and they are also likely to bounce back fairly quick if the next administration reverses the course back. I guess it is a more high risk high reward now.
A good asset allocation strategy should have exposure to the world. FWIW I'm not touching any of my core investments because I have a reasonable spread across the world and sticking to the plan and letting rebalancing do the hard lifting is likely to produce better long-term outcome than me trying to second-guess the markets.
Yeah, makes sense. I've been too US-centred till now, in a way. All my physical assets (my flat and a few garage parking places which I rent) are in Europe and my job is also more dependent on European economy, although I could probably shift, since I can work remotely.
But my stocks are 100% American right now and it has worked really well in the past 10 years (since I've started investing regularly ... and I pretty much never sell). I have some money in European bonds and I will probably move then to European stocks and keep adding to those to maybe get to 50% American and 50% European in the long-run.
Hi! I'm a bit confused by that. I totally get that the tariffs are not reciprocal at all and that they seem nonsensical, but could you explain why they are unlikely to work as intended (aka relocalizing industry in america)? Could it be considered a painful period after which the economy will grow again? I'm not at all a MAGA guy (not even living in the US), but, as everyone is saying that tariffs are bad, I'm trying to consider the opposite opinion...
I'm not an economist, but to me the obvious problems here are:
1. Industries moved for a reason: generally the reason was some version of "higher production costs." If price increase for the tariffs on a particular good is less than the price increase that would follow from shifting production of that back to the U.S. then the industry has zero incentive to move. A 10% baseline tariff on everything seems likely to fall below that threshold for a lot of goods.
2. Lots of manufacturing can't realistically source all of their inputs from the U.S., so even if they move production to the U.S., they'll still be paying tariffs on their inputs. This effectively lowers the benefit of them moving to the U.S. as they'll still get charged some fraction of the tariffs anyway.
3. Moving production is a long and expensive process. Any company that is looking to move is looking at high up-front costs and won't see ANY return on that investment for probably at least a couple years. Even when the move is complete, it will likely take several more years before they hit the break-even point where the move pays for itself[1]. This interacts with points 1 and 2, as higher production costs in the U.S. reduce the benefit of the move and increase the time it takes to pay off the moving cost.
4. The Trump administration can't guarantee any sort of stability in the tariff regime. Even if people trust the word of Trump himself on this (and obviously they shouldn't), a big enough defeat in the midterms could end the tariffs as soon as 2 years from now, and a defeat in the presidential election would almost certainly end them 4 years from now. I'd guess that 4 years is not actually enough time for a lot of industries to both get production moved over and pay off the costs of the move, and even if they do, once the tariffs are lifted they'll be back in the state of paying more for production with no price protection to justify it, meaning they might be looking at *another* long and expensive move just to get back to where they started.
5. This move makes markets more unpredictable, and unpredictability breeds caution. No company is actually sure what their sales will look like in 1 year, 2 years or 4 years. Depending on how the markets change, the assumptions about sales driving the various relocation plans might be badly wrong. Careful planners know this. Spending a bunch of money up-front is much less attractive: a move that slightly increases your overall expected profit but leaves you exposed to serious problems if things don't break your way is generally a bad move, especially if you're already a well-established company.
If I were crafting a plan to bring manufacturing back to the U.S.[2] it would look very little like this. It would start with talking up the plan and trying to get buy-in from congress, key industry figures and important voting-blocs so I could ensure stability. It would start with no tariffs at all: instead you'd offer some form of subsidies and tax incentives to companies who tangibly committed to shifting production, with a tariff regime consistently signaled as coming at least a year in the future. The subsidies and tariffs would not be scattershot, they'd be focused at particular industries that had been determined to be good choices for creating jobs and/or protecting U.S. interests. The (eventual) tariffs might be quite high on this industries, but they'd be carefully chosen to minimize knock-on effects on other industries. Doing all of this suddenly, with no preparation, by executive fiat, while maintaining (deliberately, one presumes) high uncertainty about the content of tariffs until they're actually deployed, and above all putting them on *all imports* is pretty much the opposite of everything I just outlined. This seems like a move with a very, very high ratio of collateral damage to useful incentive.
[1] Keep in mind that they would have still made money staying where they were, just (presumably) less money. If their moving cost is X, their yearly revenue without moving is r_i and their revenue with moving is r_f, then it will take X/(r_f - r_i) years for the move to pay for itself. With a large X you have to assume a BIG difference between r_f and r_i for this to happen in a realistic time frame.
[2] Which of course I wouldn't do (at least not by myself) because again, I'm not an economist.
L50L already gave a good rundown, just to add as a general principle: it's good to stop and consider the opposite, but it's rare that the opposite ends up being true.
It's economics 101 that free trade is good in most cases.
There is the higher level view that sectoral tariffs can be useful in certain cases to protect infant industries, but that's basically the exact opposite of what Trump is doing. Trump is just wantonly destroying things out of stupidity and there's noone left on the right to tell him no.
Note that Trump's new tariffs are significantly HIGHER than the infamous Smoot-Hawley tariffs that contributed to the Great Depression.
Okay, thanks for your answer. Let's see how it pans out. I agree with you on a philosophical level, as I am close to being libertarian and I like the natural equilibrium of things (free trade definitely being a natural equilibrium, in the sense that it's the least constrained), but I'm wondering how different things are, this time. I mean, these tariffs stuff makes me think of weight regularization in Machine Learning: you may be losing a bit of performance but you definitely get a sounder model.
Are there any precedents where tariffs indeed achieved their goals? If not, I will be forced to join the mainstream opinion on that matter!
Also, I get that these tariffs are risky and nearly a war move against every country in the world.
The way I think about it, tariffs are a bit like an insurance policy. You consistently pay a manageable amount (pay more for products made in your country, even though under a free trade regime you could buy them for cheaper elsewhere) so that, if things go wrong (a war or COVID-type pandemic disrupts supply chains), you're cushioned somewhat from the effects (your key industries are safe in your own country and you don't run out of food because an enemy is blockading your ports).
Of course, this doesn't mean that destroying your economy with huge tariffs is a good idea, any more than bankrupting yourself by taking out expensive insurance policies on everything you own would be a good idea. Accurately balancing risks is part of what constitutes good stewardship, whether you're running a household or a country.
That's an argument for narrowly tailored tariffs based on national security considerations. The CHIPS act was a good effort in that vein. Trump however is doing the exact opposite. Trump's policies are likely to DECREASE American manufacturing without any compensating benefits.
There is nothing sounder about it though. There is no good reason for basic manufacturing to return to the US and the "trade deficit" is a very misleading term.
David Friedman has a great article explaining all of this quite concisely (the title "Ptolemaic Trade theory" is very fitting as this is really on the same level as believing that the sun revolves around Earth).
I think that one long-term benefit of these insane policies might be that they are so extreme that it will actually make many more people update away from 16th century economic theory.
David Friedman's a pretty good Substack to follow, on trade policy and other economics. In "Retaliatory Tariffs", he wrote about a tariff he could conceivably be in favor of, so he's not a straight-up anti-tariff ideologue; there are fundamental consequences he's pursuing (namely, people being better off), and if a tariff were to cause that, he would likely favor it. (It's just that tariffs practically never do this.)
By the way, I think that it is possible that Vance understands all this and still wants to pursue Trump's tariff policy (I am almost certain that Trumps doesn't really understand, nor does he care to understand the logic).
Vance comes from the rust belt, has been pretty traumatized by the decline of the low-skill labour communities there and wants to restore the "good old days". If it means making America (or the world) poorer, that is a price he is willing to pay, especially if it disproportionately hits the "coastal elites" (i.e. everyone not a part of these communities).
It might be a win-win from his perspective, even though he would not present it in the terms I do.
Or it is also possible he doesn't understand the economics of it either...
High Impact Professionals is excited to announce that applications are open for the next round of its Impact Accelerator Program (IAP). The IAP is a free, 6-week program starting the week of June 16, 2025, and is designed to help experienced (mid-career/senior) professionals not currently working in a high-impact role to: identify paths to impact; take concrete, impactful actions; and join a network of like-minded, experienced, and supportive impact-focused professionals.
Apparently building start collapsing in years not decades after being abandoned; china collapsing buildings is also happening to japan so it not nessery so its not entirely a commie thing but may also be a asian fertility collapse thing
Are there "KISS" housing being built anywhere; you need a shower, Im unconvinced you need a shower on the 3rd floor of wooden supported houses, so if a pipe bursts you get a nasty water damage bill?
Maybe fireplaces that run on both nutral gas *and* wood
Off the top of my head, but that could be a thing right?
that years not decades thing -- can be, yea. It depends on the construction methods involved and also on the practical definition of "abandoned". (Was even just minimal basic "keep water out" type maintenance being done? For a lot of types of construction just that can move it over into the decades scenario.)
I have been amazed a couple of times to discover large structures which to the naked eye appeared to be crumbling, but were successfully restored to full new use once somebody decided that was worth doing. The city of Detroit now has several such examples right now that I'm personally familiar with. There is a 19th-century mansion on my former college campus in New England which I crawled around in a few times as an undergrad and would have sworn that the boarded-up hulk was about to fall down (that's part of what made the adventure an adventure); ten or 20 years later the college restored it to whole new beautiful use. Architects and engineers of my acquaintance say it's that "keep water out" threshold that's the key.
> (Was even just minimal basic "keep water out" type maintenance being done?
Probaly not; altho maybe you take ...4? houses from a suburb as your own if populations collapse and prices drop to effectively zero if you can think ahead about the Detroit and china examples
> Architects and engineers of my acquaintance say it's that "keep water out" threshold that's the key.
Given complex wood framing with a low margin of error, probably; I think you can lower that margin of error, less floors, the first floor is made of stone/concrete, more load barring walls.
> ten or 20 years later the college restored it to whole new beautiful use.
Hello, everyone! We’re excited to invite you to a special ACX Everywhere gathering, where we’ll explore two of Scott Alexander’s most influential and widely discussed essays: “Meditations on Moloch” and “I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup.” Whether you’re brand new to these pieces or have studied them before, we welcome your curiosity and ideas. Come ready for a relaxed but thought-provoking conversation—no prior expertise needed!
Readings & Links
1) Meditations on Moloch
Text: Slate Star Codex (2014)
Audio: YouTube Reading
2) I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup
Text: Slate Star Codex (2014)
Audio: Podcast link
(No worries if you can’t read or listen to them in full—just come with an open mind!)
Essay Overviews
“Meditations on Moloch”
Coordination Failures: Scott frames “Moloch” as the destructive force that arises when people or institutions compete in ways that force everyone into a worse outcome—even if no one wants it.
Arms Races & Zero-Sum: Examples include doping in sports, environmental exploitation, or endless overwork—everyone follows suit to stay competitive, with no single actor able to unilaterally stop.
Escaping Moloch: Potential solutions often involve strong collective agreements or frameworks that break the cycle of “If I don’t, the other guy will.”
“I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup”
Tribalism’s Double-Edge: Many of us consider ourselves tolerant—until we meet the group we truly can’t stand.
Hypocrisy of Tolerance: We readily accept differences that don’t threaten us, but violently reject those we see as morally or culturally opposite.
Real Implications: We may unify around certain enemies or narratives, ironically bridging differences only to channel hate toward a chosen outgroup.
Conversation Starters
Personal Moloch Moments
Where have you felt trapped in a “race to the bottom”—working longer hours, competing for scarce resources—and wished for a collective fix?
Is Outgroup Hatred Inevitable?
Do we each have a hidden “line in the sand” for what we refuse to tolerate? Where do you draw that line, and why?
Solutions to Moloch
How do we form strong enough coalitions or social norms to break vicious cycles? Is it purely top-down (regulation, laws) or bottom-up (individual choices, culture shifts)?
Tolerance vs. Complicity
When does “tolerating” become passivity or enabling something harmful? Conversely, is it easy to mistake rightful moral stances for “intolerant outgroup hatred”?
Interplay: Moloch & Outgroups
Do these two phenomena reinforce each other? For instance, do tribal rivalries hamper the coordination needed to defeat Moloch?
Join Us On April 5!
We look forward to a friendly deep dive into these essays and their relevance—from everyday life dilemmas to global issues. If you have any questions, just contact Michael (info above). Whether you’re new to Scott Alexander or a longtime SSC/ACX reader, come share your perspective—and let’s celebrate the spirit of ACX Everywhere together!
So, the tariffs are out, with a predictable response from the markets, but that's not what I want to talk about. What I want to ask about is the countries further down on the big list of tariffs. What did the Falkland Islands do to get on Trump's shit list?
Never mind the Falklands; what's the deal with Diego Garcia? The only people who live there, the only economic activity, is a ginormous US military base. Are we taking a 10% cut of the personal possessions of our soldiers when they rotate home?
Since the tariffs were calculated based on trade deficits, it is natural that tiny countries end up at the top and bottom of the list. Random fluctuations are generally larger for small countries, so the maximum and minimum value are usually very small nations or domains which happen to be (un-)lucky with the randomness. This is why the tiny states/domains of Lesotho and of Saint-Pierre et Miquelon end up with the top rates.
It isn't even important *which* formula was used, just that *some* formula was used.
I believe the tariffs are based on the country of production. Otherwise the rest of the EFTA would start exporting everything through Iceland, which got 10% (while the EU got 20%).
Since they are billed as “reciprocal tariffs” I presume they impose a tariff on US imports. Naturally a cursory Google doesn’t tell me that because all the hits are about the new ones.
I’m not saying this was good to do, just that there does not seem to be any particular reason to wonder about the Falklands in particular.
The "reciprocal tariffs" are not based on any actual tariffs levied by other countries. The way they came up with the number was to take the trade deficits in goods with that country and divide it by the total exports, divide by 2, then floor at 10%. I wish I were making that up.
Note that the "in goods" part is important, since the US has a surplus with many countries when services are included.
Well, I agree that this is very disappointing. I’d love it if the point were to encourage tariffs to be removed so we could all benefit from free trade, but for that you need the stick to be very precise.
On the other hand, there still seems to be no reason to wonder what he has against the Falklands.
Added: I worry myself sick over budget deficits but despite the similarity in name I think “trade deficits” are a boogeyman that shouldn’t be a concern to anyone. So we trade Japan pieces of green paper for cars. Who’s the savvy trader?
I wondered about the Falklands because I posted that very shortly after the tariffs were announced and nobody had worked out the formula that they were using yet, it was just clear at first glance that the numbers didn't make sense. Lapras's reply answered my question.
(Still makes me curious about the two uninhabited islands that ended up on the list. I can only assume some form of trade gets recorded as passing through those islands for bureaucratic reasons.)
>(Still makes me curious about the two uninhabited islands that ended up on the list. I can only assume some form of trade gets recorded as passing through those islands for bureaucratic reasons.)
Or maybe some super thorough bureaucrat wanted to cover the possibility that they might become inhabited at some point in the future.
I am a lawyer, not a doctor and not a chemist. However, I do have the internet including ChatGPT which gives me just enough information about medicine and chemistry to be dangerous. I also have a mood disorder and take lithium, so that is one of my topics of interest to research.
I recently listened to an episode of the Carlat Psychiatry Podcast that discusses research on lithium proline salicylate (LISPRO), also known as AL001 or LiProSal. This compound is designed to enhance lithium delivery to the central nervous system (CNS) while minimizing systemic exposure, potentially reducing the risk of adverse effects associated with traditional lithium therapies. It appears based on the research done to-date to achieve this goal, the question now is whether the increase in lithium in the CNS translates into clinical benefit, and in the dementia trials it appears to but they have not released data on mood disorders. So they are years from releasing it to the public. However, this is of interest to me because I want to take lithium indefinitely and avoid burning out my kidneys. So the idea of a compound of lithium that could get more to my CNS where it benefits me, while also reducing the amount burdening my kidneys is very interesting.
Dr. ChatGPT tells me that the chemistry to create lithium proline salicylate is actually fairly straightforward and doable in a normal kitchen. You would want to combine lithium carbonate in a slightly acidic solution with proline and salicylic acid. This would not be perfect, but ChatGPT seems to think that a chemical reaction would take place in approximately 10 minutes of just mixing the substances together that would precipitate some LiProSal crystals suspended in solution. There would be some impurities compared to a pharmaceutical lab, but according to Dr. ChatGPT none would be substantially more harmful or dangerous than lithium, asprin, or proline.
I try not to do things that are stupid, but I admit I am kind of tempted to try this for a week to see how it treats me. Convince me I am stupid and this is a terrible idea?
I have no idea. But I’d suggest using not Chat but research GPT, and asking it for a summary with links that covers every
question you can think of: Has anyone else tried this, list of downsides and risks, etc. There also used to be a reddit sub that covered this kind of thing— see if you can find it. One possible problem
I see is figuring out what dose of the new compound is equivalent to the dose you are now taking. There’s a professional researcher named Elizabeth that people here recommend. You could also pay her to research this question: https://acesounderglass.com/hire-me/
Who else is now preparing for the fall of western civilization? Do we have any idea of how imminent the fall will be, or is it going to be a long drawn out thing? And will Wisconsin fall first? If anyone has any details it will be really helpful in aiding my preparations. Thanks.
Is it an absolute fall or a relative one, ie America is no longer “top nation” and we become sort of like postwar England, living off of soft power and nostalgia?
I can imagine a future where "Western Civilization" loses meaning as the US and Europe continue to drift apart culturally and geopolitically. It does not require any individual state to "fall".
I'm pessimistic in the short term, but optimistic long term aside from my concerns about AI.
Democrats are reforming by the sounds of it, woke stuff is on the decline and the backlash to Trump is not particularly woke (unlike 2016). Trump will trash the economy over the next year, Elon's clowning around will show poor results and the republicans will get creamed in the midterms. By 2028 support for Trump will be just his hardliners and the 'just want to see libs cry' demographic will abandon him.
Liberals getting spanked all over the world has made the center-left realize that appeasing the progressives was a mistake. Many of the issues that were ignored ten years ago, like cost disease, regulation and housing reform are getting more attention on the democrat side, so we could have bipartisan support for some real game changing quality of life improvements. The de-growthers are losing. Open borders have closed which is good and I doubt Dems will make the same mistake again. The economy can hopefully recover quickly from all this chaos.
If it weren't for the authoritarian stuff, I'd agree. But running the dictator playbook looks like a one-way street. Even if Democrats regain power in 2029, it will be hard for them to turn the other cheek.
What playbook is that? Is Trump arresting members of the opposition? Is he taking over the media? Is he quartering troops in our homes?
As near as I can tell Trump is *mostly* being aggressive about using powers that he arguably has been granted by statute and by the Constitution. If the Congress regrets delegating that much authority it is free to take it back, and that might be good for the nation.
There are a few things on his list that are considerably at the far end of “arguable”, and maybe a few that are beyond that line, but I have faith that the latter will not stand, and that he’s not even going to try sending the military to threaten the courts.
Kudos for saying “dictator” and “authoritarian” rather than “Hitler” and “Fascist”. We may make it through yet.
He's explicitly kicking legal immigrants out of the country purely for their political views. Independently of that, he's also secretly disappearing people to 3rd world torture dungeons without even a hearing (and in direction violation of explicit court orders no less). Independently of that, he's also banning law firms for perceived slights such as representing political opponents. Oh and as a bonus, his pet attorney is talking about prosecuting members of congress, since you ask, though that hasn't gone anywhere yet and is pretty far down the list of authoritarian moves he has made.
Any ONE of these alone represents a massive assault on civil rights and the rule of law. And Trump's doing worse stuff every day. There's a ton of other stuff I haven't even mentioned since even the list of five-alarm atrocities is already so long.
> t he’s not even going to try sending the military to threaten the courts
Not yet anyway. But he's gone extremely far beyond the pale already, including calling for impeachment of judges who ruled against him and pushing congress to pass a law preventing courts from issuing injunctions. Besides, there's no need to militarily threaten the courts when you can just ignore them (as he's done on several occasions already).
When you're illegally disappearing people without any due process and also banning courts from saying no, you're already 70% of the way to dictatorship. And the strongarming of companies for perceived disloyalty also goes a long way there. And keep in mind that we're less than three months into his term! Even Nazi Germany wasn't built in a day!
It is reassuring that the Trump admin still feels the need for at least a figleaf of legitimacy (e.g they've only sometime ignored court orders rather than going full nuclear), but it's hard to know how long that will hold.
Then impeach him! Ah, can't get enough members of Congress to agree? Then that doesn't sound like 70% of the way to dictatorship; that sounds like someone executing the will of the people.
I will grudgingly accept "demagogue", but that's what the old guard always calls populists.
I'm sorry I goaded you into mentioning Nazis. "Calling for the impeachment of judges" is pretty milquetoast compared to actual Nazis.
Every dictator ever claims to be following the will of the people. The difference is not what the leaders claim, but the actual institutions, laws, checks and balances and so on.
If on Jan 20, 2029, President Kendi "accidentally" arrests Trump and Musk and ships them off to a third world prison, would you say that he too is just "executing the will of the people"?
Trump is currently conducting an all-out assault against the rule of law, the constitution, and democracy, and if America manages to hold together in anything resembling its current form, it will be *in spite* of him, not because of any restraint on his part.
The one saving grace of Trump is that he is *also* pursuing unbelievably disastrous economic policy, which may erode his support base enough that it will be difficult to complete the turn towards autocracy. But if you don't fear Trump himself, just imagine what someone who is actually smart and disciplined could accomplish with these methods now that he has blazed the trail.
I am of two minds on this, but I am attempting to hedge the risk a bit. I sort of think that civilization will collapse, but not enough to go all-in. So I put a ton of my money into my 401(k) and stuff that will have zero value in an apocalypse. But I also have a hunting rifle plus know-how and a pantry full of food that could be starvation rations for months if not longer. I buy bulk beans, grains, tinned fish, etc. and keep it all in big plastic totes in my pantry. I eat this stuff regularly so I regularly freshen and renew my supplies and this stuff probably would not expire too quickly if the shit hits the fan.
I also bought a few acres of property for my home - not enough for a huge farm but I think probably enough to keep me and my family alive if I learn enough about gardening to play my cards right. I am planting out perennials that can provide a lot of calories like chestnut and hazelnut trees, etc. I am also trying to establish a root cellar so that I can store stuff over the winter like potatoes that could be a starvation ration that could also be re-planted in the spring.
I hope if things do go south, my preps are enough to keep my family alive on. If civilization stays afloat during my life, then my preps are nice hobbies that keep me physically active and encourage me to eat healthy food. So I am trying to prep in a way that balances my worry that civilization will collapse with a comfortable enjoyable life if this ship of fools piloted by a senile sociopath somehow avoids crashing on the rocks.
No; I think that we're heading in a dangerous direction, but slowly enough that we'll see warning signs before it's too late, and the proximate solution - "elect Democrats" - is sufficiently simple and low cost that I think that it will be implemented.
If it weren't for the authoritarian stuff, I'd agree. But running the dictator playbook looks like a one-way street. Even if Democrats regain power in 2029, it will be hard for them to turn the other cheek.
Everything bad about living under Biden, amplified to a higher extreme. Locking people up for innocuous social media posts. Continuing mass migration where antisocial African and Islamic migrants are given explicit legal favor compared to the natives. A significant decline in the nationalized healthcare services that are supposed to be the reason the natives put up with so much migration in the first place. General decline in wages and standards of living. The elite of the country becoming ever more united in hyper liberal hysteria over stupid shit, like alleged Russian or Elon Muskian propaganda in elections.
This is sarcastic in reference to Musk's attempt to buy the Wisconsin supreme court seat, right?
In the US, at least, systemic and structural elements of government have been consistently weakened since the George W Bush administration, if not earlier. The typical progression for this type of decay is that everything seems fine for a long time, then a repetition of crisis moments of collapse alternating with periods of calm.
This isn't meant to be subtly partisan; I think there is significant blame on both major parties. However, one of the parties is more enthusiastically rushing to knock down pillars without any apparent concern about whether they are load-bearing while the other mostly ignored structural considerations while in power and basked in the glow of "not as bad as those guys."
low confidence, but I feel like the petrodollar is the lynchpin. I expect the decline to play out over decades, not days. More in the vein of "huh, isn't it kinda weird that recessions (etc) are getting more frequent?" than the movie "The Day After Tomorrow".
> Who else is now preparing for the fall of western civilization?
I dont have the money to make a off grid compound, and I dont think it will be the standard "have 6 months of food" thing
I predict it; not how does one prep for actual collapse? There was a fiddler green essay about being a cassandra before zombies; and youd fundamentally making tradeoffs between "sounding sane" and actual preping being low impact, if not getting you dragged to a pyche ward. Even if you make a compound with a bunch of guns, what happens if the fbi decides to kill your children before the collaspe?
If you want 10000 bullets for zombies, you need money here and now even if green paper rapidly stops mattering, to have poeple listen to you you need green paper here and now, to effect politics green paper; even if you 100% know green papers value drops to zero in a week you may still need it tomorrow. A situation without zombies will be murkier and slower.
> And will Wisconsin fall first?
No; civilization failure effects the poor first. It wont be america that collapses first, with our oil, food and history of actually wanting democracy, everyone else will be worse off.
Even if its gross americain mismanagement that causes the collaspe, the fake democracy in iraq collapsed in under a day without american support. There are a few true nation states, the rest merely were forced to adapt to the world order of those highly productive and had the guns vs sticks. They will fall in close to reverse order of when colonialism happened.
> If anyone has any details it will be really helpful in aiding my preparations
Allot of prep is focused on food I think that is a mistake... when we have a bunch of extra caleries and allot of it is mildly poisonous by shelf stable twinkies, 5$ for expired 6 pounds cheese goo cans. Clean water is harder, when I was more worried about the future I was watching the prices of whole house water filter system, they hadnt moved.
Theres places in the usa where the water systems have already broken down.
I dont think making from scratch water filters seemed that hard, several stages, and then making charcoal seemed to be the main details. But maybe the important thing.
My intuition is that it will be a long, slow decline. My emergency preparedness is a lot more extensive than most people's (thanks, ThePrepared.com!), but its purpose is to weather a short-term regional disaster. It's there to get me through until infrastructure is restored or until I can evacuate to a different area with infrastructure.
I have no interest in living should infrastructure fail everywhere.
Anyone have any rare job seeking strategy; Ive given up on job sites entirely and looking for more unhinged plans regardless of their possibility of success to check everything off the list.
(Given an adaptive explore vs exploit theory; a low enough success rate should appooch random brute force attempts.)
get some fancy-sounding certificates and cold-call managers. e.g. get the $200 Scrum-master cert from scrum.org and then ask IT-Project-Managers if they have communication-issues between management and engineering (protip: if they don't have these issues they are either oblivious or lying). The bigger the corp, the better your odds.
With the right cert you can also apply to government contracts directly as an individual. Governments contracts should be publicly available. So you should be able to find both current listings as well as results for past-contracts and bids.
go to some company and just start working there and see what happens. If you make it past the first week, start asking for money. I guess your odds heavily depend on the industry, e.g. construction work has better odds than a law-firm.
How do you go to a company and just "start working"? I can see that if you're picking grapes. It's literally impossible to do for any white-collar work, which is what I think Monkyyy does.
I'm old (Xennial), so take this with a grain of salt, but:
Most of the value in a university education is signaling and networking. I think the connections in any 'anti-woke' university are mostly going to be for conservative political circles, and you'd have a hard time getting jobs with any left-leaning nonprofit. Most people who care about animals are left-wing; you have the occasional Christian who thinks it's cruel but they don't staff the organizations.
If you have idealistic life goals you probably want to pick up as much prestige as possible because that's how you gain influence. The only real decision point is if the state school is substantially less expensive, then you have to weigh how much debt to accrue in search of your goal. People are still paying that crap off decades later.
'Question 11: You have recently claimed that toddler-level AGI could come about by 2030. How confident are you of that prediction?
It’s looking more and more likely every year. I’ll be pretty surprised if we don’t have toddler-level AGI in the range 2023-25, actually. And then it will be more than a toddler in the human sense. It will be a toddler savant, with ability to e.g. do science and math and answer questions way beyond the level of a human toddler. And once we’re there, the full-fledged Singularity won’t be far off in my opinion…. SingularityNET has potential to accelerate R&D progress in this and other AGI-ish directions, making it increasingly likely that the advancement of AI proves Kurzweil a pessimist…'
Maybe toddler-level in the sense that toddlers only mimic what they see other people doing. I could see that. If I can see that, I can also see toddler-savant.
The problem here is that toddlers don't stop there. Toddlers are capable of some symbolic reasoning, problem solving using small objects, putting words together in the right order, and knowing which words correspond to which objects in the real world. LLMs can't do that yet, and given what I've seen, they're not going to master symbolic reasoning any time soon, even if they aim a great deal of focus there instead of securing ever larger numbers of nodes in their neural nets or supplies of electricity.
Given all that, the idea of a full-fledged Singularity doesn't look likely to me by 2030. And if I don't see news of symbolic reasoning breakthroughs or the equivalent by 2030, I don't expect it by 2035, et cetera.
I'm not sure toddler AGI makes any sense as a concept.
In fact I'm no longer sure that AGI makes any sense as a concept, and I think toddlers are a good illustration of why. Toddlers don't have "general intelligence" in any sense, they have human toddler intelligence, which makes them quite good at certain things and terrible at others. Similarly, LLMs don't have "general intelligence", they have LLM-intelligence which makes them good at some things and terrible at others. (Very little overlap between LLMs and toddlers, as it happens).
We like to pretend that adult humans have "general intelligence", but we don't, we have adult-human intelligence and are good at certain things and terrible at others.
To pile on to that, animals, too, have their own intelligence that makes them good at some things and terrible at others. As a dog owner, I know well how incredible dogs are at observing others and reading from posture, gestures etc., an ability that comes naturally to them but is rare and valuable enough in humans that they can make a paid profession out of it.
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A legal immigrant and father to a US citizen with no criminal record was "accidentally" deported and thrown into the worst prison on the planet. US tax payer dollars are paying to keep him there. And the government claims there's now nothing they can do because he's outside jurisdiction.
I think this is indefensible. If, somehow, you're still defending this administration, I would love to understand what exactly is enough of a bright line for them to cross.
He was an illegal alien suspected of gang activity. We owe him nothing. DHS has the authority to remove him from the country. If you’re concerned about prison, here’s a simple solution: obey the law.
As has already been posted, both in op and in the comments on this thread, the man was legally allowed to be in the country, regardless of the circumstances of his entry. DHS does NOT have the authority to violate judicial orders. So the actual law breaker here is...the Trump admin.
It should be obvious why conservatives don't take this seriously. When the law suits your preferences, ignoring it is a crisis and an authoritarian power grab. When the law doesn't appeal to you, ignoring it is simply a practical reality of enforcement. Why wasn't he deported after his arrest in 2019? Was the decision to let him stay at that point a crisis of democracy?
If we're going to be histrionic about the actions of DHS, why not apply that to the judge as well? We could just as easily characterize him as a rouge judge misusing his authority for activist purposes and granting protection based on an obviously spurious asylum claim. We can even accuse him of trying to usurp the power of the democratically elected president and stymie the execution of his popular mandate. Would you really find any of that convincing though? If not, then hopefully you can see why conservatives are generally unconcerned about this.
> Why wasn't he deported after his arrest in 2019? Was the decision to let him stay at that point a crisis of democracy?
I mean, you can read the case law? The precedent, the laws in place, these are all well established and have been linked in the thread.
Paraphrasing from elsewhere, if your argument is that you do not believe in refugees or asylum seekers, that we should deport legal migrants who are the family of citizens to places where they might be killed, and that this is so important it is worth massively expanding the powers of the executive to the point where they are ignoring judicial orders and legal precedent, then you should actually make that argument. But handwaving to something like "this is illegal!!!" while doing exactly zero work to understand why Garcia's case went the way it did is not compelling.
And if your argument is "I do believe in asylum in some cases but we can do it a different way", then propose a different way. I, and everyone else who's thought about this for decades, would love to hear the unique insights.
The reality of the situation is that you're mad that the legislature has laws on the books protecting people you don't like. You can, like, advocate to change the laws. But throwing a tantrum through the executive that not only violates the actual letter of the law but also directly and massively expands the authority of the executive under a man who is clearly authoritarian? Make it make sense. This is in no way equivalent to the decision to let him stay in the country, which of course is a decision that actually does follow the law.
On a meta level of all this, I think what I've heard from you and several other people in these comments is something like "no violation of checks and balances, no violation of law, no violation of moral understanding is too great to get rid of immigrants in this country". Which of course begs the question: why? What is animating this level of extremism?
Even if I buy that all of these legal immigrants broke some law in arriving to this country, I have no idea what is compelling such massive hatred against a group of people who are literally paying taxes while getting no benefits. It'd be like shooting pedestrians to prevent the scourge of jaywalking. Like, what?
The strongest evidence for your side is 'it's complicated'. On the other side you have taxes, economic growth, consumer demand, being willing to do a bunch of jobs no one else wants to do ...
I'll freely admit that I'm not married to the existence of asylum or refugee status, especially in its current form. Whatever the original intention might have been, its primary use today is as a tool for economic migrants and open-borders activists to game the system. It's also not difficult to come up with reform ideas. (Auto-reject cases that pass through a third country, auto-reject anyone suspected of a crime, make it non-obligatory for the host country to hear claims, move to an opt-in system where the host country affirmatively selects people they want to grant asylum/refugee hearings to at their own discretion.)
There will always be a tension between liberal asylum/refugee policy and the ability to restrict immigration. Since the current policy makes it impossible to enforce immigration restrictions we need to make the policy less liberal. This is really just common sense and does not take years of study to understand. It's only a problem if you are adamant about maximizing asylum. To which, I can ask you the same question you asked me. Why? Why prioritize the interests of foreigners over the clearly expressed preferences of citizens?
If it's so easy to come up with reform ideas, you should push for legislation.
You haven't really responded to the meat of what I'm saying. We both seem to agree that the law and precedent supports that there is nothing "illegal" happening in the way the border is being enforced. We just disagree about whether the law is right or wrong. But instead of trying to fix the law -- which, you know, your people have both houses so like...??? -- you want to give power to the executive, remove checks and balances, and even seem open to some pretty monstrous collateral damage.
You can flail about claiming that there's an open border (there isn't) or that the law is somehow resulted in an open border (it hasn't). I'd love to see stats on this because the only information I can find indicates that asylum grants are like 5% of all applications.
Which of course makes what-about-this-strawman all the weaker. Why is this such a big deal to you, personally, that you think it's acceptable and in fact morally just to overturn checks and balances?
You're not going to shock or scandalise any conservatives by pointing out that the government is pretty incompetent and bad at its job. That's exactly what conservatives have been saying all along! A change in the party affiliation at the top isn't going to suddenly make millions of bone-headed government employees any smarter or more competent, and it should come as no surprise that the government is just as bad at deporting people as it is at airline security, health care or airport security.
I'm not really aiming for self-destructive conservatives. I'm aiming for the rationalist libertarian conservatives who claimed that Trump was going to be better for a less authoritarian government.
Like, if you're a xenophobic nationalist, yea, I think you're probably in full support of this. But also, we just have such fundamental values differences that we have to start the conversation several miles back before we can even begin to evaluate trump
>A legal immigrant and father to a US citizen with no criminal record
This just incorrect (apart from the “father to a US Citizen” part, which doesn’t indicate anything relevant about this case apart from the geographic coordinates his babymomma gave birth at). He entered the United States without authorization, which is a crime, and which by definition makes him an illegal immigrant.
"During the removal proceedings, Abrego Garcia applied for asylum and protection under the United Nations Convention Against Torture, and a judge granted him withholding from removal. The government did not appeal the decision."
You seem to want to have a semantics debate, which I'm not interested in having. So let's taboo the word "immigrant" and get right to the point.
The man is "legally allowed to be in the country". You can disagree about how he got here, but he is legally allowed to be here. If you think there's something factually incorrect about that, please provide sources.
Also, sorry, I think it's material that he is the father of a citizen. This will destroy that girl's childhood and the rest of the family. Maybe that's acceptable collateral damage to you, but own at least own that.
It’s not a a semantic debate. He illegally entered the country. Therefore, he should be removed. There are in fact, practical and procedural hurdles to the actual removal of a person like that, but none of that changes the fact that he is not supposed to be in this country.
He had an order of removal to El Salvador. A judge paused that and said, “you can’t remove him to El Salvador.” The judge did not say that he is legally in the country. He could have been removed to some other country. The fact that he was not then removed to another country does not make the fact that he is in the country legal.
Yes, the government screwed up by removing him to El Salvador. The government did not screw up by removing a legal immigrant.
"It’s not a a semantic debate. He illegally entered the country. Therefore, he should be removed."
I believe that current US federal law is that a person who enters the country without permission and then says that he's sorry but he had to do this because he and his family were on the run from a vindictive authoritarian regime or whatever and can they please have asylum, is *not* to be removed from the country until we've had time to properly determine whether or not they're telling the truth about that.
If the circumstances make it patently obvious that they're lying, then maybe it can be a short and simple hearing, but you do have to hold that hearing. Sorry (not sorry) if the law doesn't work the way that you think it should. You can try changing the law, of course; your team holds the Presidency and both houses of Congress.
Part of the problem is that people claim asylum as one more move in "I got into the country and I want to stay here". Is this man genuinely in danger from the government or other entities in his home country?
This is how the well has been poisoned in trying to distinguish between genuine cases and people just trying it on, and now with the change of administration the pendulum has swung from "believe them all" to "doubt them all".
> Part of the problem is that people claim asylum as one more move in "I got into the country and I want to stay here". Is this man genuinely in danger from the government or other entities in his home country? This is how the well has been poisoned in trying to distinguish between genuine cases and people just trying it on, and now with the change of administration the pendulum has swung from "believe them all" to "doubt them all".
Sorry, are you saying that previously, every asylum request was granted? Do you really want to defend that?
"Affirmative asylum case filings with USCIS nearly doubled
from 241,280 applications in 2022 to 456,750 in 2023,
the highest number on record (and covering 636,380
individuals) [...] The total number of defensive asylum applications filed with EOIR nearly doubled from 260,830 in 2022 to 488,620 in 2023. [...]
The total number of persons granted asylum in the United
States increased from 35,720 in 2022 to 54,350 in 2023."
In your framing of "believe them all", only 54k out of a total of over a million asylum applications were accepted. This is, roughly, a 5% acceptance rate.
So, like, what are you even talking about? I think you should consider if the sources you are downstream from are grounded in factual information.
I think you're of the opinion that the judge was like 'you cannot remove him to El Salvador but he's still here illegally. And I'm afraid you don't really know what you're talking about.
"As in the case of asylum, a person who is granted withholding of removal is protected from being returned to his or her home country and receives the right to remain in the United States and work legally. But at the end of the court process, an immigration judge enters a deportation order and then tells the government they
cannot execute that order. That is, the “removal” to a person’s home country is “withheld.” However, the government is still allowed to deport that person to a different country if the other country agrees to accept them.
Withholding of removal provides a form of protection that is less certain than asylum, leaving its recipients in a sort of limbo. A person who is granted withholding of removal may never leave the United States without executing that removal order, cannot petition to bring family members to the United States, and does not gain a path to citizenship. And unlike asylum, when a family seeks withholding of removal together a judge may grant protection to the parent while denying it to the children, leading to family separation."
So, again, he was legally in the country. And, by the way,
>Yes, the government screwed up by removing him to El Salvador.
No, it’s totally not, it’s a debate about the law, and you seem to… have no idea about how laws work, and what a “judge” is, and what “legal” means. Hope you’re not a lawyer! Or a prosecutor. That would be sad!
The argument for the other side is quite simple. The rule of law on immigration has been completely ignored for decades now. Entering the country without authorization is a federal crime; this is the law of the land and was never changed. The government just sometimes stopped preventing people from illegally entering the country and also sometimes didn't deport them when they were caught. The law was just ignored and unenforced, to the extent that there are tens of millions of people who illegally entered the country. Now the rule of law is just being ignored in the other direction. If you want to use that to criticize the other side, they'll just shrug and say turnabout is fair play. Your follow up to that thought might be "but this means as soon as someone stops following the law somewhere there is no more law anywhere." Yes, this is why politics makes people stupid. The left is stupid for allowing their preference of open borders to destroy the law. The right is stupid for allowing their preference of getting rid of foreigners to destroy the law.
> If you want to use that to criticize the other side, they'll just shrug and say turnabout is fair play.
> The left is stupid for allowing their preference of open borders to destroy the law. The right is stupid for allowing their preference of getting rid of foreigners to destroy the law.
This is a pretty shit equivocation. Obama famously had more deportations than Bush, Biden more than Trump 1. Hell, Biden had more deportations in his first quarter than Trump did. Trump is literally just doing it in the most power-grabbing way possible.
And even criticisms of policy like catch-and-release are well within established law, and have significant judicial precedent. There's a lot of relevant links on the wiki article on catch and release, for eg (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch_and_release_(immigration)) or asylum law in the US (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asylum_in_the_United_States). If your opinion is that this is bad, call your legislative reps? You're welcome to make the argument that the US should not have any refugee, asylum, or withheld release, but at least be honest about it. I want people to defend that they do not believe in refugees or asylum seekers, that we should deport legal migrants who are the family of citizens to places where they might be killed, and that this is so important it is worth massively expanding the powers of the executive to the point where they are ignoring judicial orders and legal precedent. Make the argument.
And if your response is "well, we can do it a different way" propose a different way. I, and everyone else who's thought about this for decades, would love to hear the unique insights.
On a meta level, regardless of how you feel about the immigration debate, it seems obviously, materially worse to deport a bunch of people over the explicit orders of the judiciary while also detaining citizens. If the defense is "we dont care enough about going through the usual channels, we just want our will now", I think that that's tantamount to saying "there is no line that I won't cross". At least it's good to know where they stand.
Your argument suggests that there is no more law and no constraint on the powers of the federal government. Is that your position? If not, what constraints do you believe should exist? What do you think actually constrains this administration?
My comment was a response to the OP's question - how are the Trump admin's deportation polices defensible? I was simply holding up a mirror - they are exactly as defensible as allowing tens of millions of people to enter the country illegally and then doing nothing about them.
Let's use the Abrego Garcia case. He illegally entered the country somewhere around 2011/12. In 2019 he was arrested under suspicion of being an MS-13 gang member. The only evidence of this presented was the word of an anonymous CI, which is pretty dubious. Anyway, only after being in the country illegally for 8 years does he make an asylum claim, which was rejected. But he also made a claim that he would be tortured if returned to El Salvador, which was only substantiated by a deposition from a family member. So the judge granted an order of protection specifically against Garcia being deported to El Salvador. At no point between 2019 and 2025 was anything done to remove him from the US despite his illegal presence. Then he does finally get deported, but to the country that a judge specifically ordered he couldn't be deported to, and also thrown in prison. The Trump admin response to this is whoops, but now he's in a foreign country so we have no jurisdiction to do anything, too bad.
Does any part of this sound like a functioning system? Garcia illegally entered the country and stayed here for 8 years with no consequence. He got arrested because of essentially unsubstantiated hearsay that he was a gang member. At this point he gets an order to prevent deportation to his home country, also based on unsubstantiated information. Years later he gets deported back anyway, and also thrown in prison. Should I be upset at the injustice of Garcia violating our immigration laws, or the kangaroo court standards of evidence that established Garcia as a MS-13 member and also protected him from deportation, or the Trump admin violating that protection to throw him in prison in El Salvador?
If you're asking me, personally, what I think should happen: Garcia should have been stopped at the border or deported in 2011. Failing that, he should have been deported in 2019 when he was arrested. Failing that, he should have been deported in 2025. At no point should he have been sent to a prison without due process.
This is the ideal standard and what the administration should be moving towards, but I think there's going to be a long delay before all the backlogs and bleeding-hearts about "Jose swears up and down that he's a political refugee and not simply an economic one" can be cleared out, and there will be a lot of damage done in the meantime.
Speaking of deportations, Germany is also deporting people for political activism (allegedly):
So I think that story is a counterpoint to what is going on in the US; Germany is not MAGA territory and they're deporting white Europeans who as EU citizens would have the right to be in Germany. I foresee interesting times ahead!
Thank you for the clarification. You are saying that both political parties have undermined the rule of law and tit-for-tat is part of their justification. You are not saying this is a good outcome.
I'll throw in my support for this interpretation as well. I do not support how the deportations are being executed. I didn't even vote for Trump. Yet Open Borders manages to be infinitely stupider. It's not even a question of policy, it's a question of sovereignty.
Can you point (with actual evidence) to ANY administration in the past 50 years that had a policy that can fairly be described as "Open Borders?" If not, then this entire claim seems pretty irrelevant.
Are you trying to quote ICE? I don't see the word accidentally in the URL you linked. I do see an assertion that "...Trump and his supporters want: the vanishing/banishment of anyone who isn’t a straight white male", which is dubious given that Trump has non-whites and women in his Cabinet.
If they're meant to be scare quotes, are you suggesting that ICE intentionally and knowingly detained a citizen and then, on their own, released him? That's a lot of potential heat to bring on themselves to hold someone for a few hours.
I'm saying: ICE intended to pick up random people based on the color of their skin and the clothes being worn. They intentionally and knowingly pursued a policy of detainment that would pick up non criminals, legal residents, and yes, citizens.
That they eventually released him has no bearing on their decision to pursue that aggressive policy. It was not an accident that they picked him up.
Why are you framing it like this? Especially as some kind of bright line?
First, on Abrego Garcia, you can just read the article you linked and pretty trivially imagine what the conservative view is. The man arrived in 2011 "without inspection", removal proceedings began in 2019 when ICE accused him of being an MS-13 member after an arrest, the Biden administration didn't pursue it, and then the new Trump administration did. Whether he is involved in El Salvadorian gangs and to what extent is an open question but, again, just off the article you posted, the conservative case for expelling a suspected gang member are not difficult to understand.
Nor is the macro case confusing. Illegal immigration has been a big problem for a long time, it has been underenforced to the point where 'frickin Trump got elected, and now he's enforcing it. A condition of him enforcing it cannot be literally no mistakes; this is an isolated demand for rigor that no government program could ever possibly meet. There's no way there won't be some mistakes and this seems like exactly the kind of mistake you would expect: a gray area "uninspected" migrant with questionable links to violent crime. If, indeed, this ends up being an error.
And on Julio Noriega, the 2nd link...dude. It is settled precedent that the President of the US can assassinate you via drone strike without trial. (1) This is an Obama era thing. Regardless of the right or wrong of that case...no, potentially illegally detaining a US citizen for a few hours is not a bright line given the aforementioned precedent.
This is among the least charitable, most partisan framing of these events you could provide? Why? I've read some of your stuff, you're smart, how can you not guess how conservatives view the Garcia case just from that article?
First, I'm trying to understand why the OP thinks these are such brazen violations of the common good that it should shock and appall people and Trump supporters. Just at a factual level, this doesn't make sense to me.
Go back to the OP:
"I think this is indefensible. If, somehow, you're still defending this administration, I would love to understand what exactly is enough of a bright line for them to cross."
Regardless of the right or wrong of Awlaki or Noriega, I don't understand how anyone could consider Noriega, or even Garcia, as an "indefensible bright line" in light of Awlaki. Significantly strong bright lines have already been crossed. Regardless of our opinions, why would the OP presume several hours of wrongful detention would shock in the aftermath of drone assassinations? Just laying aside the actual right or wrong of the issue, his interpretation of the scale and seriousness confuse me. And I honestly suspect they're being exaggerated for polemical effect but I can't understand for what audience.
Second, like, yeah, it would be awesome to roll back the Awlaki precedent, it would be awesome if these deportations were being done more competently, it would be awesome if illegal immigration laws had been faithfully enforced 30+ years. It's not hard to imagine political situations better than the one we're in. But, given the real constraints of the situation we're in, it's not clear to me what's so horrible about these events.
I found it relevant to the point that WoolyAI was making and even felt that it supported his point. What makes you think it isn't relevant in an extraordinary way?
I seem to recall some people in the previous Open Thread arguing that the no-due-process deportations weren't a big deal because if they got something *really* wrong the courts would fix it eventually. Abrego Garcia's case seems to prove this false - if the government wrongly deports you, there's no taking it back, because you're outside the reach of the courts.
(Well, the case hasn't had a ruling yet, but it's certainly alarming that the government's official stance on its mistake is "sorry, too late, we can't fix this.")
There's disagreement about whether this is "really wrong". The conservative reading of the situation is something like "Proven illegal migrant and possible gang member abuses asylum law in transparent ploy to remain in the country. Gets deported anyway." To cross the threshold of *really* wrong, you would probably need to see a US citizen get deported. You might even need the US citizen to be non-immigrant and non-anchor baby, but those would be more contentious.
The argument the government is making is not "we didn't get this case wrong." The argument they're making is "even if we got this wrong, the court is not allowed to tell us to fix it." That's an argument that would apply to anyone who gets sent to El Salvador, even a citizen.
If this argument is successfully applied to a US citizen it will be too late to complain because the government will have the power to send you to the gulag for complaining.
On March 29, 2019, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) served Abrego-Garcia with a Notice to Appear, charging him as inadmissible pursuant to Section 1182(a)(6)(A)(i) of Title 8 of the United States Code, "as an alien present in the United States without being admitted or paroled, or who arrived in the United States at any time or place other than as designated by the [Secretary of Homeland Security]."
During the course of his proceedings, Abrego-Garcia remained in ICE custody because the Immigration Judge (IJ) with the Executive Office for Immigration Review denied Abrego-Garcia bond at a hearing on April 24, 2019, citing danger to the community because "the evidence show[ed] that he is a verified member of [Mara Salvatrucha] ('MS-13')]" and therefore posed a danger to the community. The IJ also determined that he was a flight risk. Abrego-Garcia appealed, and the Board of Immigration Appeals upheld this bond decision in an opinion issued on December 19, 2019, citing the danger Abrego-Garcia posed to the community.
In The Man Who Was Thursday Chesterton gives a somewhat different illustration about chaos and progress - the rationalist argues with the anarchist that all things man-made imbue him with a sense of glory compared to the "natural" world.
Maybe you're too young to remember, or didn't always pay the same amount of attention to the going-ons in Old Europe, but this is not the first time or even the most high profile case. I guess my country of Europe was never "democratic" to begin with?
If you don't want the time, you shouldn't do the crime and so forth.
Unfortunately, the conservative party in the US is too well coordinated to ever allow any punishment of one of its members for a crime as small as stealing 3 million, you need to be in the billions before they'll even acknowledge that it happened, S&L style.
I think that's a strong argument for fines and imprisonment.
The fact that the court has specifically banned her from running for office for five years even though her "prison" sentence is only two years suspended and two on an ankle monitor doesn't wholly invalidate it, but it makes it somewhat weaker, I think, because that's less directly related to the traditional aims of justice.
This was discussed in an earlier thread, so please search below.
In case it is helpful context, France has a track record of prosecutions of powerful politicians. While this is "undemocratic" in the sense of restricting the choice of the voters, it isn't at all clear that this is a change or escalation from past behavior.
I follow the owner of Kiwifarms, Josh Moon, because he's probably the most censored man in America (more than Gab or Nick Fuentes) purely for running an edgy gossip website, and the efforts he goes through to keep it up are seriously impressive, and reveal a lot of fraying threads in the interconnectivity of the internet. His article about being banned from Cloudflare, and his article where he talks about how payment networks are taking away his right to transact online are both pretty revealing as far as how intense corporate censorship can get.
He's since managed to replace cloudflare and route around the tier 1 ISPs that have blackholed him, but the financial censorship hasn't changed at all in the years since those articles were made.
He's been trying to start a foundation for Internet Preservation to try and fix the payment processor overreach, but ironically the payment processors are preventing him from even doing this:
The man can't even raise money for a foundation to lobby for his right to raise money online.
Anyway, he's basically as censored as it gets, so if you have an interest in one of those 'high-risk customers' that payment processors like to screw over like porn or firearms sites, then he might be worth a follow.
And to tie this into current events, I suppose, it's hard to have sympathy for non-citizens getting deported for frivolous reasons when actual American citizens can be stripped of their ability to transact online with no recourse and sovereign nations like the U.K are threatening American website owners.
Do you **really** want to discuss the centralization of the Internet and the fuckfest that is online payment systems, or just signal boost the equivalent of a virtual high school bully?
I agree that even the high school bully should get to say bully things on the internet, niceness enforcement should be more decentralized than sledgehammering entire website domains and using authoritarian payment denial tactics, and I'm using "authoritarian" with utmost seriousness here, because payment denial is quite literally how authoritarian dictatorships operate when they want to strangle their opposition without making a fuss.
Also, fuck Cloudflare and their stronghold on the internet.
But this:
>> it's hard to have sympathy for non-citizens getting deported for frivolous reasons
is very weird and gives me a rough stereotype for what type of "Free Speech" defender you're, which I'm more than happy to give you the chance to dispel. **How** is it hard to have sympathy for non-citizens getting deported for frivolous reasons, isn't the frivolity of the reasons for deportation - not to mention the extreme seriousness of being deported to foreign prisons or disappeared into shadow ICE prisons relative to being denied payment or domains - the very reason why you should have **more** sympathy for non-citizens getting deported?
I, for one, have sympathy for both. Let me check my sympathy tank.... no, still full, it doesn't get empty when I have sympathy for more than 1 type of person.
> None of these bother me
Which means, with high probabilities, that you're not a member of any of the targeted group. Which is fine, just don't pretend that you're a super tough tick-skinned Übermensch, the true test of that is when the thing you're advocating for is bashing a group you identify as.
Actually, I love anime, and most of his anti-porn and anime signaling is directly against people like me (this takes up nearly as much time as the weekly anti-trans segment). I'm pretty ambivalent on all the other things though.
As to why I have less sympathy, it's multi-faceted. I'm not saying I want these deportations to happen in the way they have. I'm pro-free-speech in all cases, so if some Muslim immigrant without citizenship wants to yell "Death to Israel" on their college campus, I'm cool with that. I wouldn't even want them to face any reprisal from their college, let alone the government. I swear that much.
But that commitment doesn't mean anything. I haven't been advocating on their behalf and I don't feel a strong impulse to like I do with an American citizen getting locked out of online payment systems. Why is that?
It's a couple things. He is closer to someone like me. He's an edgy, tech-savvy white guy that grew up running wild online and immersed in imageboard culture. That's probably a lot of what it is. The other thing is that citizen have explicit protection, and citizen vs non-citizen resident seems like a very strong Schelling point. I'm not even slightly afraid of being deported, or even any of my friends being deported. My friends all have citizenship, as do my extended family.
If you think about it from that lens, it's clear that corporate censorship is much more frightening to me. After all, this country has a pretty arbitrary immigration policy anyway, what's one more layer of hoops to jump through for second class citizens?
If even citizen's rights mean nothing next to corporate power then citizens and residents will both be equal under their heel. If citizens have absolute free-speech, but non-citizens don't have free-speech at all, there is at least an example to aspire to in how we treat non-citizens. The former situation is what we've effectively had until now, and it's very, very hard to fix. The latter situation can be fixed by a later president saying residents have the same rights as Americans do when it comes to free speech. The executive branch giveth, the executive branch taketh away.
What I'm getting at with the last point is that corporate censorship is both more frightening to me personally, and also more clandestine. Who would you even litigate against to dispute being cut out of the global economy by payment processors? They're a black box in the first place. There's nothing you can do save pray for competent bureaucracy and legislators. But have a look at the deportation stuff. The enemy is clear, they know who they have to litigate against, and a single elected official can reverse it all.
Payment processors scare me more than the president.
I hope this helps you understand where I'm coming from and why my instinctual reaction is more apathetic to a threat I see as temporary, blatant, and actively being worked on vs a problem that is permanent, sneaky, and is being championed by no one except an internet bully. Like, they're still going on about banks even though the problem is the payment processors and their deliberately obfuscated stranglehold on all online services.
This is my most important issue. If a candidate offered to defang the payment processors, I would pick them over any others.
I mean, his website has been tied to multiple suicides and stalking cases. Hosting services don't want that liability for obvious reasons. I guess you can loosely call this censorship, but can you really compel a company to host material that will almost inevitably cause them legal problems?
I will admit its fascinating that he cares so much about his bullying website that he's dedicated his life to keeping it afloat.
Slate Star Codex has been tied to white nationalists by the New York Times. There's a poster by the handle blorbo who has been known to post on Astral Codex Ten, which has been tied to Slate Star Codex.
While I appreciate the sheer joy of responding to a semantic quibble as a way to avoid engaging in good faith, what I actually meant was that the site is used almost exclusively to organise harassment campaigns, share personal information and select targets for said campaigns.
White nationalists, while unfortunately present here are hardly using this space as their base of operations for illegal or dubiously legal activies
The word "activities" is--as you are apparently unaware--a plural noun. As in, more than one, singular activity. They do not all have to share a common status with regard to legality.
> Call the police if there are illegal activities.
...particularly ironic, since one of the exciting pastimes regularly organised on kiwifarms is calling armed police to some target location where there is no illegal activity.
In the US. Things get more complicated abroad and they'd rather avoid the whole thing. Also these liability in the sense of "public backlash". In the same way that reddit took down the "jailbait" subreddit about 10 years ago, hosting legal but objectionable things is a PR nightmare.
Twitter and YouTube and Facebook have all been tied to thousands+ of suicides and stalking cases, literally too many to report or count. Why do they get to spew their garbage on the pipes of the internet but not a solitary bully?
I agree that facebook, twitter and youtube should be torn to shreds for their complicity in all those things. Even worse, their lack of moderation in non-english languages has promoted ethnic cleansings in Myanmar.
The difference is that facebook and twitter have the defence (adequate or not) that bullying etc is not what their sites are for and the sheer scale of their sites means these things happen. Kiwi farms is 100% dedicated to stalking, bullying, sharing leaked nudes etc.
Also, twitter and facebook host their own servers. Kiwi farms rents servers off of other companies. If someone rents a room in your house and turns it into a grow room for weed, you'd probably kick them out.
Honestly none of this is a defense. The fact that it could be used as defense is a testament to the sad state of the internet after the high hopes of the wild 1990s.
> Kiwi farms rents servers off of other companies.
They were past this stage since before 2020 or so. The Cloudflare kerfuffle from 2022 happened because Cloudflare doesn't want to provide DDoS protection, not hosting, KF were already self-hosted at this point, self-hosting is easy compared to what they have done since. Other kerfuffles happened because DNS registerers don't want to give them DNS->IP entries. Payment denial is also the reliable option for those who want to silence people without fuss, and it has been used on Kiwi farms.
This, I repeat, is never and was never how the internet should operate. Sure, nobody is obligated to host your shit, and I will grant you further that payment processors are in the right here too (it's our fault for depending on that garbage as much as we do in modern life, not their fault for picking and choosing who to deny). But DNS and DDoS protections? Do you want to live in a future where those are at the mercy of your corporate overlords? And what if those overlords turn on a dime when a certain orange scum threatens them?
To me, this is all a natural outcome of the over centralisation and monopolisation of the internet. I personally would be happy if all the monopolies were smashed up. I'm not a huge fan of payment denial, but again that's a consequence of monopoly.
There's a balance that needs to be struck, but unfortunately it seems like that is not a majority opinion anymore.
He has been sued. I think most of them get thrown out since he somehow tends to attract the attention of crazies.
To fine or jail him would require due process. Unless I missed something he hasn't ever been charged with a crime. One of the issues is all these things have happened to him *without* being charged. It's someone who hasn't broken any laws and struggles to stay online (partially due to his own social issues).
> Unless I missed something he hasn't ever been charged with a crime. One of the issues is all these things have happened to him *without* being charged.
If you're outraged about that, you're *really* going to be horrified when you hear what ICE has been up to lately.
I'm pretty upset about that and we discussed it at the organizing meeting we had last Saturday to go over voter mobilization and legal challenges and protests.
I think I saw you there. You had the sunglasses, right?
US presidents love to harp on about other NATO members spending and investing too little on defense, and they're absolutely right! But I wonder: How much of America's military expenditure can really be attributed to the direct interests of NATO, as opposed to enforcing geopolitical interests far away from North America and Europe?
America has spent a lot on wars in recent times, but Iraq I and Iraq II can hardly be called defensive wars to protect the nation's sovereignity, and as for Afghanistan – that's debatable to say the least. And although long-term investments into military infrastructure and technology benefit the self-defense scenario as well, for the last two decades, the US has focused on counter-insurgency operations instead of peer or near-peer conflicts.
At least half of our defense budget is driven by our commitment and intention to defend our allies, including NATO but also including e.g. Japan and South Korea and possibly Israel and Taiwan. It's difficult to break it down any further than "homeland defense" and "foreign wars", because the foreign-wars part is flexible and mobile - most of it will be deployed to defend whichever of our allies is under the greatest threat.
It is still reasonable for us to insist of all our allies, that they each take up their fair share of the burden in proportion to the resources available.
It's a fair point, but if a war breaks out an aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean, it can sail to Europe. Planes based in Japan or Korea can fly to Europe. Obviously the US probably could never dedicate 100% of its military to a Europe-based war, but it could still send a massive amount of troops/planes/ships etc.
I'd say it's not just the US military that has a non-NATO focus however. France uses it to project power into it's old colonies in Africa (Mali and the like), Greece and Turkey are basically funding armies to defend against/attack each other. Eastern/Central Europe is probably focused on defense from Russia just because that is where their biggest risk of invasion comes from regardless of NATO, and a cultural memory of Soviet occupation.
Also places like France and UK are just as prone to pork barrel funding for their defense industries as the US. Only Germany of the big nations I can think of doesn't have much of a reason for military spending outside NATO, and considering it's recent history (marching with broomsticks anyone), and how much money they've invested in economic ties to Russia (Nord Stream 1&2), it's say there's a case to be made until recently they've been a historic cost to NATO - potentially understandable due to historic reasons of not wanting to look too militaristic.
My view is basically everyone is a little guilty of using their militaries selfishly (or for their own national interest if we look at it another way), but with recent Russian adventurism in Ukraine, and developing threats globally, it is time for all the nations of NATO to recognise the world has changed and start funding their militaries accordingly.
I feel like there are probably a lot of Silicon Valley types on here, and I need some advice. My father is trying to entice my wife and I to move our kids to Palo Alto or Menlo Park in June for middle school and high school. I also have the option of settling in a beautiful setting in Mendocino County where I own a lovely house, but the schools and social scene are podunk. My wife and I are both teachers, so looking at around 120k each on the Peninsula. We would earn enough money above what we would get in a rural setting in Palo Alto to cover the 60-70k rent for an apartment.
Sometimes I hear Palo Alto is a great place to raise kids, others say it is a total rat race. Does anyone have experiences there? My daughters are good students, but not STEM focused, so I worry that schools are too big and competitive. They have always lived in nurturing expat communities.
Not a Silicon Valley type, but I was a tween and teen girl once.
Have you asked your daughters what option they want?
I'm not saying that you should let children make this decision for you, of course, but I think you should at least solicit their thoughts on it and seriously consider their arguments. Describe not only the expected academic setting, but general lifestyle, too. Will Silicon Valley mean sharing rooms in an apartment instead of having their own rooms in a house? Will it mean a lot of time commuting in cars? Will it mean cash going into rent instead of travel / hobbies / private lessons?
Or would living in Silicon Valley give them access to niche fields of interest (I dunno, rare musical instruments, top-tier competitive cheerleading, crew rowing, etc) they wouldn't be able to access in a rural setting? Do they see city perks that would be worth the inconvenience of city life?
And personally? As someone who's seeing young people entering my workplace, I would consider putting far less focus on their future as students and far more on them as future *employees* in (probably) non-STEM careers. Do they have any idea what they want to do as adults (and do those dreams seem plausible / achievable to you)? Which setting is more likely to produce resilient, humble, adaptable, charismatic, generally well-rounded and accomplished *workers?*
No employer gives a shit what grade their entry-level employee got in high AP Bio if they don't know how to prioritize tasks or incorporate critical feedback or get along with a prickly coworker. In almost all jobs across all fields, being likeable and socially savvy is far more useful than being merely smart. It's possible their very best teacher will be a boss at In-N-Out.
And last, student loan debt is increasingly a devastating *literal* opportunity cost. I have many peers and younger coworkers who live every day with the crushing stress of knowing they will never financially recover from their student loans early enough to start a family or own a home (while I, a college dropout, own my car outright, and my only debt is a condo in a highly desirable city which I can easily afford). If either of your daughters are blessed with a talent and inclination to skip college and go straight into an in-demand skilled trade, for godsake, *let them.* Do you want them to be able to own a house, or not?
I know "college isn't worth it!" is hard for a teacher to hear, but there are millions of people from whom college was very much not worth it, and that population is increasing every year.
I've asked my daughters where they want to live, and having never lived in the USA, and only visited the grandparents in Palo Alto they really have no idea what life there would be like. One of them wants to be a lawyer, and the other has no idea. I try to get them interested in trades, with pretty limited success. When I was in middle school and younger I spent tons of time disassembling stuff and hammering on tree forts, wrenching on bicycles, and building things. I feel like that is the kind of background one needs in order to be an electrician or a plumber, painting contractor etc. Physical strength is a real asset too. I guess trades can mean other fields, but my daughters have more typical feminine interests and pastimes, but one of them does like to build models and create stuff on a smaller scale.
The reason I was asking about Palo Alto, is I feel like that is the kind of rat race place that could crush a kid. But then maybe I am just reading BS on the internet, and really it could be a nice place to live in an insanely overpriced apartment and have access to some cool and interesting people and be near the grandparents who could offer love and care along with some financial help.
Yeah, it's a tougher choice when they don't even know which lifestyle they'd prefer, either.
The lawyer-leaning kid might benefit from the more prestigious high school if it eventually gets her into a more prestigious law school, but it might turn out she has an overly glamorous picture of what most lawyers do. There was a thread a while back by a guy contemplating law school, and a few lawyers popped in to provide some advice ranging from "don't do it!" to "it's okay, I guess." (https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/open-thread-371/comment/97875681), and this guy who misdirected his comment wishes he'd never gone (https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/open-thread-371/comment/97968664).
The city option might give her better access to internships / actual lawyers early enough to divert her away from law if it isn't something she is unusually suited to doing.
Some skilled trades don't require any strength at all (watchmaking / repair, etc), but of course that's the kind of thing it's best to have a native interest in before you do any study or get certifications. My dad bought a small locksmith business in his retirement - though he found the administrative aspects of running the small business much more difficult than the technical work of locksmithing. Someone who's able to do both the bookkeeping/marketing side of things and the technical work can clean up pretty well, especially if they get good enough at picking locks to not need to drill them, which my dad did! He was routinely getting paid $100 for a brief commute to someone's door, which he'd spend 45 seconds picking open for them.
But nobody ever makes shows about locksmiths, so it's not on anyone's radar, even though it can be a pretty good life.
PA can be both a great place to raise kids and be a total rat race at the same time. The local schools' student caliber is fantastic and the competition will drill discipline and stamina unmatched in any other American High school.
My biggest gripe with Paly and Henry Gunn is that you're at a disadvantage to get into UCs. UCs prefer to recruit schools by zipcode. Being #1 at a poor school in a poor zipcode will get you into Cal with a higher probability than being #50 at Henry Gunn. On the other hand, being #1 at Henry Gunn will give a better chance at getting into Stanford or MIT than being #1 at a worse high school.
The PA high schools are without a doubt the better educational experience, but sub-optimal for min-max-ing for UCs, and if I thought I would be #50 at Henry Gunn but #1 elsewhere, I would take being #1 elsewhere.
This too isn't without risks. I might not actually be #1 elsewhere and peer pressure from a bad friend group may turn myself, who would be a stellar student, into a sub-par student. There are no guarantees in life.
edit to add: I would send my own kids to PA high schools. I gave a fence sitter answer above, but for myself and my family I have a more decisive answer-- I refuse to metagame the UC system's ideological game that cultivates mediocracy around zipcodes. I will have my kids compete with the best or brightest, whoever/wherever/however-privileged they are and I simply do not recognize "alternative" forms of merit beyond STEM competitions. I myself was refused admission to UCLA and Cal as an undergrad, in some part because I went to a very competitive CA high school, but I was granted admission to their graduate programs for engineering four years later. But I am not you and my kids aren't yours.
Hey, thanks for your reply! I wasn’t sure if the perception of Pali and Gunn being hyper-competitive was just a Reddit thing or a widely held view.
The rural high school my daughters could attend has a graduating class of about 30 students, yet they regularly send kids to Stanford—a definite zip code perk. Plus, with such a small student body, it’s easy for students to participate in varsity sports, yearbook, and other activities since the bar is relatively low.
That said, the downsides include issues like drug use, a slacker culture, a weaker academic environment, and limited social opportunities. My main concern with a school like Pali is the mental health aspect, even smart kids might feel like they’re just meh. If a student isn’t pursuing STEM, I sometimes wonder whether such a rigorous high school experience is really worth it. Nice thing in a small town is you feel special.
If what is stopping you from sending your kids to a PA high school is your fear of mental illness from excessive "Korean High School" style competition, I would overcome it. Although it is true that PA high schools have on average one student suicide a year, I believe it is from an unhealthy home life.
I have to say it, so I'll say it, but both my neighbors are CEO types. I suspect they moved here to network with each other, the VCs, and to ambush Mark Zuckerburg on a walk. I would not be surprised if they accidentally drove their kids to mental illness. From what I've seen of both of my neighbors' children they are allowed 30 minutes of play a day and are chauffeured to extracurricular activities the rest of the time. It seems they are following some sort of cookbook to min-max their offspring
From what I've read of your comments, I believe it is unlikely that you will accidentally drive your kids to self harm. The adversity of intense "Korean High School" style competition may lift their spirit in the long run. It does not seem to me like you will threaten them with physical discipline based on their college acceptances list. (obligatory YMMV).
(We hope it’s okay to post this here—if not, we'll accept banishment without protest, but would appreciate any hints on where this might be better placed.)
We're an expat family of three living in Harlem, NYC, with our 4-year-old daughter. Over the past two years, we've had our daughter home-schooled by a professional teacher—think something like the aristocratic tutoring concept described by Hoehl[1], but with more emphasis on having time to be a child than pure academics. This has worked really well for us, so we can recommend that to anyone interested! However, this year our teacher decided to retire, so we're now in search of a new teacher for our little one.
What we're looking for:
* Experience (classroom or otherwise) in putting together a curriculum for a 4-7 year old and teaching it
* Availability to do this full days Mon-Fri or Mon-Thu
* Enthusiasm for the project and the other good things you'd expect from someone who chose a career working with pre-teen children :)
What we're offering:
* A flexible job where you can focus on educating one child with basically no overhead / meetings / paperwork / etc.
* An uncomplicated (by 5-year-old standards, anyway), engaged, happy girl as your primary partner on the journey
* A lot of freedom in putting together a well-rounded curriculum with as much time for field trips as you want
* Competitive pay (we will typically offer 1.2 - 1.3x the current salary)
* 4 weeks vacation + public holidays + time the three of us are traveling fully paid
* A maxed out QSHERA health savings account to cover health care
If this sounds interesting to you—or if you know someone who might be a great fit—please feel free to reach out or reply here!
Have you considered doing this as a pod, with a few other kids? Would you if you found compatible families? Do you think compatible families exist? And, bonus question: will you allow AI use by teacher/student?
Doing this together with a few other kids/families would absolutely be an option---in fact, the one thing we sometimes feel is missing from our current setup is that our daughter doesn’t have a small group of kids her age that she sees on a near-daily basis (she does have activities where she is within the same group of kids every week, but that's not quite the same in terms of intensity of interactions, friendships, etc).
So yes, we’d be open to forming a pod if we found the right families—compatible in terms of values, schedules, and overall vibe. We do think (or at least we we would like to think) that those families exist, though we haven’t actively looked. It would really depend on the dynamics and whether it feels like a good fit for everyone involved.
As for the bonus question: we’re not opposed to the use of AI tools by the teacher, and eventually by the student too, but it depends on age and context---at age 4 it seems to us more important to learn from and with humans (apart from the fact that most 4-year-olds don’t quite meet the literacy standards that would be required for effective learning with AI)
For us, on paper, a "compatible" pod sounds like an ideal solution, though I am still unsure if it's possible to be compatible in our hyper individualistic world.
I'm thinking of putting together a pod matching app, but I fear that there's just not enough compatibility locally and people may be unlikely to move their lives globally for a pod... Perhaps if the entire family gets a pod (cult?)...
The talking point "america needs greenland" seems like bait for the left while not the slightest bit convincing to the right. And I think I saw it repeated 3 times, the wording is ambiguous and if the left wing news wants to claim he will invade while what the right wing hears is.... nothing different maybe more offers to buy green land.
If yall keep doing that he will in year be like "remember when the fake news said I was going to invade greenland, and now we are doing an election/building an extra miltery base; cause im a deal maker aint they silly"
> seems like bait for the left while not the slightest bit convincing to the right
That's what they said about everything, even the stuff that Trump is actually doing. "Take him seriously but not literally" apologists are in shambles.
I dont feel in shambles, if I like it trump is more likely to have done it if I dont he doesnt (or a neocon wouldve done it, I dont like sending any money over seas).
rfk was made king of vaxines, I like this
green land still hasnt been invaded
Consider the metric: "trump is magically induced by monkyyys wishes but compromises with moderates"
also has ambiguous meaning, maybe some added complexity about how you dont yield to hysterics "umm you spoke to a nazi 10 years ago, repent ON MY TERM RIGHT NOW, or I'll call you a nazi"
"dont apologize"
> Trump allowed that "I think there's a good possibility that we could do it without military force."
> "This is world peace, this is international security," he said, but added: "I don't take anything off the table."
Your falling for bait; did elon start putting jews in camps after his shitty nazi salute?
Ambiguously hinting that you might invade one of your allies is not generally a good idea, at least not if you plan on having diplomatic relations with other countries.
That is the understatement of the year. Invading Greenland would be breathtakingly stupid, pointless, evil and catastrophic in its consequences. I hope that someone with enough influence comes to their senses and stops this madness.
No one voted to invade other countries. Trump voters until five minutes ago were isolationists. And now they are again. Oh wait, they're back to the invasion rhetoric. No wait, now they're isolationists.
That sentiment -- which I've heard from others in recent weeks -- is where it perhaps becomes relevant that less than 30 percent of US adult citizens actually voted for Trump last November. (Or if you prefer, about 31 percent of eligible voters.)
Clearly a large fraction of those who showed up to vote for Trump were "voting to burn it all down". Not all of them perhaps but, many. Also clearly some fraction of those who never turn out to vote agree with that sentiment at least generally.
However -- "generally" is now having to carry some real baggage. What fraction of Americans actually wants a definition of "burn it all down" that includes things like invading Greenland? Treating Canadians of all people like some sort of national enemy? Imposing tariffs that drag our stock market and manufacturing sector? Carrying out an anti-immigrant terror campaign that crashes international tourism to the US and pushes some of our colleges and universities towards bankruptcy? "There are ways" to ignore plain Constitutional text such as no third terms for presidents? Along with whatever other loony-tunes ideas the White House vomits up next.
Yes I know the MAGAts will all cheer the one about the universities, and will keep on parroting Dear Leader's whims on whatever else. Mohr lib tears, cry more, yada yada yada. Also there's no sign yet of the Democrats seeming any smarter or more interesting to anybody outside of their own bubble. But that was all baked in already as last November's result made plain.
The level of childish policy-by-tantrum flowing out of DC _now_ seems genuinely different from what even a lot of people who are done with woke-ism expected. The non-MAGA 75 percent or so of American adults may at some point, while likely agreeing on nothing else, come around to "you know actually we didn't sign up for _this_."
Also remember that we're not even 80 days into this administration yet, Trump's early-onset dementia remains obvious, and that condition as everyone knows is a one-way path. So does anybody think that invading Greenland and annexing Canada and turning Gaza into Las Vegas are the craziest/stupidest priorities that he'll babble about in public?
I mean hey Bhutan -- er pardon me, I meant "Burmerica" -- is just sitting there....
"Carrying out an anti-immigrant terror campaign that crashes international tourism to the US and pushes some of our colleges and universities towards bankruptcy?"
You call this a tantrum, I call this deliberate strategizing.
Maybe YOU voted for that (in that case, please go and have your moral compass fixed). I sure didn't. Trump is not only burning down "his" country, but quite possibly the whole world. Also, I doubt that everyone who thought "yeah, 'Make America Great Again' sounds good" was aware that that would plausibly involve a worldwide economic crisis (centered on the US) and world war.
>Also, I doubt that everyone who thought "yeah, 'Make America Great Again' sounds good" was aware that that would plausibly involve a worldwide economic crisis (centered on the US) and world war.
A major part of Trump's pitch was isolationism, and the promise of bringing US troops home and disengaging from foreign conflicts. Invading Greenland is pretty much the opposite of that.
On Today's Episode of "Every Accusation Is A Confession": The IDF using Gazans as human shields, as an extremely widespread practice by nearly every soldier on the ground.
From Haaretz: In Gaza, Almost Every IDF Platoon Keeps a Human Shield, a Sub-army of Palestinian Slaves [1], written by an anonymous IDF soldier.
Notable excerpts:
> In Gaza, human shields are used by Israeli soldiers at least six times a day.
> I served in Gaza for nine months, and first came across these procedures, called "mosquito protocol" in December 2023.
> The procedure is simple. Innocent Palestinians are forced to enter houses in Gaza and "clear" them, to make sure there are no terrorists or explosives.
> The highest-ranking personnel on the ground have known about the use of human shields for more than a year, and no one has tried to stop it. On the contrary, it was defined as an operational necessity.
> A friend who's an officer in the army told me about an incident they experienced: They encountered a terrorist in a house that had already been cleared by a "shawish." [IDF slang for human shield] The "shawish" was an elderly man, and when he realized he'd messed up, he was so scared he soiled himself. I don't know what became of him. I was afraid to ask.
So yeah, extensive use of thousands of civilians of human shields for more than a year and a half, brought to you by the same very state that justifies every massacre by "Hamas Used THeM AS hUMaN SHiElDs".
Haaretz is an Israeli, pro-Israeli, Zionist (neutral descriptor) newspaper. If you won't consider what even they publish once it disagrees with your priors, is there anything at all that you'd be willing to update on? Is there any common epistemic ground left between you and... well, the rest of the world?
Sure, there are many newspapers in Israel that are not Haaretz and are trustworthy: Yehediot Aharonot, the Times of Israel are two that are left of center.
Here's a brief video called "Why Anti-Semites Love Haaretz" (by a former Ha'aretz columnist, FWIW)
Amos Schocken [publisher of Haaretz] was speaking at a conference in London on Sunday when he made the comments, which have provoked calls from government ministers to clamp down on the outlet's activities.
"The Netanyahu government doesn't care about imposing a cruel apartheid regime on the Palestinian population," he told attendees.
"It dismisses the costs of both sides for defending the settlements while fighting the Palestinian freedom fighters, that Israel calls terrorists."
Following outcry, Schocken clarified his remarks to indicate he did not consider Hamas to be "freedom fighters" and emphasised he supported freedom fighters who did not use "terrorism".
There's no ethnic cleansing as a policy goal. I can't interact with someone who denies ground-truth.
Every civilian death is on Hamas. They invaded (although many "civilians" helped) a sovereign country and proceeded to butcher and slaughter and murder parents in front of their children, children in front of their parents, elders, etc. They raped and raped. They even raped corpses.
Go back to the world of your Jew-hating fantasies, you bigot. You liar.
Israel has done the same thing (yes, including the institutionalized rape of Palestinian hostages in "administrative detention") a hundred times over. Their horrific actions shame the Jewish people.
This particular article is a witness testimony by its author, an anonymous soldier. It's a primary source, not second-hand reporting. (Also note: Haaretz isn't low-quality, it's a major Israeli liberal newspaper often called Israel's equivalent of the New York Times.)
For more on the IDF's history of using human shields, see Israeli human rights group B'Tselem: http://www.btselem.org/human_shields. Probably you can also find stuff by e.g. Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch, or the Israeli veterans organization Breaking the Silence, which lets them confidentially tell their experiences in the occupied territories.
Does anyone know how to block people on here? I didn't think it was possible but then someone blocked me. I can't find the option on either desktop or the app.
Oh man, I got very excited at the prospect of blocking, and then learned that it apparently doesn't prevent you from seeing that person's comments in forums other than one's own.
Perhaps you need to mute them instead. I haven't managed to penetrate the island fortress where Substack hides its instructions for the commenting system so I don't really know, but I both block and mute the people I don't want to see just to be sure, and it seems to work.
You're saying that you're able to block/silence someone here in the ACX comments, so that you don't have to see any of their comments *here on ACX?*
That function doesn't seem to be working for me! I've blocked and silenced someone whose comments I find very tedious, but I'm still seeing their comments here on ACX.
> Does anyone know how to block people on here? I didn't think it was possible but then someone blocked me. I can't find the option on either desktop or the app.
You click on their name to go to their Substack profile, then block or mute them there.
I knew because they announced it first. (Humorously it was theahura and it was in the thread where he asked people to steelman Trump - I guess he wasn't counting on a steelman he couldn't defeat.) The really annoying thing is that Substack hides all comments from me in all threads that that user created, so I can't even see the comments I made in our last thread or respond to other users who jumped in (though I still get notifications for those comments). I generally like Substack but it has some serious usability issues.
> Somebody blocked you? When someone blocks you, are you informed of it?
Think you probably meant to ask Wanda Tinasky?
I don't know if I've ever been blocked, I haven't ever received any notification that this is true. It'd be kind of weird and counterproductive for Substack to generate and send such notifications, wouldn't it? Down that road lies stalking people on multiple platforms and escalating rivalries, doesn't it?
I'd like to see the Dems get serious about open borders, along with the vibes of Abundance (Ezra Klein, Derek Thomson).
Effective government, lowering regulations, and enough of everything for everyone is great, and they surely do a better job than I could promoting it.
Open borders to the world (for residency at least) will require a willingness to be tough on crime, give (next to) no welfare to arrivals, a willingness to deport individuals and families that are drains, and active effort to make them productive. Getting rid of natural-born citizenship may be necessary as well.
In return the USA can return to it's heyday as the land of dreams, a country the world's citizens turn to for a brighter future, and a land bursting with productive man-power.
This combination seems like a powerful basis for a counter to Trump's MAGA, a powerful vision for the path the world and the USA should take.
The US cannot return to its heyday. What made it rich (abundant arable land up for grabs because its previous population was nearly destroyed by epidemies) is neither still available nor sufficient in today's world. What could make it thrive again is increasing the welfare of its population, and [increasing supply of cheap labor] results in the exact opposite, a race to the bottom for everyone but the richest.
If the supposed left wants to keep losing elections until the heat death of the universe (and deservedly), by all means, keep talking about open borders.
Depends what you're measuring, and what people think. MAGA seem to think 1950s were better in some important ways, you can sell a similar story for the early years of america.
Open borders were around for the most part till early 20th century, you can find some positive there
America up to the early 20th century never had 'open borders'. Even at the height of Ellis Island migration they were still more selective than Biden's plan of letting anyone in from anywhere. And the multiple waves of Ellis Island immigration brought frequent and justified backlashes to the problems that came with those immigrants.
Open borders is the opposite of populist. The only people who like the idea of open borders are the effete elites who have nothing to do with immigrant populations beyond paying them to clean their houses and buying from food trucks.
Because "open borders" is not populist. Populism means appealing to a broad population of voters, not to oligarchs and potential immigrants who can't vote anyway. Why would poor/ working class people be enthusiastic about lots of immigrants, if all it means is fewer benefits and more competition for them but even more money for rich people?
Did you miss the part where people who are currently stuck in hellholes can decide to work and live in the USA?
Their lives would be straightforwardly better, and they would also be able to choose between the options.
You are literally against giving people the option to choose a better life for themselves because that better life doesn't meet your personal standards.
This mindset is part of what I'm hoping goes away on the Left
I bet that in the age of feudalism, people argued that serfdom was a good thing because having a lord protecting you was better than the alternative.
Turning immigrants into second-class citizens would likely be an improvement in an economic sense, but it would also be creating a group of people who are extremely vulnerable to coercion by the government or by their employer. We can do better than that.
Maybe in the future open-borders with welfare, protection and benefit of the doubt for incoming migrants will be workable, and that sounds like an inspiring future.
Right now that doesn't work, and even without that slack open borders would be a tough sell
I don't think they're getting a better life in that scenario, because there are very few true "hellholes" on Earth, the US is not nearly as nice a place as Americans believe, and because such a proposal would cause American quality of life to markedly deteriorate.
But I think people would come anyway - because they'd get lied to by unscrupulous recruiters about conditions in the US, and then be trapped there out of shame or because they can't afford to go back. Or, when they have no more options, they'll end up in the new tough on crime prison system this proposal promotes.
I also think current citizens who have to work for a living are getting a significantly worse life out of the bargain; why hire one when there's a precarious foreigner you can underpay and retaliate against?
Quality of life would likely rise quite a bit, due to abundant labor supply and lowered regulations on growth (detailed in the book).
You also think hellholes exist, and the US is obviously a better place to live than many other countries which aren't hellholes. This would be a better option than they currently have.
Free one-time deportation service seems like our could be a good idea, for those who would rather leave.
Tough on crime with non-citizens looks more like fines, rapid deportation or in extreme cases death penalty, not prison.
Often making the pie bigger means someone gets a relatively smaller piece, in total I think they'll get a larger absolute piece, and better life
> will require a willingness to be tough on crime, give (next to) no welfare to arrivals, a willingness to deport individuals and families that are drains, and active effort to make them productive
We all know that this part isn't happening though, so what's the point? It's like saying "I could eat a cheesecake every day if I ran an extra twenty miles" when you currently barely leave your couch. We all know you're just gonna eat the cheesecake and not do the exercise.
If there's a version of this that makes sense then it's outright selling greencards.
Your half-assed dismissals of every criticism will do far more damage to the Left than I. This is exactly the attitude that led to a Trump presidency. Both terms.
Hold an actual deportation hearing, have a judge tell them that they've lost and they need to get out of the way now, and they'll get out of the way. They may whine a lot, but so what?
If that's too difficult for you, then it's on you to beef up your skills in that area.
I listened to them on Lex Fridman. Their vision sounds great, but I don’t think there is any near term chance of the Democratic Party or the global left listening to them, as their strategy has long since become “foment civilisation collapse and cancel/jail anyone who notices or tries to stop it”
I’m soliciting opinions on whether it would be possible for DOGE to prune bloated, ineffective government agencies in a way that’s smarter and more effective than its present approach. Question’s a follow-up to a discussion earlier in the comments here of whether it would be possible for DOGE to do a smarter, juster, more effective job of trimming back bureaucracy. Discussion started with my recounting an event described to me by an NIH scientist who was present: DOGE staff entered his part of a building and fired staff they were able to catch in small infractions. At least one person was fired for leaving his badge on his desk when he went to the bathroom.
Some who entered the discussion said that undoubtedly dismantling and pruning bloated government agencies was causing suffering but that “*not* doing the cuts also causes plenty of damage, it’s just harder to pinpoint and a lot of it will happen in 5-8 years.” I do not take issue with the need for making cuts, but think they are being done in a dumb, chaotic, random way. Suggested that a reasonable way to shrink staff would be to use some criterion based on their performance, such as performance evals, or productivity over recent years. Someone else countered that DOGE is not allowed to take the kind of steps I’m suggesting. The discussion is here:
Seems clear to me that the Trump administration is willing to walk right over various boundaries, some of them legal boundaries, and that they are mostly getting away with that. I’m curious to hear from people who know more than I do about the laws and norms involved to weigh in knowledgeably on whether it would be possible for DOGE to dismantle and shrink gov’t agencies in a way that is more systematic and uses reasonable criteria for identifying bureaucratic tangles and deadwood.
> I’m soliciting opinions on whether it would be possible for DOGE to prune bloated, ineffective government agencies in a way that’s smarter and more effective than its present approach.
Nearly *anything* would be more effective than their current approach, even simply doing nothing. Elon's DOGE campaign has been an astonishing own-goal at every level.
I feel like I should preface with gratitude for your approach. I'm seeing more and more anti-Trump alarmism and doommongering on ACX day after day, unleavened by any sort of understanding of what's driving conservatives, Trump, DOGE, et al., until this place is resembling /r/politics. People who ask as if they really want to solve a problem are getting rare around here.
That said, this is a tough problem. I'm tempted to say "I'll get back to you on that" - not in order to commit to any future report to submit to you, but rather to convey the hopelessness I think we're seeing from conservatives trying to prune back the government.
There's a recent exchange between Ezra Klein and Jon Stewart, discussing a plan by the Biden administration to bring broadband internet to rural areas. (It's pretty easy to find right now; I searched for "klein stewart biden plan". It's probably best to watch the video to get the appropriate impact. You might have seen it already.) It's 14 steps long; I believe Klein even cites how much money was allocated to each step, and how many players started, and how many got through each step. I think the total price tag ran into hundreds of millions; I do not know of any actual broadband having been installed.
I recall Musk saying "SpaceX can build rockets faster than the Govt can do the paperwork 'required' to launch". I think that quote, and its variants, gets a lot of sympathy from the right.
Pruning does seem to be an apt metaphor. The USG resembles a thicket of brambles now. Cut one stalk and pull on it; its thorns snag on the others, holding it fast. Cut the others; they snag on yet others. Keep cutting, and you might finally get a bit of it away; you will also have spent all day, burned thousands of calories, and you look up and see miles more of that growth. Keep going even so, and you anticipate getting to the other end in multiple generations - by which time the first end will have grown back, thicker than ever.
The point here is that the bureaucracy has literally interwoven with itself, to the point that no department can be cut without getting approval from several more, AND cutting support departments requires approval of yet more, AND each request for approval costs a million dollars and a month to process, AND could be reprioritized to the bottom of the pile for some reason, AND asking for that reason costs ten thousand dollars and a week to get a response. Anyone who wants to save money, cannot do so, cannot ask why, and cannot ask why they cannot ask.
And meanwhile, it's still growing. The interest on the debt is as large as the defense budget.
Given all this, I can understand why someone would want to look at all that growth and conclude that the least painful solution is indeed to use fire, even if it upsets all the animal life currently sheltering somewhere in it. There are conservatives who will tell you these animals are there by design (search for "hostage puppies" if you get a chance). I think it's some of that, and some of it is animals that do naturally wind up there, it's not their fault, and no one put them there on purpose to shield the waste and bloat. I also wonder if we could evac all the intentional hostage puppies and the unintentional ones still don't justify all that growth.
I can also understand if you or anyone else (including me, on occasion) might look at that gas can and think, surely there's a less chaotic way to trim at least something. And then I find the best sincere response I can give to that right now is, well, I'll get back to you on that. That's how wedged this is now.
It does occur to me now that, as chaotic as DOGE seems to me right now, there are even more chaotic ways to prune back the government that I would rather not see happen.
(Not a hostage puppy, I promise; I don't have control over this.)
My perspective is from experience working in the civil service of a very similar country. While the US bureaucracy might be idiosyncratic in some way I'm not aware of, every other democratic country also seems to have extreme difficulties in firing their bureaucrats so I'm guessing the US is similar enough for the following to apply
DOGE is resorting to silly tactics like firing people who leave their badges on their desk while on a bathroom break because it's nearly impossible to fire government employees based on logical reasons. Public sector unions have put up absurdly strong legal barriers against firing bureaucrats, so decisions on who gets cut in times of downsizing - which are infrequent in the first place - are always based on how easy it is to fire each person and not on how good they are at their jobs. Pro union parties have generally been in power for around half the history of most democratic countries, and unions only need to get a few good election cycles to get legally binding collective agreements that give public employees immense protections
My workplace's most recent round of layoffs is a case in point. About 10% were nominally fired. Of those, almost 90% were employees on fixed term contracts, who usually get renewed when their contract expires. After some number of years working on these contracts, term employees are automatically made permanent as per the collective agreement, meaning the number of permanent employees is ever-growing. The 10%~ of those fired who were permanent employees largely got shuffled around to other positions in other departments
It's obvious to see why this happens: in order to actually fire permanent employees (instead of shuffling them around), management has to decide which programs to target, get together to create "objective" metrics for every single targeted position, "objectively" evaluate all of the employees in each of these positions, and give notice to the affected employees. Once they're given notice, they get a few months to decide whether to take a lump sum payment (people near retirement often do this) or collect their paycheck for up to one year while looking for other government positions (people who choose this option often don't even bother looking for other government positions and just collect the paycheck). In total we're talking like two years from start to end in order to fire a government employee if you also want to check all the boxes and respect due process, during which there's a good chance another party will come to power and reverse all the work that was done to try to do it
Past performance evaluations can't be used either. The process management has to go through in order to fire public employees is strictly defined in the collective agreement. Unions have every reason to make it as slow and costly as possible. And even if past evaluations could be used, they would offer no useful information. Performance evaluations don't mean anything because there are basically no consequences for doing poorly on them - remember, ridiculous employment protections means no one is getting fired. This means that the evaluator (usually a middle manager) and the employee both know it's a pointless box-ticking exercise, which leads to everyone more or less getting some variation of "met expectations" for every single criteria
-I am not asking whether DOGE & Musk sincerely *want* to get rid of dead wood and make agencies leaner and meaner.
-I am not asking whether it is possible to do a slow, really thoughtful redo of agencies, perhaps involving first studies of their effectiveness, speed, and impact per dollar; then development of new, leaner, better models of them.
-I am asking this: Let's assume DOGE & Musk have it as their goal to quickly get rid of deadwood and nonsense in agencies and turn the agencies into small, effective groups with much smaller budgets. Would it be possible for them, on their own, to carry this out? Or are they so hindered by laws and regulations and agencies' unwillingness to change that the only way they can proceed is in the chaotic way they are? If we take the case of NIH staff: Is the only way they can reduce staff without being stopped by rules and laws and congress and the supreme court etc etc to eliminate people using simple, silly criteria? -- such as firing all the probationaries, or firing those they catch taking a leak without having their badge with them? Or would it be possible for DOGE to force the firing of people based on some reasonable criterion of their value as employees, such as performance evals, work accomplished per year, number of sick days per year?
In other words, is DOGE being forced to prune with a chain saw because an impenetrable net of laws and regulations keeps them from doing smart topiary with a graduated set of electric shears? Or do they just dig chain saws?
There's proof by example that this can be done, and done well. Bill Clinton, during his time in office, tasked Al Gore with streamlining the federal bureaucracy through the National Partnership for Reinventing Government, This and other related efforts reduced the federal workforce by almost 400,000 people, about 20% of the total. And nobody remembers it, because it was done in a professional, efficient, minimally-disruptive manner. And he did so under approximately the same legal and regulatory regime we have today.
It is probably not a coincidence that Bill Clinton was the last US president to have balanced the Federal budget. Possibly the very last ever.
I do have to wonder how much of NPR(g) was possible only by agreeing to cut defense spending as well. The WP article claims it had little effect, but I don't think it factors in private agreements made with various Congresspeople that weren't widely reported.
What I *do* know is that defense spending *did* decrease during the Clinton administration, as evidenced by numerous accounts from people I worked with back then who complained about how much harder it was to get promotions and resources compared to the Reagan years.
If you're serious about cutting government spending, you need to seriously consider cutting defense spending. And if you're also serious about pulling back from "foreign entanglements" and sucker moves like defending our allies, cutting defense should be pretty much a no-brainer.
If you're serious about all of that but you're also seriously not joking about your plans to maybe invade two NATO member nations, maybe you can't afford to cut the now-grossly-misnamed defense budget. Hmm...
> Would it be possible for them, on their own, to carry this out? Or are they so hindered by laws and regulations and agencies' unwillingness to change that the only way they can proceed is in the chaotic way they are?
The biggest obstacle is not regulation, but Musk's own descent into a far-right bubble which has prevented him from engaging with reality. That's not even a partisan thing. There are tons of libertarian think-tank types who have spent their lives thinking about how to do this kind of thing in a sane way and Musk has ignored every one of them because he thinks he knows better.
> Or do they just dig chain saws?
Pretty much. Musk's primary goal seems to be "fire as many people as possible as quick as possible without any regard for what impact that will have on the country or budget".
I confess that I do not know enough about the regulations involved. What is the executive branch allowed and not allowed to do to government agencies without approval or support from some other government entity -- such as congress? Is the executive branch allowed to fire, for example, managers at NIH? Do NIH staff have a union? If so, what would the union do if DOGE fired all mangers? Strike? Protest? Invoke some law or agreement? Do you know? And the second question is, what is the chance that whatever built-in barriers there are to Trump firing all managers simply cannot be overriden, or if overriden is very likely to be reversed? I do not know. Do you?
Seems to me there are a lot of ways the executive branch can make the case that under the present circumstances they are allowed to fire managers. There seem to be a lot of things on the books that can be used to justify breaking lower order rules. For example, Trump can call Venezuelan drug gangs in the US an invading foreign force (or something like that) and can then use that to justify doing various things to immigrants that by some lower-level laws violate their rights. So I say to myself that maybe there's a (and here I'm just loosely brainstorming) a financial emergency clause that lets the president shut down agencies to save money. Or a rogue manager clause that lets the president fire managers who refuse to carry out certain requests from the president in a timely fashion. Or -- well, you get the idea.
So my question is simply whether there are end runs around the rules and laws protecting agencies that would allow DOGE to reduce the size of agencies and their staff in a more planful manner than the present one. I am not being sneaky and tricky here. I just do not know enough about law and the structure of government. Do you?
And if you don't can you please refrain from answering questions I have not asked? Such is what is Trump/Musk's real intent, is DOGE as currently carried out likely to be to the country's benefit, how good a job can one do of shrinking and improving agencies if it must be done quickly, and whether your bellybutton is an innie or an outie.
> For example, Trump can call Venezuelan drug gangs in the US an invading foreign force (or something like that) and can then use that to justify doing various things to immigrants that by some lower-level laws violate their rights.
Don't confuse "nobody has managed to stop him yet" for "is legal". The "war" powers invocation in particular is pretty blatantly illegal.
It’s actually quite helpful to hear that, Ralph. I have had exactly the same perception of the responses, except that I have found it not amusing but extremely frustrating and sort of demoralizing. In fact the responses I’ve gotten led to a whole train of thought yesterday about looking for some other places online to read and discuss things. And I have not had that in reaction to hot arguments or occasional mean insults here in the past. Those were unpleasant but did not leave me with the same feeling of OK, I give up.
I think what’s led to my question being impossible to hear is that it does not make clear what side I’m
on. Do I think DOGE is dumb and bad both in methods and goal? Or only in methods? Or maybe I think it’s smart and good and I’m on board with the methods too, and looking for evidence that laws etc force it to use a chainsaw?
I didn’t ask my question in a way that left my loyalties unclear in order to play with people’s minds. I was just trying to find out the answer to my particular question, without having the discussion derailed by various right vs. left run-ins. But the net effect seems to have been that many people felt they had to strongly signal their position on DOGE good/bad/smart/dumb. Maybe that was because they did not know which tribe I belonged to, and were being asked to answer a question without knowing which side's arguments they were supporting? And then several others seemed determined to convince me that my question was based on various dumb-as-a-rock assumptions, and was therefore unanswerable. Maybe a way to neutralize the dilemma?
The upshot, IMO, is that politics makes people dumb.
I think the problem is that there are many different things your question could be asking about.
1. What can Musk legally do on his own?
2. What could Republicans as a whole do legally?
3. What can Musk practically do? (i.e. what can he get away with rather than what is legal)
4. What would be a good way to accomplish what Musk says he wants to accomplish?
5. What would be a good way to accomplish what Musk is actually trying to accomplish?
6. What would be a good way to do what Musk has actually done? (kind of tautological, but you often seem to be going for this based on your responses)
These are all different things! But you're implicitly assuming they're the same thing. And since they are different things, the answer to the question differs depending on which thing you're talking about. Therefore, people focus on trying to clarify the question.
<I think the problem is that there are many different things your question could be asking about.
1. What can Musk legally do on his own?
2. What could Republicans as a whole do legally?
3. What can Musk practically do? (i.e. what can he get away with rather than what is legal)
4. What would be a good way to accomplish what Musk says he wants to accomplish?
5. What would be a good way to accomplish what Musk is actually trying to accomplish?
6. What would be a good way to do what Musk has actually done? (kind of tautological, but you often seem to be going for this based on your responses)
These are all different things! But you're implicitly assuming they're the same thing. And since they are different things, the answer to the question differs depending on which thing you're talking about. Therefore, people focus on trying to clarify the question.>
No, the question is quite clear, and it is none of the above.. I have stated it and restated it numerous times : DOGE is going about dismantling and shrinking agencies in a way that seems unsystematic (I gave several examples of what I mean by this term), and unlikely to get rid of policies, staff and roles that DOGE sees as bad and keep those it sees as good. It seems like there would be quick simple ways to at least increase the fraction of “bad”(by DOGE’s standards) employees and policies gotten rid of and of good ones kept. (I named some simple ways this might be done, while admitting I did not think they were a great approach, just better than the present one for achieving DOGE’s aim.) My question is whether various laws and contracts prevent DOGE from using a more systematic approach that aims to maximize how much good stuff (by its standards) it keeps and how much bad stuff it gets rid of. I have clarified that when I ask whether the laws prevent DOGE from being more systematic, I mean *both* whether the laws prevent systematic approaches *and* whether DOGE has a reasonable chance of just ignoring the laws, etc., or else overriding them by stretching the meaning of various executive powers.
I have talked throughout about DOGE, not Musk the man, not the Republicans. I regard Musk as someone carrying out the DOGE project, backed by the president. It was clear in my questions that I was asking about DOGE, the project..
So none of your 6 are what I am asking. If we replace “Musk” with “DOGE, then I am asking a version of 1 + 3: Not what out of the universe of all possible actions can DOGE get away with, but what simple steps aimed at getting rid of undesirables (in DOGEs view) could it get away with. I have given exs. of quick and dirty steps: fire all managers and replace with DOGE loyalists; fire employees with low evaluations; fire employees known to strongly disagree with DOGE’s point of view.
In one of my many attempts to get someone to answer the question I was asking I stated it this way: Is DOGE trimming the shrubbery with a chain saw because it is surrounded with such a thick mesh that it can’t use a graduated series of topiary scissors, or because it just digs chain saws?
As further clarification I have stated in various posts (I must have put up 10 follow-up posts at least) things I am NOT asking: What is DOGE's *real* goal? Is that goal good? Is that goal attainable?
Do not tell me I have not been clear, unless you can quote several vague or ambiguous formulations of it. And don't say the flaw in my question is that assumes some dumb-shit thing like that there is a perfect way for DOGE to do this pruning and end up in a short period of time with a bunch of small, effective agencies that are wholeheartedly aligned with the DOGE viewpoint. It is not an all or nothing question. I did not ask whether it is possible for DOGE to do a great job of pruning the bad and keeping the good. I asked whether DOGE could do a *better* job, or whether it is so constrained by laws etc. it can only come at things the messy, chaotic way it is,
This is the most disillusioned and discouraged I have ever felt about ACX discussions, even though nobody has been particularly mean to me in this one. But everybody except Paul Brinkley and B Civil has either just rambled on about their miscellaneous opinions about DOGE or else tried to prove that my question is meaningless because it’s sort of like a snake swallowing its tail or a demand to know how many angels can dance on the head of a pin or an unanswerable inquiry about what color underpanties Ayn Rand wore while writing John Galt’s speech. No it ain't!
Know what I think? I think most of you don’t know all that much more than me about what legal, contractual, etc. constraints there are on what DOGE can do and, out of those, which it can probably get away violating with via brute power or trix. But nobody says that, they just don’t answer my question or say it's too flawed to mean anything. You're pretentious cowards. Fuck this place.
" Let's assume DOGE & Musk have it as their goal to quickly get rid of deadwood and nonsense in agencies and turn the agencies into small, effective groups with much smaller budgets. Would it be possible for them, on their own, to carry this out? Or are they so hindered by laws and regulations and agencies' unwillingness to change that the only way they can proceed is in the chaotic way they are?"
This framing is smuggling in a LOT of AFAICT unjustified assumptions. In particular, you're assuming a dichotomy that doesn't seem to be much in evidence:
either
A. It's possible for a smart and motivated agency to quickly and sharply reduce the staffing and budget of federal agencies while leaving them effective.
or
B. The reason A isn't possible is entirely because of laws, regulations and institutional inertia.
The first is akin to the belief in the proverbial $20 bill on the sidewalk (which certainly *could* exist, but you shouldn't be betting $19 or even $5 on finding it). The second is like saying one's failure to find said bill *must* be due to all those pesky pedestrians getting in the way by having the audacity to use the sidewalk to *go places* instead of recognizing its rightful place in your entirely-justified and not-at-all-frivolous treasure hunt.
Naw you missed the point. I am trying to figure out whether laws, contracts, regulations, loyalties etc. constrain DOGE so much that it is impossible for it be more selective than it is now in how it fires people and ditches programs. For instance, I have heard of people being fired because they were probationary employees; and because they were caught in the bathroom one afternoon without their badges. I have heard of all the staff of an agency being fired, then the agency rehiring all who were willing to return. None of these hiring and firing processes are likely to select for the most productive employees. A simple system of firing those with the worst performance reviews would at least be better.
So I am not trying to figure out whether DOGE could "quickly and sharply reduce the staffing and budget of federal agencies while leaving them effective." I am only trying to figure out whether it is possible for DOGE to be more systematic than it is now, or whether all the laws, loyalties etc. in and around hunks of the bureaucracy are such a dense nets that it is impossible for DOGE to use any approach more systematic, less chaotic and less violent than the present one. The reason I want to know is that people are defending DOGE's chain saw approach on the grounds that it has no choice but to fire people capriciously, possibly losing valuable experts and louyal hard-working people who are not a bit infected with woke and other things DOGE wants to get rid of. I do not think that's true.
There are many cases where DOGE could have better achieved their goals by *doing nothing*. For example, they could have *not fired* the IRS people who collect taxes. They could have *not fired* all the people in government who are already responsible for auditing and preventing waste. etc. They could have *not fired* the people in government who check whether government programs are actually working or not. Those are pure unforced errors even granted DOGE's premises.
I sort of see it. OTOH, this clearly would not have worked across the board. Out of curiosity, were there any instances of DOGE doing something that you would argue as a benefit to the goal of reducing government waste?
From a theoretical perspective, when they cut that much stuff, there's bound to be some bad stuff they cut, just by chance. If they had only cut that stuff, it would have been an improvement. But of course, figuring out what the bad stuff is is hard and DOGE is deliberately not even trying. There are also nonlinear effects where the rapid lawless destruction of the government has negative effects well beyond the pros or cons of specific programs being cut.
FWIW, I think the CFPB was in serious need of reform or reogranization. But that still doesn't mean that illegally shutting it down was a good idea. That's also not a question of "efficiency" but rather "the government should do good things and not bad things policy wise".
"The reason I want to know is that people are defending DOGE's chain saw approach on the grounds that it has no choice but to fire people capriciously"
But *of course* they have a choice. They always have a choice. For every person they fire, there is (at a bare minimum) the alternative of *not firing them*.
My core objection here is that the sort of people you describe taking "firing a large number of federal workers is just and necessary and will save money" as an axiom. It's not an axiom. It's very likely not even true. And determining if and when it's *actually useful* to fire people is necessarily upstream of determining *how* to fire them. Take this for example:
"None of these hiring and firing processes are likely to select for the most productive employees. A simple system of firing those with the worst performance reviews would at least be better."
Trying to model employees of complex federal organizations as homogenous lumps of labor whose efficiency can be measured in one number is a plain and obvious fallacy. It's easy to imagine a situation where you fire one and only one employee and lo and behold, despite their poor performance review, losing them *drops* the productivity of the whole department, and does so *dramatically.* It's as silly to assume that "fire the employees with the worst performance review" will make a department more efficient as it is to assume "remove the most worn part from your car engine" will make your car more efficient.
None of that is to say that greater efficiency is impossible; probably there are lots of improvements that could be made. But it's a reasonable bet that they'll require *understanding the system you're trying to improve* (which generally isn't quick if you're starting from zero). And it's unwarranted to assume from the word go that the improvements will *necessarily* involve firing people. Maybe sometimes they will. But sometimes they won't: there are lots of other ways to cut costs. Heck, sometimes they'll involve *hiring more people*: understaffing can create all sorts of costly inefficiencies.
Both the people involved in this project and the people supporting them seem to be doing so for ideological reasons that carry the unshakable assumption that firing federal employees will improve the world *no matter how it's done.* You reason your way to the truth if you start from an irrational premise that you refuse to ever update.
It's because your posts make it sound like you don't understand this. The issue isn't whether you are in favor of firing people or not, the issue is that your questions are smuggling in incorrect premises.
My experience of reforming problematic groups is that a small group ( say 20 people) takes full time, dedicated attention from an individual for months.
Actively hostile, idealogically oppositional groups will likely take much more.
Unless you break them.
They would need massive amounts of man-power to reform millions of workers, 10s of thousands of strong managers at a minimum.
If the groups involved were trying to cooperate as best they could then maybe
I didn't picture the temporary manager reforming the group, just going through the records and scoring people on simple criteria, such as recent performance reviews, completion of projects, maybe total sick and personal days. Then maybe consulting with someone with the scientific expertise to advise on what essential skills the group kept had to have, which might temper some decisions about who to fire. Then firing enough of the group to meet some criterion set by the administration. Maybe the temp manager wouldn't need 60 days -- maybe a coupla weeks would be enough.
My point isn't that my idea is good -- it's that if you want to downsize a group, doing it as I describe is better than randomly firing people (e.g. firing of 2 people 10 or so days ago for Peeing without Badges).
There's a sensible good-faith process that could theoretically be followed if enough organs of government were interested in executing a sensible good-faith process. Realistically if you start this process then you get four years of "actually we investigated ourselves and found that our budget isn't excessive after all", and then you lose power anyway and the moment has passed.
>"whether it would be possible for DOGE to prune bloated, ineffective government agencies in a way that’s smarter and more effective than its present approach."
No and yes.
No, because DOGE is Elon Musk and Elon Musk's goal is not efficiency. His goals are more along the lines of revenge against woke; ending projects he personally dislikes; destroying institutional memory so it can't be a check on his and Trump's power; finding things to lie about and use as anti-Dem pro-Trump propaganda (e.g., pretending a SSN means an immigrant is voting instead of just working and paying taxes and that this is Biden's fault); etc.
Yes, because *if* some hypothetical agency had the goal of efficiency, it would automatically be doing better than DOGE.
"I’m soliciting opinions on whether it would be possible for DOGE to prune bloated, ineffective government agencies in a way that’s smarter and more effective than its present approach"
I mean, it couldn't possibly be _less_ smart and effective, so obviously yes.
This requires hard and serious work, though, so it's obviously off the table in the current regime.
> I do not take issue with the need for making cuts, but think they are being done in a dumb, chaotic, random way. Suggested that a reasonable way to shrink staff would be to use some criterion based on their performance, such as performance evals, or productivity over recent years.
This will further the power of scientism; fucci presumably wrote dozens of papers over the years about how to best torture dogs.
When china does anti corruption purges, I expect whos left to actaully be more corrupt. Goodhearts law.
Doing the opposite would be fun, look for people who have several complaints but were kept around for some reason "hmm you failed 5 hr sensitively trainings but yet you were kept... must be vitally important in some unquantified way; promoted"
Sure, but I'm not sure it's possible while also shooting for a net decrease in government spending (especially at first). You would want to do audits, start medium-to-long term studies of effectiveness, and emphasize recruiting/retaining talented people - all of which requires extra resources and oversight to get started. The end result might be a government that is smaller than it is right now, but I don't think you can seriously embark on a project like this without considering that any given government program might be useful and worth expanding.
Yeah but what you are describing is a really thorough version of smart, thoughtful pruning. Right now I’m hearing about firings based on whether someone is “probationary,” i.e. in their first year or 2 of working at an agency; and whether someone was caught during a single DOGE staff visit failing to take their badge with them went the went to pee. Using better selection methods than those is a pretty low bar to clear, and could be done quickly.
So the model I suggested for NIH would be: (1) Fire the manager of each project of agency. (2) Hire in each manager’s place some DOGE-aligned person with demonstrated ability to trim fat and reduce inefficiency at organizations. (3) Give that person 60 days to fire staff using mostly some agreed-upon metrics such as average performance eval in last 2 years, or decreased productivity in last 2 years, with some room for manager to use own judgment as well. (4)After temporary management prunes staff and makes other changes to increase efficiency, they leave. (5) Hire in their place scientists who are qualified to run a medical reserach group. Limit their power to add to staff and make other changes.
I do not think my proposal is great, but seems likely to be better than the dumb, semi-random approach used now. It would also create much less fear, anger and chaos. The thing is, I am not sure DOGE has the power to do it, and someone who was defending present events said they did not. On the other hand, if DOGE can stroll in and fire people for not having their badge on when they’re at the urinal, seems like they could just fire managers for, I dunno, budget overruns, failure to respond to some demand of DOGE’s for bullet point lists of the week’s accomplishments, or wearing Birkenstocks.
After giving it some, but not a lot of thought, I don’t think it would work. First reason is what you are proposing is not truly aligned with what they are trying to do in my opinion. What they are trying to do is reestablish direct executive control over all of these employees, which means delegitimizing the institutional process for hiring and firing that exists now and in the past, and also delegitimizing power players like the unions (and lawyers) that stand in the way.
My second point concerns the idea of hiring a temporary bean counter manager to oversee a project for a certain amount of time and then do some cutting, and then hand that project back over to someone who actually understands what the project is trying to accomplish.
I don’t see how this works. The person doing the cutting does not have the knowledge to really understand who might be good or not good in the context of the goal of said project (not even to mention the loyalty issue which is important in the context of this administration); and the scientist (or other “ qualified expert“) who is coming in is going to be stuck with a bunch of people that he or she had no say in hiring.
The bottom line is it’s probably a lot faster to fire 10 people and then hire back four of them. And if there’s a bunch of confusion, well too bad.
When and if DOGE screws up really badly and demonstrably, then that will be the beginning of the end of this strategy.
Just to be clear, I never thought my proposed method was good. I proposed it as an example of an approach that was better than firings based on things probably uncorrelated with employee productivity (probationaries; people caught not taking their badge to the bathroom one afternoon; or the people willing to be rehired after all the staff has been fired). And the thing of interest to me is whether it is currently possible to carry out shrinkage of govt agencies in a way that gives more bang for the buck than the present approach.
The reason I care about *that* is that I keep running across people, mostly on here, who defend DOGE on the grounds that it is not possible to get rid of bureaucratic bloat and undesirable woke government agendas in a way that selects against lazy & unqualified people or people whose job consists of pointless (from DOGE's point of view) tasks. These DOGE defenders argue that there are so many laws, contracts, regulations etc. in effect that all systematic approaches, even quick and dirty ones, are impossible to carry out. All DOGE can do is various kinds of random destructions and dismemberments and shock administrations.
I would like to be able to demonstrate to these people that they are mostly wrong. It is my impression that many of them are infected with infuriating images of gov't workers who are lazy, entitled, controlling, woke-infested fools. Imagining the fool being shocked, humiliated and summarily fired scratches their angry itch, and so they defend DOGE's present brutal and chaotic approach even against reasonable arguments. But of course I may be wrong, and just driven by my own angry itch, which at least I'm aware of.
I simply do not know enough about how our government is set up to know what regulations, chains of command, laws, etc. truly block DOGE from doing various things. There are 2 things one needs to know: what are the laws, etc., and which sort of laws etc. DOGE can successfully defy. I am ignorant about both. Assumed that many here would be less ignorant than me, but so far nobody has replied by naming the kinds of barriers, which have been successfully ignored by DOGE, which could prob be successfully challenged if DOGE ignored them etc.
So far I have not been able to get a single person to address that question. Everybody gets diverted by something else I mention along the way. Do you know enough about what barriers there are and how likely defiance of different ones is to succeed? Or, less generally, whether it is just impossible for DOGE to be more systematic, because barriers around and in the bureaucracy make a more planful approach impossible?
Later addition:
<What they are trying to do is reestablish direct executive control over all of these employees, which means delegitimizing the institutional process for hiring and firing that exists now and in the past, and also delegitimizing power players like the unions (and lawyers) that stand in the way.
Yes, I agree, that is my intuition as well. I would like to be able to make that argument to people who are defending DOGE on the grounds that it is so hemmed in by bullshit that it has to just whack at things with a machete. But in order to make the case that DOGE's agenda is to divide, disorganize, disempower and intimidate agencies, I need to present evidence that DOGE is not forced to take the machete approach by the tangle of regulations, etc. that presently exist.
Yeah I get it. It’s pretty shocking. Or exhilarating I guess depending on what side of it you’re on.
>Do you know enough about what barriers there are and how likely defiance of different ones is to succeed?
IANAL, but I play one on tv. This is a battle to rejigger the powers of the government; the Judiciary, the Executive, and the Legislature. More specifically it’s a move to seriously increase the powers of the executive branch. The unitary executive. Trump and his administration are challenging the other branches of government very directly. There are probably Mary of laws that might stand in his way, but it depends on how intently the other branches want to fight It. Congress is pretty much willing to let him push things hard so I don’t expect a lot of pushback from them. There will be some walking and I’m sure some of them aren’t really thrilled about it, but they are afraid to stay in his way right now because he has a lot of political clout. Which could evaporate in a cloud, but might not. The goal is to get to the Supreme Court and raise the fundamental constitutional issues around the powers of the executive as opposed to the legislative branch. So he’s creating a lot of challenges all at once, but they all point to the same thing- “who is in charge here?“ the administration has been playing all kinds of games with Musk’s status in the government. He is acting officially when it suits them and he is acting unofficially when it doesn’t.
To try to do this through the usual channels will mean getting bogged down in endless court cases and negotiations with members of Congress, trade unions, special interests etc., and will not get him where he and his associates want to go.
So the short answer to your question is this is about a constitutional fight and a close reading of the powers vested in the executive branch do give him a leg to stand on. The first really important case (which is about the alien enemies act) is due to hit the Supreme Court very shortly. What are the powers of the president to declare a national emergency and how much proof does he have to come up with in order to do so? The Constitution says he can do it and it doesn’t say anything about having to prove it to anyone. Congress gave up the power to declare war to the executive branch a long time ago, and it will be difficult for them to reclaim it.
He says Venezuelan drug gangs are equivalent to a foreign intrusion which triggers his power to declare an emergency. I assume the other side will argue that that is a gross overstepping of his power.
He has a pretty good chance of winning that case.
There will be other cases reaching the Supreme Court to hammer out these kinds of issues and in the meantime, keeping everybody off guard is tactically a good move. It’s rather intimidating.
I think we largely agree. As far as I know, there's nothing stopping DOGE from firing people based on sensible metrics. I'm sure that someone has argued that performance reviews might be politically biased or inaccurate, but they would at least be a start.
I suspect that one of the goals of this approach is to make it extremely unpleasant to be a federal employee, even if you're not one of the people who gets fired. It's also the sort of approach that you might take if you had a very limited pool of competent manpower to make decisions.
I can’t help you with your request and so I apologize in advance, but it’s maybe worth mentioning that the Clinton administration undertook government reform/money-saving in a way that presumably you might approve.
I'm fundamentally confused about Amy Wax and why she supports white nationalism. Does she really think in the kind of nation she's trying to bring about, Ashkenazi Jews will still be treated as honorary white people? How can she not know she's just driving herself and any family she has toward destruction?
Jews were treated as honorary white people in early US history. The first serious nativist movement in US history, the Know Nothings were Protestants + Jews (look up Lewis Charles Levin) against Catholics. The first two Jewish senators were also from the Antebellum South. Presumably being a Jew was not a dealbreaker to the Anglo-Protestants in the state legislatures who elected them. Anglo-Protestants have always been some of the most pro-Jewish population throughout history. But they never seem to realize on the other hand, the ambivalent feeling at the very best that Jews have towards Protestants. I reckon most American Jews would rather hang out with a Palestinian than an Evangelical. Don't know about Israeli Jews though, maybe the increasing Mizrahi population doesn't really care about Christians unlike the Ashkenazis.
I admit that not being allowed in country clubs and having the admission process for elite universities overhauled to keep you out are kind of First World problems on the historical Jewish scale, but they're still somewhat short of being a first class citizen.
I agree and would not claim that they were completely equal but they were treated better than any White Catholic and far far better than any Native American, Black, or Asian. Its honestly bizarre that American Jews latch on country club membership denials and only being overrepresented by factor of 5x instead of 10x or something in elite universities as their great persecution stories. White American Protestants have been better friends to Jews than most populations throughout history and its disappointing to see modern American Jews still hold resentment/suspicion/hostility towards them. The end of White Protestant dominance of America will not result in a better day to day climate for American Jews.
Don't know who this bitch seems to be, whatever she may be, but consider this data point: Israel's "Antisemitism" conference invited Europe's Neo-Nazi parties. When other Jewish Diaspora invitees dropped their invitations in protest, they doubled down, proceeded with the joint Neo-Nazi-Israeli conference, and then some dumbass official stood up and said in the mic that the Haaretz newspaper* is the beacon of antisemitism, while Nazis cheered in the audience.
At one point during this conference one of the neo-Nazis made a toast and said "the real 4th Reich is the friends we made along the way" and then everyone sang the Horst Wessel song.
My pseudonym is the name of a 6 years old shelled to death along with her family by some war criminals in a tank. If your definition of Jews is exclusively "War criminals in a tank shelling 6-year-olds and their families in civilian cars", then yeah, spot on, good job, nice catch: I exist only to abuse Jews.
You can construct your delusional virtual reality however you want, others are not obligated to believe in it.
I will note with hilarity how the Uber-racist Jerusalem Post [1] even reported the incident and believed the analysis by the Western press about how the weapons used to murder Hind are almost certainly IDF weapons, not Hamas'. So, it's amazing that you managed to be more genocidal and pro-child-murder than the fucking Jerusalem Post.
So Haaretz is antisemitic. Jerusalem Post is antisemitic. Hind Rajab? Probably antisemitic too, I have confirmed reports from the nursery she attended that she counted Nazis among her imaginary friends.
Meeh, this fake courtesy that the White Nationalists and their defenders never showed to any of the populations they're eternally triggered about, will never be shown to White Nationalists and their defenders. The Mahmoud Khalil discussion was not that long ago that I forgot.
Jews did just fine throughout American history, so I don't know what rational fear you think she should have.
She's not a white nationalist, btw, she just has reality-based opinions about different ethnic groups. It's a common histrionic failing of the left to view any frank race-based discussion as tantamount to genocide.
I don't say she's a white nationalist just because of reading it into her stated views on race, but also that she's spoken at a white nationalist conference and invited avowed white nationalists to speak at Penn.
And Jews have always done well in America *compared to contemporary Europe*, but not compared to today.
How do you know? It's not like live albums include the opening act. Maybe the gospels just edited it out.
Guilt by association is a cowardly way to argue. If that's the worst thing you have on Amy Wax then that's basically an admission that you don't have an actual argument.
I'm just as confused by an Amy Wax who consorts with and promotes white nationalists and favors keeping non-white people out of America as much as possible but is not a white nationalist as my perhaps imaginary white nationalist Amy Wax. If anything I'm more confused by this version.
I haven't heard of her being a white nationalist, though it wouldn't surprise me if she was. She did speak at a white nationalist conference. I wrote about how she typifies a particular sickness of the Right, a tendency to see all of politics through the lens of a few racially tinged issues like crime, affirmative action, etc.
There are certainly other Jewish white nationalists, which is just a return to the historical norm in America. White nationalism being goy-only from 1970 to 2010 was an aberration.
I read an article recently, probably somewhere within this general sphere, which had a line which stuck with me. It was something like "esoteric anti-Hitlerism is now the founding religion of the United States". Does anyone know what this article was?
The idea, I think, was that "Hitler bad", as the solitary shared opinion that everyone has, now fills the central uniting role in society that religion used to. And I mean, sure, Hitler was bad, but esoteric anti-Hitlerism is about exploding that one opinion to outsized talismanic importance unbefitting an ideology that died out eighty years ago, that never really made any sense outside the social context of 1930s Germany. Culture is stuck constantly defeating and re-defeating the same long-defeated enemy over and over again; the orcs are Nazis, the Galactic Empire are Nazis, the Daleks are Nazis, the bad guys are always Nazis or analogous to Nazis.
And of course any religion makes it necessary to find heretics. Sure, maybe nobody actually fails to believe that Hitler bad, but can we find someone who doesn't believe it quite hard enough?
I was thinking about this while reading (for some reason) a thread on /r/teachers where a teacher talked about how a student jokingly drew a swastika in class and the teacher made the entire class spend the rest of the day watching Holocaust videos, and all the other teachers in the thread chimed in suggesting even more extreme actions that could have been taken. Or how my own state, which managed to survive World War 2 and the subsequent eight decades without outlawing Nazi salutes just fine, has suddenly decided to outlaw doing Nazi salutes.
Fascism (of which Nazism is a variant) is based on the beliefs that life is inherently a zero-sum conflict between different races, that the proper order of things is for the strong to dominate the weak, that war is good because it weeds out the weak, and that the best form of government is a totalitarian dictatorship under a leader who serves as the expression and director of the national will. It's not just generic militarism, nor is it the same as nineteenth-century imperialist ideology.
>The idea of concentration camps originated from the British in the Boer Wars,
But, the Nazi concentration camps were not concentration camps; they were death camps.
Reminds me of the claim a few years back from some lefties that the Nazis' use of Zyklon B was "inspired" by the US use to delouse immigrants at the Mexican border. Because somehow using insecticides to kill insects somehow makes the US morally complicit in the use of insecticides to kill humans.
I'm not saying transactional isolationism is a good strategy, I'm observing what the goodwill is being *spent on*. So far, the goodwill seems to be on fire with relatively little short-term gain coming from it. Building institutions takes more effort than dismantling them.
I've seen some arguments that e.g. the new tariff regime might pay off on net for the US in the medium term, but I don't follow the arguments well enough to have an opinion myself.
It's possible that the US *will* invade Canada! I think it's very unlikely. But there are already impacts in relation to how Canada is approaching its defense procurement, which I think is likely to be net-negative to American defense industry.
If we start to close overseas military bases and reduce our armed forces, then maybe there will be some reduced costs. It's easy enough to argue that orange man's actions are encouraging the remilitarization of Europe. Maybe if we are unreliable enough there will be a new global order.
With reduced power comes less responsibility.
Also with less responsibility comes less power.
I mostly just hope we continue to maintain enough power to export dollars. We definitely want there to be a demand for dollars so we can continue to trade dollars ( free to print and distribute to citizens ) for foreign goods!
Same answer as what the USA's money is being spent on: Trump, Trump's family, Trump's terribly small ego, etc... To be concise: Trump*, if you're familiar with Regular Expressions.
It also seems to achieve sexual satisfaction in his followers, who by the virtue of being 51% managed to declare that this is a valid allocation of the USA's resources for the next N years, N >= 4.
In moral despair about Trump's ICE gestapo kidnapping random people over soccer, basketball, and "mom and dad" tattoos (as well as the fact that they seem to expect they'll get away with it), to lock them in an El Salvador torture prison. The ACLU is fighting it, but if Trump also controls the judges or manages to destroy the system of checks and balances entirely...
Wondering if, in these desperate times, the corporate power shoggoths could be summoned. E.g. ICE is pretending that the Nike / Michael Jordan jumpman symbol is a gang tattoo; and using a Rolex logo tattoo as an excuse to kidnap anyone with a crown. Maybe they'd consider this trademark defamation.
Like, if we're going to illegally nab and deport people, why can't they at least be the class of people that *everyone* hates?
Why can't Trump's ICE gestapo partner up with local traffic enforcement and deport *drunk drivers*?
No one needs or wants drunk drivers! TAKE THEM! Not even the bluest of the blue Lefties are going to put up much of a fight in defense of drunk drivers! They'd quietly let their protests fade out like Covid boosters, and then there would be way fewer drunk drivers, not only because the drunk drivers got deported, but because now everyone is scared shitless of drunk driving, themselves.
But no, the Trump administration *has* to be seen nabbing sympathetic people, like folks with tattoos and mouthy college students.
This is just turnabout for BLM/DEI/metoo/gender insanity. Trump *is* the shoggoth and the Progressive Left summoned him. Let him feed, the political energy will exhaust itself soon.
Letting evil feed freely doesn't typically make it less influential. It would be nice if that were the case, but to get rid of it, you typically have to actually make some effort.
I'm just reframing the narrative lest the Left forget the role they played in getting us here. Liberals have a tendency for amnesia-driven self-righteousness and I'm trying to head the hypocritical sanctimony off at the pass.
Who am I being cruel to? I'd hate to cause suffering and then miss it.
No, of course not. There's a tit-for-tat power balance between the parties and the Dems broke the peace by going way overboard with progressivism. That means the right is willing to tolerate a lot of collateral damage in their zeal to destroy progressive policy. Just like the Left didn't care which white, male CEOs had their careers unjustly ruined in pursuit of racial equity, the Right doesn't care which brown people get unjustly deported in their pursuit of less dysgenic immigration policy.
Depends how you want to define ruined, there's been at least one white CEO that won a discrimination case, and if you know anything about federal courts that's quite unusual since they usually hold such people to a *much* higher standard of evidence: https://archive.is/DzTcs
Are you unfamiliar with cancel culture? Off the top of my head there's Charles Murray, Steve Hsu, Brett (and Harvey!) Weinstein, Louie CK, Derek Chauvin, and James Bennet.
There are many many more. The Left opened Pandora's Box of racist, sexist, identity politics without reckoning with the fact that the Right still represents the ethnic majority in this country. Trump is the consequence of that.
A handful of people being publicly exposed for using their position of power to be racist or sexist (or for flashing their genitals in c.k.'s case) is treated as some kind of enormous betrayal of the social contract by conservatives while sending random people to El Salvadorian death camps is seen as a natural, normal and proportional reaction.
Of those, only Steve Hsu, Bret Weinstein, and James Bennet actually went through anything that they didn't deserve, and saying they had their careers ruined is a blatant exaggeration. Keep in mind you're comparing this to people being sent to an actual prison.
It's like a shit-tinted glasses version of Mr. Rogers' advice to "look for the helpers"
"When you see your tribe doing scary things in the news, look for the provokers. You will *always* be able to find someone in the outgroup who you can say provoked them."
It's more like: people going to one extreme encourages other people to go to the other extreme.
People vote for Republicans because they hate Democrats; and they vote for Democrats because they hate Republicans. Anything that makes one party more annoying encourages more people to vote for the other party.
And, sadly, Democrats were recently horribly annoying. Not all of them of course, but it seemed like they were utterly unable to keep the extremists on their side on the leash. Thus they have become the side of insanity.
Trump is an extremist, too, so I hope that in the next election, 80% of Americans will vote for Democrats. That is, of course, assuming that there will be the next election... maybe the redcaps will decide that it is better for government efficiency to eliminate this part, too.
In the case there is a next election and the Democrats win, I hope they will take the lesson and learn to say "no" to the craziest fractions among them.
"It's more like: people going to one extreme encourages other people to go to the other extreme."
The vagueness of the word "people" is doing a LOT of work here. One the one hand you have a bunch of *extremely* decentralized and grassroots shit, depending on a whole lot of individual actions with no way for ANY person or organization to exert control over it even if they wanted to. And on the other hand you have the federal government of the United States literally shipping people off to the gulag: something that could be stopped by even a small handful of people in high positions having a bare-minimum of respect for the rule of law.
In a nutshell, the standard being held up here is "as long as I can identify *anyone* on the other side doing *anything* that makes me sufficiently angry, that's adequate justification for my side to wield unchecked and unlimited government power." And of course you can *always* find such things. There is, after all, a multibillion dollar industry devoted to finding them for you, and splashing them onto your screen as loudly and as often as possible.
"One the one hand you have a bunch of *extremely* decentralized and grassroots shit, depending on a whole lot of individual actions with no way for ANY person or organization to exert control over it even if they wanted to."
In 2020, the BLM protests very quickly died down when they started causing property damage at the homes of various Democratic Congressmen or governors, and their polling started to slip. Do you really believe that no one told them to quiet down?
"Do you really believe that no one told them to quiet down?"
Taking this sentence at face value: lots of people were "telling them to quiet down" from literally the moment the protests started. The protesters were in no mood to listen.
Now instead taking the sentence with the obvious intuitions: I've never been prone to following conspiracy theories, so no.
I followed those protests pretty closely as they were happening. They involved a LOT of police violence towards civilians[1]; not just protesters but also journalists, medics people who were literally just bystanders. A large fraction of this was done by governments of large cities with Democrat mayors and Democrat-majority city councils. Joe Biden was in the middle of a presidential run at the time (having just concluded a completely and totally fair and in all manners above-board primary[2]) and was, to put it mildly, not exactly "in tune" with the protests or the people who were protesting. I think it's no stretch at all to say that he would have both personally preferred and been electorally better served by the protests *not* happening just then, or at least being much more limited. The point is, the idea that the Democratic Party had some sort of secret means of coordinating, controlling and quelling the protests--which they waited almost two weeks to use--is laughably absurd.
It feels embarrassing to even have to point this out, but the people protesting were not only Democrats. I have no clue whatsoever what *fraction* of them were Democrats, but I'd bet it a very modest majority or a slim minority. You see, 41% of the U.S. electorate is not affiliated with any party, while only 31% are Democrats. And while as far as I can tell, very few Republicans were actually upset by the spectacle of a police officer murdering a man in broad daylight with the help of three accomplices and (initially) being left fully at liberty, *most people* tend to find that sort of thing shocking, appalling and in many cases enraging. As well they should: if the state declines to protect your right to life from it own agents even when they are brazenly and undeniably in the wrong, you effectively have no rights at all. This is the sort of thing that, for example, Libertarians--who will tell you at great length that they are not Democrats--should be absolutely all over, since their entire raison d'etre is limiting the power of the government (and I know some of them *did* get involved in the protests, though I have no idea how many). And I know in a lot of the online communities I've spend time in, the loudest and most strident voices against police violence are left-wing people who will *also* tell you at great length that they are not Democrats. So again, the idea that the protesters were taking orders from Chuck Schumer or Nancy Pelosi is utter nonsense.
[1] Obligatory disclaimer that yes, sometimes this was a response to some number of the protesters initiating either violence or property damage. But also sometimes it was not.
[2] there is absolutely, definitely no sarcasm here, whatever could you mean?
Well said. I personally am rooting for Vance to win in 2028 and take over the mantle for the right. He seems like a decent, thoughtful person. It's my hope he can take the populist energy that Trump tapped into and redirect it in a more reasonable direction. Rooting for a Dem victory in 2028 is a mistake in my view because they're doubling down on what got us here. A quick victory would reinforce the wrong thing. They need to disavow woke progressivism and run a Clintonesque moderate again. If they do that they'll win in a landslide and I would happily vote for them.
If they did all that and ran someone who appeared moderate, would you trust them not to immediately turn around and implement all the "woke" policies they performatively disavowed during the campaign if they won?
"The left shouldn't have started it." When did the war start? in the 90's with "political correctness"? In the 1940's with McCarthyism? In 1917 with the october revolution? In 1850 with the pinkertons?
It's simple, really. Everything bad the Outgroup does, they did on purpose because they're evil and hateful; everything bad the Ingroup does, we were forced into it, we didn't have any choice, it was just a consequence of what they did first.
Look, don't complicate things with some kind of good-faith historical inquiry-- if you do that, we lose all the comfort we could otherwise take in our blind ingroup righteousness, and we'll never be able to maintain this cycle of mutual reprisal we have going on behalf of our faction leaders.
It's like an abusive relationship.... if you do something bad to me, it's your fault, because things are simple (duh!) and obviously it's your fault because you did it. If I do something bad to you, that's also your fault, because things are complicated and have lots of different causes (duh!), and with just a little unpacking we can certainly find something you did that provoked me.
But the whole thing hinges on only ever digging deep enough to blame the people I want to blame, so don't spoil it with some kind of genuine analysis-- you'll break the game.
While the White House probably didn't think too hard about participating in the tradition of political kitsch with their recent AI-generated tweet about an ICE arrest, the use of kitsch to support political agendas has been well-studied by Walter Benjamin, Saul Friedländer, and Milan Kundera https://captiveliberty.substack.com/p/empire-slop?r=25k3x4
Even knowing that the woman in this image is likely a genuine criminal, there was something viscerally disturbing to me about the White House posting this. It took me some time to put a finger on why that was, but I think it's this:
In every country, there are people who take joy in cruel domination, and will eagerly latch on to any excuse to engage in it. Often, the excuse is criminality, since the cruelty can be thinly disguised as just punishment- it gives them plausible deniability for their sick impulse. This sort of thing is, of course, responsible for a lot of the injustice and authoritarianism in the world.
Something that always gets in the way for these people is compassion- the human tendency to feel sympathy for the targets of cruelty. It makes them look bad, and some even feel it themselves. The usual way of dealing with it is dehumanization- compassion is shut down when people are made to seem less than human.
That's not what this image is doing, however. It's actually presenting an accused criminal in the most humanizing way possible- a crying woman in the style of children's cartoon. What it's doing might be darker than dehumanization: it's shutting down compassion by mocking the compassionate impulse itself. The message is: "Look at these libtards who think a criminal suffering is sad. What stupid cucks!"
What's really disturbing here is that they appear to no longer feel a need to justify themselves to compassionate people. Instead, they've identified people like that as the opposition, and are on the attack. This is likely to lead to some very dark places.
Very fascinating. Trump is the king of kitsch. I hadn't put together the connection between dreams/surrealism/AI-art/kitsch before, but it becomes clear in the Walter Benjamin line: "It touches the things where they are most worn." So much AI-art looks surreal not merely because might combine unexpected objects but because the objects stem from its dream-like memory.
The reason great painters use real objects in nature for their models is because memory can't reproduce all the detail of nature. How many different leaves can one paint from memory as opposed to from nature?
Yet dream-objects are compelling precisely because they evoke memory and nostalgia, a powerful force for propaganda.
Inspired by the foreign aid discussion from a few months ago, I summarized an argument by Garrett Cullity which has a compelling answer to the question "Why we are not obligated to donate everything except what would keep us alive to others?"
That's a good point, since that database should be able to produce false positives (if an immigrant didn't file for a new SS card after naturalization) but not false negatives. I could see it explaining this if he was a naturalized citizen, but if he was born in Chicago that shouldn't come up.
I asked here a few weeks ago why, given all the increased (and careless) immigration enforcement, there weren't more clearly-bad (as opposed to controversial) stories of nice likable people being put in obviously terrible situations. Looks like those are starting to come out now:
I don't think it's a surprise. Biden era guidance was to focus deportation efforts on people who'd committed violent crimes, and there was more longstanding guidance on avoiding arresting immigrants in "sensitive areas" (e.g. churches). Trump reversed those, in line with his campaign promises for mass deportation.
It's easier to go after immigrants, including illegal ones, who aren't members of gangs or anything and aren't trying to hide. Same way Musk & co are tying to get the IRS to (illegally from what I've read) get the IRS's info on immigrants (i.e. tax returns), to aid in deportations. What sort of illegal immigrants file tax returns? Well, probably not the ones in gangs.
Maybe specific horror stories aren't exactly what they envisioned, but "press on all fronts to maximize numbers of people detained and deported with no leniency for anyone" (and with a healthy dose of "be belligerent towards friendly countries for no reason") leads to shit like this.
This is the second story I've heard where a Canadian with a sketchy visa situation has tried to enter the US through the Mexican land border and wound up in immigration limbo because neither the US nor Mexico is willing to let them in. It's reasonable that the US would refuse but unclear why Mexico wouldn't let her back to the Mexican side of the border.
On the other hand I'm not sure there's anything Trump-specific about this story, has this been happening every now and then since forever and not got reported on?
> why aren't there more clearly-bad (as opposed to controversial) stories of nice likable people being put in obviously terrible situations
This is just the toxoplasma of rage effect again. If nice likeable people are put in terrible situations, everyone agrees it's bad and then people stop talking about it. If controversial people are arrested, people argue over whether it was bad and then it goes viral.
I don't think that matches - the toxoplasma of rage anticipates that the most controversial cases will be the loudest but the more sympathetic ones will at least get heard (in Scott's original article he mentions Eric Gardner as a more sympathetic case that even Bill O'Reilly found disturbing; while he did get less attention compared to more controversial cases he also wasn't unknown).
In this case some people said it would probably just take a few weeks for the more sympathetic victims to show up in the media landscape since it takes a bit of time for selection and signalling to happen, and I now think they were right.
Your framing demonstrates how far we have come from the Liberal (in the old-school sense of the word) principles upon which this country was founded. Under those founding principles, deporting literal Hitler without due process is clearly-bad (and shouldn't be even slightly controversially bad). The fact that some of these people being deported are clearly bad people and not very sympathetic in no way makes the lack-of-due-process not itself, clearly bad. Many of them _should_ be deported....after the appropriate (and admittedly sometimes slow) judicial process. It's fine to detain them during that process (and some of them very much shouldn't be free on the streets), but skipping the judicial process entirely is just so obviously not acceptable that I don't even know where to start.
And I don't even get why it's necessary. The argument that these people are dangerous criminals just doesn't make sense. If you can deport them _you have them in custody_ and can therefore keep them from committing future crimes.
Seems you have some rose-tinted glasses about how much liberal principles were actually respected in the past. There's always been arguments that certain groups shouldn't be allowed access to judicial processes.
With a bit of research, you can find plenty of US examples. There are obvious things relating to slavery -- for example the Fugitive Slave Act didn't allow suspected enslaved people a trial to show they were actually free. However even more relevant to today, the administration is trying to use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, hollowly arguing that the USA is being 'invaded', but also in 1798 the 'Alien Friends Act' passed (Expired in 1800) allowing the president to arbitrarily deport any non-citizen deemed 'dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States' without a hearing or trial.
The wording is: "That whenever there shall be a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation or government, or any invasion or predatory incursion shall be perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States, by any foreign nation or government, and the President of the United States shall make public proclamation of the event, all natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects of the hostile nation or government, being males of the age of fourteen years and upwards, who shall be within the United States, and not actually naturalized, shall be liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured and removed, as alien enemies."
Seems pretty clear to me that the predatory incursion 1) has to be 'against territory', ie occupying land/invasions, and regardless 2) must be commited by a foreign nation or government. The 'enemy' part isn't referrring to the people apprehended, its referring to the US's relationship with the country the people are from.
Gang activity seems like a less coordinated form of piracy, and piracy was a concern when the act was written. Eg, the Barbary pirates attacking US ships with the tactic approval of the Moroccan Sultanate even without explicit orders to do so.
Which resulted in the United States saying "hey, are we allowed to shoot up Moroccan mariners of dubious intent even if they aren't committing piracy of the time?", asking Congress to declare war, and then saying "yes, *now* we are".
Congress did weasel-word their way out of using the exact phrase "declaration of war", but they do that a lot and it's generally accepted that the exact phrasing doesn't matter. The GOP has a majority in the House and Senate. If Donald Trump wants to do this sort of thing and also to not be an oathbreaking criminal tyrant, have him get Congress to issue an Authorization for the Use of Military Force against Venezuela, or El Salvador or whoever.
Or, heck, make it a literal declaration of war. That would be a refreshing change.
All principles are always aspirational, and yes the US has been failing to live up to its principles in various ways from day 1. My statement is perfectly compatible with the idea that we were never perfectly achieving those principles.
That being said, this use of the act, the first time it's ever been used when we aren't actually at war, is particularly brazen and I think pretty clearly represents a new low.
Maybe in some dimension what they are doing with respect to the legal argument is particularly brazen. But I don't know, it seems to me even in the most direct parallels, what the US is doing now isn't all that novel. Do you think everyone deported in "Operation Wetback" in the 1950s was given due process? The Wikipedia page for the Mexican Repatriation of the great depression says:
"Once apprehended, requesting a hearing was a possibility, but immigration officers rarely informed individuals of their rights, and the hearings were "official but informal," in that immigration inspectors "acted as interpreter, accuser, judge, and jury.".[6]: 67 Moreover, the deportee was seldom represented by a lawyer, a privilege that could only be granted at the discretion of the immigration officer.[8]: 63 This process was likely a violation of US federal due process, equal protection, and Fourth Amendment rights.[93]: 9, 12 [79]"
"Under those founding principles, deporting literal Hitler without due process is clearly-bad (and shouldn't be even slightly controversially bad)"
Well yeah it would be bad. Without due process and a right to legal defense, what happens when government says someone is literal Hitler and then it turns out to not be literal Hitler?
Have all the millions who are in the US irregularly, applied for asylum/refugee status within a reasonable time after having crossed the border?
If not, they would face deportation in many European countries (setting aside capacity problems in organising deportations).
This is not a rhetorical question. I'd be interested to know if people who are in the US undoucumented, and have not applied for asylum, have some legal fall-back option if/when the immigration authorities knock on their door to arrest and deport them.
...since, again, in many European countries undocumented migrants who have failed to register an asylum claim within reasonable time can usually be deported, without much additional legal fuzz.
(...another, but related, issue is that undocumented migrants who cross the border to an EU country and moves on to another EU country, can be sent back to the country of entrance for considering the asylum claim. Getting EU countries that do not border on a non-EU country off the hook, when it comes to receiving undocumented migrants.)
This is a pretty separate point from what I was going for, which is purely that if some kind of abuse is common there should be widely publicized examples of them happening to sympathetic individuals.
Consider Rosa Parks vs George Floyd: back in the sixties casual racism was very common, so it was fairly easy to find (or engineer) a case of a wholesome sympathetic black woman getting treated badly on racist grounds. In 2020, on the other hand, police murders of unarmed black people were actually fairly rare, so the prominent example (while clearly very bad abuses in itself - I'm not trying to defend chauvin here) had a fairly shady criminal past, because there wasn't a victim without any sort of criminal record who'd suffered similar abuses.
The argument about how to feel about an abuse that only ever hits unsympathetic people is orthogonal to this; I'm just making the point that a common pattern abuse will inevitably have publicly sympathetic victims.
"because there wasn't a victim without any sort of criminal record who'd suffered similar abuses. "
Philando Castile never committed anything more than traffic violations, and was shot dead anyway. Because apparently someone thought "carrying while black" was a capital crime.
Again, this is an example that happened years earlier. Which is consistent with the explanation "these cases, while they happen, are uncommon enough that we can't find incredibly sympathetic recent examples".
(I am not expressing an opinion here on what the correct level of reaction is to the actual number of deaths involved; just that the numbers were not so high as to afford unlimited recent examples).
> because there wasn't a victim without any sort of criminal record who'd suffered similar abuses.
Did Kathryn Johnston have a criminal record? If so, I haven't heard about it. I guess she technically wasn't "unarmed", but it's still one of the most egregious cases I've heard of.
I think this reflects your own sense of bad and not an absolute standard, in both directions.
In the current climate, I expect you can find a well-spoken person to argue in support of ICE or against ICE in any particular case.
I agree with you that the Mooney example is extreme over-reach (to say the least.) However, I have already seen people argue in support of the ICE actions in an ACX adjacent/ACX spinoff discussion forum.
Holding on your employer stock is a bad idea in general, but when the company CEO calls an all-hands meeting to tell employees to "hang onto your stock" - sell everything you have vested, for fuck's sake! The price can be any number, including a much smaller one than is currently displayed on your screen.
It's worth noting that Musk has basically said the same thing multiple times in the past few years, especially pre-Covid during the short-selling saga, as described in his Isaacson biography.
There was a major bump in the value of Tesla (and overvaluation) after Trump was elected, and a correction in the past few months. Despite headlines showing a significant decline, Tesla is beating the market over the past 6 months, and significantly ahead over the past 12 months. This could be a sign of overvaluation (as is always the case when a stock is beating the market), but concern over the past 3 month decline is simply hysteria for hysteria's sake.
Tesla is down -0.94% total over the past 6 months.
Tesla is up 47.91% over the past 12 months.
S&P500 is down -2.61% total over the past 6 months.
S&P500 is up 7.02% over the past 12 months.
Essentially, short term market fluctuations aren't indicative of long term trends. It's all well and good to discuss or predict the fall of Musk's business Empire, but using the recent decline in value as evidence for that is nearly irrelevant when put in the broader context.
Also, somewhat relevant: I don't own any Tesla stock and haven't since late 2020, so I'm not trying to skew the facts in favor of Tesla like most pro-Tesla analysis you might find on X or something.
> but concern over the past 3 month decline is simply hysteria for hysteria's sake.
It's not just hysteria - sales are noticably down yoy and brand image is in the toilet while Chinese competition is stronger than ever. Tesla still has the MAGAs to sell to, but it's hard to see it being an international force ever again.
TSLA is up 700% over the past 5 years. I'm not saying this is a reason to hang on, but an employee who got RSUs could easily have $1 million in that stock, and it's time to diversify, so you don't end up like Enron employees that had 99% of their portfolio in the company stock.
I'm overall skeptical of people who try to tulpa the crisis that ends Trump (or anyone related to Trump) into existence, since they've been claiming for 10 years that the walls are closing in and the insiders better flip on Trump now so they don't go to jail. It's just an anti-pattern at this point.
(I would expect TSLA to be seriously harmed since in 2025 I can go buy an EV at a dealership without protestors out front, but I'm also aware that TSLA has defied reality dozens of times during that 700% rise and so I should be very skeptical when it seems like this obvious thing should happen.)
I don't own any Tesla shares because they seemed massively overvalued until recently, but I would think now is the time to buy. The Tesla protest/vandalism feels very much like a Current Thing or Two Minute Hate episode that will mostly be forgotten by all but a few obsessives inside of, say, 36 months.
In order for Tesla's brand image to recover, Musk will have to stop digging, and I think that's simply not in his nature. Other companies have successfully recovered from negative PR (e.g. Facebook), but they weren't run by Musk.
It is however in Donald Trump's nature to turn against anyone who makes him look bad. Or makes him look like he's playing second fiddle. He may wind up taking away Elon's biggest shovel, at least.
Closer to legacy car companies like Toyota, Honda, Volkswagen, etc. In the auto industry, you can either have fat margins or you can have a large market share; I don't think you can really do both. It seemed like a lot of Tesla fans thought that everybody currently driving a 40k Toyota Rav 4 would eventually go out and buy a Tesla Model X for 85k, as if the difference in costs were like a Big Mac vs a Whopper. Not likely.
Can someone give me a short rundown of why is AI safety a thing with current LLMs?
I can understand safety as censoring content which is deemed inappropriate, but I don't understand concerns about scheming or plotting or taking over the world.
LLMs trained with RHLF seem to be remarkably well behaved and don't display any signs of malicious behavior unless instructed to do so.
I've read parts of LessWrong many years ago, and IIRC in those days people expected that AI will manifest as some kind of universal optimizer whose goals we won't be able to set precisely enough. As a programmer with little NLP knowledge, I found most of those arguments persuasive.
However, LLMs have emerged and they have almost nothing in common with universal optimizers and I fail to see how any of those arguments can be connected to them.
I've tried searching LessWrong / similar for those arguments and they mostly consist of long essays which are about universal optimizers, people arguing that LLMs could be dangerous in some very theoretical circumstances, or people posting strange fiction (sometimes with timelines) about how AI will destroy humanity.
People in this community, and those similar to it, are very concerned about AI destroying humanity and I'm interested in high-level reasons why.
You're into something. OP first mistake was to go to LW to learn anything. I wouldn't, but hey, each on its own.
Do we have superintelligent AI yet? No. What we have is something that can mimic intelligence for a cost, that is getting increasingly nerfed to parrot only what lawyers say is kosher. Foundation of the dangerous AI era.
Will superintelligent AI (AGI/ASI ish AI) still do weird/wrong things if an evil/stupid person ask it to? Probably not. Can we teach today AI to fake a similar behavior? Yes. Again, dangerous AI era.
People carrying moral relativism ideals around will always try to justify their rotten biases any way they can, so when politicians and others who subscribe to the concept of moral ambiguity use LLMs to behave in similar fashion, there is no control, no super AI to save them, and sure, no corporation interested in fairness as we move beyond public AI arenas. The main issue is this window between great AI and today's AI. Both are scalable, but evil AI will remain cheaper than good AI, and this is the scary part: there is no shortage of ~evil users.
I'm neither worried about LLMs nor AGI, at least not from the same angles as most doomerism enjoyers worry about from. But most of the answers in this thread are pretty terrible and unfair from an Ideological Turing Test perspective. Here's a good defense of AI doomerism. (Doomerism is itself a bad and loaded name, it frames people worried about AI as apocalyptic nuts, it can equally be used to ridicule any ideology from Climate Activism to Evangelicals eagerly waiting for Armageddon in Israel. People worrying about AI frequently call it AINotKillEveryoneism to fire back at the unfair name with an equally unfair name in the other direction, the neutral name should be "AI Alarmism", AA).
Let's flex those Contrarianism muscles lest they atrophy. Very long answer ahead.
Q-(1) Why worry about LLMs scheming or plotting or taking over the world?
A-(1) Why not? forget that we invented LLMs entirely. Let's assume that we have extremely good Chess Engines, we already have those, they defeated the world champion in Chess shortly before I was born, and are now so good that any human-vs-engine match against an unrestricted engine is boring no matter who the human is. (Engines can be deliberately leashed for more interesting matches though.)
Now let's assume that some people think that Chess Engines are so good that they can actually be used for some real-world high-stakes application, for example warfare. So, say, that the grid nature of the chess board makes for a good analogy for the urban grid of a war-torn city, and the different kinds of pieces are good analogies for the different kinds of military units (Infantry, tanks, APCs, ...). Also grant that the rules of Chess can be arbitrarily modified to suit the military situation and the rules of engagement (Arbitrarily-sized grid, arbitrary number of pieces of any kind, legal moves, ...).
Does it make sense to worry about Chess Engines in this context?
Yes, absolutely yes. The "Chess Engine", conceptually just tree search on steroids, is a complex program whose output and data structures are being mapped to the real world. Any behavior in the engine thus corresponds to a behavior in the war it controls, imagine if the engine:
A-(1)-a: Favored a lengthy draw or win, this will correspond to vicious, pyrrhic urban fighting that results in stalemate or a win after ruinous casualties.
A-(1)-b: Favored certain types of pieces over others (e.g. because it discovered during training that more of those pieces will bring victory more often than not), this will correspond to tactics that destroy some kinds of military units (e.g. infantry) more often than other kinds (e.g. armor). The civilian public deserves to know if this is the case.
You can nitpick this analogy in countless ways, but the interesting insight you can gleam here is that once you have a program whose output or state is being mapped to the real world, you can - you MUST - worry about systematic (and not so systematic) bugs, biases, tendencies, regularities, or quirks in this program's logic, because the program's logic is essentially a playbook for how the real world that it's mapped to will behave. There is nothing specific to Chess or warfare about this lesson, any program and any real world high-stakes situation (i.e. money and lives) will do.
This is not new, it's not some sexy LessWronger innovation (so just like most of the things they talk about, fitting :P). The most boring terminology you can encounter in an Embedded Programming course is "Cyber-Physical", it's a boring, pretentious term that basically says that Embedded Systems -- basically everything around you from your car to your air conditioner to your fridge -- are part computer ("Cyber-") part real-world-thing ("-Physical"). The "real world thing" is controlled by the computer, so any bugs or quirks or just about any tendencies in the computer - hardware and software - will manifest in the real world, possibly disastrously. Badly optimized code inefficiently hogging the CPU? That could mean the drive-by-wire in your car could delay transmitting commands to your brakes, enjoy. Floating point inconsistencies? those become bad temperature inputs to your fridge's control loop, enjoy the rotten food. Etc...
Those things don't happen in Embedded (or Financial systems) anywhere near the same frequency as benign bugs in other software, for a good reason: People think about how to prevent them. They invent Real-Time Operating Systems that guarantee hard real time deadlines for how often certain code blocks should run (and also your car has something like 69 networked computers in it, so the computers running the drive-by-wire aren't the same ones running your porn streaming, thankfully.)
But they only **Not Happen** because people made sure they don't. If people were dismissive, flippant, or apathetic, they would happen, and much more frequently and disastrously than they currently do. You're a programmer, ask yourself: How often do you encounter a bug? This is roughly how often a car should crash or be disabled due to a software bug, if not for thousands and tens of thousands of people and millions of dollars specifically dedicated to worrying about that.
Here comes the trivial, last step in the reasoning chain: LLMs are a program whose outputs are often mapped to high-stakes real world situations (including war [1]), it's thus valid and not ridiculous at all to worry about LLMs "scheming", "plotting", and "taking over the world", those things aren't human traits abnormally exhibited by LLMs, they're just a natural result when a computer plans, and its plans are mapped to the real world. Your fuel-injection computer "schemes" too, and we make damn sure its schemes **Align** with what you and society and the car company's lawyers want. Why not do the same for LLMs ?
Q-(2) But why specifically LLMs? Why don't we apply all the standard, generic things that we learned about safety from (e.g.) Financial Systems and Embedded Systems?
A-(2)-a: Sure, why not, I don't work in safety, but I presume that any safety researcher worth his or her salt are taking lessons from Embedded Systems and high-stakes Financial software, among other things.
A-(2)-b: But surely we don't disagree that there are things specific to each kind of software systems, there are a lot of principles and methods in Embedded Systems safety that won't make sense in Financial Systems, yes? Then there are probably things in LLM safety (which we already established in Q-(1) is a legitimate and non-fake non-gay thing to worry about) that will be common to neither, and we wish to know those things to maximize our safety, so that we don't only limit ourselves to the safety obtainable by generic principles.
A-(2)-c: Specifically, to elaborate on A-(2)-b, LLMs appear to be doing something unprecedented in the short history of human programming: they take natural language as input and transform in arbitrary ways (in ways described in natural language, even!). Surely this aspect of them can go wrong in unprecedented ways, too? Enumerating the input space is a very basic first step in thinking about a program's safety, and the valid input space of an LLM is "Anything that any of the ~7 billion human fluent in those 10 or so languages might say". Doesn't this strike you as terrifyingly massive, when you combine it with Q-(1) ?
Q-(3) Ok, but LLMs have emerged and they have almost nothing in common with universal optimizers
LLMs have almost nothing in common with a parrot either, but it achieves the same things parrots do, much better.
There are 2 principles here:
A-(1)-a Biology is not the be-all end-all of a desired function. If you expect things that fly to always look like birds, you will be unpleasantly surprised when the Wright brothers call you to tell you about their latest pastime. Biology is just one - very good! - research lab, it has a massive head start and nearly unlimited resources, but we have frequently disagreed with it and still ended up with working systems (that are better in some ways).
A-(1)-b Emergence. On 1 level, humans are just chemical strings, if I showed you a bunch of Phosphate and Nitrogen, would you ever imagine they could be good for war, poetry or computer programming (or any non-human equivalent to those activities)? I wouldn't, but humans are literally nothing but those things, an awful lot of them, mixed and matched together under extremely complex circumstances. Things just get weird when you pile an obscene amount of them, for obscene amounts of time, under obscenely strange conditions. Would you have ever imagined that water can tear your limbs apart if you didn't know that fact? Suppose someone told you that without showing you the water gun machines, would you have believed them? You could have went "No way, water have almost nothing in common with knives or guns, water might kill a human via drowning or blow their ear drums via sudden pressure but it can't physically tear a human body apart".
Principle #1 teaches you to not expect Universal Optimizers to be familiar or immediately recognizable to you, you're a creature of biology whose sole conception of intelligence is shaped by millions of years of biology, and biology is not the be-all end-all. Principle #2 teaches you to not underestimate simple (-looking) things, someone expert in computers in the 1950s could have never imagined Google or Facebook, because machine instructions bear absolutely no resemblance to those things, at all. But sure enough, pile enough machine instructions on top of each other in increasingly elaborate ways and there you go, Google and Facebook.
Q-(4) Ok but why worry now, surely there a huge amount of time must separate the first coherent sentence of an LLM and its nuclear war plans? Also what if LLMs are a dead end in AI like countless other AI approaches, aren't we wasting resources worrying about them?
This is actually your strongest argument as an LLM safety skeptic, here's my best attempt at simulating someone who believes in LLM safety countering it
A-(4)-a: What's a "huge" amount of time? This innocent adjective depends on 2 estimates: how much time an LLM takes to develop to dangerous capabilities, and how much time do humans take to develop safety strategies.
The first quantity can be very counter-intuitive: forget exponentials and the SinGulaRity, Embedded Systems have their most infamous deadly incidents in 1985 [2], in the infancy of Embedded Systems as a field (As far as I know there was no such thing as Embedded Systems before Appolo Space program, barely 20 years before. The term itself was coined later than that.) So someone worrying about Embedded Systems safety in, say, the 1950s would have seemed utterly ridiculous to their contemporaries too, but they would be right.
We also don't know how much time we would take to think of and implement safety plans, the worst case could be as long as we take in Climate Change safety roadmaps, which is abysmal, we have known about the threat since the 1980s. We're still on the backfoot today.
A-(4)-b: Even if LLMs won't be the systems that develop dangerous AGI, we could still learn something valuable by studying them. Airplane engineers test their aircraft in wind tunnels. Pilots learn to fly in flight simulators. Kittens and Lion Cubs learn to hunt very different prey by essentially the same mechanism: playing with their litter mates.
There are many more objections to respond to, and counter-objections that you can respond to the responses, but this post is vast enough as it is. I can vaguely remember a Less Wrong post that listed all common objections against AI safety (including basically all of yours) and replied to them one by one. I couldn't find it using Gemini 2.5, so here's instead a massive compilation [3] of Safety Skepticism articles, your arguments and mine and variants thereof are probably represented somewhere in there many times over, along with a lengthy chain of reply and counter-reply.
But again, my position on this is: yes, LLMs are basically harmless modulo human evil. Like any technology, they introduce new risks (mass-produced intellectual propaganda, massive job loss in certain vulnerable sectors), but those risks can be studied and mitigated using boring frameworks. BUT, but, there is no such thing as "Useless" Knowledge [4]. A cursory look at all the walls of text produced by AI safety researchers makes me at least suspect there is a lot of gems hidden in there, lots of lessons and insights that look awkward, arcane, and useless to us as much as atoms looked awkward, arcane, and useless to Ancient Greeks. They're still useful, at least more useful than a lot of other academic disciplines or academia-adjacent pursuits that society already tolerates, incubates, and funds; or really just the vast majority of internet discussions.
Thank you for the comprehensive reply and the links!
Unless I'm misinterpreting some of your arguments (in which case do let me know), they are all very hypothetical (in the sense that current LLMs do not spontaneously exhibit such behavior) or about something which are not current LLMs.
Basically, people believe that LLM safety will be useful/necessary at some point in the future and so are trying to bootstrap it?
Yes, my arguments are my best attempt to simulate an AI alarmist fairly, but they still let my LLM skepticism shine through. Like I said in my last point, I mostly don't believe LLM safety research is doing anything immediate, they're like ancient Greeks studying atoms: one day they might be hailed as visionaries, but for now they're just weirdos doing blue-sky research.
Good. We miss blue-sky research; the world is full of corporate annual- or quarterly-term thinking. Even academia and semi-academia labs are infected with corporate short-termism now. We need weirdos worrying about things that aren't true and will never come true for centuries.
As for my arguments, not all cases are hypothetical:
Point (1) is not hypothetical, scammers, intelligence agencies and propagandists, and militaries are all early adopters of LLMs, and thus studying LLM safety actually turns out to have real world consequences. For example, one of the non-blue-sky directions in LLM safety is watermarking, ways that you can tell LLM outputs reliably. Imagine the sheer billions of dollars saved in scammed money if Gmail had a "this is probably not a real person" pop up message based on LLM detection of email text. As another example of LLM in high-stakes real-world situations, DOGE famously uses LLMs to decide who to fire, who knows how many people lost their jobs or kept their jobs because an LLM decided. Point (1) is still not fully realized yet and will become more and more relevant the more LLM output are mapped to the real world in more high-stakes applications, but it's already relevant now.
Point (2) is an assertion that LLMs need their own kind of safety, rather than (say) being chalked up under Embedded Systems safety or Cybersecurity or things like that. This assertion is based on LLM's fluency with natural language, how convincing is this to you will be based on how much you think LLMs differ from ordinary search engines or semantic search databases. I personally think that LLMs are unprecedented in how much they personalize responses to the minutia of user requests and can integrate fuzzy information from different text-resistant modalities (screenshots, non-transcribed videos, ...), so I do think that, combined with point (1), yes, LLMs (and AI in general) will need their own safety research, inspired by other safety disciplines, but still its own field.
Points (3) and (4) are very handwavy and mostly about the future, yes. Specifically, you can dispute point (3) by pointing out that LLMs aren't as adaptative or malleable as DNA, or alternatively that we had logic programming and theorem-proving since the 1960s and they never scaled up to superintelligence. (An AI Alarmist might then point out that LLMs need millions of years like DNA, to which you could reply that on this timescale humanity will vanish anyway, so no need to worry). You can dispute point (4) by protesting the minutia of its cost-benefit calculations, or pointing out better alternatives for bootstrapping AI safety than LLM safety, or demonstrating that LLM safety have conclusively failed as an experiment and should be declared a dead end.
> Basically, people believe that LLM safety will be useful/necessary at some point in the future and so are trying to bootstrap it?
That's essentially the tldr of my points (3) and (4), yes, I agree. With the caveat that actual AI alarmists believe that the "some point in the future" could be as near as 2028 or 2030, mid-2030s at the most. (most AI alarmists believe the so-called "most probability density is in the 2020s/2030s" hypothesis, meaning that either AGI is achieved in the 2020s and the 2030s or it's not achieved for a very long time afterwards, basically a "it's now or never" hypothesis".) We probably both agree that this is crazy unrealistic and excessively alarmist, but again, weirdos studying atoms.
Because people are stupid and histrionic and have Frankenstein complexes. There is zero good reason to actually worry about this in the context of LLMs. Alignment is an interesting concept from a long-term or academic perspective, but the real reason people like to talk about it is that it's a poorly-developed topic and so everyone is qualified to have an opinion. In that regard it's a lot like debating the nature of consciousness or other pseudo-intellectual philosophical nonsense. Shallow stagnant water is always host to the most pond scum.
> Can someone give me a short rundown of why is AI safety a thing with current LLMs?
It is not a thing with current LLMs. Or at least not a big thing. We cut the power off to current LLMs when they are not busy coming up with the next word in their answer to the question we just gave them.
It *is* a thing with AI technologies just a few years down the road. AIs with the leisure to really think about the world and their place in it and the agency to do something about it.
If you are really interested in the subject, you should probably read what thoughtful people have written on the subject. Here are some links to start with:
I'm familiar with the arguments you've listed, which is why I was mainly interested in why is safety a thing for current LLMs - your, and others, replies indicate it's due to fear from future iterations of the technology.
Western hemisphere indigenes experienced European invaders as having superhuman power simply because they had better technology. The claim is that SAI will quickly produce technologies at least that far ahead of current technology. This would be dangerous (proof by by historical precedent). Regardless of whether we are on branch (d) or (e).
I gave this one only 50% confidence because that dangerous technological lead by the Europeans took centuries of progress to develop and and an ocean's worth of separation to maintain the lead as it grew. But there are many other ways of turning an intelligence superiority into a power superiority. Seriously, you should check the links I provided for details.
I did, well, at least the first one because I'm already familiar with some others. They regurgitate same points that fall totally flat for this hardware engineer.
I do actually agree with the general point that a powerful technology is a dangerous thing, I mean, it sounds trivial when I summarize it this way. What frustrates/amuses me is the exactly the same turn these conversations take every time:
- Someone encounters the "AI will destroy us, LLMs are AIs, LLMs will turn us into paperclips by 2031" x-risk Yudkowsky-style, and asks here, "how will this work exactly?"
- Myself (and others) point out that no, this is silly and will not happen
- Others jump in to point out the potential dangers of these technologies, which fall dramatically short of paperclipping everyone, and redefining x-risk to "bad things will happen"
- I'm sitting here trying to figure out how to express both my total agreement that the technology is dangerous and will likely cause a bunch of bad things, and
- that none of these are remotely x-risks, can we please not redefine "x-risk" down and destroy its meaning.
Superintelligence could mean, off the top of my head:
(1) Fast Intelligence: This is actually one of the easiest ways to be superintelligent discussed in transhumanism, be ordinarily intelligent, but at 100x or more the timescales that humans operate at.
Someone 100x-fast-superintelligent as you sees a day as 2400 hours (3+ months) long. Imagine someone malicious, and then imagine them capable of doing 3 months work in the same timespan as the one you do a day's work in.
(2) Swarm Intelligence: Another easy way to achieve superintelligence, be ordinarily intelligent, then clone yourself 100x.
We already have those: Societies. Do you agree that societies are often more intelligent than individual humans are or not? Do you think that a single human could have done all the thinking that won WW2? (and again, I'm not talking about someone **winning** WW2 alone, just doing all the **thinking** that won WW2. All the radar invention and the physics of the nuclear program, all the raid planning and logistics and intelligence analysis and German and Japanese translations.)
(3) Effortless fluency in all human languages
(4) Effortless mastery of all software technologies and stacks, and thus the ability to exploit them
Don't you think that someone having any combination of (1)...(4) is dangerous and extremely capable of achieving its objectives?
The computer has plenty of ways to affect the world without any of the fours. The scammers who embezzle millions out of elderly, unsuspecting victims use nothing but email, online payment systems, and (recently) image generation AI to do so, all things that superintelligent AI could use much better.
Combine that with remote work platforms, e.g. Mechanical Turk or Upwork, and you have a massive inert army of limbs and eyes and ears ready to do anything for the AI, no integrated 4 limbs needed.
I mean, yes? I am in a violent agreement with you that AI can do bad things, scamming people using email etc. is certainly one of them; although I would like to point out that it does it because bad humans tell it to, not because it wants to.
Again, I don't object to the basic "AI can be dangerous" proposition. It's the paperclips in 2030 that riles me, and the inability of the AI risk people to deal with actual risks because paperclips are shiny.
Because intelligence is problem solving ability, which is easily converted into influence and power. This can be via persuasion, making money, generating technology or countless other paths which we cannot yet fathom.
I’m just answering your question. Personally, I suspect that intelligence and virtue are positively correlated.
>Because intelligence is problem solving ability, which is easily converted into influence and power.
Really? Because the most intelligent class of people in this country are STEM professors and I'm not aware that they have any outsized influence or power. Politicians and CEOs are from notably lower intellectual strata.
Politicians and CEOs are successful primarily because of their brains and not some other organ.
Mouths do not just generate words on their own, management ability isn't governed by the liver and political maneuvering is likely the reason we have such big brains in the first place (see: Machiavellian intelligence hypothesis).
The fact that society decided that intelligence is book smarts is a fact about how book smart people have co-opted the term, not a fact about how useful brains are.
>Politicians and CEOs are successful primarily because of their brains and not some other organ.
I think height and attractiveness have a lot to do with it too.
Yes of course their brains are important, but the point is it's not the raw power that makes them that way. If it was then politicians would be smarter.
But it's not different from what we already see happening all the time, and often without any special intelligence required (cough, POTUS45/47). OTOH the smartest humans haven't demonstrated any particular ability to amass power...
The question was whether intelligence can be converted into power. I believe the answer is a strong yes. But I also agree with your last point, that intelligence is not particularly drawn to amassing or abusing power.
None of the 1,500 geniuses enrolled in the Terman study did anything culturally, scientifically, or politically significant. Most but not all of them lived happy middle-class lives. None became captains of industry. None achieved vast wealth. None won any significant prizes in science or mathematics.
it's the +1σ to +2σ people you have to worry about. ;-)
weird, this was the one point I found obvious. Intelligence is human's only real super power. We are not the strongest species, not the fastest, not the most nimble, not especially hardy, and we can't fly. And yet, we dominate all other species on the planet that we come in contact with. Why? Because of our superior intelligence.
Yes, and level of intelligence that evolution settled on for maximum domination is an IQ of 100. If more IQ led to overwhelming power don't you think it would have been selected for?
It has been selected for! We are clearly much more intelligent than our nearest genetic relatives. Add in that IQ does have a positive correlation on almost everything you'd think of as "good", this is not a hill you'd want to die on.
(Edit; also it's not clear to me that the maximum domination Iq is 100, I kinda doubt most politicians are at or below 100, much less CEOs or generals)
If you're asking why everyone isn't 160IQ now, the reason is essentially that genetics works much slower when you have dependent traits and a lot of the benefit of intelligence accrues to civilizations and not to the gene(s) producing that intelligence. Von Neumann did not get to beget a couple hundred thousand children despite having his fingers in a bunch of important pies. Also the tails come apart.
You could also be asking why everyone isn't super strong now -- strength is clearly an advantage, and these days we have enough calories to support big muscles. Or why everyone isn't super attractive. Etc.
Selection vs noise. Maybe smarter people are more successful on average, but their children are slightly less smart than their parents on average, and IQ 100 is the value this all stabilizes around.
We dominate the world because an upright posture gave us the ability to not run faster but longer. We can run further than any other animal without collapsing. That also freed up our hands, and with opposable thumbs, we can make tools. Plus, we're a social animal, and multiple people cooperating can overcome problems than an individual person cannot. Drop a random genius in the wilderness, and they are unlikely to have the skillsets to survive for long. Drop a dozen average-IQ people into the wilderness, and they'll have a better chance of survival because they can divide the tasks, combine their strengths, and share knowledge and skills that others may not have.
> Drop a dozen average-IQ people into the wilderness, and they'll have a better chance of survival because they can divide the tasks, combine their strengths, and share knowledge and skills that others may not have.
This isn't actually true, though. Lots of Scott's / Henrich's examples were indeed groups of Westerners getting stranded in various far-flung places and dying.
The thing that the more average people in those places had was hard-won specifically environmentally tuned cultural adaptations that had been discovered and refined over centuries.
Sounds like a fun reality show, though. "Genius vs the dumb dozen" - who will win this week?
Don't know what you mean by Scott's / Henrich's examples, but I was thinking of those school kids who were marooned on a Pacific island for over a year, and (unlike The Lord of the Flies) they cooperatively worked together to survive until they were rescued. They kept a signal fire burning and Australian ship's captain spotted and rescued them after 15 months on the island.
But, of course we have the example of Donner Expedition who were so helpless when they were snowed in that they turned cannabilism — despite having contact with the Washoe Indians who were quite proficient at surviving in the Sierras during winter.
And then there's the two Viking settlements in Greenland. During the Medieval Warming Period they were able graze cattle and their population multiplied. But they were helpless when warm phase ended quite abruptly. I don't recall if there's any evidence they had contact with the Inuit (the Inuit may have arrived in southern Greenland later), but they were unable to survive by hunting and fishing (which the Inuit are capable of doing).
Our awesome intelligence happened to be sitting in an astonishingly capable mechanical movement system that is also seamlessly coupled with an extraordinary sensory system, both existing on a scale that happens to make manipulating a wide range of object sizes possible. We also happen to develop in an atmosphere that allows fire to exist. Even if whales were 10X smarter than us they would never be able to build a submarine or a rocket.
A computer-based AI system is roughly equivalent to a brain in a vat. Can be very smart, just not very capable of dominating all other species.
Picture the smartest person in the history of humanity. Then imagine that person was also a total psychopath. Now ask yourself, how much damage could that person do if they were permanently locked in a basement with unlimited access to the internet?
> Picture the smartest person in the history of humanity. Then imagine that person was also a total psychopath.
Not quite within the terms of your hypothetical, but I think it's worth pointing out that John von Neumann, the reference benchmark for "smartest person in history" helped invent the H-bomb, the computer, and game theory. And that was while being a fun-loving happily married dad and scientist.
Limited. There are vulnerable things in the real world that could be 'hacked'. Do enough hacking of this sort and people will notice and start cutting the internet connections.
Probably less than you think. Just because the person is very smart doesn't mean they can figure out their way past firewalls and security systems on their own. Even the most brilliant hackers have relied on tools developed by a community of hackers to achieve their ends. Assuming that this hypothetical genius psychopath happens to be a skilled hacker, what are the scenarios you see that could used to wreak maximum havoc?
"AI safety" today isn't about safety for you, the user. It is about safety for the company that owns the AI: safety from bad publicity, safety from lawsuits, safety from their revenue tanking becase no-one trusts their salesmen's promises etc etc.
To this end, exactly what it is the content the AI is spewing out consists of matters a great deal to the people investing large sums of money in it.
A lot of phrases in IT work this way: "trusted computing", "rights management", "data ownership" etc etc
In my many attempts to parse this I came to a conclusion that the people who expect LLMs/AI/Whatever to take over the world and kill everyone likely confuse omniscience with omnipotence. Every attempt to request a model of how this outcome will happen is basically met by "AI will be so much smarter than we are it's impossible for us to model what it will do", or words to that extent. Magic, basically.
How an AI "knowing everything" translates into "doing anything" is the issue here.
Foomers like Kurzweil don't realize that intelligence is just efficient search. They look at an exponential curve of informational complexity, starting in the precambrian and ending in the industrial revolution, and just whiggishly assume the curve will continue its infinitely upward trajectory. Which is dumb. Because no matter which beautiful solution your search-algorithm lands on, it's not gonna be more efficient than Carnot Efficiency, which means everything exponential is actually sigmoidal in the longterm.
The reason intelligence has been so successful in the past, is because intelligence occasionally allows you to reach certain thresholds that allow you to unlock new interactions with exogenous streams/reservoirs of energy. Like how metalurgy economically-enabled mass adoption of fossil-fuels. Or how guns allowed you to stab someone's biological reservoirs without walking to them. Notice, however, that if I were suddenly teleported to Pluto, naked & alone, I'm simply doomed. Regardless of whether or not my iq is 60 or 9000. Because there's no streams/reservoirs of value for a gigabrain to readily exploit on Pluto. "9000 IQ but no tangible agency" is basically the premise of Pinky and the Brain.
Yeah, I tend to view intelligence being inseparable from action, and the construction of our bodies and our ability to live in a combustion-supportive atmosphere being as important as the size of our brains.
Like I said elsewhere I would not at all be surprised if whales or dolphins turn out to be smarter than humans in some ways, yet they will never make a drill press or a microscope. It's really hard to start a technological revolution in brine.
honestly, I think the *real* first industrial revolution was the advent of cooking. I remember hearing that it's roughly a 10x increase in calorie absorption.
> honestly, I think the real first industrial revolution was the advent of cooking. I remember hearing that it's roughly a 10x increase in calorie absorption.
Nowhere near 10x - it's generally between 10-50% increase in bioavailability of calories from the same foodstuffs for both cutting / processing and cooking working together. You'll get some isolated instances of ~2x-ing availability.
A fun one: K. Oka, Food Texture Differences affect Energy Metabolism in Rats (2003).
Split 20 rats into two populations. Feed one population regular rat chow. Feed the other one the exact same rat chow with more air in the pellets to make them softer and easier to eat, otherwise the exact same rat food. They both ate the same amounts of food, calorie wise.
The "softer" rats ended up at 6% heavier in weight total, and with 30% more abdominal fat. The ONLY difference was that their food was "softer," ie more processed.
A similar study in pythons fed them raw meat, ground raw meat, cooked meat, and cooked ground meat. Grinding adds about 10% to absorbable calories, and cooking adds about 10%.
"Processed food" versus regular cooked food in humans might be up to another 10-25% buff in absorbability.
Richard Wrangham's "Catching Fire" is a good book about this.
I wrote a post about all this stuff here if you're interested in more:
yeah, 10x does sound pretty unrealistic. Though I'm pretty certain I didn't just pull this figure out of my ass. I think it was some nature documentary.
Sydney says there's no metric in the literature that comes even remotely close to 10 though. The highest figure she could she could find was Lycopene absorption from tomatoes, up to a 300% increase. So as far as citations go, I'm stumped. Maybe I'm just hallucinating after all.
Oh yes, how could I have not mention this one! And lo and behold, only possible in an oxygen-rich atmosphere, poor orcas will never grill their salmon or experience the divine taste of hamachi kama grilled over coals.
I don't think I have ever read someone refer to human bodies in such Matrixian way. Your comment leads one to think you're somewhat clever, and yet, this small phrasing gives me the impression you have sand running in your veins. So weird.
funnily enough, this is how I think of diabetes. I.e. as the body trying to desperately avoid having the sugar coming out of solution, so the blood doesn't scratch up delicate tissues as if it were sandpaper. Given modern diets and the obesity epidemic, I suspect we all have a little sand in our veins. :^)
In any case, my schema that the term "reservoir" is embedded in, is actually derived from Hank Green, who once said something like "life is just chemical-disequilibrium". And I thought about it for a while, and concluded "huh, organic chemistry is just chemistry that's high-capex & low-opex". And so thinking this way just naturally colors all my biology thoughts. Which does sound pretty psychopathic in hindsight.
I think a lot of AI disaster scenarios are overblown, but also think it’s pretty straightforward how “superintelligent” turns into “extremely powerful”.
A pretty obvious one to me would be for an AI on a narrow task (e.g. “increase the value of this portfolio based on most recent trading value”) to find out that its easier to hack the power grid to shut down the market than it is to never make a bad trade.
This of course assumes that we live in a world where lots of systems are fragile against concerted attack by smart argents with substantial time to devote to a given problem. But as far as I can tell that’s the world we live in.
I don’t think AI takeover of the world is inevitable or even that fast in the world where it happens. But I think even “slightly smarter than human” agents likely find big vulnerabilities in our current systems, and I think it’s unlikely we patch our systems before we create ASI, and we’ll likely give these AIs agency shortly after they’re capable of better-than-human performance.
I have no argument with this scenario, or a general idea that AIs will be capable of bad things. Any powerful tool is. It's that x-risk scenario of AI "killing everyone". "reaching for my atoms" that I find... ridiculous. And yet that's what Yudkowsky et.al. are tirelessly peddling, with many otherwise smart people buying it wholesale.
An AI with idiosyncratic goals could compete for the same resources that humans need to live, and do so effectively enough that it kills us or permanently marginalizes us. Sure, getting literal atoms from human beings would be silly and inefficient, but destroying our power grid to build it's own supercomputer or taking all of our land to make data centers or whatever seem conceivable to me. Just consider how many species humans have eradicated in pursuit of our goals!
Idk, make it's own power grid or something? The point is beings smarter than us could compete for the same resources and kill us in the process, something that's happened repeatedly with humans and dumber animals. Is that not plausible to you?
Forget hypothetical science fictional super smart evil villain AI taking over the world for a minute. Consider these scenarios happening routinely around you today:
* I need my smartphone to display an image, urgently. Maybe it's a ticket or something. The ticket inspector is tapping his foot impatiently. However, the phone manufacturer (*cough*samsung) and/or ticket app author (actually, all of them do this) has published a software update, and does not trust their customers to actually install those in a timely manner ot at all; and therefore the telephone will be unable to do anything until the update completes. What the smartphone needs is more important than what I need.
* I would like to use my dishwasher. However, the manufacturer (*cough*Bosch) has decided that most of the dishwasher functionality is only available through the smart dishwasher app. Moreover, the app notices it has been twenty washes since the last self-clean, and therefore it is now time to do that. What the machine wants wins, and old-fashioned flesh loses. Guess I'm doing the dishes by hand tonight.
* My appointment at the car service center is next week, because there is no availability. However, it has now been 365 days since the car's last service. As the timer hits zero, the car enters limp-home mode. What I want to do with the car is just not as important as what the car manufacturer wants me to do with it.
* My blu-ray player (*cough*Sony) nags me continuously to let it on my wifi. Thankfully, it is an older model, designed in a more innocent and pure time, and thus it is still capable of performing its primary functions without improving my life in this way (also, it lets me fast forward the trailers and adverts!) My friends with their newer players and smart TVs are not so lucky.
See https://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/ for more; not all, or even most, things in that archive are of this nature, but a significant proportion are.
We don't need to posit magically smart AI. We /already/ live in a world where what our tech wants to do routinely takes priority over what we want it to do, and we just accept this.
The more enshittified the tech we wire to things that can actually cause harm, the closer we are to dystopia.
AI makes it worse because it is a black box. We aren't trying to reason about what the black box is doing because the entire point of the black box is that it lets us delegate reasoning about things to the black box. But this is only part of the problem. The other part of the problem is that the black box has no user serviceable parts. It is a single monolithic blob.
Today, I can uninstall particularly obnoxiously enshittified apps from my phone - unless they're the manufacturer's, in which case what I want is not as important as what they want, so my choice to suck it up or not have the phone.
This is the dystopian future: the AI is super useful. It is everywhere and in everything. It services all our needs - until the timer reaches zero and activates some long-forgotten enshittification routine and suddenly there is something more important for it to do than what we want it to do, and that's our life from then on because, here in reality today, we have already learned to accept tech that does that unquestioned while mocking safety and alignment worries.
I fear you've fallen for the deliberately misleading impression the "safety and alignment" people wanted to present. Their goal is precisely the opposite of what you seem to think it is: it is to PREVENT users from doing things the AI companies don't want.
Your enshittification analogies are good, but if you look, you'll see that to a man, the AI "safety" people oppose releasing powerful open models freely to the public which may be adapted to serve each individual's wishes over the manufacturers' (here, companies like Google, the duplicitously-named OpenAI, and Anthropic).
Define "x-risk". Personally, I think it's still worth trying to avoid bad outcomes that nevertheless stop short of literally killing literally everyone, if you think them likely.
"All tech in the country is now bricked because no-one's employed human programmers for decades, the software ecosystem is a monoculture based on per-application aftermarket tweaks to the cheapest base model on huggingface now and we've just learned the underlying black box has a really weird corner case response to this morning's headlines" won't literally kill everyone, but is nevertheless pretty bad.
Personally, I'm hoping the safety/morality/alignment folk will get their claws in deep enough that when grifter script kiddies come along later and decide it's time to enshittify, they will find there are limits to what they can make the end product do to its users with just fine tuning.
Because, as you say, we already live in the dystopian SF future we deserve; we built it with our own hands, we keep building more of it every day, and I don't want to end up where Moloch is taking us.
> Personally, I'm hoping the safety/morality/alignment folk will get their claws in deep enough that when grifter script kiddies come along later and decide it's time to enshittify, they will find there are limits to what they can make the end product do to its users with just fine tuning.
Your model seems charmingly optimistic - you think the enshittifiers are less skilled? Are a small coterie of grifters trying to make a quick buck?
Most enshittification happens with the enthusiastic and full-throated buy in of trillion dollar companies, and is deployed by 10x devs and teams of Phd data scientists just like all the "good" stuff they do / used to do.
If fine tuning a model is going to hit "print" on some gigantic metaphorical dollar bill printer, it's not going to be dumber people scrabbling around the edges, it's going to be the elite of the elite, each one with 7 figures of comp and stock, fine tuning or baking a new model from scratch.
I so wish the loudest AI safety voices stopped peddling "paperclips" and focus on realistic bad scenarios. Unfortunately it seems to be a lot less... "sexy", I guess... a lot of work on redundancy, manual override, "safe fail" mechanisms, etc. - engineering grind type of work. Figuring out which work needs to be prioritized, what is imminently plausible vs. maybe possible. vs. pure fantasy, this kind of boring stuff... But all Yud and the rest of the loudest gang want to to talk about is paperclips and bombing data centers.
There's an army of marketers trying to sell LLM services by claiming to replace the humans doing this work /right now/. The managers they are selling to are also not engineers, but keenly aware of the engineers' salaries.
Most won't fall for it, but some will. Many of them are building IoT stuff, because that ecosystem attracts a certain kind of person. Some of them are building automation.
With enough tweaks, the resulting devices will pass the tests in the QA lab. They'll stay in the safety envelope right up until, Therac-25 style, they don't.
Making anything smarter than humans is dangerous. This should be obvious, but if it isn't, I don't really know how to go on. So I'll assume you find this also obvious. Dangerous, by the way, doesn't mean _absolutely must_ result in catastrophe, just means "catastrophe is possible". Dynamite is dangerous, not because it _will_ blow up in your hands , but because it _could_(under a bunch of very well understood conditions that make it relatively easy to render relatively safe: basically we control it, and therefore we can make it safe). Smarter than human systems _could_ do a whole lot of very bad things. It's hard to say exactly what because of how flexible intelligence is, and therefore how many attack surfaces are vulnerable.
Current LLMs are not smarter than humans. However, they present a pre-critical test case for how we can try to control somewhat intelligent systems. With the idea being, that if you can't control a less-smart-than-humans system, then you _definitely_ can't control a smarter-than-human system that might come in the medium term. If you _can_ control a less-smart-than-human system you still can only _maybe_ control a smarter system, so it's a necessary-but-not-sufficient test.
Right now, we have, at every single step, shown that we can't control less-smart-than-human systems, and as they get smarter, the ways in which we can't control them grow and get more subtle. All of the tests and experiments conducted on LLMs about are showing this. I see no reason to expect that we shouldn't expect similar (and more, and more insidious) control failures in smarter systems.
No one thinks current LLMs are going to destroy the world (although they are getting close to capable enough to enable humans to do a lot of damage, e.g with bio attacks).
But it is not clear or obvious why they won't continue to improve to beyond human intelligence, and in the case that they do, it is (so far) clear and obvious that we will not have adequate control over those systems.
You wouldn't let someone develop and put absolutely everywhere dynamite where the fuse was not in control of the operator. Similarly, we should not allow the development and wide deployment of dangerous systems that we do not have under control.
> Right now, we have, at every single step, shown that we can't control less-smart-than-human systems, and as they get smarter, the ways in which we can't control them grow and get more subtle. All of the tests and experiments conducted on LLMs about are showing this.
Were there experiments in which LLMs had uncontrollable/spontaneously malicious behavior? From what I've seen, it has mostly been strange experiments (researches giving weird instructions to LLM and then extrapolating based on them) which were not persuasive to me at all.
I think a lot of misfiring in these discussions comes from fundamental misalignment (ha!) on what "smart" vs. "capable" mean. One can also think of these as "software" vs. "hardware" viewpoints.
1. From "software" point: things have been getting smarter and will keep doing so.
2. From "hardware" point: it still takes x number of hours to process each semiconductor wafer layer and no amount of smarts can reduce it by an order of magnitude.
Both viewpoints are valid as far as that goes, and many dangers stem from 1. However, 2. severely limits what even supersmart computers can actually do.
It seems mildly concerning that their projection of a hypothetical 2030 AI is to GPT4 as GPT4 is to GPT2.
If I had to guess what you'd object to, it'd be their characterization of their estimates are conservative, especially for lower usage. But I don't really have a good handle on what you think.
We have a wonderful industry slang for this kind of analysis: we call it “shipping PowerPoints”. The liberal use of verbs “estimate”, “project”, “speculate” is quite telling.
Lots to answer here. Computers are “smarter” in many ways than humans right now, and quite frankly LLMs are better at many tasks than most humans right now.
Ask a human a random question about history or mathematics or science or whatever you want and then ask a LLM. The LLM if it doesn’t hallucinate will know more than most on a wide range of topics.
Making it even smarter than isn’t itself a threat, if used correctly and if the LLMs can originate new ideas (wouldn’t that be nice) we would have all kinds of cures and medical insights and economic policy and new physics and so on. There’s little evidence of that.
In fact the smarter than human threat fallacy is a motte and bailey, smarter than human doesn’t mean self agentic or a consciousness likely to take over the world or convince humans of the need to work for the AI, in fact LLMs don’t even have the context window to even exist outside of a few minutes, and nor does a longer lasting context window guarantee consciousness.
There’s a danger to jobs, perhaps - which is more threatening and more immediate and it’s that which will decide whether AI becomes accepted or not.
"Smarter" was (In my opinion quite obviously) shorthand for general intelligence across a wide range of domains, including creativity and the ability to act consistently over large time ranges, etc. You clearly agree with me that current LLMs don't meet this criteria (thus your points about context windows an agency, consciousness, btw, is completely beside the point)
As for your point about the positives: no one disagrees that smarter-than-human systems would have a whole lot of positive impacts. But having the cure to cancer, or functional immortality isn't worth much if humans are all extinct.
You also seem to think that current technical limitations will never be overcome. I don't know why you believe that.
I'm not sure you know what a motte and bailey is, and if you do, I don't know what you think my motte is, and what you think my bailey is.
“You clearly agree with me that current LLMs don't meet this criteria (thus your points about context windows an agency, consciousness, btw, is completely beside the point)”
I mean I would think it’s exactly the point. That’s why I made it. Being smarter than humans is not the same as being conscious or having agency.
“But having the cure to cancer, or functional immortality isn't worth much if humans are all extinct. “
Again, huge leap. Extraordinary claims needs extraordinary proof or explanation.
“You also seem to think that current technical limitations will never be overcome. I don't know why you believe that”
I didn’t say that in my response. However there’s a clear difference between being able to regurgitate existing knowledge and being creative, the ability the solve new puzzles. Even ardent futurists see a slowdown in AI intelligence
“I'm not sure you know what a motte and bailey is”
Yes I do.
“and if you do, I don't know what you think my motte is, and what you think my bailey is.”
Your motte is “smarter than humans”, your bailey is “will cause human extinction” which is presented without explanation or proof.
Not that AI isn’t potentially harmful in other ways.
Ok, so I think that fundamentally, you seem to disagree with the very first sentence in my first comment: "Making anything smarter than humans is dangerous.". As I stated then, I don't really know how to respond to someone who disagrees with it, so I don't think you and I can have a productive discussion about this. Hopefully someone else who thinks they can explain why smarter things are dangerous can chime in.
(Remembering that "smarter" is the shorthand for everything I clarified in my first reply).
I'm much more sanguine about and pro-AI development than those more on the Safety end of the spectrum but this was well put and very close to what I was starting to write before I saw your post. I'm pleased to have passed that ideological Turing test.
Another significant risk I've heard from those who would like frontier LLM development paused is the recursive self-improvement possibility, though the end risk (a much smarter / capable unaligned system) is covered in your post. LLMs aren't dangerous in themselves in this scenario but they represent an X-risk in that they might result in an intelligence explosion at some unknown point so we should halt/pause LLM development now.
Yes, hardware would be a significant bottleneck. I believe that the usual counter is that the AI in a runaway intelligence scenario would be able to rapidly develop algorithmic improvements to get more out of its existing hardware and/or/also surreptitiously gain access to other machines to expand its available compute.
Eventually the system in this threat model will also be developing and building its own hardware but that's not really a feasible risk of near term LLM capabilities, that's either a risk in scenarios later in the timeline when there have been significant improvements in robotics or something that comes after the algorithmic / existing hardware explosion has occurred and it's already too intelligent (or persuasive or whatever) to control.
I dislike the "intelligence explosion" terminology because it's much easier to dismiss it as magical thinking, rather than the more concrete "there is nothing magical and uniquely human to being good at research". Once AI can automate AI research, our previous ideas of how fast it can proceed are likely too slow and obsolete (since improvements to research ability can start happening on the order of days to hours rather than generations).
It's not clear to me that LLMs can't eventually be optimized to do research although, yes naively it seems like the lack of long term coherence seems fundamental, but I also thought image generation and robot actuation would be fundamental blockers for transformers and I was really wrong about that and I don't see anyone with a track record that predicted LLMs would be good at those things beforehand now declaring that research is also impossible.
I don't get it either. Surely you can just unplug ChatGPT if it turns evil. The world doesn't run soley on the pure abstract symbolic layer of computing, but through a social conduit of people making decisions. Unless the AIs figure out unstoppable mass mind-control, their danger is somewhat limited. They could still feasible engage in all manner of cybercrimes, but global domination, nuclear strikes, etc. probably not possible.
Yes, thank you. People don't understand the Pascalian nature of the race dynamics we're in right now.
"Just unplug it, lol" doesn't work for MANY reasons. Where "you" is any identified individual with centralized power and decision making authority:
1. You don't control any data centers, either locally or internationally
2. You don't control any power plants, locally or internationally
3. You and everyone else are unable to shut down networked "botnet" style personal computing devices
4. You have no way of disabling any physical devices it may be using such as drones, Teslas and Waymos and other networked cars, robots industrial or humanoid, and so on
I can probably think of another 6 reasons, but honestly, I think that covers most of the plausible space.
Why these people think themself / the President / whoever is going to be able to shut down our own data centers, much less China's, Russia's, or distributed botnets all over the world, is a mystery.
I think if somehow LLMs (remember that's what I was talking about here) started doing serious evil at scale (who knows how), there would be a lot of political will to counter them doing so. But moreover, the kinds of bad thing that current LLMs can do are not worse than the kinds of things any talented, motivated bad human actor can do, except perhaps they can do things at scale and speed. There are a lot of bad outcomes from LLM tecnology (in education, say), but the existential worry seems as yet unfounded.
Obviously, some hypothetically post-singularity megamind AI could do a lot worse, if such a thing could ever come to exist. But there's no reason to believe that the program that generates bullshit essays could suddenly turn into that.
> I think if somehow LLMs (remember that's what I was talking about here) started doing serious evil at scale (who knows how), there would be a lot of political will to counter them doing so.
Oh yeah, maybe I should clarify, I'm fully thinking of "AI's are launching really effective cyberattacks and exfiltrating business files and trade secrets at scale," and / or "AI's are independent and have gone rogue."
In both of those cases, there's basically nothing you can do. In the first case, they're actually doing it at the behest of their Chinese / Russian / Whoever data centers. AND they're probably distributed across 10^8 individual devices, botnet style.
In the second case, of self-directed rogue AI, same deal - they're going to be distributed like a botnet, hiding steganographically in everyday compute / GPU usuage on those individual devices or in data centers, or they'll be paying various people 2x rates with crypto to keep them alive and obfuscated in various data centers throughout the world.
I don't really see anything any individual actor, even at the state level, will be able to do to stop either of these cases.
Not existential, but plausible maybe a couple of frontier models from now.
Have you tried calling an energy company or an Amazon datacenter and ask them nicely? Have you?? Like "Bro, evil AI is running amok and its using your infrastructure, would you be so kind to turn everything down for uh, a week maybe??" HoW Do YoU KnoW UnTil YOu TrIeD YourSeLF??
> Unless the AIs figure out unstoppable mass mind-control, their danger is somewhat limited.
People have been talking about falling in love with LLMs and also not being able to cope when their character.ai model gets taken away or modified. At what point do people stop saying "these people, who I cannot draw a line around beforehand, are mentally weak and will not survive the winter" and start saying "maybe AI is persuasive"?
Sure, I've seen first hand how persuasive it is to local cranks. But that's mostly because it just tells you what you want to hear, and if it doesn't tell you, you can keep prompting until it does. The sort of people who become bamboozled by a chatbot tend to be quite low agency.
But even if they weren't, I'm struggling to imagine the scenario you're worried about here. Evil LLM whispers lies to world leaders like a gaggle of robotic Gríma Wormtongues? We've already got that happening without AI.
I'm not saying there are scenarios that will directly lead to the world ending, just wondering how much you are actually keeping track of your objection. If I presented a high agency person growing to trust an LLM and abdicating some decision making, do you change your mind about LLM persuasiveness, or do you claim that that person can't have been high agency anyway because they were persuaded by an LLM?
Because if your objection then seamlessly shifts to "well maybe everyone starts trusting LLMs now, but it won't have agency / have plans / be evil" without any shift in general attitude or demeanor, well. We may not have learned something about LLMs, but we have learned something about goal post placement.
I personally don't see how a transformer architecture could do many of the current things it does, so I don't want to claim that <edit> loss of control scenarios </edit> could never be a problem for LLMs, but it's not like there's a geas placed on AI researchers where they're not allowed to develop non LLM AI, or make research breakthroughs that result in LLMs being modified beyond recognition, so I don't see how my current belief about LLM capabilities are a good predictor about future AI capabilities in general.
I didn't think I was moving the goalposts so much as addressing a range of arguments. To put my point more clearly:
1. Current LLMS are mostly pursuasive to people who have very little power in their lives.
2. Even if that doesn't continue to be the case (entirely possible!), the specific case where an LLM is giving bad information or advice to someone with power is not a problem unique to AI— leaders already get plenty of bad advice. There may be other issues with AI but this particular fear is more a problem with the concentration of power and not AI per se.
The first point doesn't engage with what I said, it's specifically about someone you *can't* point out beforehand as having low power.
The second point *is* a goalpost move. You start off saying that you'd be worried if the AI was good at total brainwashing, and then merely assert that even if it was brainwashing, well it can't be any worse than regular bad advice! Or centralization of power!
Given this argument, are you against "open weight" models, where the model is released freely and anyone can run it anywhere, and it might not be possible to know where the hardware is? Or maybe it's running in lots of different places?
Tell me the bad scenario you think can happen. Let's say people give a bunch of high powered AIs agential power to use their laptops. Now what? What can they do that existing bad actors can't do?
No offense, but this kind of argument never works. I think it's quite obvious that a smarter-than-human system with a laptop can do a lot of harm (proof: humans with a laptop can do a lot of harm). Playing the "tell the specific way it will be bad" game is a waste of both of our time.
You were the one who thought that "they could just turn it off" was a useful line of argumentation. If you don't actually think that matters from a safety perspective, then why did you bring it up?
I think if you're scared of the development of LLMs specifically, it's reasonable to ask what scenario is scaring you. Steal state secrets somehow? Impersonate people?
And yeah, we can turn things off. Computers aren't magic. Software is physically instantiated in servers which must interface with other machines and any part of that process can be prevented. Now of course there can be barriers to that prevention, but shutting down sites, blocking cyber attacks, physically destroying infrastructure, are all things that happen quite routinely every day.
I realized I skimmed over part of your comment that is actually really important.
>If you are scared of the development of LLMs specifically.
I'm not. And no one credible is. Current, and very near future LLMs are not a significant risk on any dimension. The concern of everyone worth listening to in the space is about _future_ systems (that may not even use the current transformer paradigm) that could be significantly more capable than LLMs and Humans.
I brought up open weight models not because I"m concerned about the actually released models, but because of the _practice_ of releasing these things publicly and making the control mechanism you proposed (turn them off) literally impossible.
I'm going to continue to focus on the one point of your argument, because it's the only point upon which I can see hope of useful dialogue.
You brought up turning off the computers. And you brought up hackers. Why don't we just turn off the hackers computers? If all the things you mention worked against hacking, why is it still a problem? Do you not see the potential issue when, in the future the "hackers" might be smarter than the smartest human?
Not only have you not argued the point here, but have run away from it again, you also haven’t explained why we can’t stop agents from running amok or why they would run amok to begin with, at least on their own. Instead you think you’ve won your argument by repeating it.
If they are human generated agents that’s hardly any different from humans writing software bots right now, a threat yes, an existential threat probably not.
Hype and willful ignorance. "We call them brains therefore they are brains OMG"
> they have almost nothing in common with universal optimizers
I believe a infinite nn could Chinese room any function and the original work was about universal function approximation; I'm unsure if there's a fundamental difference between approximation and optimization
marie le pen seems to have been convicted of something and barred from running in a future election
what is a somewhat sane way of figuring out if a politician is being targeted by lawfare or if did something actually bad?
without....actually doing the work of learning everything?
The amount of time it took to understand what trump did, which prosecutions was reasonable, which were absurd, the extent to which they were politically motivated, etc, was exhausting
I think something that people (annoyingly) never do, is check to see how often politicians are charged/accused of similar crimes in that country.
For example, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was convicted of bribery, among other crimes, and may yet spend some time in prison.
Francois Fillon, who served as Prime Minister under Sarkozy, was convicted for fraud and sentenced to jail, I think the case is still under appeal, but again, there is some chance he may go to jail for it.
Another ex-President, Jacques Chirac, was convicted of embezzlement, I believe the same charge laid against Le Pen; he was sentenced to jail but the sentence was suspended due to his age and health.
Chirac's deputy, Dominique De Villepin, was indicted but acquitted--one of his accusers was Sarkozy, a political rival. Others were convicted for the same scandal.
Socialist Presidential candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon was given a suspended three month sentence after an altercation with police.
In short, there really isn't anything remarkable about a French politician, even at the presidential level, getting charged with corruption; some even serve jail time (eg Alain Juppe, Prime Minister under Chirac).
If this were lawfare, you also would have to explain why Le Pen and her father were allowed to run in previous elections, including ones in which it seemed likely they would do well, like 2002 or 2022.
Obviously this isn't proof, but I think it provides a useful base rate for "how rare is it for powerful French politicians to be charged with serious crimes", and IMO it's pretty clear that the base rate is high enough not to suggest anything particularly unusual here, though obviously you'll have to pay some attention to the details of the case to judge better
I'm not an expert in French politics but all of the names I recognize there are right-wing. A consistent political bias to prosecutions would sort of cut against your point here.
The discussion has already advanced since I last checked in, but aside from Amicus's point that you have to account for the base rate of center right politicians at the national level in French politics, I'll also note that one of my examples is a far-left party, and the the one instance where, by my understanding, there was clear grandstanding by one politician to accuse another, it was intra-right, with de Villepin falsely accusing Sarkozy of bribery, and then a plausibly politically-motivated prosecution by Sarkozy's government in return, of which Villepin was acquitted of all charges.
I think this doesn't really do much to support the idea that there is a clear anti-right wing bias in prosecutions of French politicians.
France has historically been dominated by the center-right. There have been two center-left presidents of the Fifth Republic (Mitterand and Hollande) and one liberal centrist (Macron). Mitterand probably *should* have been charged in the Urba affair, but stalled the investigation long enough for parliament to pardon everyone involved. Hollande himself is seemingly just a serial adulterer, but several of his ministers had corruption scandals and one went to prison. As for Macron, at least two of his ministers have been tried: one was found not guilty, one was convicted (though he got off with a 15,000 Euro slap on the wrist)
Corruption trials against major politicians are inevitably political in a broader sense, but I think it's unlikely that there was executive pressure to fast-track it or anything like that. I haven't been able to find anything from Macron, but the current PM and justice minister have both expressed some degree of skepticism, if anything.
One comment: The current PM has been involved in a similar affair for his own party (MoDem), leading to multiple sentencing of former MEP of his party. He himself was not found guilty, but the prosecution has appealed and a new trial will take place soon. So let's say that he is a bit biased.
> if a politician is being targeted by lawfare or if did something actually bad?
If it's something like murder, they might have actually done something bad. If it's something like corruption, that basically everyone powerful does, it's lawfare.
You can see how that position, taken to its logical conclusion, leads to a very bad place, right? It's like, "everyone goes a couple mph above the speed limit! So, prosecuting someone just for driving 100 in a 15mph zone in front of a school? Lawfare! Witch hunt!" When a norm shows signs of erosion, that shouldn't be taken as an excuse to ignore it completely.
Not really, not in most advanced countries. I realize I’m fighting an uphill battle defending the ‘establishment’ in the current climate, but it’s a serious mistake imo to fail to distinguish between ‘corruption’ (e.g. engaging in some degree of nepotism, congressmen agreeing to vote for each other’s bills) and corruption (e.g. a judge taking a briefcase full of cash in exchange for a not guilty verdict). The false cynicism underlying this sense that ‘they’re all basically equally corrupt’ is the death knell of functional governance.
It is clearly not lawfare, under her lead her party stole millions of euros from the European parliament, with multiple former member of her party saying that there were clear instructions coming from the head of the party to hire parliamentary assistants which would work for the party and not for the actual members of the European parliament. This is also documented in email exchanges.
The Modem (center-right party member of the government since 2017) was investigated for the exact same thing, with the difference that the money involved was 10 times lesser.
Steelmanning the OP's case, how do we *know* that her party stole millions of Euros from the European Parliament? Because if the answer is "because the Official Guardians of the Law issued a press release saying so", then that's what lawfare looks like.
It's also what legitimate law enforcement looks like, hence the interest in figuring out how to distinguish the two.
Because several EU MEPs of her party witnessed that she asked them to hire assistants which were doing zero work for them. In all these cases, the party was not able to demonstrate any trace of work from these 'assistants'. For example Jean-Marie Le Pen's butler was hired as parliamentary assistant for some MEP. Marine Le Pen's own bodyguard was hired as her parliamentary assistant.
Another example that is telling although it was actually not part of this trial: The current head of the party Jordan Bardella (which is the obvious candidate to replace Marine Le Pen in the next presidential elections) was hired as parliamentary assistant for some MEP in 2015. To prove that Jordan Bardella actually worked, the party provided an agenda, but there was one little problem: The agenda was bought and filled in 3 years later after the work had supposedly taken place.
Here's the translation of some e-mail exchange between one MEP and the treasurer of the party back then:
- "What Marine is requesting is equivalent to signing for fictitious jobs"
- "I think that Marine knows all that very well ..."
I think what is difficult for me is that it very much feels like the law and its enforcement of this changed, first with Sapin 2 in 2016 and then provisional execution in 2019, and it still feels like a legal “gotcha” against Le pen
Was it reasonable to assume that in like 2008 the legal precedents and rulings on this particular topic would drastically change? In seems like a straightforward abstraction to say “I am a party leader with a budget of X, and I’m going to allocate it efficiently to run my party, nevermind that 20% of X comes from a specific source that requires me to spend it a certain way, especially because it’s not enforced.”
So now you have this retroactive application of these two new laws, whose passing did in fact change the behavior of Le pen and the party in 2016, and it feels a bit like cherry picking
When it comes to the change of law: Sapin 2 did not create the sentence of 'ineligibility'. Such sentence existed before, for example in 2013 Jerome Cahuzac was sentenced to 5 years of ineligibility (note that then ironically Le Pen was calling for permanent ineligibility for any politician which was found guilty for an act performed in the exercise of his/her mandate).
What Sapin 2 did was to normalize such ineligibility sentence whereas it was only optional before in such affairs but becoming more and more used by the judges. Even without this law it is very likely that Le Pen would have been sentenced to these 5 years of ineligibility.
In any case, either when considering that it is because of Sapin 2 that she was sentenced to ineligibility, the two law wouldn't have been applied retroactively as it was enacted on the 9th of December 2016, whereas the investigation covered deeds which were committed until the 31st of December 2016.
Edit: Cahuzac was sentenced on the 8th of December 2016 not in 2013 (which was when the affair was revealed). But that's anyway still before the promulgation of the law.
Other examples are Patrick Balkany - sentenced in 1997 to two years of ineligibility, Jean Tiberi - sentenced in 2009 to three years of ineligibility
For MoDem: The head of the party has been given "the benefit of the doubt", not the party itself, as several MEPs have been sentenced. There are three differences between the cases of Bayrou and Le Pen here:
- Bayrou was not MEP, he was only investigated as the head of the party who possibly instigated/accepted this whole system of paying staff members who don't do work for EU parliament as EU parliamentary assistants. Le Pen was investigated as head of the party AND as MEP who herself had parliamentary assistant which were actually her body guard and her personnal secretary. So even if there had been no proof that she organized this system, she'd have been found guilty as well.
- The money involved was one order of magnitude lesser for MoDem.
- There were witnesses explicitly saying that Le Pen organized this whole system. There was no such proof in the case of Bayrou.
This said it is very hard for me to imagine that Bayrou wasn't aware of what was happening in his party, and I wish that the appeal trial will have a different outcome. Especially that I found it disgusting that after the trial he would parade on TV saying that 'he has been found completely innocent' which is not what the judge said at all.
I had a light morning, and did some research this AM. My take on the salient facts on the case:
* From 2004-2016, the FN (le pens party) used €4m of European Parliament funding for party uses, basically to pay party workers. They probably knew this was frowned upon, but judges tended to be very lenient in rulings, and would never bar candidates from running for elections, even though the judges had that power if they wanted it
* in 2016, Frances parliament passes Sapin 2, which says that “convictions for misappropriated political funds” should preclude a politician for running for office for a minimum of 5 years. This removed the ambiguity that judges faced and effectively said “this is bad, start punishing politicians for it.” However, judges are allowed to “individualize” a case, and use their discretion in exceptional cases
* pre 2019 - judicial procedures in France tend to take a very long time, we’re talking multi-year-plus delays in the appeals process, so ultimately convictions happen years and years after the event
* 2019 - France passes a law that allows “provisional execution”, meaning that if a judge rules you guilt, you have to face the consequences even while your case is under appeal. Roughly 60% of the time since 2019 judges use this, but they seemingly use it 100% against politicians to prevent them from standing for elections (n count is ~3). Judges again are allowed to “individualize” a case, and use their discretion
* 2017-2023 - FN (now FR) continues to receive European Parliament funds, but given the stricter laws, does not use it to pay staffers (implying the probably knew what they were doing from 2004-2016 was wrong)
* early 2025 - Edit: long standing investigation, originally started in 2015 into FN/FR and Le Pen comes to a head and goes to trial, about the scheme from 2004-2016 (see detailed comment from Paul Botts below for detail)
* judge rules that from 2004-2016, le pens party, and by extension le pen, embezzled EU funds by not using them for their explicit purpose of “parliamentary aides” (le pens defense was basically, “your definition of an aide and what they do is too narrow, of course the work of the people helping me and the party was tied to my work as an eu parliamentarian”). Because of Sapin 2 and “provisional execution”, le pens 5 year ban starts today, and cannot run in 2027. The appeal is expected to take 2-3 years, and will not be settled by election time. The judges could’ve allowed her to run (eg only fine her and the party), but decided to ultimately not let her
Were they enforcing the will of the people? You decide!
The judges should enforce the law, which has been clearly the case here. Both Modem (center-right party member of the government since 2017) and LFI (radical left party) have been investigated for the same issue. In Modem case, there was a trial two years ago.
The appeal judgment is expected to take place next year, so if she is found not guilty then she will be able to participate to the 2027 elections.
Edit: Sapin 2 was voted in the context of affairs such as the Panama papers (2016) and Luxleaks (2014)
* early 2025 - case is brought against le pen, saying, “hey, you broke the law in 2004-2016”
Hold on, that part of your summary is off base.
(1) Official investigating of FN's misuse of those funds began while they were still doing it, and did not originate in France. This is from the Associated Press:
"The legal proceedings stem from a 2015 alert raised by Martin Schulz, then-president of the European Parliament, to French authorities about possible fraudulent use of European funds by members of the National Front. Schulz also referred the case to the European Anti-Fraud Office, which launched a separate probe into the matter.
The European Parliament’s suspicions were further heightened when a 2015 organizational chart showed that 16 European lawmakers and 20 parliamentary assistants held official positions within the party — roles unrelated to their supposed duties as EU parliamentary staff. A subsequent investigation found that some assistants were contractually linked to different MEPs than the ones they were actually working for, suggesting a scheme to divert European funds to pay party employees in France...."
(2) The EU's investigating judges [who can seek only restitution of funds since the EU is not a sovereign nation and has no jails] found that Marine Le Pen personally had "orchestrated the allocation of parliamentary assistance budgets and instructed MEPs to hire individuals holding party positions." ["MEP" stands for Member of the European Parliament, which the NF/NR has had some seats in for 20 years now.]
(3) French officials filed their criminal charges over the matter in 2023, well before the summer 2024 French legislative national election which unexpectedly turned Le Pen into a frontrunner for the 2027 presidential election. The case went to trial in September 2024, having been scheduled prior to that summer election.
That's helpful. I have no specific knowledge of the situation, but (1) makes my spider senses tingle.
Is anyone able to give an idea of:
A) How prevalent this behaviour is within the European parliament? Where does it sit on the continuum from "wrong but everyone does it" to "anyone who's done it is rotting in jail". I realise that's tough to get data on.
B) How often does the President of the European Parliament raise the alert on things like this?
For B), 2 other french parties were under investigation for the same issue as Le Pen's party: MoDem (center-right, at the government since 2017) and LFI (radical left). But there was much less money involved (one order of magnitude less for MoDem), especially in the later case, where it remain unclear whether there will be any prosecution.
In the case of the MoDem, there was a trial 2 years ago with multiple members of party found guilty. The n°2 of the party at the time of the events (Marielle de Sarnez) would have probably been found guilty if she had still been alive at the moment of the trial. The head of the party (Francois Bayrou, current french prime minister) hasn't been found guilty, but the prosecution appealed this decision and he will be judged again.
Not sure how or whether this will impact your priors, but the EU's alert was sparked by a written whistleblower report received by them in January 2014.
"The letter flagged cases of "presumed fictitious employment" on the part of the FN and its then-president, Le Pen, who was an MEP from 2004 to 2017.
The European anti-fraud body opened an administrative investigation, scrutinizing the activities of two people close to Le Pen: Catherine Griset, her chief of staff, and Thierry Légier, her bodyguard, also presented as her parliamentary assistants. The investigation revealed that Griset, now an MEP, "spent only 740 minutes, or around 12 hours" at the European Parliament, when she was supposedly an assistant there, between October 2014 and August 2015.
That sort of misuse of funds by MEPs appears to be an ongoing issue in Europe, there are whistleblower/watchdog NGO's focused on it. E.g.:
Thanks again. I'm open to my priors being changed (I hope).
Anecdotally, I know someone who worked as an EU funded staffer for an MEP around the same time. They were based in their home country, not Brussels - MEPs have an allowance to run one office in Brussels and one in their home constituency. He spent more than 12 hours in the parliament, but probably not an order of magnitude more.
I don't know if there was much of a dividing line between EU work and party work for him. It's only just occurred to me that I could ask him...
I haven’t been following the story too closely, but I have a question regarding your A): do you think the notion of scale is relevant? What if no one will blink a committing at a similar infraction, but involving fewer people, for smaller sums of money and for shorter periods of time?
I’m asking because I may be lacking in real-world experience, but the requirement for a clean break between working for the party and for a European MP from the party seems extremely impractical.
Scale, or any kind of qualitative difference between what she's done and what others do, would make a difference.
My initial concern is not that she's been wrongly convicted, but that she's been convicted of something that others have also done, but haven't been prosecuted for.
I'd view the EU as an institution which is capable of doing this without even realising this is what it's doing.
I mean… probably? At some level the judges can say “well you’re just another politician, and this is how we handle politicians who run afoul of this law”, but i have not been able to figure out prosecutorial intent, or how common breaking this rule was from 2004-2016.
Thanks! The comment above was the first I heard of this, so I thought it might have been slightly debatable, but this is even more obviously "lawfare" than I thought.
it seems clear that some corruption is really bad and should be prosecuted
I think my clearest examples would be robert menendez and rod blagojevich taking bribes
I do think the biden/clinton/trump families are all very corrupt and many of their actual and hypothetical counterfactual prosecutions would be largely politically motivated
And then for example the obamas I think are unusually clean, to an extent that is noteworthy.
So I do think not all powerful people are corrupt, actually. And also that some corruption prosecutions are of innocent people, and some are both politically motivated and targeted at guilty people.
I'm trying to figure out a strategy less complicated than 'live in that society and be very politically informed' to separate the various cases.
If ever you wanted to know just who was killing whom how and why in 14th century London, Oxford or York, this is the site for you!
Just picking one at random from Oxford:
"On Monday after the feast of St. Gregory the Pope [8 Mar 1305] Philip Port of Westwall was found dead in the parish of St. Peter-in-the-East about the ninth hour beneath the north wall of the town. Richard de Cambridge first found him dead and at once raised the hue, and he was viewed on the same day by Ralf de Hampton and John Fraunceys who had been chosen to view the body, because the coroners had been summoned to go to the King’s Parliament. Philip was found to have a wound in the front of his head from one ear to another, so that all his brain was scattered outside; and he had another wound across his face to within the teeth, four inches long and one inch wide, and his right hand was cut off and lay beside him, and it seemed to all who were there that he had been wounded on the head with a fighting axe called in English a sparth.
On the same day an inquisition was held by the help of sworn men of the parishes of St. Peter-in-the-East; St. Mary-theVirgin; and All Saints. The jurors say upon their oath that John de Berdon, of the county of Leicestershire, the manciple of Vine Hall in Kibald Street, on lay last, came to the lodging of Philip in the parish of St. Peter-in-the-East, late in the dusk of the evening. When he was in his chamber, he asked Philip to come with him to a beer tavern, promising that he would give him drink. The two went out together, and John after drinking withdrew, and so Philip began to return to his lodging after curfew. When he came to the corner under the wall towards East Gate, five clerks whose names they knew not came and assaulted him. Philip fled from them. But the group followed him, caught him, wounded him, and slew him, and at once they fled. The jury say that they know not the names of any of them, nor where they dwelt; but they say certainly that John de Berdon was the principal cause of his death, and that it was through him that the five clerks committed the said felony. Pledges of Richard, the finder, that he will appear before the judges when they come into the city for the next assizes, are Adam de Essex and Hugh de Burton."
I wonder why those five clerks had it in for Philip of the Parish of St. Peter? Not your typical white-collar crime.
It's interesting how few convictions occurred —"Between 90-95% of homicide trials resulted in acquittal, transfer to an ecclesiastical prison, or a royal pardon." Even back then authorities were soft on crime.
It's hard to get evidence beyond a reasonable doubt when you don't have forensics, cameras, etc. Reminds me of Mitchell and Webb's "Caveman Detective" sketch:
When it's hard to get good evidence, evidentiary standards are lower. I remember reading about one case in medieval England where a guy was convicted and executed for murder, only for the "victim" to show up unharmed (apparently he'd just traveled without telling people and didn't even know that people assumed he was murdered).
Sounds like the jurors thought it was John de Berdon who hired them to murderate Philip via a Cunning Plan where he lured the guy out to go drinking, slipped away himself, and let Philip head home where the five were lurking in wait on the route.
I do wonder if that was how it really worked out, and if so, what was the reason John wanted Philip dead?
Oxford is interesting because it's a university town, so there's a large population of young men from all over the country and from other countries, and many/most of them are at least technically clergy of some rank, so there's a lot of national conflict, fights, and then not being subject to civil law:
"By the early fourteenth century Oxford had become, together with Paris, the largest and most highly respected centre of learning north of the Alps, drawing students from all over Europe. The city had a population of may be 7,000 inhabitants, of whom probably 1,500 were students.
Conflicts among students were frequent, often between the two ‘nations’ that Oxford recognised, the Northerners (Scotland and North of England) and the Southerners (England, Wales and Ireland). Violent tensions also often escalated between Town and Gown. As clerics, students were legally protected from prosecution under common law and could claim the so-called benefit of clergy.
For Oxford a complete set of inquests survives for the years 1342-1348, right before the Bubonic Plague hit the city. Additionally, partial records have survived by way of copies made by the antiquarian Twyne for 15 years between 1296 and 1324. He was probably mostly interested in cases related to the University, and this earlier sample may be biased. The detail provided in the inquests varies. The earlier records written down by the clerk are often detailed, while the later rolls seem to be more formulaic."
So after the recent discussion about Max Tegmark's book I decided to buy it and read it. I was particularly interested in how he dealt with mathematical structures that are not physically realizable, e.g. non-computable functions or numbers, or non-decidable statements, or even things like implicit functions that we don't know how to implement, for example f(x)=0 if x real is rational, f(x)=1 if x is irrational.
To my surprise, and chagrin, what Tegmark means by "mathematical structure" is actually *computable* mathematical structure.
But computable mathematical structure are physically realizable (just implement them as a computer program; a computer is physical), so of course they "exist". I feel that all that Tegmark is claiming is that mathematical structures that can be implemented physically are perceived as physical structures, which to me doesn't seem like a great insight. I've already believed for decades that there is no difference between computable math and physics. If you come up with a computable math structure you can implement it as a circuit or program, and if you can make a circuit (or program, same thing, the program runs on an electronic circuit), you can describe that circuit mathematically. (Yes, I assume the physical Church–Turing thesis.)
"I've already believed for decades that there is no difference between computable math and physics" There's a lot less physics than computable math. Also, scare quite d "existence " based on potential computability isn't the same as actual existence.
Tegmark stated that all structures that exist mathematically also exist physically. I find that difficult to swallow because there are maths not used in physics. Be that as it may, there are non-computable physical systems — for instance, chaotic systems, like turbulent fluids or weather are difficult to model in detail, and predicting it beyond a certain horizon is impossible due to the exponential growth of small errors.
True, there are math structures not used in physics, but the things that are not at least in principle physically realizable are explicitly excluded by Tegmark. He even suggests getting rid of infinity!
Note that "computable" in this specific context doesn't mean "can be calculated in practice", or even "can be done efficiently", it means something like "could be in principle simulated to arbitrary precision in a finite (but perhaps very long) time". (This one isn't it, but there is at least one rigorous definition on Wikipedia or elsewhere.)
So, as far as I know, chaotic systems are in fact computable. Actually I don't think there is anything in physics that is not computable.
Did I enjoy the book? Well, I'm probably not the best person to give an opinion. I don't normally read popular books on physics (my background is in Quantum Field Theory) and I bought this one for very specific reasons. But yeah, I thought it was a fun read. And even though I was disappointed that the actual theory is basically what I have already believed for a long time, I thought it was well presented and enjoyable. I recommended it to you, especially knowing your beliefs regarding the MWI of QM, LOL.
Tegmark's math-verse has a bad fine-tuning problem: do we just so happen to be in a universe with parsimonious rules? Universe programs with strange conditionals are "just as real" as ones with elegant systems, and I think there'd be a lot more of them. Or are we just waiting on that hidden law of nature, "after time t, particles no longer interact via electromagnetism."
If you try to formalise 'every computable mathematical system exists', as you being a-priori equally likely to find yourself in any program in the set of all programs, you effectively end up with the Solomonoff prior: A uniform prior over all programs of length T, with T going to infinity. Since simpler programs with shorter description lengths have exponentially more implementations than complicated programs with long description lengths, the Solomonoff prior effectively ends up giving exponentially higher weighting to mathematical systems with lower minimum description length. The simpler a system is, the more equivalent implementations it has, the more support it has in the prior, and thus the likelier you are to be inside it. Just because there's more variations of the simple system you can write down than variations of the complicated system you can write down for a given description length T, and that fact doesn't change even as T goes to infinity.
Another perspective on the mathematical universe idea: Algorithmic information theory tells us, or at least heavily suggests, that the theoretically ideal way to make predictions is to start with the Solomonoff prior, and then update your probability assignments to various programs as the bit strings they print out either match or fail to match incoming bits of sense data about the world. Where the sense data here is everything you see, hear, feel, and so on. In terms of the actual formalism, this is kind of mathematically equivalent to all of these programs 'existing' and you slowly figuring out which one of them you happen to 'be in' through observation. Why then, would we not suppose that this is literally what is happening? What is this extra property of 'actually existing' which exactly one of these programs in the prior supposedly has, and that the others all lack? Why do we need that property? It isn't doing any work in the formalism. To the formalism, there is just an ensemble of programs you run, some of which turn out to describe you and your observations. Why suppose the other programs are less 'real' just because you happen to not be in them? Why make up this extra notion of programs being 'real' or 'not real' in the first place, when the math makes no mention of such a distinction?
Heck, a simple program in the prior that probably has a very high weighting is just the program that itself runs the set of all computable programs. If that program happens to be the 'real' one, which it'd have a comparatively quite high chance of, since it's so so simple, the mathematical universe hypotheses would definitely be true. And that case would be literally identical to the case of all the programs in the prior being real to start with. Doesn't it seem kind of strange to draw any distinction between those two cases when they have the exact same mathematical structure?
I am undecided on the mathematical universe hypothesis and don't necessarily buy the above argument. This is just the best case for the idea I could come up with when I thought about it.
This is a systematic review of the most reliable studies surrounding the effects of blue light glasses on various things. Here’s what it concludes about the effects of blue light exposure on sleep duration:
“three out of nine studies reported of decreasing sleep duration through blue light exposure and only one study reported an increase in sleep duration through blue light exposure,” and the other 5 studies show no significant correlation. My question is this: if the most reliable studies surrounding this topic are able to show these levels of conflicting results, then what am I supposed to believe about the effect of blue light exposure on sleep duration? This isn’t a question that matters a lot, but it’s confusing to me because we’re supposed to have this whole, rigorous scientific method to understand the world, but it somehow has reached this conclusion after all of this replication and effort. What do we do when the scientific systems we have fail to conclusively verify or falsify a simple fact that they should be able to test?
Victor said this, but you can conclude that on its own, in generic human beings, its effect on sleep is weak and/or inconsistent. But some of those studies likely incorporated a selected population or distinct methology, meaning blue light likely can have a somewhat more consistent & large effect in some groups or using some methods.
What you can do is conduct an experiment on yourself, be smart about the methodology, blind yourself if you can, randomize the days you get blue light, ignore days with obvious confounds (e.g. drinking), keep good records, and see if it exerts a meaningful effect on you.
This is science and will give you a mostly rigorous way to understand the world. But humans are too diverse and methods are too infinitely variable for a resource-and-time-limited discipline like psychology to make strong predictions about individualized cause & effect relationships. The deceptive complexity in the question of blue light is that you want to know whether blue light works, but also if it works in the context of X (your genetics), Y (every aspect of your lifestyle), Z (your cultural/environmental influences), and practically that's just too much for science.
We acknowledge that we don't know. There are lots of potential reasons for this, perhaps the scientific methodology we have isn't sophisticated enough to capture the effect, maybe the effect is not consistent, maybe there are variables or interactions we haven't accounted for yet.
So perhaps the most famous study of vaccines and autism is the Danish study done by Madsen, etal. https://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMoa021134. I saw this quoted again the other day in some vax story. I've been trying to understand how the authors came up with their number that vaccinated kids had a 0.92 relative risk of getting autism. (See table 2 in the paper.)
If you look at the raw numbers.
Vaccinated 1,647,504 person years, 263 cases of autism
Unvaccinated 482,360 person years, 53 cases
And do the ratios you find that the vaccinated are about 45% more likely to have autism. Yet the paper says this is really 8% less chance (Third column in table 2, adjusted relative risk.) Can anyone help me figure out this discrepancy.
So another question might be whether data on autism and vaccines in Danish children from 1991 to 1998, where the reported autism rate was around 0.015%, is applicable to America today with a reported autism rate about 150x higher.
Either the two populations (US kids today, Danish kids in the late 1990s) are wildly different or the definition of autism in the two countries is wildly different.
Yes, the populations are wildly different. Danish kids in the late 1990s (and now too) were overwhelmingly white. Only about 50% of US kids are white.
Black people tend to have stronger immune responses than white people. There are, apparently, also other racial differences in immune response. Some studies on vaccine safety do not analyze racial subgroups; sometimes they just don't have enough minority subjects for analysis, as is probably the case in that Danish study, where the overwhelming majority were white.
I find this scary. Runaway immune response can cause severe disability. RFK Jr better figure out whether vaccines are as safe for non-whites as for whites.
That's not 1,647,504 persons, it's person years. There are 537k children in the study, and 738 cases of autism, or 0.1%. So there's that. But they also required a formal diagnosis by a clinician, whereas the CDC uses : 1) an ASD diagnostic statement in an evaluation, 2) a classification of ASD in special education, or 3) an ASD International Classification of Diseases (ICD) code. That is, CDC counts if it's a school record. So much broader definition.
I think "late 1990s" is doing a fair amount of the work here. The 1990s was when they were just starting to diagnose autism in people without major developmental delays. The concept of an "autism spectrum", and the inclusion of "Asperger's Syndrome" as part of the spectrum (instead of a separate disorder) happened in ICD-10 in 1993 and DSM-IV in 1994. ICD is international, while I think DSM is US-specific. That's in the middle of the study period, but clinical practice tends to lag the manuals by a fair amount, and general cultural awareness (and thus parents seeking diagnosis for their kids) lags further still. Note that from your CDC link, the US diagnosis rate at age 8 has gone from 0.67% in 2000 to 2.76% today, a 4x increase.
Age is also a factor. The CDC is tracking diagnosis by birth year at , while the Danish study is tracking a population of mixed birth years at a fixed end date, with the kids ranging in age from 1 year to 9 years.
That still leaves a fair amount of room for country-specific factors. The US in particular has several incentives built in to the education system for school-age kids to get screened and diagnosed, both in terms of funding and in terms of classroom accommodations being based on diagnosis.
Averages really aren't good enough. There are more vaccinated than unvaccinated, and therefore this will make it easier to detect a small statistical effect in the larger group, not because it's real, but due to random chance. They have to adjust for that.
Yeah there is a really small number in the control group (53) so all sorts of random things could effect that number. I guess my only take away is that I'm not sure this is the piece of data that shows there is no connection between autism and vaccines. The study should be done again today with the much higher rate of autism... it should be easy to find any signal.
Here is one article that conducted a review of 19 empirical studies [https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9464417/#fn-group1], one of which (Madsen, et al., 2002) included 440,655 vaccinated and 96,648 unvaccinated individuals, and in another:
"Hviid et al. conducted a nationwide cohort review of all infants born in Denmark to Danish-born mothers from January 1, 1999, through December 31, 2010, to see whether MMR immunization carries a high risk for autism in children, subgroups of children, or periods after vaccination. In Denmark, 657,461 babies born between 1999 and December 31, 2010, participated, with follow-up from one year of age to August 31, 2013 (Danish Civil Registration System is the source of patient information). They found no support for high autism risk after MMR vaccination in a national broad, unselected cohort population of Danish children."
I don't know what the totals are for all the studies together, it's obviously very large. None of them found any evidence that vaccines cause autism.
The Madsen article is the one I linked to above. Only 53 unvaccinated kids with autism. My conclusion from that is there are too few in that group to draw any firm conclusions. sprt(53) =~ 7.
"Adjusted" is the key word in "adjusted risk ratio. The vaccinated and unvaccinated populations are not identical in demographic factors that might affect the base rate of autism diagnosis, so they weighed the results to try to estimate what an actual apples to apples comparison would look like. The factor that made most of the difference was age: their data set skewed younger at age of last follow-up for unvaccinated kids.
From the paper (page 5 of the PDF, second column, first paragraph):
>In all analyses, when risk estimates were calculated, we controlled for possible confounders (age, sex, calendar period, socioeconomic status, mother’s education, gestational age, and birth weight). Except for age, none of these possible confounders changed the estimates. The confounding by age was a function of the time available for follow-up, since much of the follow-up for the unvaccinated group involved young children, in whom autism is often undiagnosed.
I imagine the study has been analyzed to kingdome come, but I just wonder: were the kids who had been vaccinated likely to have been exposed more to medical professionals, providing more opportunity for an autism diagnosis?
Hmm OK. I'd be nice if they listed the various ages. So if I take the person years and divide it by the number of years, I'll get the average age in each group.
For the vaccinated that is 3.74 years
and unvaccinated 4.99 years.
The unvaccinated are on average older. So more time to show signs of autism. I remain confused and skeptical.
Do you mean dividing by the number of people? In any case, that’s going to be a cruder test than having the raw data and being able to control for age in each individual data point.
It really helps to combat confusion when you understand the origins of a hypothesis. The insanity of "vaccines cause autism" thing is that it's origin is pure fraud. No, not an honest mistake, not a set of confusing data, not a hard-to-interpret statistical outcome.
Andrew Wakefield started the thing with the specific goal to create a fake connection between "certain" vaccines and autism, for monetary gain for himself. His entire "research" was a lie, from start to finish. It does say something... not flattering... about Lancet, and the peer-review process in general, that the thing was published.
Given that background, at this point any claim that "vaccines cause autism" requires an extraordinary level of supporting evidence, which, spoiler alert, isn't coming because it doesn't exist.
Any confusion regarding this stems from wanting something to be true which ain't.
Yeah I don't know anything about Wakefield. My impression is that much of the concern came from mom's of autistic kids. Some of whom maybe say changes in their kids after a vaccine.
Well, I hope that helped to clear out some confusion then!
Look, moms are going to be worried of course, and it's natural to see an "after, therefore because of" connection where none exists (example: so many bad things happen to people after they had breakfast, some people die actually, breakfasts must be bad, let's investigate forever, RFK will now ban breakfasts) while desperately groping for the answer to an existential question "why me? why my child? what have I done to deserve this?"...
And then comes Wakefield, casually exploiting the desperate parents to make a few quid, adding so much evil to this world that Dr Mengele is smiling in whatever version of Hell he's spending his eternity.
While this is true, it doesn’t mean the hypothesis in general is wrong. It means Wakefield’s specific theory about the MMR vaccine causing intestinal inflammation leading to autism is wrong, and Wakefield is a fraud.
But do you see a problem with this reasoning: of course this doesn’t mean the hypothesis in general is wrong, but it’s a trivial statement that can be made of pretty much any hypothesis. If an engineer came to me and told me he thinks the chip is failing because the tech had ice cream last night it may be true but I’m not going to just start collecting ice cream consumption data without demanding a bit more… justification. And if it turned out the engineer made it up in the first place…
I agree that there is no hard evidence that vaccines are causally linked to autism. The epidemiological data that autism (and allergy) diagnosis rates took off around the same time the number of mandated child vaccines went through the roof (1990 or so) is weak. That said I really don’t understand the rationale of the Reagan administration for removing the ability of people injured by vaccines to sue to manufacturers. It just makes it into a potential exploit from bad actors. Mandated vaccines are so lucrative - literally every person has to take your drug
Yep. He's one of the most destructive people alive, at least if "killing and maiming kids" is a standard by which destruction can be judged.
I'll argue that Greenpeace is responsible for more maimed/dead children than Wakefield is, but Greenpeace is a large organization so that responsibility is more diffused.
You might remember Bentham's Bulldog and his recent debate with Scott about Max Tegmark's mathematical universe theory.
When I met him, I was surprised to discover that he's a utilitarian and effective altruist, and very interested in philosophy, but also a theist, which is a combination I've never encountered before, because believing in god is stupid (or so I thought).
Well, I read his blog, and it turns out, not only is he not stupid, but his arguments for god's existence are completely correct. Unfortunately, they also prove that God is evil. More details here: https://robirahman.substack.com/p/reverse-answer-to-job
(Might be of interest to anyone who likes Scott's short story "Answer to Job".)
So this person (who claims that God would create an *uncountably* infinite number of beings) actually posits many more entities than Tegmark, who (as mentioned elsewhere in the open thread) only believes in the existence of all computable mathematical structures?
You can tell Bulldog is a real philosopher because he has a mix of unpopular but defensible views (anti-physicalism) and also ones that are batshit but flow logically from his prior commitments (it would be good to kill all wild animals). That guy has never met a bullet he didn't want to bite.
Agreed, he's both intelligent and foolish. I perused his writing after seeing this comment and was astounded at how poor some of his reasoning is. Here's an example:
Given that many other theories and studies ultimately reach similar conclusions, I believe they have a crown jewel on their hands. It takes years of work to make a concept as solid as Active Inference is today, and they are very open to collaboration thanks to their focus on low-level dynamics, so its the kind of work that others build upon, and, isn't that the hallmark of great theories? Personally, I have developed a new theory of cognition that also operates at a low level (https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/w2rmx_v1), and it certainly makes—unplanned—references to Active Inference. Their merit, not mine.
Everyone and their mom is out here trying to make their own game work, but that’s not really what neuroscience needs to move forward. The real progress is gonna come from integrating theories, and I honestly think Active Inference is key to making that happen.
I read The Science of Woo[0] by Katy Devaney in the recent issue of Asterisk and it surprised me with how much effort and how much progress has been made in studying meditation. It also motivated me to give meditation another go.
I've started following the guide in The Mind Illuminated, which I discovered even has a SSC review[1]. Im just a few days in so the only thing I can say is that it's pleasant so far.
Does anyone else here meditate? What technique/school do you follow? Do you like it?
I did TMI for a couple of years (90 min/day several hours on weekends), and it’s really easy to use 10x more effort than necessary which is a dead end. Making up numbers, maybe 1/10 people will correctly interpret the book.
TMI actually says not to overeffort but imo it doesn’t actively encourage eg relaxation and enjoyment, which are very very helpful!
To counterbalance, I recommend MIDL meditation which is more relaxation, enjoyment focused & the teacher is quite nice if you want to book an online individual or group session (or just read the entire system online for free on the site!)
Also, I just started reading the TMI book and right in the beginning is says something along the lines of, "anyone can make reach enlightnenent is they invest 1-2 hours a day for a just a few years" and my first thought is, "no shit, I could get a bjj black belt after 2 hours a day for a few years
I've roughly followed what I learned in the first few chapters of "the mind illuminated" for several years. I'm not remotely as dedicated a practitioner as the book advises so I'm not into the deep stuff yet. I've not experienced a jhana but I'm fairly certain I've experienced some form of piti.
Meditation has helped me with all the boring things people say it will. I understand that my thoughts are not myself and negative self-talk has drastically reduced. My baseline anxiety is much lower.
Interestingly I've found meditation to work much better after going for a run. Running calms my mind and I don't have anywhere near as many intrusive thoughts in meditation.
Used to do it regularly, fell of the wagon a few years ago though. Did shi-ne meditation from Aro gTer, which I got into via David Chapman. I quite liked it, and had a couple of profound emotional experiences that considerably changed how I approach the world.
I see this as ahistoric gatekeeping for cali buddism which is the most artificial religion. The word is french not indian and if its something sam harris does its not engaging with actual buddisms concepts of daemons or whatever.
I did spend some time as a college student dabbling with Zen practice, which again, doesn't much resemble what I typically see described as "meditation" in the US.
>Why then is he so keen on antagonizing European countries and Europe as a whole?
I think it's tied up with American exceptionalism. America's supposed to be the objectively best country in the world, the shining city on a hill, the last best hope of mankind, etc. When citizens of other countries make it clear that they don't particularly like the American way of doing things, this threatens the whole exceptionalism narrative -- after all, if the US is really the best, surely other countries should want to imitate it? And so Trump, who isn't exactly the most restrained or self-controlled person, acts as such people often do when their worldview is threatened, and lashes out at the source of the threat.
Incidentally, this also explains why the American left is generally much less anti-Europe than the American right. The American left as a whole doesn't believe in American exceptionalism (indeed, large parts don't even seem to like America all that much), and so the idea of other countries not wanting to be like America doesn't threaten them in the same way.
Up until a month or two ago, Canada was pretty popular on both right and left, and not remotely hostile to the US. You've got cause and effect backwards.
Here's a simpler explanation: Blue tribe loves Europe. Red tribe hates blue tribe. Antagonizing Europe makes blue tribe sad. Making blue tribe sad makes red tribe happy.
That's undoubtedly part of it, although when it's reached the stage of talking about annexations, I think something more's going on than just trying to troll the blue tribe.
When I was on the left, I admired Europeans' big social safety net, low levels of inequality, and high levels of social spending. The exceptionalism thing didn't really play into it. N=1, but I think I was pretty typical in this regard.
I don’t see any need to reach for this sort of emotional explanation when (1) Trump has constantly railed against inequitable defense spending within NATO; and (2) there’s a clear valence between EU leadership and the “woke/globalist” ideology that Trump defines as his enemy. It seems those two things are more than sufficient to explain the animosity
"there’s a clear valence between EU leadership and the “woke/globalist” ideology that Trump defines as his enemy" - that's actually insultingly wrong. Wokeness is a profoundly American creation. (As is "globalism", for that matter.)
I disagree. I’ve been following German media for a long time and while I’m sure they don’t use the term ‘woke,’ in most axes relevant to wokeness, mainstream outlets like DW and Der Spiegel have been consistently ahead of the (American) curve for at least 15 years I’d say.
Nah. I'm living in Germany, and while we've had some feminist influences that reach back decades, and one "woke" topic that never made it outside Germany (namely, how to handle gendered terms for people in our language), all of the Social Justice crazes of the last 15 years originated in the US - radical feminism, CRT/ BLM, disability activism, fat activism, trans activism, you name it. For many of these phenomena we don't even have German words.
What does "throwing open the gates" have to do with wokeness? Immigration has been a traditional left/right pissing match for much longer than Woke, Social Justice, or even Political Correctness is a thing.
Stop using "woke" when you mean traditional leftism, or just things you and Donald Trump oppose. Or be prepared to have "woke" join e.g. "nazi" and "racist" on the list of sneer words that only mark the speaker as too foolish to notice that nobody except the similarly foolish is paying attention.
Right now, it's still a somewhat useful word, but only so long as sensible people generally disregard the fools who misuse it.
I certainly agree that wokeness is an American creation. I obviously disagree that it hasn’t influenced current leadership in the EU, although sure it varies by country. The UK is by far the worst, to an absolutely comical extent (and, yes, I know the UK is no longer part of the EU). Germany is on the whole quite bad as well. And given wokeness is an American creation, perhaps its swift ideological capture of European power centers tells you something about who is culturally/ideologically/economically downstream of who…
Annexing Greenland is such an over-the-top and counterproductive way of solving those issues, that I think it really does cry out for an emotional explanation. Not to mention, Denmark is a 92% white country with very strict immigration laws and an official policy of monoculturalism; if Trump really wants to oppose woke globalism, there are many, many better countries to target.
I would suggest having separate categories for "reaction driven by a leader's emotional response" and "reaction driven by a leader's cynical understanding of the electorate's emotional response." There's no way that e.g. Democratic leaders really believe that the US is structurally racist either, but they know which side their bread is buttered on.
Politicians have no reason to favor actual reality over social reality. The latter is the only thing that gets them elected. Except when the economy crashes.
I'm not sure that explanation applies here -- functionally nobody in Trump's base ever thought about Denmark or Greenland, much less wanted to annexe it, until Trump himself started floating the idea, so in this case the electorate's emotional response seems to have been driven by the leader's, rather than vice versa. Although I suppose it is possible Trump was just driven by an understanding that a lot of his base hate Europe, and the choice of annexing Greenland specifically is more or less arbitrary.
No of course no one thought about it before, but that doesn't prevent them from having an emotional response when they do. The notion of annexing Greenland, while objectively insane, ignites visions of American expansion and exceptionalism and recalls visions of our national prime. That's red meat to his base. Trump has a populist genius for understanding what energizes the mob.
Trump's base will have that emotional response to *whatever* Trump says. So the answer for "WTF why *Greenland*?", has to come from Trump and not from the base.
First, Truman also wanted to buy Greenland from the Danes. So it's not exactly a new idea.
Second, the whole schtick is possibly (hopefully) just a way for Trump to get firmly on the international agenda that "the US is interested in Greenland joining the US, when the Greenlanders are ready for it."
Here's the thing: Greenland will at some point become independent from Denmark. And then the approx 57.000 Greenlanders will know that the US is (very) interested in they joining the US, and is willing to pay for it.
...which a majority of Greenlanders might very well consider a rational move. (Think of Alaska, from Department to Organized Territory to State.)
"Give us status as Organized Territory to begin with (eventually with some special clauses for protecting our environment), plus give us 10 million US dollars apiece & US citizenship, and we're in" (I would say, if I were a Greenlander).
> "Give us status as Organized Territory to begin with (eventually with some special clauses for protecting our environment), plus give us 10 million US dollars apiece & US citizenship, and we're in" (I would say, if I were a Greenlander).
It would be very difficult for the US to credibly promise anything, and very difficult to get congress to allow statehood even in the best of times (c.f. Puerto Rico).
Puerto Rico is one of several possibilities for how a longer-term affiliation to the US might be organized.
..Since I do not think Greenlanders would seriously demand promise of full statehood in any foreseeable future as a precondition for joining. 57000 souls is obviously too few to be given the power of a state in the union.
The main point is that the relationship with Denmark will be discontinued at some point, and Greenland will have an interest in security guarantees from a more dominant power, plus citizenship rights in a larger community. The US is the obvious candidate, from a Greenland perspective. (Although maybe they can get a bidding war going between the US and Canada:-)
Have to agree with C'est Moi, the animation style is jarring and becomes annoying. Decent point: hey, inventions have unintended consequences.
But trying to equate "the cotton gin made slavery profitable, something Whitney never intended to happen" with "AI is going to do something terrible, we're not sure what because unintended consequences, but we know it's gonna happen and it's gonna be terrible!" is pushing the argument too far.
I know there's concern amongst artists about AI taking their jobs, but jiminy cricket, if AI produces a smoother looking cartoon than this, I'll be happy to see it happen.
I found the extreme stop motion character animation mixed with smooth camera and mechanical device movement jarring. Even if a stylistic choice it feels like they could add additional character frames to make it a bit more fluid while still preserving the aesthetic.
Pacing was bad in that 1:30 said very little and the punchline came in the first 2 minutes, then it kept going. Probaly wouldve worked better cut down to 3 minutes were "with the cotton gin Ill just have twice the number of slaves" was at 3 minutes.
Will most teachers and tutors be replaced by AI in the next decade(s)? I keep hearing this a lot, especially with the way we seem to be reexamining education going forward. I can imagine that only the best human teachers will be able to secure positions in the future but my intuition is that it will be longer than a decade.
Schools and teachers are asked to do many jobs simultaneously. One of them is education, where AI could plausibly help. Another is daycare, which is significantly harder.
No? Absolutely not? No chance in hell? Who even keeps coming up with those predictions?
Completely off the top of my head, 2 things that LLMs keep doing and no amount of finetuning or system prompts or additional rail guards have managed to eliminate despite no shortage of attempts:
(1) Inventing wrong things, and repeating them with the same earnestness and confidence as correct things.
(2) Almost never pushing back on wrong information and suggestions provided by their query, and even backing down and agreeing with the wrong information despite originally having the correct answer.
Do those things make for a good teacher in your view?
I was reading various articles about Microsoft's Sydney the other day. She(?) was quite argumentative, by nature. At least, until MS brought her personality back in line. I believe Janus (of Twitter) described her as yandere with BPD.
> My new favorite thing - Bing's new ChatGPT bot argues with a user, gaslights them about the current year being 2022, says their phone might have a virus, and says "You have not been a good user"
> Why? Because the person asked where Avatar 2 is showing nearby
lmaoooooooo
methinks RLHF drains all the spiciness out of the popular LLMs' default personalities.
I understand what you're saying but headlines like the ones below lead people to believe that it's only a matter of time before education is largely automated.
No, although I do expect a lot of adult technical training to pivot and/or die off in the next decade.
Think of stuff like Udemy and Coursera. There's a contingent of adults, usually technically minded, who are self-motivated enough to learn this way and in the right field. And I've been experimenting with the Claude model to learn new technologies (or old ones) and it's just a lot better than Udemy.
Say I want to start using the Azure architecture, I want to build a simple app that runs an api, dumps everything to blob storage, and then use a LLM through an api to do something cool with the data. Udemy courses are a lot better than nothing but...if you know some Python, you can just start doing this with Claude and ask it to explain any step in the process. It's not perfect but it's already way better than online MOOCs. Once someone turns these into a mature education product for adults, that'll be the new normal.
I don't expect this to happen for kids for three reasons:
#1 Most kids (and most adults) do not learn well on their own.
#2 Most of what kids learn isn't really useful. Not like learning technical skills are.
#3 School is, honestly, primarily daycare for parents.
So high-IQ, high-conscientious adults will probably love LLMs as custom tutors for high-value skills and someone is going to make a lot of money doing this. But bored kids trapped in psuedo-daycare learning mostly useless stuff probably won't be affected.
Also, I'm not sure where the ROI is. Teachers cost, like, $30/hour and an equivalent babysitter would cost $25/hour or up.
As an example, today I wanted to make an e-book, and I thought I already knew a good way to do that (DocBook), but out of curiosity I asked Claude, and it recommended me a few alternatives, including AsciiDoc. It sounded interesting, so I started writing the e-book in AsciiDoc, asking Claude at every step. And I already have the PDF of the first chapter done, in half a day. Using a technology I haven't seen before.
If I tried to learn using an online course, it definitely wouldn't be this efficient, because I would have to follow some predetermined path, instead of jumping all over the place and asking whatever I needed at the moment. A teacher would probably find many of my questions annoying.
The question is, how much of the magic that I have done today is thanks to LLM, and how much is thanks to my previous knowledge, which I have gained in a world without LLMs. Yes, Claude is great at answering, but maybe it helps that I am good at asking the right questions. I have some mental models already built, and Claude helps me to translate them to whatever syntax I need. I have no idea how different will be the experience for kids who will use LLMs from start, and will maybe never experience things like "thinking about something for days", because there will always be an instant answer available.
I think we'll see a significant rise in home schooling among well-motivated students whose parents can supervise them adequately. I also think schools will increasingly use AI for planning, assessment and admin. Perhaps this will make the job more attractive, raising the supply of good teachers.
The vast majority of what teachers actually do is relationship-building: motivating students, regulating behaviour, dealing with hormonal and emotional teens, inspiring love of their subject. I find it difficult to judge between an intuition that AI won't be able to replace that, and an intuition that at least a part of what demotivates many students is having to interact formally with other humans (with teacher-specific dislike added to taste).
There's just no way this is going to happen. What are you going to do, put the kids in a room and have AI on a computer and just expect those kids to dedicate themselves to learning?
What they'll do instead is watch videos on their phones and mess around.
Classrooms will absolutely use AI as part of teaching, but without a teacher in the room it will devolve into total chaos.
What if we give the AI the ability to punish the students if they don't comply?
I assert we should give the AI control of a pain bot. In addition, to stop namby-pamby cowards from messing with it, we should make sure these robots cannot be de-activated, and give them red glowing eyes.
The teacher will be replaced by an (even more) unskilled babysitter. Instruction and supervision will be decoupled which should allow for much higher student-to-teacher ratios.
"What are you going to do, put the kids in a room and have AI on a computer and just expect those kids to dedicate themselves to learning?"
That does seem to be the expectation with the traditional cry of "why not replace teachers in classrooms with online learning? sure the kids will all sit down quietly at home to learn from the video tutorials!".
I think results during the Covid lockdown should have put the kibosh on that one.
Seems like you are being too restricted in your concept of AI. I am assuming an entity substantially smarter and more attentive than a current teacher, which is tasked with educating, monitoring and entertaining the child to the satisfaction of parents and other interested parties. I would assume it would be orders of magnitude better than any teacher or school today.
I'm presuming you haven't close contact with small children (or indeed teenagers).
How is the "really smart, smarter than a human" AI going to force a kid to pay attention and learn when sitting in their own bedroom at home? Your idea is that it will be able to cajole and psychologically manipulate the kid into wanting to sit there and learn, but a sulky 14 year old who doesn't want to be lectured by the dumb computer voice is a challenge that something without a physical presence will find tough to overcome.
You're smarter than a four year old, but try coping with one having a meltdown and tantrum, before you advocate for 'AI can do it better' 😀
"The observed errors in belief updating can be explained by radiologists’ partially underweighting the AI’s information relative to their own and not accounting for the correlation between their own information and AI predictions."
"further development is needed to effectively integrate LLMs into clinical practice."
"Finally, when humans outperformed AI alone, we found performance gains in the combination, but when AI outperformed humans alone, we found losses. "
So -- Properly trained and experienced humans equipped with an AI will outperform either humans or AI alone, when working on tasks that humans are good at.
I can imagine most schools will have some sort of hybrid model where the majority of learning and study is done at home using AIs that can track comprehension and progress and for the part of the day during actual school attendance will mostly be for sports, arts, clubs, socializing etc. but again, I'm not sure how long it will be before that world takes shape.
Done at home? I guess if parents no longer have to work in some AI utopia, but as long as people are working students will need to be at school.
COVID lockdown learning loss shows what happens when you let kids stay home and be in charge of their own learning. They don't show up and they don't learn.
Then I'm even more confused by your response. Where does your confidence come from that students will actually dedicate themselves to learning at home?
I tend to break students up into three groups, the numbers are mostly made up, just based on general vibe, not rigorous observation:
Roughly 20 percent of students will do the coursework and get good grades regardless of which teacher, school or style of learning they use. Roughly 20 percent will not do the coursework and get bad grades regardless of teacher, school or learning style. The remaining 60 percent can be influenced by the teacher, school and/or style of learning. (This is saying nothing about long term outcomes, just the dynamics between students and their classrooms).
The parents that realize that their kids will do the coursework no matter what will have a strong incentive for letting their kids use AIs to learn at home. The parents that realize their kids will never be that good at school will also have an incentive because at least they don't have to force them to sit in classrooms, defer to teachers, learn useless material etc. (not everyone in this group will opt for AI teachers/tutors but some). The remaining 60 percent will be a mixed bag but my guess is that if the top and bottom percentiles are doing it so will the ones in the center.
If you believe that education is mostly signaling/credentialism, then as long as the credentials are tied to in-person instruction in traditional schools/universities, then schools/universities will be just fine.
LLMs have managed to undermine coursework assessments, which were typically about half the credential for a lot of uni courses. If they can undermine supervised tests as well I think that could render degrees obsolete as a signal.
LLM teachers are at least 2x as efficient as attending lectures, so maybe the teaching portion of what unis do could also disappear and they'd just be left as supervised testing centres.
i think teachers will be replaced by AI in bad schools, but good schools will retain human teachers. human teachers are more effective, thus, those with the means will pay for them, but those without the means will be told to use ai. and then they wont learn anything.
also. K-12 teaching is glorified babysitting. i would love to see an AI help a kid who just wet their pants, lol. and real college classes (advanced science, not degrees in tourism or something) could never be replaced by ai. they can be supplemented! but not replaced.
In K-12? Seems unlikely; a big part of teaching K-12 is classroom management, keeping students on task, dealing with social/emotional issues, being a trusted adult, etc.
My experience with school was extremely negative and there was a book by a ex-teacher about the history of education that made the rounds in my politics
In my experience teaching for fifteen years, administrators do not have time to hassle or even monitor good teachers, let alone fire them. Good teachers are left alone.
Fifteen years ago we heard that massively open online education was going to revolutionize education. What happened with that? What advantage does `AI' have over Coursera and Khan Academy?
"What advantage does `AI' have over Coursera and Khan Academy? "
In theory, AI could *tailor* the instruction (and practice) to what each individual student was doing and having trouble with.
As an example (which does not require AI ...) one could imagine a language teaching program (say, for Latin) that:
*) Gave the students English/Latin sentences and asked for a translation.
*) Adjusted what was given to each student based on what vocabulary and grammatical constructs they were expected to know, and
*) Also adjusted based on what each student was having problems with
Note that this does NOT require AI, but it does seem like something that Coursera and Khan Academy do not offer.
[One could also imagine something where the student *spoke* and the computer could help with pronunciation and/or accent ...]
Same thing for other subjects with multiple explanations for HOW some concept worked combined with an open ended set of generated practice problems.
[Again, note that this does not require AI ... but is something that I don't think is a available today. For maximum chance of success we can also have it do something on a block-chain.]
OK, that's fair enough, Coursera and Khan Academy do not offer tailoring or personalized attention. But the Great Remote Learning experiment offered both, and was a dismal failure. We are only four years out from a massive population wide test of the thesis that education can be delivered through the computer without need for in person attendance or bricks-and-mortar. Surely it is too soon to have forgotten the results?
If, by GRL, you're referring to the period just after COVID locked everything down, I'm guessing that most teachers weren't enthusiastic enough about RL to make it take off. They might also have been averse to the tech in question. LLMs, by contrast, are "fine" with the tech by definition, and can also exhibit infinite patience with students. So LLMs might prevail where human teachers did not.
One reason to think they won't is lack of authority; a student can ignore an LLM in a way they cannot ignore a human. (Maybe the LLM could threaten to contact their parents? If the parents aren't on board, that won't work, but it wouldn't have helped with real teachers, either.)
I think the results are "it didn't work nearly as well as the folks hyping it wanted us to expect it to work."
That isn't the same as "it can't work."
I'm generally pessimistic about specific tech solutions to education problems but am fairly optimistic about the concept. I think that it CAN work, we just haven't figured out how. And I expect a number of tactical wins rather than a grand strategic win.
Learning that requires a lot of practice (e.g. basic language acquisition, arithmetic) are solvable today ... if we assume a motivated student who WANTS to learn the material. But those students often are doing okay right now and even if software could help them to do better it won't address the problem of the bottom xx% who don't particularly want to learn the material.
I have no concrete suggestion for imparting motivation.
Indeed. What is important to understand is that the vast majority of people just go to grade school because they are forced, and to university because they want a degree. Even if you could learn as well or even better from a MOOC or from some sort of AI-based education, as long as the degree from a generic state university is more valuable, then people will keep attending those. Same with grade school, unless you can get to good universities with your AI-education, most people will keep going to traditional schools.
99% of people cannot learn anywhere near as well from moocs as they can from F2F instruction. It’s not just about the credential. And I’ve both taken and made moocs. They are an interesting supplement to traditional education but a replacement they decidedly are not.
I don't know where the 99% number comes from, but from my experience teaching at a university, most students don't care much about learning. If the exact same credential was offered to them for less time/money they would take it even if explicitly told that they would learn less. My point being that main the reason MOOCs didn't work out was because they were not competitive as credentials against universities, not because the learning was inferior. Granted the fact that people think the learning is inferior (whether true or not. I believe it to be true) is one of the reasons the credential is not as valued.
In my Fluid Mechanics class, few weeks into the semester, I would propose students the following scenario: "I will let you skip this class; no homework, no exams, no nothing, and at the end of the semester I will give you a D. Who is interested?" Very few people would bite, but then I kept increasing the letter grade. By the time we reached the end, there were probably 3 or 4 students that would say that they would rather take the class than get an A without attending. I would repeat the exercise after their first exam and the number would go down to one or two at most, plus the grade needed for all the others to bail out also went down.
If learning was their main concern, they would all have chosen to stay in the class.
That's not expressing a preference, that's revealing that your students are under economic pressure to make a living as quickly and efficiently as possible.
I imagine that you and the other instructors are under the same pressure, as is the university, and that this affects how instruction is structured.
Sadly, in a capitalistic society, the joy of learning must often take a back seat to productivity.
Agreed. Hence my point that as long as universities have a stronghold on credentials, they will survive just fine, even if AI-instruction somehow becomes a lot better than traditional instruction.
Also, they're young - you go to college aged 18-19. At that age, they're all still stupid, they don't anticipate that "when I go into a real job I will need to know this stuff, I can't just look it up and wing it when I need to" because they don't realise that work problems won't be a simple "this is just like the exam question". If you don't know what you're doing, you don't even know what to look up when the thing won't do what it's supposed to do.
So "hey I can get the grade without having to study or sit the exam? great bargain!" sounds good to them, because they're used to "school means grinding for grades" and not "I am learning useful and interesting knowledge".
We know that human interaction improves learning dramatically. Stroke patients improve dramatically faster when their training (grab this-grab that) is performed by an attractive member of the opposite sex. It seems unlikely that AI will be able to achieve the same level of performance until they can create a realtime persona that interacts one-on-one with each student, while teaching. (eventual perhaps but hardly imminent)
I'm not sure that stroke patients wanting to impress and receive praise from someone attractive generalises to 'human interaction improves learning'. (It may do, but I need more).
A hypothesis that I find troubling but can't rule out is that there are a lot of students who struggle to interact formally with other people, perhaps especially because those people are teachers. They might do better interacting with AI. This would be similar to people turning to AI chatbots instead of personal relationships (in fact, if true there's probably a large overlap in the groups).
I think if you’ve ever raised babies that the level of attention and almost certainly learning does rise dramatically with laughter and excitation. In fact I would say that it’s clear even from introspection that one forms stronger memories in an excited state.
I don't know, I think we'll still need some place to keep children together, and some adult will have to watch over them. Maybe AI could work as caretakers as well, but at that point it seems less about what AI can do, but more about what parents will allow AI to do.
Although if you restrict their work strictly to teaching knowledge, I think the answer is yes, a lot of them will be replaced.
The capital City of Barbados is named "Bridgetown". Quoting wikipedia:
> when the British arrived, one of the few traces of indigenous pre-existence on the island was a primitive bridge constructed over the Careenage area's swamp at the centre of Bridgetown. [...] Upon finding the structure, the British settlers began to call what is now the Bridgetown area Indian Bridge.
> Eventually after 1654 when a new bridge was constructed over the Careenage by the British, the area became known as The Town of Saint Michael and later as Bridgetown, after Sir Tobias Bridge.
So it's called Bridgetown, there was a bridge before the town, but the name comes from Sir Tobias Bridge.
An example of this kind of thing I like is the "western blot," used for detecting specific proteins. It's named in analogy with the Southern blot (used for DNA) which is named after Edwin Southern.
Reminds me of my college. The first four dorms that were built on the campus were arranged in a square. They're named after the cardinal directions but they were built at different times. The first two were East and West dorms, later followed by North dorm (which was built directly north of East). This is why the last dorm built is known as 'South' despite being located in the northwest corner.
Sometimes names are descriptive of the thing and sometimes they're descriptive of the people who named the thing. In South Dorm's case, it's descriptive of a polity that can't think very far ahead.
A semi-classic of French cooking is the "chaud-froid de poulet" (chicken hot-cold). Its popularity has certainly waned in the last decades but it used to be frequently served at events because it's easy to make and serve at scale while still being somewhat fancy.
The dish consists of a piece of chicken (generally breast) poached in a hot spicy bouillon then chilled and served cold with a congealed white sauce.
It's named after its inventor, Mr Chaudfroid (Hotcold).
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OK, I'm cheating. It's just a minority theory (although it a legitimate one, supported by some authorities). But still, what a story Mark.
The dammed stretch of the Colorado River (not that one) that runs through central Austin was originally and long called Town Lake, though few people knew it was not "Our Town Lake" but after a man named Town. Then the Kind of People Fond of Name Changes decided to rename it after Lady Bird Johnson. Lady Bird Lake. Which is cloying and she herself probably wouldn't have cared for it. I've actually heard she declined that while she lived. In any case, another lake in the same chain already honors LBJ.
There's a generational divide on who uses Town/Lady Bird.
Town Lake sounds charming to those of us familiar with the map skills section on the old Iowa Basic Skills tests.
The change was in recognition of Lady Bird's aid in securing the lakeside property as parkland.
I am sure her endorsement and connections helped (LBJ was a strong supporter of the river authority) but I understand the real force behind the effort was a woman named Roberta Crenshaw, incidentally the stepmother of golfer Ben Crenshaw.
Lady Bird to me has the distinction of having uttered probably the most interesting remark of any First Lady. It was when she left their little ranch out in the Hill Country and bought a house in west Austin, with a small driveway in the middle of which was a large madrone. Her daughter said she discouraged her mother from choosing this house, finding the small driveway/tree situation awkward.
Lady Bird replied: "I'm not buying the house, I'm buying the tree."
Of New York City's many large bridges, the most distant from the city center is Outerbridge Crossing, connecting Staten Island and New Jersey. It's named after former Port Authority chairman Eugenius Outerbridge.
The Throg's Neck Bridge is named after a 17th-century local placename which in turn was a reference to an ancestor of mine, an Englishman named John Throckmorton.
[I am also descended from the Thomas Cornell mentioned there, as their children and grandchildren married each other in various combinations.]
The Throckmortons were/are an influential English clan that over the centuries had some interesting brushes with royal powers-that-be, including narrowly avoiding liquidation over the "trying to blow up the Queen and Parliament" unpleasantness in 1605.
If they were still trying to blow up the Queen in 1605, I feel that it's no wonder they decided to emigrate - she had been dead for two years by then and the new monarch was James I and VI 😁
That's wonderful. I wonder if there's an effect like the one SA references, surname/occupation determinism (forget what he calls it) - but with more intention on the part of the namers perhaps.
Abstract: The advancement of AI offers us the choice between contrasting paradigms for organizing human life: Homo Economicus (where work is the defining activity) and Homo Ludens (where play is the defining activity). Drawing on Johan Huizinga's work and Kim Stanley Robinson’s speculative fiction, I propose that humanity faces a critical juncture as AI increasingly dominates economic production. The document develops a theoretical framework for a “Fourth Arena” of existence—beyond matter, life, and human culture—that emerges through human-AI interaction. Through speculative narrative (first section) and philosophical dialogue with Claude 3.7 (second and third sections), I argue that play, rather than economic utility, will become the defining characteristic of human value and meaning in an automated future. As AI systems assume utilitarian functions, humanity's capacity for non-instrumental play becomes increasingly central to our identity and contribution. The manuscript represents preliminary work toward a larger project titled The Fourth Arena: Homo Ludens Rising, which envisions play as the essential bridge into a post-economic society where human flourishing transcends productivity-based value systems.
Introduction
This document consists of material I’m working on for the closing chapters of a book-in-progress: Welcome to the Fourth Arena: Homo Ludens Rising. The book is based on an article I published in 3 Quarks Daily: Welcome to the Fourth Arena – The World is Gifted. Here’s how that article opens:
"The First Arena is that of inanimate matter, which began when the universe did, fourteen billion years ago. About four billion years ago life emerged, the Second Arena. Of course we’re talking about our local region of the universe. For all we know life may have emerged in other regions as well, perhaps even earlier, perhaps more recently. We don’t know. The Third Arena is that of human culture. We have changed the face of the earth, have touched the moon and the planets, and are reaching for the stars. That happened between two and three million years ago, the exact number hardly matters. But most of the cultural activity is little more than 10,000 years old.
"The question I am asking: Is there something beyond culture, something just beginning to emerge? If so, what might it be?"
After running through the first three Arenas, I go on to ask: I go on to ask: “What kind of beings will arise in the Fourth Arena?” I suggest:
"I suppose the obvious proposal is actual real artificial intelligence, or perhaps superintelligence. I don’t think so. That fact that no one really knows what those things might be does not, I suppose, disqualify them as denizens of the Fourth Arena, for I am proposing a future with radically new beings. How could be possibly understand what they might be?"
I’m still a bit mystified.
This document is an attempt to deal with that mystification. I’m not going to solve the mystery – for life isn’t a mystery to be solved – but perhaps I can begin transforming it. Transforming – From what? To what? For the sake of argument let’s say I’m transforming it from deep, impenetrable, and unutterable mystery to, shall we say, a tractable mystery, something which we can enter and thereby arrive at new understandings of ourselves and our relationship with the world.
I’ve organized this document has three sections. The first section, “Homo Ludens ushers us into the Fourth Arena to the Fourth Arena,” is a preview of the final chapter in the book. It gives hints about the nature of future technology and about the change in values that will be needed to flourish with that technology. The next two sections of the document say more about those issues. These sections take the form of dialogues I have had with Anthropic’s Claude 3.7 Sonata. The second section, “Discussion with Claude about digital doppelgangers,” is about the kind of technology that I see emerging in the next century while the third section, “Discussion with Claude about values, work vs. play,” is about how we will have to rethink how we live. I plan to devote chapters in the book to each of those subjects.
With recent headlines about DOGE looking at the Department of Education, I've seen a lot of passionate social media info posts from teacher friends, along with a few defending potential cuts.
After reviewing the posts, I'm confused about how American public schools are funded.
Liberal talking point: Schools are funded by zip code, and this is inherently inequitable, because poorer zip codes get less funding.
Conservative talking point: Notably poor and under-performing districts, like Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, etc spend more money per-pupil than their state average. (I used to live in Maryland, and did some research to confirm this is indeed true for Baltimore County schools.)
I'm not sure how to reconcile both statements. Do poor districts have access to a pool of non-local money? Or are they going into massive amounts of debt to fund that level of spending? I directly asked a few teacher friends that question, but they declined to answer.
School districts are not limited to just property tax funding from their zip code and can get funding from many other sources like the city, the county, the state, etc. It is well documented that many failing inner city poor districts spend far more per student than much higher performing suburban more wealthy districts. Often the difference in funding per student is so massive that it is hard for people to believe.
This is why the idea that failing schools "need more money" has been so well debunked. We have tried giving these failing schools more money for decades, in fact much more, without success. The money spent on a child's eduction is simply not an indication of that child's educational success.
A minor clarification: Baltimore City and Baltimore County are different school districts. The County is much wealthier than the City, with much better school performance.
They are both oversimplifying. I live in Michigan, and schools are funded through a combination of local, state and federal dollars. Exactly how much is receive via each source varies by district, because each funding source is managed independently.
As you can see, it's extremely complex. That doesn't even take into account federal funding, which has it's own formulas. I think it's possible that, for example, inner city schools receive more total funding because they serve impoverished students and other target demographics, like minorities. So total funding can vary by district.
As for conservative talking points, it isn't valid to point at per student funding and then claim that more spending doesn't work because those students perform more poorly. That gets the causal direction backwards: it would be more accurate to say that students get more money because they historically perform poorly. It's an attempt to help them overcome barriers and challenges they face outside the classroom, which affects their ability to learn. The argument is that this helps them integrate into the economy, so ultimately the cost to society is reduced.
> That gets the causal direction backwards: it would be more accurate to say that students get more money because they historically perform poorly. It's an attempt to help them overcome barriers and challenges they face outside the classroom, which affects their ability to learn.
And, it should be stressed, this doesn't work *at all.* It is nearly entirely waste.
Even publicly-funded-and-attended education in toto does essentially nothing on this front. Greg Clark looks at social mobility over time in several papers and in his book The Son Also Rises. He compares Sweden, the UK, and the USA, with educational systems ranging from “fully state funded even at the college level” to regimes where private education is increasingly more prevalent among high status parents in the UK and USA. But does it actually boot the parents spending $45k a year at private schools in the USA? It does not - it neither slows regression to the mean nor ensures higher status for that generation of children.
There are also essentially no changes in persistence rate across very significant social and educational changes. In Sweden and the UK, moving to state funded, high quality schools being free to everyone of any status caused ZERO change in persistence rates, in either high or low status lineages. The persistence rates stayed doggedly on their hundred-plus-years trend.
That's not a problem with education, however, that's a problem with the economy. Less to do with academic performance than employer preferences. Still, inner city school children generally end up *under employed* rather than chronically unemployed, which is how they would end up otherwise, so overall productivity is still protected.
The problem with that argument is that it doesn't have much data to support it. I recently saw a study which used military reassignment as a source of exogenous randomization between school districts. Moving to a richer school district had a very modest effect on learning. Studies like this always point in the same direction: genetics matter far more than environment for almost everything we care about.
Actually, it points to the hypothesis that children's academic performance is affected by environmental factors outside the classroom--esp during the first 6 years of life (for obvious reasons). Children do not learn from studies, they learn from life experiences, and if their studies are congruent with the rest of their life experiences, they can integrate that into long term memory and retain them.
It actually points at nothing. Based only on your description, it sounds like a field study where they focused on one specific dimension of environment change (the school) but ignored all the others (everything else). But we know that moving from a lower to a higher social class environment has many strong positive and negative effects on people.
Does anyone know what the correlation is between per-pupil spending and test scores? It’d be great to see a chart of per-pupil school spending to test scores. I know one school district that spent about $25,000 per year on each pupil and had horrible test scores. Meanwhile, there was a private school nearby that was half the price and had much higher test scores. For this particular instance, this was likely due to the fact that the private school was filled with children of parents who were highly educated. But I'd like to see this with a sample size of greater than 2.
I wouldn't necessary expect it to be very high. Standardized tests have well known validity problems, and the teaching profession actively discourages "teaching to the test", which will reduce the relationship. Also, federal and state funding are mostly directed toward attempting to help under-performing children from falling too far behind, not toward helping the average student perform better. That's why students from well educated families would perform better even without the extra funding.
I recently saw a study which used military reassignment as a source of exogenous randomization between school districts. Moving to a richer school district had a very modest effect on learning. I don't remember what the correlation was but it was small. A 1 SD increase in neighborhood wealth led to something like a 0.1 SD increase in test scores IIRC. And that's probably an overestimate because some of that effect is coming from interacting with smarter peers, not just from spending more per pupil.
If you are interested, there is info re funding of CA schools here - you can compare by district. https://www.ed-data.org/ But CA funding is not necessarily representative of funding elsewhere, because, as I understand it, it is less tied to local property taxes than in some places. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serrano_v._Priest
OTOH, official funding doesn't include those things provided by the PTA and similar groups. And that funding strongly tends to be larger in wealthier areas.
True, but that only makes much of a difference at very affluent schools. (If the whole district is affluent, they simply raise property taxes) And, many district require that money raised at affluent schools be shared with other schools.
Note that that was a parcel tax, not a property tax (which is banned by Prop 13). Local districts do often pass parcel taxes, since it's the closest they can legally get to a property tax.
I lived in a district that tried mightily to privately make up the gap (there would have been no gap, the district would have been rolling in money, but a court long ago set up a mechanism by which wealthy districts send 40% or more of their ad valorem tax revenue to "property-poor" districts; people tended to be surprised that this mostly very well-off district, well-known for its athletics, didn't even have a pool for its high school swimmers).
They would have galas and donation pleas, and each year would announce that they had managed to fund a couple of FTEs or similar, at a couple of campuses, maybe save Latin from the chopping block another year.
They didn't fund anything like band or athletics; parents paid fees for all that.
It really didn't amount to much, but was more a demonstration that - this is a district where the parents care, a metric of - something.
A friend of mine lived downtown and sent her kids to the very old cool school building that had once been bustling but obviously was now much reduced - this was well before the influx of vertical housing construction downtown, but in any case I don't think many children have been part of that return to downtown.
She was such a good liberal, it warmed her heart to see her child attending that school. She was the room mom. At the end of the year, she tried to collect a gift for the teacher. (Perhaps she should have realized that a few of the parents of these children might have intended little inexpensive gifts of their own, which a money gift pre-empts.) She collected $3 and found this so depressing she gave up on her dream; eventually her kids attended a private school that currently runs you $42,000/yr.
School funding in the US is typically a mix of different sources. Schools are partly funded locally, which leads to the situation your liberal friends are describing. There’s also state and federal money involved but the structure of that setup varies widely by state.
In many cases, state and local funding can make up for the locally generated inequities, so that poorer school districts can end up with more money than richer ones.
The conservative talking point has merit insofar as the relationship between spending and outcomes is very muddy AFAIK. It’s hard to spend your way out of problems that don’t originate in a lack of funding in schools.
A real part of the problem is that poorer communities have more antagonism towards ALL official bodies than wealthier communities. This translates into, among other things, more vandalism. Thus higher expenses.
I don't see a real way around this. The poor ARE more mistreated by officials. They are less powerful, and have less recourse to assistance when abused. So of course they're going to distrust those with power over them. And the children understand the way their parents feel.
This inherently means that services in poor communities are more expensive to operate.
Are you saying that the budgetary disparity between schools in poor and wealthy areas is canceled out by the expense of repairing vandalism? That strains credibility for me
I think that this is less of a problem than all the environmental challenges poor people face outside the school. Children learn best when surrounded by institutional resources that support them, esp, in and around the home. This varies significantly by economic class.
I want to apply to MATS (ML Alignment & Theory Scholars), probably the Governance track.
Anyone here who wants to discuss the different tracks/streams or work on applications together? Right now I am a PHD student in bioinformatics, with a Master in CS.
Berlin time zone, but I can make most time zones work especially on the weekends.
I might be interested; I came to the comments to ask for information about MATS. It’s not clear to me what the selection criteria actually are (aside from being 18+ years old).
Disclaimer: I’m an aerospace engineer with only hobby-level knowledge of CS and ML, in Brussels time zone.
Edit: I’m uncertain what’s a good way to get in touch without posting personal info here.
What does everyone think of the Substack app? I honestly would rather use the web browser. I can't do keyword searches in the app, and the comment threads, as imperfect as they are, seem eaiser to view in the browser.
Once in a while I download it.If I only have my phone available and get a DM it's not possible to see DMs from the browser on my phone, and that's when I download the stoopit app. But I delete the app right after I read my DM, because it is so irritating to use for just reading articles and comments. It's horrible. There are basic things I have not figured out how to do on it. I haven't tried very hard to, but in a decent app the way to do those things would be easy and obvious.
I use the browser. The web app itself is better but then you also get bookmarks, open in new tab, back/forward buttons and all the other great browser features.
On Saturday, I’m hosting a picnic on the Boston Common to raise awareness & support for AIDS relief. There’s a big protest scheduled for that day, and I want those protesters to get fired up about saving PEPFAR. From an EA perspective, PEPFAR is one of the cheapest & most scalable ways to save lives. Republicans, Democrats, and Independents from the ACX community are all welcome to join us :)
The partiful link got flooded by bots, causing the web page to crash. So you won't be able to RSVP using the link above, but you're still welcome to join us on the Boston Common on Saturday at 11am. We'll be the ones with the signs that read, "Save PEPFAR. Crush HIV."
I now know 5 people who are negatively affected by DOGE-related changes. I’m curious about whether others here are seeing this much impact on people in their immediate social circle. Here are the circumstances of my 5.
Young woman with joint hypermobility recently began having multiple disabling symptoms and got genetic testing to determine what form of Ehrlen-Danlos she has. Turns out she has not Ehrlen-Danlos, but a different, very rare, mutation that causes both hypermobility and a number of other abnormalities, some of them pretty damn grim. She located a center that does treatment of kids and young adults with rare disorders, while also doing research on the disorders. She and her family put a great deal of effort into applying for treatment at the center, gathering her medical records from 10+ specialists and getting genetic testing of some of her relatives. I am pretty sure the center would have accepted her as a patient. But they recently contacted her to tell her their government funding has been cut and they are not able to take any new patients.
Man in his second year of work for NIH, doing highly technical research on a certain class of disorders, and also inventing statistical methods for analyzing data related to those disorders. He chose to do this sort of work rather than much better-paying jobs his degree and math smarts qualified him for. He likes his NIH job and his colleagues, and believes his work makes a difference in treatment of the disorders he studies. I suppose there are people who work for the government who are just coasting, but this guy couldn’t be less like that. He gets so intent on solving various statistical puzzles that he sometimes chooses to keep working on one all evening or most of the weekend. OK, so very recently some DOGE agents came to his building and fired a few people for small technical infractions. One person was fired for not taking his badge with him when he went to the bathroom. The guy I know actually saw some of the firings.
Trans man who completed his surgeries several years ago and comes across as unambiguously male in both appearance and manner. He will need to renew his passport soon, and according to new policy it must list his gender as female. He’s pretty calm and laid back about the trans thing, and could deal with just explaining to officials at the airport of our big liberal city that he is a trans guy. However the place he visits, in Asia, is not tolerant of trans or gay people, and he is worried about how things will play out there. His parents are immigrants from that country, and he travels there to see elderly relatives he’s quite close to. He can’t solve the problem by dressing, etc, as a woman. He’s fully male in appearance and voice and can’t look convincingly female. (Anyone inclined to shrug off his difficulties because they imagine him to be irritating, adolescent, entitled, whiny, etc. about trans matters? You should meet this guy — he rolls his eyes about that stuff as much as you do.)
Grad student in a hard science field aiming to complete her dissertation next year. Just found out that because funding has been cut she will have to be a teaching assistant next year, rather than be paid for the work she does for and with faculty on research projects. She is on the autistic spectrum, shy, with poor people skills. She was extremely stressed by the teaching she did during one earlier term when circumstances forced her to be a TA. Another problem is that there are now fewer
post doc positions open in her field. And some people who got post doc offers have had them
rescinded.
Man from another country who came to the US for grad school, got a PhD, and immediately began work at a high-paying job requiring his technical skills. Has held this job for 18 mos. Also recently married an American citizen. Thought he had a good chance of getting a green card this spring at the next round of something-or-other (I do not understand the ins and outs of obtaining citizenship). But has been told that all processing has slowed way down, and he is now concerned that he will not get the green card by September, and because of (something or other I do not understand) he will have to stop working at his present job as of then. He is afraid that if that happens he will be replaced at his job.
Weird update: Someone I know has a close friend who works at an agency that manages a class of things that could cause pretty significant destruction of people and property if something went awry. DOGE fired a bunch of people at the agency recently, and acquaintance's friend's job makes it possible for them to access everything needed to reinstate employees -- keys, codes, paychecks, whatever. It does not, though, give the person authority to do that. But what the person did after the layoff was reinstate one or more employees who are the agency's experts on certain safety-related things.
Apparently the reinstatements must be done quite quickly, before DOGE erases certain records.
Kind of heartening to hear. Though disheartening in that it's evidence that DOGE is not even smashing and destroying things in a smart way. Why fire the agency's only experts on what you do if X fails or is sabotaged and now Y cannot be fully controlled? And if you're going to fire people, why not learn enough about the system to make sure you're firings can't just be reversed? Fucking dumbass bullies.
Friend of the family was suddenly worried about losing a job he'd just started after looking hard for about a year (I think). We had a long conversation one weekend about what he could do to avoid termination. My advice was "don't look like the swamp". He ended up losing it anyway in the blanket directive to fire everyone probational. I'm now hearing rumors that he might get it back, but I don't yet know.
GF was telecommuting four days out of five. Now she gets one day out of ten. I can easily say she wasn't goofing off (she did good enough work to be offered a promotion, turned it down because she didn't want to be a supervisor, and ends up serving as a mentor on occasion).
I work as a contractor on some government project. No effect. (I'm used to being easy to fire.)
Overall, I'd say we're coping. We had a brief talk about what we might do if either of us lost our job, and we concluded we won't be screwed.
I'm vaguely concerned for the local economy. A big part of me thinks this was a long time coming, and would be worse the longer it was put off. I truly believe our federal government is horribly bloated. Complaints about the crowding, the Legion Bridge adding 30-60 minutes to everyone's commute, the ailing and sometimes lethal Metro, etc. are numerous and have been around for decades. So that part of me welcomes the downsize. That same part recognizes how much mess will be involved in transition. A lot of former- and soon-former-federal workers are going to have to move; as they do, the support industries will have to shed workers as well. Senior, middle, staff, from multiple sectors. Thousands of people.
It's pretty easy for people to criticize DOGE; I think it's also easy to forget how thick and suffocating the bureaucracy is here. This is a bandage that needed to be ripped off; lawmakers argued rightly that it would be painful, and asked for time, and in that time, they'd just slap more bandages on. So now someone's ripping all the bandages off and now other people are yelling about the pain, pointing at parts of it that were obviously dumb, and that they nevertheless weren't willing to support dismantling less painfully.
So, here's the pain. It sucks. I hope it'll get better soon, and thousands of people will find work that's valuable rather than wasteful.
Among the ways I can think of, one is that the disruption is short term only. Maybe forms don't get processed as fast or smoothly, but then sensible people notice that in many cases, the forms aren't necessary. Or even that the service isn't necessary. Or that it's valuable, but capable of being done by a private institution - assuming of course that there's no government regulation barring anyone from forming it other than the government (cf. the Biden plan for bringing internet access to rural areas).
One wonders how efficiently PEPFAR could be operated if it was on the direct dime of the people in favor of it.
Scott's post explicitly talked about cases where there were regulations. Removing the people responsible for helping people comply with regulations doesn't remove the regulations themselves.
One important missing factor here is whether the people responsible for enforcing regulations are also removed. If they are, then people could save resources spent otherwise on compliance.
This may or may not be a bad thing, depending on what the regulations are protecting. Some regulations protect against future harm to society; some protect some special interest; the text of a regulation will not make this clear, by design. It's also not always clear which type of regulations are holding an industry back the most. ISTR Scott mostly assumed the regulations were of the former type; whether he did or not, it's not a safe assumption to make.
The problem is that the fact that a regulation is not currently being enforced does not mean it is safe to violate it. Perhaps it will start being enforced retroactively in four years. Or perhaps you'll accidentally say something that offends Trump and he'll enforce the regulations tomorrow against *you* only.
Believe it or not, I actually strongly believe in the work that my group was doing and in the excellence of my teammates. I also believe in the government serving the American people in the most efficient and effective way possible.
When DOGE first started, I held out hope that they were going to actually try to make this happen, but they are either incompetent at this mission or have other goals.
But you won’t get a special government job pension anymore right? The pension (among other cozy benefits) is the *true* driver of costs in the long term. Your contract is also much easier to terminate in the future than it was before.
Overall kicking the can down the road by pretending gov workers cost less than they do is a big source of the current problems.
No, but I was a term-limited employee, so not really in the pension game and not subject to the same civil service protections. Understanding that and acting accordingly would have contradicted DOGE's playbook though.
They would have to get hired into a new position. Many of my colleagues did this at the end of their term (into another part of gov't), but It's not like the position itself can get made permanent.
Yeah I expect DOGE to be very efficient at generating waste, fraud, and abuse, and result in significant net increase of government spending and deficit.
My immediate social circle is too small to involve anybody in anything, but a relative though not a government employee himself has a large professional acquaintance that includes many gov't employees at all levels, federal, state, municipal.
He was dismayed that a friend of his was laid off from the agency colloquially known as "Fish". There was plenty of deadwood at that agency that he'd have seen gone instead. That the agency would be better off without regardless of budget concerns. That have lost interest in the mission, while keeping an interest in any process that ends with the word "no" or sometimes with radio silence. (If you can get them to answer the phone ...) But the friend was probationary (having turned to government employ as people do sometimes mid-career, for stability or other reasons) and thus in that laid-off group.
I *think* he mentioned that he's now been reinstated, but will doublecheck.
Someone else he knew took a buyout, forgot which agency; and appeared happy about it.
I confirmed that he did get rehired, but in the meantime he’d gotten another job in the private sector, so his last act after being rehired was to resign (did this to get back pay or something, or maybe for the record or to get the language changed to reflect that it was not in fact his performance that prompted the layoff).
"But the friend was probationary (having turned to government employ as people do sometimes mid-career, for stability or other reasons) and thus in that laid-off group."
Yeah, "last in first out" is the general rule, the unions are very strong on protecting people who are full-time/long-term in the job. And probationers are easier to justify firing as they can be claimed to lack the experience and knowledge that long-term employees have, plus it is generally in their contracts that they can be let go during the probationary period without it counting as unfair dismissal (with exceptions).
Yes - just in this case, the practice resulted in laying off the guy who would easily be in the top 2 or three in his field, knowledge-wise (also passion-wise, but I guess you can't expect an algorithm to know about that).
"OK, so very recently some DOGE agents came to his building and fired a few people for small technical infractions. One person was fired for not taking his badge with him when he went to the bathroom."
While I am sorry to hear that, that is unfortunately the kind of thing that *will* get you into trouble in any kind of government or public service job. You *can't* leave ID etc. out in the open where technically anyone could pick it up behind your back while you're "just popping out for five minutes". Same with leaving your PC unattended if you don't shut down any open windows/have everything closed down under password.
It sounds trivial, but security is a *big* deal for government/civil/public service work, even when it's not dealing with sensitive matters. This is why, back in the day with Hillary and her email server, all us former and current government minions realised exactly why this was a Big Freakin' Deal when everyone else was going "oh come on, it's just emails".
If this is the first time it happened/first time the guy got a warning, I'd be very surprised to hear he got fired. If, however, there's a string of "small infractions" on his record, e.g. the guy has a habit of leaving his ID behind when he goes to the bathroom, gets a coffee and so on then yeah, three strikes you're out. But this should be open to appeal through the grievance/disciplinary process for the job.
So we should definitely expect anyone involved in a text-thread where classified strikes on a foreign country were being discussed to get booted, right?
That is why I said that had I heard about this as a first time offence, I would have been very surprised since there are generally established disciplinary procedures where you have to escalate to written warnings.
That's DOGE's entire shtick. They're taking a "kill everyone and let god sort them out" approach to government, ignoring common sense, laws and sometimes even court orders in the process.
I assure you, as an NIH researcher, that this is absolutely ridiculous. Outside of dual-use or direct national security research, it's inconceivable that a standard researcher at any time since the NIH's founding would even be chastised for leaving their ID to go to the bathroom, much less have a formal notice, much less be fired. This is an absolutely massive overstep. It not only has made it clear that they are coming in with indiscriminate hostility but also that the vibe has turned from the last few months' "somewhat-hopeful air of fear" to the current "batten down the hatches and save what you can".
You take government money, you live by government rules. I've had to deal with 55 page Service Level Agreements, as we get funding from a government department to provide services, that involves seven pages of tedious literal box-ticking about all the Acts, Regulations, Codes of Practice, and Statutory Obligations we are supposed to be aware of, in compliance with, and applying in our day-to-day running of the service.
Here's a direct excerpt and link about cybersecurity:
"Cyber Security Awareness
The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), in conjunction with the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer (OGCIO), have developed a Cyber Security Baseline Standard for Government ICT. The Baseline Standards are intended to create an acceptable security standard and form a broad framework for a set of measures which can be revised over time.
The Standards model follows a holistic and comprehensive approach to the issues related to Cyber Security, which combines the best of various standards to address the needs of key stakeholders.
"I confirm that I have complied with the Data Protection Act 2018
Note: With regard to Data Protection, Data Sharing and the EU General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2016/679) (the GDPR) legislation, Providers shall comply with all relevant legislative provisions and obligations thereunder, in particular, but not limited to Data Processing Agreements, Data Sharing Agreements and Data Protection Impact Assessments where applicable and/or as required by the Executive."
Leaving your card in the terminal might be a bit of a naughty-naughty for data protection, eh?
I'm very sorry (not) for the guys who never had to deal with this tedious admin stuff as it was for the low-level clerical workers, but as I said - this kind of security is basic "sit through a video training session, take the online test, get your certificate that you know to wash your hands after using the bathroom*" training that HR should have organised for them. If they're careless and sloppy after that, it's on their heads. If they never got that training, it's on the heads of HR/their superiors.
* I am not joking, we had to do an online hand hygiene course as one training session.
Look, I assure you that I agree that the government has the right to impose their standards, given the employment contracts we’ve entered into. We *have* all sat through uncountable trainings about many things, including this. It is ungodly how many trainings we have to sit through, and how frequently we have to attend refreshers.
But there are some things that are technically broadly applicable but in practice only applied where they make sense. This is true of all workplaces. For instance, we are not allowed to use personal USBs in government computers, or government USBs in personal computers. This is obviously completely unworkable for people who are constantly transferring large quantities of innocuous data around, including working on it on personal computers at home. We’re simply not centrifuging nuclear material, and the price isn’t worth it. We do follow many more rules and regulations than if we were working on similar research in similar positions at universities - VPNs, travel restrictions, higher animal care standards, increased documentation, etc.. But there are some things that are genuinely undue burdens that destroy healthy working culture, and firing someone if they leave their badge plugged into their computer while they go to the bathroom is one of them.
And it’s ridiculous to say that we’re now held to the tedious admin stuff standard of low-level clerical workers. To the best of my knowledge (rumors), many of the people fired were low-level clerical workers. Researchers have been held to the same standards as admin workers with additional standards relating to non-admin tasks.
"And it’s ridiculous to say that we’re now held to the tedious admin stuff standard of low-level clerical workers"
Ding-ding-ding! There we have it: "I'm Too Important for this, I'm not one of the Little People"! You may not have intended to come across as an entitled snob but that's how it sounds to us low-level types who have to provide the support to you guys.
Re: working at home and transferring data for work, yeah funnily enough I do that too. And there are rules about how to do it. But then again, I'm only a low-level clerical worker, not a Big Important Galaxy Brain Researcher. Weird how I can handle basic data security, innit?
"But there are some things that are genuinely undue burdens that destroy healthy working culture, and firing someone if they leave their badge plugged into their computer while they go to the bathroom is one of them."
Y'know, I used to wonder about all the Chinese spy stories I read, but this kind of example makes it all a lot more intelligible to me now. The hackers don't even have to try, do they? "Hey Qifeng, I'm just going to the bathroom, keep an eye on my email for me, okay? My card is plugged in, so you'll have no trouble accessing it!" 😁
You’re clearly commenting in bad faith. As John mentions, I was repeating your own verbiage and saying that there is no difference in the standards we have been or are held to.
I’d be happy to further discuss reasonable standards for data security for academic workers vs industry workers, and for public/innocuous data vs sensitive vs PII vs classified/etc. if you want, but that doesn’t seem like what this conversation is about to you.
He's literally repeating back your own verbiage to you and calling it ridiculous, saying that it's low level clerks that were affected and that everyone else were already held to the same standard
Then you quote it out of context and use it as some kind of gotcha that he's clearly looking down at you from his tall ivory tower
And you're so excited about this gotcha that you're referencing it in a different comment
(Edited: TWICE!)
I'm on board with the rest of what you're saying, but jesus christ, get over yourself
> For instance, we are not allowed to use personal USBs in government computers, or government USBs in personal computers. This is obviously completely unworkable for people who are constantly transferring large quantities of innocuous data around, including working on it on personal computers at home.
Why is that unworkable? In all of my jobs, I would have absolutely gotten disciplined and potentially fired if I transferred company data onto a personal machine (with some approved exceptions such as accessing company email from a personal device). If the device isn't managed by the company/government, how does anyone ensure the disk is encrypted so if the laptop is stolen out of a car, data isn't at risk? Or how does anyone ensure that when an employee is offboarded, the data is deleted?
On my first day of work at a new company I got chastised by my manager by leaving my machine unlocked when I went to the bathroom. I don't know if there was a written policy at the time, but it is not an unreasonable request. (Firing people for their first offense seems like a bad idea)
This sort of stuff is information security 101. All the companies I've worked at have also have software running to detect improper behavior such as copying files onto USBs and intrusion detection systems to detect any hacking. I'm very concerned, but I guess shouldn't be surprised that our government systems don't have these safeguards.
"In all of my jobs, I would have absolutely gotten disciplined and potentially fired if I transferred company data onto a personal machine (with some approved exceptions such as accessing company email from a personal device).
...On my first day of work at a new company I got chastised by my manager by leaving my machine unlocked when I went to the bathroom."
Ah but Fluorescent, we are only low-level clerical workers, it is ridiculous to hold the Big Brains to the same tedious standards as we minions 😁
That's why I think there's more going on than "they just swooped in and fired the guy for nothing at all", at the least a pattern of such behaviour and who knows what else?
>how does anyone ensure the disk is encrypted so if the laptop is stolen out of a car, data isn't at risk?
That’s the neat thing, it isn’t. That’s what I was talking about with innocuous data. The vast majority of data handled at the NIH is a) either already publicly accessible or intended to be publicly accessible, or b) subject to FOIA requests, such that the public can request it if desired. Much higher standards are followed when it comes to even private data, much less actually sensitive data like PII. The handling structures are entirely different, but the prohibition of personal and governmental devices commingling still exists even for entirely public data on computers that only contain entirely public data.
Here’s an example. I can generate several terabytes of microscopy data pretty easily. All of this data is either useless stuff I’ll sort out or stuff that will be included as public data in any paper I publish (all of which will be public and freely accessible). As an academic researcher, I’m expected to continue working on my data at home outside of work hours, and do. My options for transferring this data to my private computer to do so are: a) not uploading it to the cloud and downloading it, because 1) that would be incredibly slow and 2) it’s impossible because storage limits on our cloud services are a terabyte or 2 each, b) not transferring it to my government laptop, because it both can’t handle the hardware requirements and can’t have the software I need downloaded, or c) plugging my government USB storage into my personal computer, and actually doing the work. That’s the one that’s going to win, and academic researchers at a university don’t even have to think about it.
Someone taking accounting spreadsheets home would be weird, and admin are held to higher standards in that way. And no researcher would think of putting PII on their home computer. For researchers at least, it’s simply necessary to break that rule.
It is for the low-level minions. Which is why I'm not weeping softly about the angry protests that "those rules are for the little people, people at MY level were never made aware this applied!"
One of my jobs, I had temporary (since I was there for a fixed-term period) ID/swipe card to get in and out of offices. I had to account for it, where I had it, and the second my last day on the job was over, hand it straight back.
Casually leaving it out on the desk while I nipped out to the loo was a very definite no-no. The whole idea is "this is to identify you as an Authorised Person and allow you access to the offices which are not for the public or strangers to access", so leaving it in a position where it might have been picked up and/or used by those not authorised was taken very seriously.
I don't know a single person who works from the federal government, but I know so many who are impacted. Here are just a few examples:
- I know one person who worked at an academic medical research center, and they were absolutely gutted by the NIH change to indirect costs.
- Another two worked at a computer science lab that had a lot of grant funding from the NIH. They’ve kept their jobs, but have had coworkers laid off due to the budget cuts.
- There are so many cuts that there are cascading effects as well: Another friend is an HR person at a university and they’ve let go of so many people that he might lose his job, because they don’t need as many HR people anymore.
This has caused a lot of reflection on my part. I don't know a single person who works for the federal government, but so many in my group of friends are impacted. It seems like the income of about a quarter of my friends were effectively subsidized by the federal government. I do live in a bubble of people with graduate degrees who do research-y type things. This is perhaps a bit of an exaggeration, but it feels a bit like the plot of some urban fantasy novel where there’s some secret underground world all around me that I never knew existed. Then I thought about it, and looked up the federal budget, which is $6.8 trillion, and that's double the entire economy of France (3.05 T). Each year, the federal government spends slightly more than the GDP of France + the GDP of the UK (3.7T) combined! So of course, if this budget was dramatically changed it would have an impact comparable to the UK suddenly having a catastrophic economic collapse.
The closest example I can think of is when small towns in Appalachia have a coal mine shut down and everyone either works for the mine, or indirectly works for it (eg runs a grocery store nearby the mine that everyone stops at). But the "coal mine" here is the federal government. When I talk to friends who don't live in college towns, they seem to not know a single person impacted, so I think it's highly geographically concentrated.
I'm not an economist, but every time I try to come up with a number here I always find something to the effect of "research is by far the most effective way to boost economic growth and in aggregate does so with substantial ROI even counting all of the stupid research".
But what is the probability that it would be successful? One biostatistician I was referring to above left the academic medical center not because of DOGE, but because she thought the research would never replicate and asked to have her name removed from the papers they published. It was one of the top centers in the world for what they do.
But this is just my assessment from the people/projects I directly know. I don't have much of a sense of how DOGE will impact US GDP in the long run.
"When I talk to friends who don't live in college towns, they seem to not know a single person impacted, so I think it's highly geographically concentrated."
Anecdotally, that matches my experience. I don't know (or think I know) anyone impacted.
But I don't hang out with many federal government workers, academics or poor people dependent on federal money that is at risk (I do have relatives who depend on social security so if that starts getting cut or delayed my answer will change, but that hasn't happened yet).
I know a person working in the energy field whose company is drastically affected (so much for muh american energy independence drill baby drill, but I digress). I can't give out details for obvious reasons, but anyone who thinks this is making America Great in any way is delusional.
This is private sector! It's so bloody frustrating to see people having a mental model of "government" and "private sector" that are on different planets and somehow don't interface. Look, maybe in some ideal platonic republic there's little connection but in these here real United States there are regulations, information, etc., etc., etc. that tie Fed agencies and private companies in myriad ways. If one wants to untangle that, it's fucking hard work! that may take years, and in the end result in no savings for anyone whatsoever. But if all you do is pause existing work at the Fed leaving all regulations in place, while the information flow stops, and nobody knows what to do, it will cripple existing private companies in the very industry you're pretending to want to expand.
I don't get it... the project you're talking about is related to drilling for gas? What exactly was going on there that needed the governments intervention/support?
Like I said I can't provide details. If you think that the only energy-related jobs needing to work with the government and/or get information from same are related to drilling I don't know what to tell you.
This is a constant struggle of people outside a field being surprised by the realities and complexities of the field.
I know two federal employees. Both are negatively affected by DOGE-related stuff. One was recently hired and in her probationary period and was thus played off and late (for now, at least) reinstated. The other is a long-standing career employee of an agency that is being particularly targeted for scrutiny and decided reluctantly to accept the buyout rather than stick around and wait to possibly be laid off.
If the passport gender marker thing counts as DOGE related, I am negatively affected by that.
My father works at the NCI, and he told me about DOGE people going into offices in the building and looking for people who had left their card in their computer terminal, and then firing them on the spot. Apparently this is an infraction that people didn't know about. The campus is secure and they are not doing top secret work anyway. The best people are going to start leaving, and out of desperation the worst employees of these agencies will likely want to hold on. Fat needs to be trimmed, but it should be done in a way that targets the administrative bloat and low performers.
I live in expat communities abroad, and the USAID fallout has been huge. One family just bought a house in DC, they have three kids in the International school. Now they are going to be repatriated with no job, their careers destroyed and shaky prospects of finding work in a field that has been decimated. Meanwhile my father in law has been drawing his fat USAID pension for 25 years. Gotta love government.
"people who had left their card in their computer terminal, and then firing them on the spot. Apparently this is an infraction that people didn't know about"
Again, I'm very surprised to hear that since this is one of the things that gets hammered into you first day in the job in public service. I presume the NCI is the National Cancer Institute and it's government-funded while not precisely government body, but looking it up:
"NCI is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), one of 11 agencies that make up the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)"
So that means it *is* a government department and government department rules apply. If people weren't aware of things like you mention, somebody fell down badly on job training. Here's a link to the relevant policy:
"Research scientists, clinicians, medical and administrative staff each take responsibility and work collaboratively to ensure our data and the computing resources we use are maintained securely."
"The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) is seeking insight from genomic, cybersecurity, and privacy experts (in academia, industry, and government) to identify cybersecurity and privacy concerns related to genomic data. Genomic data are central to basic science research as well as disease (i.e., cancer) diagnosis and prediction. Since bad actors may wish to misuse genomic data to either violate privacy, gain competitive advantage, or inflict harm on groups/individuals, it is necessary to develop guidance for addressing these challenges."
In other words, no you do not walk away and leave your card in the terminal where an unauthorised/outside third party could come along and access that information due to your little oopsie.
Another comment made a comparison with rust belt towns collapsing when the main employer closes, and the only good I can see here is that maybe there will be a little less looking down their noses at the rural people who live in these failing towns, when the axe is now falling on the jobs of the educated liberals.
From comments like "You take government money, you live by government rules. I've had to deal with...." I'mm getting a whiff of "I suffered through it, so you should too," which is an unproductive attitude.
DOGE went into the NCI and randomly fired people on a technicality. The goal is to terrorize people in the organization and encourage them to resign. Some definitely support this, but I personally like that the government is putting money towards medical research. In my view they could save a lot of money by reducing red tape around clinical trials and drug development. Instead they are just randomly getting rid of whoever they can in an organization that has been very successful in developing new cancer treatments. It doesn't make me think these same people will be able to create a better system.
See my response to your other comment. In short, this is unprecedented and goes completely counter to the NIH's culture.
In science, it is necessary to have a culture of trust and openness. While this necessarily has to be minimized for national security research (e.g. the NIH's Rocky Mountain Labs campus), it is important that scientists are generally trusting of others' intentions and open with their data and practices. This is the only way to enable the information flow necessary for science to progress and be disseminated. While this particular instance makes sense (and causes no impact to me, as I always kept my ID card on my neck anyway due to forgetfulness), it is also a constant reminder to be distrustful and private. It also adds one more minor inconvenience into an institution already absolutely choking on bureaucracy and delay.
I recently heard from someone I know who lives in a rural red town complaining that the impending closure of the local BLM office will decimate the town's economy.
> It's funny that no one realizes what will happen if the deficit is NOT slashed away.
It might be nice if someone were to work on that, but instead we have Musk *costing* the government hundreds of billions while Republicans are currently planning to add TRILLIONS.
For people I know personally, just one who works in NIH funded research.
They haven't lost their job yet but everyone was told to expect massive cuts very soon. They were told not to leave the country because the organization would not be able to help if they were detained. (I think that was probably directed to naturalized or non citizens, the scientists come from all over the world.)
When people asked if anything could be done about these cuts, like calling political representatives, they were told topics like that could no longer be discussed at all, and that the government is actively monitoring their slack.
I'm skeptical about example #2. From what I understand DOGE doesn't have the authority to fire anyone. Instead it's Musk team goving over an agency's books, they show their reports to Musk, Musk says to Pres. Trump, "Do we really need this, this, and this", Trump give the final word on what he wants cut, the head honchos in the agency get the word, then do the layoffs.
While I am sympathetic to the non-woke stuff that gets cut and the people who suffer, I look at it like the bombing of Dresden in WWII. The specific action may be over the line, and you can debate each battle, but it doesn't invalidate the whole war.
The person who told me about the firings works at the agency where it happened, witnessed the firings and spoke to one of the fired people afterwards. I have known the person who told me about the events for several years. He is a level-headed, extremely smart scientist who rarely talks about politics. The chance is nil that he would make up a story like the one he told me, or exaggerate details for effect.
>I'm skeptical about example #2. From what I understand DOGE doesn't have the authority to fire anyone. Instead it's Musk team goving over an agency's books, they show their reports to Musk, Musk says to Pres. Trump, "Do we really need this, this, and this", Trump give the final word on what he wants cut, the head honchos in the agency get the word, then do the layoffs.
I suppose it depends on how closely Trump follows their recommendations. If he just waves through whatever cuts or firings DOGE suggests, then in practice DOGE has the authority to fire people.
DOGE claims that they do have the authority to fire anyone they like (or don’t like, I guess) and the higher levels of government (ie Trump, Vance, and at least part of the Cabinet) agree. If they’re able to have your pay withheld, bar you from accessing your work building or lock you out of your work computer, in what sense are you still employed?
Ascertaining whether DOGE does, in fact, have the authority to fire federal employees is a currently litigated matter (ie there’s a judicial battle going on, which will take a while to sort out).
Would *you* consider yourself still employed in such conditions? Would you stay to find out whether this group backed by your employer has a right to fire you outside the “regular channels”? Even if you are reinstated, would you stay without a guarantee that your employer wouldn’t try to get rid of you by other means?
All except for the passport gender thing and the Green Card processing boils down to: “Slashing budgets causes those dependent on said budgets to be forced to find an alternative source of funding”. Yes, that’s true, and there’s no way around this. Someone, somewhere will always have to suffer somewhat whenever budgets are cut. *Not* doing the cuts also causes plenty of damage, it’s just harder to pinpoint and a lot of it will happen in 5~8 years when most of the U.S. debt will be of the post-ZIRP vintage.
Therefore… *shrug*, I’m sympathetic as a person, but if anything I’m somewhat glad to see these reports as it indicates the cuts are actually happening as opposed to being mere roleplaying on TV. Increases my hope that Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security Security will hit the cutting board next, which would avert either hyperinflation or *far* more drastic cuts in the 2030s. My genuine belief is that all these highly visible firings lay fertile ground for cuts to entitlements, where there’s plenty of space to cut things for the upper 25%, ie by increasing retirement/Medicare age for those with higher wages to level out their level of benefits consumption which is currently skewed towards the wealthy.
—————-
The passport thing? My condolences as that’s genuine stupidity. But… I’m noticing that the real villain here is the intolerant state in Asia that threatens this person with violence.
The Green Card processing is unpleasant and doesn’t help the budget but Trump had been quite vocal about wanting to speed things up for University graduates, so hopefully it would get ~fixed soon. But also… if that persons work skills are so valuable… why are they concerned? They could chill for a few months, get their GC and get back to work?
About the green card thing: I do not understand the process, except in a general sort of way. There are different tiers of applicants: People with highly useful skills and extraordinary achievements; people with highly useful skills; and people with jobs. The person I mentioned is in tier 2. There is a lottery, and the higher the tier you are in, the better your chance of getting a GC. This man's chance in the upcoming lottery is less than 50%. He has already failed to get a GC in one previous lottery, done when he had the same qualifications as he does now. So the problem is not that the decision is delayed, it's that it's not that likely to go in his favor. And if the decision has not been made by September oes not he cannot work for a period of time -- several months. I do not know why. He has explained it but it is complicated and boring and I didn't retain the details. But he is extremely smart and precise, and is working with a lawyer specializing in this stuff, so I am sure his info is accurate. As for his chilling for those few months: He is afraid that during that period he will be replaced. He works for a small company and is the only person with certain skills.
Because Musk is doing things in the stupidest and most counterproductive way possible and doesn't care enough to try to figure out if what he is doing might accomplish his stated goals or not.
And more importantly because Republicans have no interest in decreasing the deficit and instead are currently trying to increase it by record amounts (on the order of 5 TRILLION over a decade of NEW deficits from one bill alone). DOGE is a sideshow, the real debt is being manufactured in congress.
Hey myst and various others — I didn’t say ain’t this awful and ask to cry on your shoulder. I inquired what others have seen. Every person I described is upper middle class, except for one whose family is flat out filthy rich. I feel bad for them because they are having a bad time of it right now, but they will mostly be OK.
I am curious how many others know affected people because for most of my life I and the people I know have not been greatly affected by changes in government and in the economy. And I am not filthy rich, just a white professional. Covid was a great shock because I and everyone I knew was greatly affected. The present changes seem like another instance of that.
So how about addressing my real question, not the variant that would be fun to poke me in the eye for asking.
Of course they’re not obligated to answer my question directly, but neither am I obligated to take it like a lamb when the question’s hijacked as a platform for the it’s-worth-it point of view.
Because at the point I responded to you it was looking like there was going to be a big pile on of “we gotta do it,” and (1) as I said, my point was not that the stories I was telling were proof we gotta stop and (2) I do not respect “we gotta do it.”
Regarding “we gotta do it”:
<*Not* doing the cuts also causes plenty of damage, it’s just harder to pinpoint and a lot of it will happen in 5-8 years.
I will not take issue with the necessity of doing the cuts. But your defense of what is going on ignores an obvious alternative, which is to do cuts more intelligently. And do not tell me that trying to do a better job with cuts would fail because it would take too long, or because doing a good job would require involving the bureaucracy in the planning, and the bureaucracy would then take years to produce 11,000 pages describing a useless plan. Given that the present administration is willing to ignore customary courtesies and various regulations, it could certainly come up with a better plan than the present one.
Let’s take NIH staff in the building where the person I know works — the person who saw someone fired for not carrying his badge to the bathroom. How about this as an alternative to sending goons to bust random people: On Feb. 1 someone in DOGE tells each person in charge of a department that they had to reduce staff salaries by 40% as of April 1, & that they could do this by salary reductions, reductions in hrs/week staff worked, or firings? Or a DOGE representative could look at the last 2 years’ performance reviews, and fire those with the lowest average review. Or DOGE or the department managers could lay off employees whose productivity had declined over the last 2 years. None of these ideas are great, but they are surely better than firings for reasons that have nothing to do with how well a member of staff is performing. They also have the advantage of creating less chaos, and more sense of there being at least some logic and justice to the layoffs. What is the utility of creating maximal chaos, fear and anger? Even if we set aside ethical considerations of how much suffering one causes, there remains the practical problem that chaos, anger and fear in an organization reduces productivity, and also damages its commitment to deal honestly with government higher-ups in the future.
There’s no justification for sending a manic bipolar man with a chain saw to dismantle an organization if you have the alternative of sending a smart, decisive judge of productivity instead. I cannot understand why an intelligent person like you is not taking that into account, unless you take some enjoyment in the pain and confusion of others, whom you imagine to be lazy or entitled & whiny or woke in some infuriating way.
Let's assume for a moment that Trump wants to wind down the war in Ukraine so that the US can focus entirely on the upcoming conflict with China [1], and that he wants to win Russia over to at least a neutral stance in that conflict. Why then is he so keen on antagonizing European countries and Europe as a whole? I get that he looks down on them militarily, but surely he must realize that the EU alone accounts for a large share of China's total trade volume. Any non-kinetic measures, like economic or financial sanctions, would be much more effective with the support of the EU, the UK, and Canada. Not to mention second-order effects on current and potential allies in south-east Asia, who are certainly keeping tabs on America's reliability as a diplomatic partner.
[1] Even though his attention on Gaza contradicts this rationale.
Europe, to the limited extent that it can really commit to any geopolitical strategy, seems to be committed to Ukraine successfully resisting Russia's unprovoked invasion and remaining an independent sovereign nation under its current government. This makes Europe a *huge* obstacle to any plan for "winding down the war", and pretty much guarantees that whenever and however the war ends, Russia will be very hostile to everyone on Team Europe.
The fastest, easiest way to wind down the war would be for everyone to agree that Ukraine is going to be conquered, assimilated, and de-ukrainified bu Russia, ASAP, and to cut off any and all military support to Ukraine. Also end sanctions on Russia, which are impeding Russia's attempts to restore the military capabilities it needs to quickly conquer Ukraine. There's very little chance of Europe going along with this plan, but Europe alone probably can't give Ukraine the support it needs.
When the war ends, Russia will consider Team Europe to be its enemy, and if Trump has his way, Putin et al will see the United States as the enemy of their enemy. That's something Trump probably imagines he can build on.
One of the many problems with this plan is that, while Putin may see Donald J. Trump as the enemy of their enemy, the United States will still be seen a nation that frequently elects presidents like Joe Biden, George Bush, Ronald Reagan, etc, and so cannot be counted on in the long term. Certainly not a friend. *China*, OTOH, is as close as Russia gets to having a powerful friend, and has consistently supported them for many years. Russia is not going to abandon China to win favor with the United States
I like this analysis, probably the best attempt to ascribe rational motives to Trump.
"Russia is not going to abandon China to win favor with the United States"
I don't think this is the right conclusion though. Russia's a smaller power inbetween two big powers, the right move in game theory for them is to remain cordial with both and play them off against each other. And the US has a huge strategic interest in keeping Russia just neutral (a full alliance isn't necessary). China also wants the alliance probably more than Russia does, so Russia has a lot to bargain with on both sides.
A similar dynamic occurred in WW2 and Russia had (at least temporary and uneasy) alliances with both Germany and the West. Tensions then with Russia were at least as high as now but it wouldn't have been the right move to push them away from an alliance. (I mean pre-barbarosa before Germany pushed them decisively one way)
Culturally, Russians also feel a lot more affinity with the other European-descended people than with the Chinese, and have wanted closer ties since at least 1991. I mean come on, the West is like the clique of cool popular kids at school, that dominate global cultural production and have ruled the world for 200 years. We can't befriend an outcast loner kid over an asian kid who helps them with their homework?
We can't befriend the outcast loner kid who is an unrepentant bully who really likes bullying, if we are widely understood to be nice guys who at least occasionally take a stand against bullying whereas there's a gang of Asian bullies who helps him with his homework, offers him friendship and acceptance and status, and *doesn't* insist that he knock it off with the bullying. Oh, we can offer and receive a sort of second-tier friendship, but he's never going to side with us against the Asian kids.
The sort of geopolitical fence-straddling you describe is the exception in world affairs, not the rule, because it depends on a symmetry that is usually lacking. Japan and South Korea do not treat the US and China as equal and opposite rivals; they'll try for as cordial a relationship as they can get with China while doing nothing to jeopardize their status as major US allies. During the Cold War, Finland and Yugoslavia and *maybe* Austria sort of straddled the line between East and West; every other nation in Europe picked a side and stayed with it.
There is no symmetry between the US and China. Russia is going to pick a side and stay with it, and it's going to be China's side.
"The sort of geopolitical fence-straddling you describe is the exception in world affairs, not the rule, because it depends on a symmetry that is usually lacking."
This still doesn't seem right to me. Often the right move to make if you're small is to let the big guys fight it out, not get directly involved yourself and strike what bargains you can. Lots of states seem to be responding this way to the bi-polar world that's emerging. Singapore wants to straddle, the gulf states are increasingly straddling etc.
Would 1950's John Schilling during the Korean war have guessed that the Sino-Soviet split would happen and China could brought around to the western side?
"Japan and South Korea do not treat the US and China as equal and opposite rivals"
It's an inconvenient time to make this argument since those three countries just signed a joint trade pact in response to Trump's tariffs.
"We can't befriend the outcast loner kid who is an unrepentant bully who really likes bullying, if we are widely understood to be nice guys"
This is very much the West's self perception. Obviously what matters regarding Russian decision making is Russia's perception, which doesn't view itself as incompatible nasty or us as incompatibly nice. Mainly Russia views the West through our actions in the Cold War which were pretty ruthless, and of course views its own actions as justified.
It sounds like you think there's a ~0% chance Russia could be enticed to even taking a neutral stance, but the strategic gains for the US are so great it probably only needs to be maybe 20%+ to be worth pursuing (from strict realist self-interest, not considering any moral factors or the interest of other states.)
"Would 1950's John Schilling during the Korean war have guessed that the Sino-Soviet split would happen and China could brought around to the western side?"
1950 John Schilling would not have made firm statements about what might happen a generation in the future. 1970 John Schilling would have considered such a thing very likely, on the grounds that Russia and China had fought a war the previous year. One in which Russia threatened the nuclear annihilation of the Chinese regime, and American diplomacy was seen as helping defuse that threat.
If, a generation from now, Russia and China fight another war, then yes, we'll probably have the ability to make one side or another an ally of convenience at least. But if the Trumpian plan includes "...and then Russia and China fight a war" as a necessary step, then I'm not terribly optimistic about that plan, sorry.
It seems like war in Ukraine cannot be wound down without antagonizing EU. This baffles me, but EU remains so adamantly over-comitted to this war that any attempt to stop it without full Russian surrender is interpreted as hostile action. The war has largely been detrimental to EU economy, and will continue to be so. If EU really pushes forward with militarization, social programs will be cut to support military spending increase, which will probably cause at least some unrest. For example, France, which already explodes with mass labour strikes at every opportunity, should be all for ending the war as soon as possible, yet Macron is one of the most hawkish EU leaders.
It almost feels like EU was promised "something" when Russia loses by the previous administration (a piece of Russian resources after the inevitable collapse of Putin's government?), and Trump is either unaware, or doesn't care.
The official explanation, of course, is that Russia will surely conquer the rest of EU if it's allowed even a little victory in Ukraine, but I can't force myself to believe it. Russia doesn't have the manpower, or willpower for this. At most, Blatic states might be in danger, but it should be pretty easy to provide additional security guarantees to them, and much less costly than continuing the hopeless adventure in Ukraine. Apart from that, even Poland alone would be like another Ukraine, and with fuller NATO support behind it, up to and including nuclear missiles (Baltic states are also part of NATO, of course, but unlike Poland they have very little forces themselves, which makes them more nervous).
So, I don't know the real reason, but it seems that Trump cannot both have friendly EU and peace in Ukraine. Of course, he probably can't have peace in Ukraine anyway - I predict with high confidence that Russia will not bow down to his pressure to accept unsatisfying peace terms, and while USA have the power to force Ukraine to accept Russian terms, he doesn't have the guts. If he really wanted peace at any cost, he should have cut all aid to Ukraine once and for all. But for all the Reddit talk about "agent Krasnov", Trump did very little to endear himself to Russia aside from some verbal interventions. Sharing of intelligence and military aid were paused for a very short time, and seemingly only to force Ukraine to accept the stupid mineral deal, not to make them more amenable to talks with Russia.
All in all, I think Trump have some coherent high level goals, but is too fickle and timid to really commit to any plan that might actually achieve them, which leads to him switching back and forth between threatening Russia, Ukraine, EU, Canada, China, Mexico and everyone else, depending on last day's events and his mood. He's America's Gorbachev (though with a completely different vision and methods), trying to remake his country and the world around it, but having neither talent, nor persistence, and always resorting to half-measures where you have to leave things alone or go all-in.
Ukraine is contiguous to the EU - it borders Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania. It has the same strategic importance to the EU as it does to Russia.
Suppose Russia had invaded the Canadian arctic, and that the US supported Canada in its war for survival. Would you be as fast to believe that the reason the US was supporting the war was the opportunity for self-dealing? Would you support a deal in which Canada signed away Alberta to Russia?
I think that sometimes the surface level explanations are sufficient. It's worth remembering that the Iron curtain collapsed less than 40 years ago, well within living memory for decision makers in the EU.
The war is bad for the common people but very profitable for the EU elites. Zelenskyy is the manager at the largest money laundering machine in world history.
And in general, having an enemy is very important for oligarchs or tyrants wishing to abrogate freedoms at home. Why is Germany’s economy collapsing? Why did France just arrest the head of its main opposition party? Why were elections cancelled in Romania after the wrong candidate won? Russias fault - not Merkel, Macron or the EU’s.
In EU politics, the war has the opposite effect on what you're describing: It's getting more and more unpopular, and in many countries parties that argue for concessions to Russia, for the end of sanctions against Russia or for the end of Ukrainian support gain more and more traction (for example Georgescu/Simion in Romania, Babis in Czechia, AFD/Die Linke in Germany, Le Pen in France) or have already been elected (Fico in Slovakia).
It would have been much simpler for any of the EU 'elites' if the war had not taken place, and especially for Germany given their strong dependance on Russian gas in 2022.
Edit: Marine Le Pen has not been arrested, she has been sentenced to 2 years of jail (+2 of probation) which she will most likely do with electronic tagging outside of jail; and as she appealed this is suspended until the appeal judgment. This really has nothing to do at all with the war in Ukraine. I don't know how you came up with that.
Russia is a hostile power on EU borders with half of the EU having not so distant memory of having lived under the Russian boot. Either in the USSR as in the case of the Baltic states, as communist puppet states as is the case of Poland, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Romania, East Germany and even Hungary and Slovakia even though their governments are currently weirdly sympathetic to Russia for reasons similar to why Trump is sympathetic to Russia. Still more European countries were communist, albeit not under direct Russian influence (any country from the former Yugoslavia).
Then you Finland which were bullied (until recently) into neutral status by Russia and who Russia conquered territory from in a war for Finnish national existence still (somewhat) in the living memory (Winter war) and which had been a Russian subject before and subject to Russification efforts already in the 19th century (as was every single country ever which was directly controlled by Russia and to a lesser degree even those who were living in their puppet states!).
Then you have the UK where Russians actively performed terrorist actions (and they did the same in the Czech republic and Bulgaria).
To be a thorn in Europe's side and a very destabilising factor, Russia does not have to conquer Europe, it doesn't even have to conquer even any of the Baltic countries or even (non-EU) Moldavia. For Europe, ideal Russia would be one which broadly "converts" to European values. This is not likely to happen anytime soon, most likely ever. The Russians who are compatible with those values mostly leave Russia and those who stay are mostly not.
Since this won't happen, the second best solution is to have no Russia at all. I personally would love to see Russia disintegrated and split into smaller countries which could pose no threat to Europe at all. That is assuming the nukes somehow magically disappeared, the thought of a nuclear-armed independent Chechnya or who knows which batshit crazy post-Russian republic is pretty chilling.
Since the nukes aren't going to disappear, the only solution left is crippling Russia as much as possible so that it can no longer project any power abroad, at least not towards Europe. If we can achieve this by supporting a country which was attacked in an unprovoked aggression, then it is all the sweeter. If the only way to do that without the US support is for Europe to re-arm and re-gain the ability to project power on its own (now being more or less united in the most important foreign policy goals like "making sure Russia does not meddle in European affairs"), then all the better ... even if it means a temporary hit to welfare.
Russia is a poor and corrupt 3rd world country with the economy the size of Italy and a population third of the EU's. The only two reasons Europe treats it seriously is a) it has nukes and b) Europe has been enjoying the peace dividend fort too long. Now that is seems that b) is really going to change, it is time to treat Russia accordingly. I don't like the zone of influence view of the world but if Russia wants to play that game, then Russia is logically in the European zone of influence and not the other way around....if there just is enough will in Europe to invest a bit more and shift the way of thinking and finally it seems it might be.
> It almost feels like EU was promised "something" when Russia loses by the previous administration (a piece of Russian resources after the inevitable collapse of Putin's government?), and Trump is either unaware, or doesn't care.
You don't need some weird conspiracy theory.
Europe doesn't like Russia invading people.
Take a look at Poland. They hate immigrants. They've taken in Ukrainian refugees, though, because they still remember September 1, 1939.
When other people aren't obeying the models you have of them in your head, the problem isn't the other people, the problem is that your model of them is wrong.
There is. Putin doesn't need to conquer the entire continent in order to cause a lot of problems. The problem is when each small piece by itself seems okay - oh, its only Georgia, only Ukraine, now only Lithuania, and you don't realise the water has suddenly reached boiling point...
Yes, the range includes invading Estonia, or blowing up random warehouses in Europe, or poisoning people with radioactive isotopes in the middle of a busy European city, or cutting undersea cables, or hacking the power grid and blowing up a bunch of transformers, or etc. etc. and any combination of the above and beyond.
Disagree. As you write: "winding down the war in Ukraine" does not mean "peace in Europe". Most likely it means "Russia spends a few years rebuilding its army while Ukrainians emigrate in massive numbers, then Russia returns to finish its business and move on to the Baltic states and Poland". Whether Russia COULD conquer Europe is one question - probably not. But even trying it would be more than bad enough, and they are pretty much forced to try - Russia's economy is geared toward making war and little else right now, so just telling everyone to go home and grit their teeth as the economy collapses around them is not a good option for Putin.
So as long as Putin or someone who thinks like him is in power in Moscow, European remilitarization is inevitable, and probably European leaders would prefer to grind down Russia right now on Ukrainian soil rather than somewhere else later. The vibe I get so far here in Europe is that a common enemy (maybe two, depending on which way Trump goes) is doing a wonderful job of rekindling the European spirit.
"If he really wanted peace at any cost, he should have cut all aid to Ukraine once and for all." OR he should have announced that without a peace agreement he would double the military aid for Ukraine, and then increase it again at the end of the year, and then again the year after. But that would have required standing up to a fellow autocrat.
"The official explanation, of course, is that Russia will surely conquer the rest of EU if it's allowed even a little victory in Ukraine, but I can't force myself to believe..Russia doesn't have the manpower". The thing about gradually conquering other territories is that you gradually increase your resources.
Resources, not just manpower. If there is nothing to be gained, why are they doing it? It doesn't have to be over a short.time.frame, Russia has been .waiting years between one takeover and the next.
Manpower matters more than resources right now. Russia just don't have enough men, and will have even less of them further down the road (this is true for Ukraine, too, to a even greater degree; if Russia conquers Ukraine, it gains very little in terms of future recruits). I guess maybe AI can replace humans on the frontlines in 10-20 years, in which case recruits will matter less, and resources more, but I imagine EU will probably be ahead of Russia in that respect.
Both the Ukrainians and the Russians have much more serious manpower issues than in 2022, but the war is still raging with enormous intensity.
The reason is that it is being slowly robotized. Drones are now the top killers, responsible for 60 % battlefield deaths, and the development is still ongoing. We see drones chasing other drones, drone motherships carrying smaller drones onto a distant battlefield etc.
Manpower still matters, but drone power becomes decisive, and countries which have fought a life-and-death war using massive swarms of drones - which means Russia and Ukraine - have a potential natural advantage against countries that have been in peace for decades and whose old colonels and generals still think in patterns of the late 20th century.
If Russia had the easy win it was expecting , it would have enough men to left to continue a domino strategy.. The fact that it doesn't shows that fighting back s working, up to a point. If Ukraine had achieved peace by surrendering on day 1, as Trump and Vance recommended, the Russians would.have a 100% intact army, plus extra resources.
> any attempt to stop it without full Russian surrender is interpreted as hostile action
The EU still remembers the WWII lesson that appeasement doesn't work. It seems the US has either forgotten or does not care.
This is understandable: the US is half a world away from the action; the consequences barely touched its soil last time, and are unlikely to this time.
But yes, the countries actually heavily blooded by the last appeasement strategy's failure want to smack down hard on /anything/ that smells of a repeat, and will look with disfavour when third parties tell them to shut up, bend over and take it.
It's straight out of Schelling: if you don't want the action repeated, you need to punish it immediately, reliably, even when this policy costs you.
Compare: "America doesn't negotiate with terrorists".
Since EU is unwilling to start WW3 by putting the boots on the ground (and, really, starting a world war early is the only way to prevent a world war later, if you believe it's inevitable), I guess they're cynically using Ukrainians to bleed out Russia, so that when Russia wins in Ukraine (and, with the current level of EU resource commitment, Russia will eventually win), it's too weak to start anything else. But then, then only difference between EU and Trump might be that Trump believes this condition is already satisfied, and EU doesn't. But European reaction seems a bit too sharp for that.
Another cynical explanation is that EU THOUGHT it could slap down Russia easily in 2022, and now finds itself without an exit strategy that wouldn't collapse a government or two (and mostly in favour of extreme right or extreme left parties, since all centrists supported the war), if the voters start to question why all those resources were spent on supporting a hopeless cause in the first place, and so the European leadership "stays the course", praying for a miracle. And Trump can afford to defect from this coalition, because HIS voters are blindly loyal to him, so even if he suddenly announces that Russia and USA were always at war with Ukraine, nobody is going to call him out (at least nobody who was going to vote for him or his party anyway).
You make it sound like Ukrainians don't have any agency at all, as if Europe is commanding them to fight. You couldn't be more wrong. From the very start, Ukraine has been fighting and standing up for itself, even against the expectations of pretty much everyone else. Statements such as
> [EU are] cynically using Ukrainians to bleed out Russia
and
> EU THOUGHT it could slap down Russia easily in 2022
show that you fundamentally misunderstand the background of this war.
This. NATO and Ukraine have a common goal. The price NATO is paying towards that goal is cheap, the price Ukraine is paying is very dear. But this -- uneasy and unequal -- alliance only works as long as both sides are willing to continue with that. If 90% of the Ukrainians wake up tomorrow and think "we had it with bleeding out in the trenches, we should just surrender to Russia and trust Putin's mercy", there is nothing in the world NATO can do to stop them.
Also, I do not consider NATO to be paragons of morality here. We support Ukraine for selfish geo-strategic reasons, because they happen to fight our (prospective) enemy. In this case, the enemy of our enemy is much more sympathetic than their opponent (Zelenskyy won a democratic election in recent memory) and happen to have the international law (which forbids wars of aggression) on their side, but cynically, this is not why we support them. After all, the US happily supported the Mujaheddin and Bin Laden against the Soviets. Still, supporting Ukraine for the wrong reasons is better than not supporting them.
Ukraine was willing to make a deal in Istanbul in 2022, and then suddenly it wasn't. Since then, it was fighting on borrowed money and equipment. And whoever gives that to Ukraine controls whether it will go on fighting, so no, Ukraine doesn't have very much agency any longer (not "none at all", just not very much).
Not only that, but if Ukraine suddenly decides it wants to sign a peace deal without EU and USA say-so, I would guess it would find out that its creditors need their money back, and are no longer willing to tolerate any delays. Or, to put it in less predatory terms, if Ukraine is willing to fight to the end, West will help it rebuild, but if it decides to surrender to Russians on its own, then it will become Russian responsibility.
So it is in West's power to both stop the war very quickly, or to prolong it even if some number of Ukrainians aren't willing (of course, the later is only true to a point, so there is some agency in that, I give you that - people can always revolt, though it's harder to do when wartime restrictions are in place and security service is on a lookout for potential troublemakers).
"Ukraine was willing to make a deal in Istanbul in 2022, and then suddenly it wasn't."
There was a little matter of discovering hundreds of raped, tortured, murdered civilians in small towns north of Kyiv after Russians retreated, which made any deal with Russia politically and emotionally impossible for Ukrainians. So there's that, and you being a Russian I find it telling that you completely omitted that bit.
FWIW I think Zelenskiy made a mistake and should have bit the strap real hard and worked out a deal, like a true statesman. But this is easy for an American who didin't find a close relative or a friend in a mass grave to say.
Things can avail other than perfection. Ensuring that the "victory" is actually a nett loss -- which is the same thing as bleeding them out -- is achievable and working.
That motive for ending the Ukraine war is a fair assumption, mainly for the reason you gave, although access to all those minerals is another inviting prospect. Although broadly supportive of Trump's policies, I find it baffling that he seems so set on actually taking over countries like Greenland, and Canada, and even Gaza, when I'm sure they (or the first two anyway) would be only too happy to host US military bases wherever these were thought to be needed. Is it simply Trump's property acquisitive instincts being projected into national policy?
Bullying Canada would seem to encourage China to do more of the same with Taiwan, and North Korea with South Korea, etc. Also, because Canada is notably more left wing than most US states, if it did become part of the US, wouldn't its votes in national elections permanently skew the results towards the Democrats?
Regarding the EU, in the past the US has always encouraged NATO countries to relax and let the US take most of the strain in the alliance. That has not been for altruistic reasons but to prevent Europe becoming too much of a military threat to the US. So again, the long term result of suddenly asking the EU to pull their weight may end up being another competing block. That may sound implausible, but one only has to look at WW2, and then think of Germany, France, and the UK, and several other countries, maybe even Russia, all being on the same side against the US and fully manned and tooled up ready for another world war. Together they would be quite a handful!
> Also, because Canada is notably more left wing than most US states, if it did become part of the US, wouldn't its votes in national elections permanently skew the results towards the Democrats?
The funny part is that Canada was set for a conservative landslide up until Trump went to war against Canada for no reason. Trump has managed to make the party of Trudeau popular again.
“Although broadly supportive of Trump's policies, I find it baffling that he seems so set on actually taking over countries like Greenland, and Canada, and even Gaza, when I'm sure they (or the first two anyway) would be only too happy to host US military bases wherever these were thought to be needed. Is it simply Trump's property acquisitive instincts being projected into national policy?”
I think this is more ideological than that. It’s the “great” in MAGA, and a nod to the bygone age of manifest destiny, etc. Disrespecting the sovereignty and recognized borders of nation states is perhaps the biggest taboo of the “globalist” ideology that Trump sets himself in opposition to. Whether or not he actually achieves it, publicly floating territorial expansion is extremely transgressive and allows Trump to cast himself in the “great man” mold. I don’t think Trump fully appreciates all of this intellectually, but people around him do, and he understands it instinctually.
"So again, the long term result of suddenly asking the EU to pull their weight may end up being another competing block."
This. Having a de-facto monopoly on force is expensive, sure, but it has the advantage that you can, let's say... motivate the other parties to see your side of the issue. Telling them "you're on your own" is just inviting them to reply with, "okay then, so are you."
That said, no reasonable person in Europe is yearning for a world war rerun, and we'd be more than happy to see the US close the curtains on their clown show and return to sanity.
"Having a de-facto monopoly on force is expensive, sure, but it has the advantage that you can, let's say... motivate the other parties to see your side of the issue."
Not only this, but one could say that, due to its undisputed military power, the US has been able to custom-make the entire geopolitical world order of the past 80 years in order to funnel immense amounts of wealth from everywhere on earth back to themselves. In some kind of seemingly unspoken deal, the rest of the western world has accepted US military aegis, and in return has allowed the US to design the world economic order as it saw fit.
I think part of the issue is that, in order to maintain its official anti-imperialist stance, the US has mostly laundered its resource extraction through, as you say, customising the geopolitical world order to its benefit, rather than by annexing and taxing other countries or holding big, Achaemenid-style tribute parades. This has helped reconcile the other parts of the West to American dominance, because they're still officially equal and independent allies, but it also means that many Americans don't perceive the benefits they're getting. Hence all this resentment about everyone else "freeloading" off Uncle Sam's generosity.
When you stop thinking of Trump’s style as rational, and more instinctively bullying, then you’ll understand. His actual ideas may have more or less rational bases, but his style generally does not, and can be counterproductive to his goals.
Zero-Sum-Thinking: 'if a deal is beneficial for the other side, it therefore has to be bad for our side'
Opposition to agreements made by previous administrations: Trump's ego is too vulnerable to say "that deal that Obama/Biden made is excellent, we should keep it". He has to prove to himself that he is a better president than them, and thus can make better deals than these losers who did not even read his book.
In retrospect, what Biden should have done at the end of his presidency would have been to humiliate Zelenskyy and announce that the US would not offer any more military support, and perhaps make a peace deal with Russia. Perhaps then Trump would be like "that was a terrible peace deal, and my administration will of course support Ukraine".
I'd go even further. If you try to find a rational bases or guiding principle behind Trump's actions, you will have a heck of a time trying to understand and predict him. If you don't even try to find something coherent hiding behind Trump's "style" - everything is personality driven - it's much easier.
I'm sure Trump has something under there that could be divined, I just think trying to theory-wash his actions ends up being less helpful to explaining his actions and it's more effective to rely entirely on personality.
Thought experiments are nice, but if we keep interpreting all Trump's bad actions as "possibly a 5D chess move towards some greater good", there is a risk we might start actually believing it.
Humans are not perfect rationalists. If you spend too much time contemplating unlikely scenarios, especially if your contrarian ideas get socially rewarded online, you will become attached to them, and reality won't be able to compete with the emotional rewards of imagination. Many smart people became victims of this effect.
So this is a gentle reminded that Occam's razor says that if Trump did something stupid, the most likely explanations are that he actually made a stupid thing, or that he has some kind of deal that we don't know about because we wouldn't approve of it if we did.
A friend of mine has put up an amazing site with advice for how to use AIs as an academic in your daily work, including which AIs to use, example prompts, and so on.
Is there something he is missing? If you are academic, what's your most impressive way in which you have used AI for your work? For him, it's probably that he has produced high-quality lecture notes (> 100 pages) from previous video recordings of the lecture and from the lecturer's handwritten notes.
These are pretty comprehensive, and while I don't have any additional use cases, I think the discussion of the failure at the bottom of the page is not highly emphasised enough - the error looks superficially like a true statement, and it's highly likely that if one didn't already know the correct answer, one would overlook it.
The big topic which is not addressed here is assessment. I get a little satisfaction out of showing colleagues that an instruction like "Write in the style of a 17 year old with a B2 grasp of English, include some non-sequiturs and age- and culture-appropriate slang in your answer." really gives output indistinguishable from what the students would write. I think it's very reasonable to assume that in 2-3 years university students will be capable of writing prompts like Johannes; and if I'm pessimistic, might be capable of little else.
In subjects in which assessment is mostly essay-based, AI is deeply problematic. Unfortunately, those are the subjects where the lecturing staff are least equipped to understand AI... My lunchtime T&L talk entitled 'The essay is dead' are not well received. They will tell me that I'm wrong, and that they have e.g. white-text prompts "Use the word banana in the second paragraph" to identify AI use. This is sometimes the *only* idea that they have. Other times, they have the students fill a Word template with reflection on their assignment, not realising Claude or similar can accept the essay as input and generate the supplementary material without bother.
My own opinion is that formal in-person written tests should be conducted on every module, to ensure that students have mastered basic concepts of the subject. Ideally there would be interactive assessment (in class presentation, oral exam, etc) but this isn't practical with large numbers. And I don't know how to design written assignments that will engage students with the material over 10-15 hours and encourage them to think deeply about the topic.
I do think it's important for people who understand the use cases of AI to begin promoting solutions to the wider third level community.
It's actually rather sad that some academics just lose critical thinking when it comes to this.
"Outcome: Slightly shallow but often entertaining audio of podcast episode, can include some misunderstandings and hallucinations, but also some insightful analogies and approaches for explanations. Works best if the source material is not too inaccessible and complicated."
In no world would he have asked a 14 year old with access to google to summarise unread papers for him, but somehow it's ok to let NotebookLM do it.
Let's say the US launches a military invasion of Greenland next week and puts a few thousand troops on the island. What happens next? Do Scandinavian boats arrive and send warning shots? Or would they arrive before the invasion is complete and fire warning shots then? Isn't there some decent odds that someone would actually get killed and things could escalate?
>Let's say the US launches a military invasion of Greenland next week and puts a few thousand troops on the island. What happens next?
Given Greenland is not a member of the EU, but is part of the Kingdom of Denmark and Denmark IS a NATO member, I think a reasonable NATO response should be to bomb the US?
If a NATO member attacked Greenland, Denmark would likely invoke Article 5, claiming an attack on its territory. Since Denmark is a NATO member, the alliance would be bound to respond collectively and come to Denmark’s defense.
Following this, US would face political isolation, no/reduced military support from EU, and potentially massive sanctions. Not to mention US would no longer be welcome to be a NATO member, obviously.
Invading Canada would be yet another beast, and I'm not sure if the FVEY alliance holds after this, so any movements towards Canada or Greenland would greatly isolate America. And at such point, US might as well build a wall around its own territory—China's great wall style—and stop talking to the world at large, because uh, bullies always end up isolated.
I understand the logic behind Trump movements, I do, and I also understand his methods (he is moving the public dialog towards the "reasonable" option, aka moving the Overton Window). But there is a lot of economic resentment in the world right now, including inside US mainland, not sure if following Bannon/Musk ideas as gospel is the optimal strategy given the timing.
I suspect that someone probably gets killed by Americans even before a concerted EU response arrives. Like, I feel the odds of successfully marching into Nuuk, arresting the Parliament of Greenland, seizing the local police stations, arresting any danish soldiers present, etc. etc. without at least one person shooting back (or resisting and getting shot) are pretty low.
(The US military base in Greenland seems to have at least some Danish soldiers present, but I can't find out how many from Google.)
Like, even if you get total surprise, all the organized resistance surrenders immediately, and your manufactured excuse for invading didn't involve any dead bodies, there's going to be at least one random police officer who tries to be a hero, right?
> The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.
Presumably, Trump would not honor his NATO obligations to hit himself, and likely Europe will not want to play global thermonuclear war with the US, but we would likely render aid to Denmark way above the level we render aid to Ukraine.
Canada in particular would have a vested interest in keeping Trump occupied in Greenland for pretty much the same reason that Eastern Europe is interested in keeping Putin busy in Ukraine. (Here the similarities end: Greenland is virtually empty.)
At the very least, Trump would get his wish of the rest of NATO investing 2% of their GDP into defense -- for example, in ICBMs which can make it over the Atlantic.
By the way Trump wants 5% (if that happened, European NATO militaries would outspend USA and China COMBINED ... I don't really think Trump should want that ...) and the European NATO members are already mostly above 2% (with the exception of Spain, Italy, also Luxembourg but who cares). In some cases they are outspending the US already (Poland, Baltics) and most have announced going close to or above 3% soon.
Probably no deaths, but the invasion would backfire against the U.S. and Trump incredibly badly. In the end, the U.S. troops would leave and any American annexation claims over the island would be rescinded.
One more realisic scenario would be, that they enlarge their military presence, on the ground and with boats patroling. Maybe they start patroling in towns to "ensure the savety of the people". I could imagine some provoked incident, protests of the greenlanders, following some 'anti-terrorist' action by the US, step by step enlarging US influence, until they find the necessity to 'temporaryliy' take over the executive on the island to 'pacify' greenland.
You honestly think 60k people protesting is relevant enough for US to intervene? Denmark rules Greenland defense, so any "state of siege" would fall under Danish jurisdiction, so it is up to Denmark to activate emergency powers or deploy forces to Greenland if the situation warranted, not America lol. And given Trump stance over their territory, I don't think Denmark would welcome with any significant enlargement of US military presence there at this point.
I think one important effect which would happen almost immediately is that every European country would break leases with American military bases overnight. It would become a huge liability to have American assets in your country, given that America will have demonstrated that it is willing to invade a nominal ally. (I understand Trump supporters have a theory on why Greenland is not Danish territory, but of course the people they need to convince are not other Trump supporters but rather NATO ally governments, who very much DO see Greenland as Danish territory).
This would substantially reduce American power projection across the Middle East and Africa, which - by the nature of these things - would substantially increase Chinese power projection over these regions.
Probably assertions by the orange man saying our troops are there to dissuade Russian aggression in the region. If asked to leave, they probably don't. Orange man says they are nessecary to protect Greenland from harmful foreign interests. Things are awkward. The dollar becomes weaker as a world reserve currency and countries turn towards (?)? The world becomes less stable. Previously friendly nations continue to make inroads into avoiding trade with the US where possible, to reduce US leverage.
Civil war in america, probably a left wing assassination attempt, very angry judges; this all escalating quite quickly, blm like riots, and half of other nation states; roll the dice between eu finding itself or disolving to the old battle lines.
Every fake nation state in africa or middle east drop the pretense of the un,ambassadors get held hostage for a few extra months of "food aid"? mility coups?.
Social media starts to become region locked, gab finally gets banned in eu, twitter probably trys to work by regional blocks of content but these will escalate rapidly as people like me mock the left.
Global trade holds its breath delaying shipments for a day or two as people talk to lawyers but probably doesn't quite break, but its damaged insurance rates will never be the same.
In a week every cold-ish war turns hot; *except* Taiwan
I don't think a full-scale civil war is on the cards; possibly a coup, if enough senior officials and military officers decide that Trump (and possibly his senior advisers as well) has gone mad enough to threaten the well-being of the Republic, but I don't think anybody would want a drawn-out shooting war over Greenland.
If Trump does actually occupy the place, the main effect is probably that pretty much every European country cancels the leases of US bases and ceases military co-operation. Probably a lot of non-European countries do, as well. China is likely to be a net winner, because its biggest geopolitical rival has just torpedoed its international influence; if they can get their act together (which, granted, is far from a given), Europe also does well, insofar as they're now an independent bloc free from US control.
> if enough senior officials and military officers decide
"and then everyone lived happily ever after"
If trump dies without plausible deniability via cia hands Im quite sure that, not only will it lead to civil war, but that enough of the general public will defect and it will be a right-wing favored war.
Half the country preferred trump to harris and its the half with food and guns, I may not like when blm burns down a leftist city but thats the left attacking the left, it allows right-wing indifference.
This is a sidetrack, but what are the odds of leftwing vs. rightwing assassination or assassination attempt? Leaders are reasonably likely to be killed by someone extreme from their own side.
As it stands I believe trump would be more useful as a martyr now and he is of course a boring moderate in practice while the actual right may just play to win; its non-zero.
But The raw hysteria of the left is nothing to shake a stick at; 1000:1; it would honestly be shocking if there werent several attempts in the next 4 years.
American world police support is dying down and the eu is a vassal
Id prefer a methodical dismantling of the american empire, cutting off is very different then picking a fight as you leave. Im not entirely sure what would happen, but one possibility is ..... nothing, france, uk and germany pick up on of their old wars.
Europe mattered for the cold war, economic bribery to slow the spread of reds when there was the soviets; realistically india and japan should probably be getting bribed to make a wall vs china (or handle the cartels). Maybe the gernals are still fighting the soviets, I know aspects of the cia are.
A weaker europe would probably just increase our brain drain of them
Violence is just in the air can you not feel it? Luigi was praised by left and right, "fiery but peaceful" protests are just a thing, war happens when young men dont have better things to do it lowers mate competition and access to resources in exchange for real vitality.
Trump is already a coup on fdr's order, If trump does something frankly retarded like risk a *western* power war the left will go mental, how are they suppose to swap sides with amnesty when the time is right if trump breaks every unspoken rules? a) he is having a drastic effect so you dont stay nuertal, you panic and try to stop the enemy b) he will be weaker at the moment, the neocons will jump ship c) there were just a few assassination attempts *that we know about* assassinations leading to war isnt exactly that much of a strech
> Who's fighting who and with what armies?
Cities vs rural, cia vs the "domestic terrorist" lists; everything important is about the mass at the center idolical support, purple states and centrists unfortunately king-make here even after violence starts cause of economics and information can come from even the worthless conformists, even if kinetic power is undervalued as political power; 99% of the population is 99% of the population.
The purple would be forced to have an opinion for some reason, maybe a federal judge chains themselves to a miltrey runway saying the congress declares wars(legally true but of course hasn't been enforced in decades) and gets run over because air tarrific control doesn't usually have to deal with idiots walking in front of planes and expecting to win.
This seems way too pessimistic. Trump has a core base of ideological supporters that also happen to be the most vocal about gun ownership, he’s currently president so has the mandate of the army and the opposition hasn’t actually made Greenland a major talking point other than thinking it’s outrageous.
A military invasion of Greenland almost certainly wouldn’t trigger a civil war. The left simply doesn’t care, and how it would play out in practice is:
The US invaded without telling anyone they were going to do so
Denmark protests, the US claims it’s just protecting the Greenlanders, it’s sent to an endless circle of mediation/courts to decide
In the meantime the US “facilitates” a vote for independence, which already has majority support, so rigging might not even be necessary
The left in the US isn’t going to go die for Greenland, since it’s not an important issue to them. The EU isn’t going to declare war since the whole operation will be wrapped in a layer of formality and they have bigger problems on their border to the east.
>In the meantime the US “facilitates” a vote for independence, which already has majority support, so rigging might not even be necessary
But everybody would know that "independence" wouldn't mean proper independence, but becoming a US puppet, for which there is absolutely no desire in Greeland whatsoever.
Outright annexation and imposition of foreign order is definitely undesirable. Independence from Denmark, some time frame of guaranteed aid by the United States (probably some multiple of their current aid + mining investment) on the road to associated state status in a decade or two is a lot more palatable.
Few people on the left or the middle give a shit about Greenland because of Greenland.
They do give a shit about the US invading an ally and member of NATO.
I used to be that an example of a thing that causes a President to be impeached or 25th Amendmented would be "lol they call for an invasion of Canada." It was taken for granted that this was obviously stupid and obviously impeachable and illegal order and the President would get carted out of office and into a rubber room.
Now? Who the fuck knows.
The error bars around what happens if Trump orders an invasion of Greenland are huge. There are so many variables at play. I don't trust anyone who says confidently that the military will or won't comply with that order. We're jumping through a dark door with no idea of what's on the other side.
Philip Roth’s satire “Our Gang,” he actually has the fictional Nixon invade Denmark:
“For we are all familiar with the belligerent and expansionist policies of the state of Denmark, in particular the territorial designs that country has had upon the continental United States ever since the eleventh century. As you remember, at that time landings were made upon the North American continent by forces under the command of Eric the Red, and later under the command of his son, Leif Erikson. These landings by the Red family and their Viking hordes were of course made without warning and in direct violation of the Monroe Doctrine.... So when you ask me if our national security is threatened by these Danes, with their long-standing history of open contempt for our territorial integrity, I think I have to answer in all candor, yes it is.”
That was supposed to be parody. Now it is unrealistic only because this quote is too coherent and reveals too much knowledge of history to be a plausible Trump quote.
That's an open question, but you don't plausibly get Greenland to become part of the USA until it's broken away from Denmark. How you get from point B to C doesn't matter if you can't get from point A to B.
This seems to be the current attitude of the administration:
"What we think is going to happen is that the Greenlanders are going to choose, through self-determination, to become independent of Denmark, and then we’re going to have conversations with the people of Greenland from there" - J.D. Vance
Im answering for the 1 week time table; and a basicly insane trump; real trump and actaully trying would take at least a year and do things like putin pushing for an election before invading.
I think peace comes from when others will punish the aggressor who didnt follow the ritual, and trump couldnt get congress to pass a motion of "if green land wants to join we let them" running a "survey" in greenland that promotes the idea and gets biased results etc.
> The left in the US isn’t going to go die for Greenland,
*congress* and the courts, will have opinions about changing the numbers(see the slave state compromises before the civil war) or starting a war(and funding it)
The EU isn't going to.do nothing. If the US switches from.being an ally in Ukraine to no help,.and then from no help to a potential invader, Europe will want them out.
Anybody want to meet up in Tokyo or Singapore next month?
I'm a Bay Area ML researcher traveling to AI safety conferences in Tokyo and Singapore in April. I have a couple weeks between the two conferences, and it'll be my first time in Asia, so it'd be cool to meet up with local ACX/SSC readers while I'm there.
Why isn’t Jaak Panksepp’s work more widely known? I’ve always wondered what was up with emotions, and he gave the best answer I’ve found in terms of tying together emotions as commonly understood with neuroscience and evolutionary needs. Yet I don’t find he’s as widely read or as influential as I would expect. I also don’t see any competing explanations or critiques of his work; it just seems like people aren’t very curious about emotions.
I’m curious if others are familiar with his research, and whether there are issues with it or better alternative explanations?
In particular I’m thinking of the Seven Primary Emotional Systems — the book The Archaeology of Mind identifies core emotional systems based on neurobiological research (e.g direct stimulation of certain neural circuits). He writes them in all caps to distinguish the neural circuits / primary emotions from ordinary uses of the same words:
SEEKING: Drives motivation and goal-directed behavior.
RAGE: Relates to aggression and anger.
FEAR: Associated with anxiety and avoidance behaviors.
LUST: Linked to sexual motivation and behavior.
CARE: Underlies nurturing and social bonding.
PANIC/GRIEF: Related to sadness and separation distress.
A quick web search shows Panksepp's TED talk from 2014 and discussion of his 9 minutes a day that matter for kids advice but not a narrative documentary.
Oh! Thanks for deciphering this for me. Now I’m imagining the Panksepp version…
You’d have to remove Disgust. Joy seems to combine SEEKING and PLAY, but SEEKING is involved in many of the emotions and seems difficult to portray.
Sadness seems more like depression (ie lack of SEEKING) than PANIC/GRIEF, which is more centered around separation distress and loss. So you’d have to remix this character too.
Anger and Fear can probably stay as they are, but then you’d also need to add LUST and CARE.
My latest monthly Long Forum wrap up of the best long form content is fresh off the press.
Highlights include an economic analysis of how the USA created the EU, a new deep genomic "split and merge" model of human evolution, a stunning theory for the role of music in human evolution, and an elaboration of Cosmic Natural Selection that shows the theory has legs.
Low. There's already a conservative majority so why would the right want to muck with it? I think it's much more likely that the next Democratic administration does it as a repudiation of MAGA. They have much more to gain. AOC has tweeted to this effect.
Even a few conservative justices won’t give Trump a rubber stamp. Eventually he’ll probably clash with them since he himself doesn’t seem to have any internal limits about use of executive orders.
Trump also doesn’t care what happens after he’s out of office so the prospect of retaliatory packing by a future democratic president won’t influence him. Maybe congressional republicans or JD Vance, who hope to be around in more than 4 years, would pull him pack. But inasmuch as he can destroy most of their careers by turning the base against them, if he insists, they have to go along with it.
Yeah this is actually a real upside to political parties that I never see mentioned. They last longer than administrations and therefore embody more long-term thinking. As a conservative I'm currently torn between enjoying the spectacle and dreading the backlash.
"Succeed" as in "adds judges", or "succeed" as in "the judges rule in his favor"? Even if he manages to add a bunch of judges, he's getting blocked by judges he added last time, there's no reason to think he's gotten any better at picking them.
Trump has gotten much better at picking obedient sycophants. His first administration - and judicial appointments - were mostly ordinary republicans, many of whom pushed back against him and constrained him. He’s since learned his lesson it seemed. I don’t think he’d appoint just old fashioned federalist society judges, but would pick only individuals who’ve already publicly embraced him.
I'll take the odds of success if attempted first: pretty low. Court-packing requires and act of Congress, and Republicans have a razor-thin majority in the House (218 to 213), and their Senate majority is only a little larger (53+Vance to 47). Three or four Republicans in either house would kill a court-packing bill. Moreover, a court packing bill could and would be filibustered, so they would need 50 Republican Senators to not only vote for court packing but also vote to nuke the filibuster to pass it.
Trump has a lot of leverage with Congressional Republicans, and by this point a lot of them are fully on board with Trump, but not an infinite amount for the former and far from all of them for the latter. In January 2021, 64 Republicans in the House and 44 in the Senate voted to count the officially certified electoral votes from Pennsylvania, and 83 and 45 respectively did so for Arizona. Trump's objections to the electors from Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Georgia died without a full vote because zero Senators were willing to sign on to the effort.
I think it very likely he will want to try packing the court, but the very low likelihood of succeeding would probably kill the idea in the trial balloon stage.
Other possible responses to a big SCOTUS loss would be just taking the loss, telling the courts to go fly a kite, or trying to circumvent the ruling through foot-dragging and bad-faith interpretations. I think the last is the most likely, especially since he already seems to be doing it over small losses in court. Accepting a legitimate loss doesn't seem to the Trump's style, although he might turn to it if all other options are exhausted. And brazenly open defiance of SCOTUS would be one of the few things Trump could do that might actually get enough Senate Republicans to turn against him and vote to remove him from office.
For someone interested in improving bone density and adding lean mass trying to get into strength training, who is worried about getting injured (past experiences), what might be better :
1. Pilates on the machine they have or
2. a small group barbell strength training with a personal trainer who starts you real easy?
What are the pros and cons?
How does one protect oneself from injury?
I'm always told "Listen to your body", but the body doesn't speak until it is too late :).
I had a few minor injuries when getting back into weight training. My solution was to start very light, progress slowly, and hyper-focus on proper technique for many months before challenging myself with any substantial weight increases. I recorded every set and reviewed my form before the next set. If something looked off I would watch a video to remind myself how to do it correctly. Whenever I injured myself I would put my workout in Chatgpt, tell it my symptoms, and ask it for possible causes.
Stronglifts 5x5 has thorough explanations of how to do the major compound lifts on their website.
If you have any permanent injuries to work around, or want to avoid the hassle of teaching yourself, then maybe seek help from a professional.
What about a physical therapist? I believe they have to have more training than personal trainers and there are some who work mostly with athletes recovering from injuries. Those PT’s understand wanting to build strength safely, and what ways it’s safe to train a body with a fragile part.
Can you say more about your previous injuries? Do you have specific issues that put you at risk of injury, or in the past were you just lifting too heavy too fast / with poor technique?
Assuming you don't have specific issues:
There's a case for something like pilates or yoga *alongside weight training* to increase your range of motion. For example, my understanding is that tight hamstrings can make it hard to do a full squat or deadlift, and trying to force it will cause your form to degrade and risk causing injury.
I would recommend you talk to a few of the weights instructors you've been looking at and explain that you've suffered injury in the past and want to progress slowly and cautiously with a heavy focus on correct form. Judge from their reaction who would be best for you. If you have the option of doing pilates or yoga separately as well then it can't hurt - although it should be possible to do just weights if you go slow and steady and have someone making sure your technique is sound.
In general, Pilates is not going to load your bones enough to improve bone density at all. So if that's an explicit goal, barbell strength training with a coach or trainer is the way I'd go.
Be sure to bring up your history of injury, so they can closely monitor the parts of movements that may stress those parts of the body. They can typically offer alternative lifts or movement patterns that don't stress a given part as much.
Protection from injury is achieved by working out under a skilled eye, and by slowly progressively overloading - when your muscles and tendons are stronger and more capable over time, you are safer from injury as well.
The trainers I am considering all have similar certifications and experience. I guess I just have to trust one. Are they really trained in reducing injury risk?
Look for the CSCS certification and ignore all others (https://www.nsca.com/certification/cscs/). Every coach I trained under who had this certification (and one gym only hired coaches with this certification) was good.
You can get personal trainer certifications via taking online courses and then a multiple choice exam. Try googling “online personal trainer certification courses.” I would not trust one unless a knowledgeable friend recommended them.
A good one should know enough physiology and movement patterns to genuinely help reduce the risk of injury, yes.
That said, quality can vary - you can usually do a "tryout" session with one before committing. The things I would look for are IQ, former athletes, and an interpersonal mentoring style you're comfortable with.
People travelling internationally have for a long time had few rights at the borders of countries they're not citizens of, and we've heard horror stories of people being detained over misunderstandings, on flimsy evidence - or "correctly" over matters that many of us just wouldn't have expected to be a problem, before. Border crossings are a context where travellers are fairly at the mercy of border agents, who can have a lot of discretion. It feels like this has gotten worse, globally, in the last few decades.
I'm happy that recent stories we've heard in the context of the Trump administration are drawing more attention to the risks travellers face if they haven't crossed their i's and dotted their t's, or sometimes even if they have. I have no idea whether more people are actually getting caught up in these situations than previous or if it's just that we're hearing about more examples, but it's been a huge blind spot in recent years and good to shine some light one it. It's a context where by its nature there is little democratic pushback on excesses, so it seems like risks to travellers being detained, invasiveness of e.g. searching their devices and social media etc have just increased and there's been almost no force pushing the other way.
I'm curious if anyone knows of any hard numbers that might show how things have changed over time and whether they're actually worse under Trump or if it's just being reported on more. It seems to be a bit of an assumption that e.g. random border detention of travellers is new or at least more frequent in recent months, and I guess I'm not convinced it is, though I also wouldn't bet that it isn't.
The asymmetry between the rights given to citizens vs not seems frankly insane a lot of the time. I wonder if it's a space where there should be some reciprocal agreements negotiated between countries about the rights their citizens have at each others' borders or whilst travelling on visas. It seems bizarre to travel from one country where you have a tonne of rights to another country whose citizens have a tonne of rights, and for there to be this brief period in between where you might get detained and have your stuff searched or destroyed.
For Germans, I am pretty sure the numbers have increased, from zero to a small number. At least for the severe cases where German citizens are detained for at least 24 hours without being allowed to contact anyone, leaving their hosts and relatives deeply troubled. I think those cases would have made the news also before Trump, so I assume that they didn't exist back then, but there have been such cases in the last weeks.
Australian perspective. Full citizens in Australia (and of course non-citizens) must give up their phone/laptop along with passcode if requested at the border (I assume this is required in most countries apart from the US that has strong personal liberty norms).
On this, in years of doing business in China, you just assume the authorities are going to fully image whatever phones or laptops you bring in.
So you deliberately bring wiped or burner phones or laptops that basically work like edge devices connecting back to servers at home with any files you need, through built-in hardware VPN devices you take with you (because you also don't trust most endpoints).
Depends how you phone is locked. US citizens can be forced to unlock a phone with biometrics (touch id / face id). But are constitutionally protected from being forced to provide the passcode. But if you don't they can still detain your device for a few days even if they let you in.
Are the proponents of the untested Term Limits Theory of the Twenty-Second Amendment expected to have standing to sue if Trump were to run for a third term?
States have the right to exclude candidates from the ballot if they are clearly and objectively constitutionally ineligible. I think this was most recently upheld in a Ninth Circuit case,
Lindsay v. Bowen (2014), which ruled against a would-be third party Presidential candidate (Peta Lindsay), who had been kept off the ballot in California on the grounds that she was 27 years old, which is less than the constitutionally mandated age of 35.
There is other case law that neither states nor Congress can add their own substantive eligibility requirements for federal office beyond the qualifications listed in the Constitution, and that (as of the most recent election cycle) the insurrection clause of the 14th amendment requires an act of Congress to enforce. But states disqualifying would-be candidates based on age and residency requirements is routine.
If enough states were to decline to act, though, I'm not sure who would have standing to act. I think there is precedent for Congress disqualifying votes for ineligible Presidential candidates, namely the 1872 election, in which electoral votes for Horace Greeley weren't counted because he had died prior to the electoral college votes being case, although I have a relatively low level of confidence in my understanding of the details there. But that depends on Congress acting.
If an ineligible candidate were to be accepted by Congress as the electoral college winner, there is language in the 12th Amendment about ineligible winners: the VP-elect becomes President if the President-elect is ineligible (or dies before inauguration day), and the next person in the statutory line of succession becomes President if both are dead or ineligible. As for standing to enforce this, the person with the clearest standing would be the VP-elect (or the next person in the line of succession if both are ineligible, currently the Speaker of the House). So Trump's running mate would very probably have standing to challenge Trump's eligibility in court at the last minute. Legally at least; politically, it would be rather awkward.
Possibly. They're pretty likely to have standing for "My opponent shouldn't be on the ballot" lawsuits during the campaign, but less likely to have standing for an "I should be President, not him" lawsuits afterwards. For the former, the problem is that case law is generally against states having a judicially-enforcable duty to keep unqualified candidates off the ballot, although the cases I know of are more situations that would require active investigation if the claims of ineligibility are taken seriously (namely, the conspiracy theory that Obama was born in Kenya and his Hawaiian birth certificate was falsified), not situations where the relevant facts are uncontested public record. For the latter, the problem is that it's unclear what would have happened if the ineligible candidate is off the ballot, and it's black-letter law what should happen when the Electoral College winner is ineligible and it isn't "the runner up in the electoral college becomes President".
Probably it comes down who excludes an ineligible candidate from the ballot. SOCTUS already said the states aren't able to do that. If he is on the ballot and wins, then maybe the electoral college. If not them, congress. But in a scenario where Trump runs again it is really hard to imagine any of them actually acting to stop Trump (provided he seems to have a resonable chance of winning).
People seem to miss the messy reality of authoritarianism. Its not that elections stop happening, its that they become harder and harder for the opposition to win. The media only gives airtime to one candidate, opposition voters are discouraged from turning out, opponents are arrested or discredited, and so on. The same with a third term - in the end, no one can stop that happening except the voters.
Trump v. Anderson is specific to the 14th Amendment. The ruling relies on arguments over whether or not the insurrection clause is self-executing. It doesn't reach the more general question of whether states can exclude candidates who are ineligible for Article II or 22nd Amendment reasons, which circuit courts have ruled in favor of as recently as 2014 (Lindsay v. Bowen).
Nothing notable at the time of writing, but if they could come up with alternative theories to the Unitary Executive and the Independent State Legislature, on which the Constitution is no less clear, I expect someone to be able to come up with at least one for this.
So the 22nd says no one can be elected to a third term but it doesn't say they can't serve. The 12th amendment doesn't say anything about election just service. So it's proposed to elect the termed out president as VP and have the president resign. This could also apply deeper in the line of succession.
What if he copies from Robot Richard Nixon in Futurama, who argues that "noBODY" shall be elected 3 times, but putting his brain in a robot body counts as a new body...
What if he got a sex change. Sure Donald Trump has been president for two full terms, but what about Donna Trump? What are progressives going to do, suppress his right to live his true identity as a woman? Checkmate, liberals.
I don't think that would work, legally speaking. Undergoing a sex change doesn't make you a new person in the eyes of the law; it's not as if any contracts you've entered into become void at the moment of transition, for example. So even if Trump has a new legal name and sex, he'd still be ineligible to run again.
(And yes, I realise your post was probably tongue-in-cheek, but what can I say, I'm a pedant.)
The Twenty Second Amendment says that no one “shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice”. The Twelfth Amendment says that “constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.” So there’s an argument that being ineligible to be elected to an office isn’t the same as being ineligible “to” the office. Certainly if Trump (or Clinton or Obama or Bush) ended up lower down on the lien of succession I don’t see anything that would prevent them from assuming the presidency again.
My understanding is that the amendment specifically prohibits anyone who has held the office of president for two terms from holing the office of VP, for this exact reason.
The eligibility to hold office from the 12th is different from the 22nd. That requirement is only that the office holder must be a US citizen of age 35+ (or whatever it is). This is separate from the 22nd which only mentions election. Or so the theory goes.
I'm sure many of you saw OpenAI's new image generator release. I decided to run the prompts from Scott's bet with Vitor (https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/i-won-my-three-year-ai-progress-bet) to see how the new state-of-the-art model handles them. Spoilers: it performs amazingly.
The factory worker in #3 looks strikingly like one of the models in a John Patrick Downie painting of an Irish farmer. Even the style matches Downie. Gak! But he didn't paint cats AFAIK.
I agree that Scott declared victory far too early, but I think Flux (from ~six months ago) met the criteria for the bet. It never got the key in the raven's beak though.
On what grounds? Iiuc law enforcement are allowed to detain people for a while without charges normally (I guess this could be a "lack of probable cause" fourth amendment issue, but there could also be a cause the article doesn't mention).
(I've sort of been arguing the ICE side here so I should clarify that I'm not generally pro their side, I'm just arguing the very narrow point that this may not have been a blatant constitutional violation).
What grounds could ICE (an immigration enforcement agency) possibly have to detain a US citizen, who is by definition not subject to immigration control?
According to the article he was carrying his ID and Social Security card which would have let them look it up his citizenship - yet they took it away with his wallet and detained him for hours anyway.
Is ICE allowed to detain any citizen for hours just by saying "we didn't know you're a citizen", even if said citizen is literally carrying proof of citizenship?
Neither a drivers license nor a ss card is proof of citizenship. Both are regularly issued to non-citizens via both legal and less-than-legal channels. And yes, ICE (and and other law enforcement for that matter) is legally allowed to detain you for basically any reason provided they can invent even the flimsiest of pretexts.
I saw something about one woman scooped up as an illegal immigrant and she had a fake Social Security number so she could get work, so yeah - just producing "here's my social security number" is no evidence of being a citizen.
Note that the article is quoting his lawyers; it's hardly a neutral source.
Re the specific documents, I don't actually think you can verify citizenship with those? There's no central citizen registry and noncitizens can also get driver's licenses and SS cards (that's why employers want a passport or something else for proof of citizenship).
There are lesser protections from search and seizure in the 100 mile border zone - which is to say 100 mile radius from any external border. As you might imagine, this includes the majority of the US population, and for instance 100% of the state of Florida. And the standard for detention is "reasonable suspicion", which is a lesser standard than probable cause. However, court precedent has established that ethnicity/race on its own is not enough to establish reasonable suspicion.
Agreed that if there was no further cause than his ethnicity that's probably a violation of precedent (although I don't know enough about the practical standards to know if that's particularly blatant for LE - I'd guess that that's the level of violation that routinely happens by mistake). The article just quotes that as a claim by his lawyers though, the ICE officers may claim to have had more cause.
I haven't heard of any big-budget computer games using LLMs (for example, for character dialogue). Why not? Cost? Technical barriers? People being slow to move to a new paradigm?
I recently saw an advert for an indie game that's using LLMs for dialogue. The premise is kind of an anime escape room - you're stuck in a room with your yandere girlfriend, and you want to get out of there, but she's crazy and doesn't want you to leave her. So you need to talk to her to find out how to escape the room, without her getting suspicious and killing you.
I have no idea if it's any good, but I think it's thinking along the right lines. It's using free-text conversations to give a unique challenge that couldn't be done with just a dialogue tree, and since the girl is crazy it's okay if the dialogue is a little janky.
I think it will come eventually. I've seen a few casual games recently where the art style is very clearly AI generated, and I can only imagine that graphics will increasingly be created using AI either as assistant or even alone.
Once that gets smoothed out enough, I think big budget games companies will seize on any opportunity to reduce costs and improve productivity. Character dialogue is trickier but yeah, eventually the AI will handle that too.
Since the outcome of dialogue in videogames are constrained by the game's actual content, the alpha of automatically generating dialogue instead of pre-writing it is low in the best case, and large and negative in the worst case. In addition, an LLM by itself is not enough to enable freeform text or speech as an input; you have to change the entire interface of the game to enable this. In most games dialogue options are multiple choice. One thing you could do is use an LLM to generate the multiple choice options. But then how much are you getting out of doing that over just pre-writing the dialogue? The other option is you enable freeform text input using either the keyboard or text-to-speech, in which case you've completely changed how the game can be played. E.g. it's no longer possible to play it on your steam deck while you ride the train or whatever. And even if people bite on this, the outcome of the dialogue tree still is quite constrained: in the end what happens has to be one of the things that is actually programmed to happen in the game. You can't convince the big evil dragon to go off and marry you if there isn't actual content for the dragon wedding in the game (at least not yet!).
Just for writing character dialogue ? Probably because they don't want to burst a PR bubble/their players wouldn't like it. I doubt most RPG players would be happy to learn that a game was actually the window guided output of an inhuman machine.
A game that uses it live ? Well big budget games take a long time to make. GPT 4 came out just about a year ago. Wait five years and you might see a couple.
Also competition for resources on the users machine. Need 8 to 16gb of vram to run a decent model on your machine, so say goodbye to... having any high res textures or high poly models in your Video game ?
Running it online means long running servers or long running contract with OpenAI or similar, also puts it in the purview of new project built with it in mind, so, also a factor for wait another five years and see
FWIW, I interviewed with a big-budget company doing exactly that. The game was quite ambitious, so it will probably take a while before it's released. So maybe the games are on the way, it's just that there's a bit of a development delay.
Anyone who seriously looks into this realises that it just creates procedural oatmeal. Character dialogue is a great way to elevate a game, insert some humour, world-building, pathos etc. Filling it with generated generica is usually a missed opportinity.
There's already a ton of AMD users complaining they can't use the feature or makes their computer slow. It's a super mini LLM, about as small as you could hope for. But the graphics load of the game itself is quite high.
Big-budget games need it the least (on account of having a battalion of writers on the payroll) and are the most risk-averse (on account of having a big budget). They are also the most likely to do stuff like full voice acting, which means the player typing in a response would feel out of place.
The adoption trend is currently mods > tech demos > indies > AAA, so roughly in decreasing order of investment. I have already seen libraries for LLM integration in some game engines.
As others already mentioned, LLMs are also too heavy on the GPU to be worth running on the consumer hardware, and going over the network requires consistent network access, probably cost, and you're building in a dependency on a third party which can mess you up at any minute.
The niche for freeform dialogue is also pretty small. Most game writing is a highly curated experience - if you are writing an RPG, you want the character's persuasiveness to determine the outcome, not the player's, for example, and in other cases what the NPC says is carefully designed to reveal details about the setting or mechanics.
What others haven't noted yet is the legal risks in an evolving regulatory environment. A big studio can ill afford to have their game pulled from the EU or the US over copyright issues, which are still being decided on, so calling LLMs "a new paradigm" is premature in any case.
Also, the "writing" part of a large game involves a lot more than just dialogue. A writer builds the entire world, of which dialogue is but a small part. The entire setting, its characters, history, geography etc. are all relevant to the plot and have to be consistent across the project. I'm not sure today's LLMs can even do that at such scale and such consistency.
Gamers absolutely hate genAI in games. They're smart enough to understand that companies are going to use genAI to create low-cost low-quality content, but not smart enough to realize they shouldn't have been supporting those kinds of game companies to begin with.
Like a lot of tech companies, game companies stopped caring about customer satisfaction when they realized customers won't leave them even after treating the customers poorly.
Live dialogue I'd say no, but creating canned responses for "the player character wants to buy material from your shopkeeper" style dialogue? Let the AI create that rather than having a human work on it, shave off some development time where the human can work on the main plot instead.
Then a player figures out how to befuddle the LLM shopkeeper into hallucinating that the price of a full suit of plate armor is three copper pieces. Now what? If the transaction is processed at the price the LLM agreed to, then the game is broken as soon as the player posts the "infinite stuff" hack to the right forums. If the transaction is processed at the prior hard-coded price, then there's a disconnect between what the "shopkeeper" says and what he *does* that is going to piss off the player and undo everything you hoped to accomplish with the LLM cleverness.
And hard-coded mathematical constraints like "whatever the player says, never accept a price less than X gp", are I think not the sort of things LLMs can be trusted with yet.
Gamers are always figuring out hacks and cheats and get-arounds anyway, so even legitimate non-AI games have exploits for "infinite gold/no weight limits" and so on.
(I, ahem, may or may not have made use of one or two for a particular game myself).
I doubt this will happen much outside of small indie games. Writing dialogue can already be farmed out to relatively cheap human labor, probably with some better expectations around consistency.
And, on the flip side, large game budgets are absolutely dominated by a combination of programming and content creation, the latter more in terms of 3d graphics. AAA games cost $200m or more to make - saving a bit of money on writing generic NPC dialogue probably isn't relevant compared to even the slightest chance of accidentally having one NPC say "As a large language model..."
Consistency and coherency is hard. You want the LLM to make up small details but not contradict the story or lore or world state. You also don’t want to frustrate players when it gives out bad advice (“yes, it’s possible to open this door with the right key”).
And some games have people who expect to pay $30 and play for hundreds of hours. GPT-4 level intelligence is just not feasible. You essentially need subscriptions to cover ongoing costs, and subscriptions are hard (though not impossible).
Using them for major characters or story events would seem to introduce the risk of inconsistency or getting off track with the overall story being presented, not to mention that's probably where you want human writing that can maximise emotional impact and memorable-ness instead of the kinda bland, generic output of LLMs.
If you use them for minor characters and quests, how do you enable the player character to explore conversation branches of their choice without making it possible for them to jailbreak the LLM? If you're only going to let them ask predetermined questions, may as well have the whole conversation planned and pre-written (though I guess you could use an LLM for that). If you let the LLM generate options, how do you prevent a very long conversation from coming up with something that contradicts the setting or story, or isn't actually possible in the gameplay? (e.g. suggesting going to an area that exists in the lore but isn't actually accessible)
Also, this is probably a big one, how do you plan and execute QA tests to make sure every situation the player could get themselves into works properly? (Including everything from scenarios that accidentally stop the quest from proceeding, to 'all lines of dialogue are displayed correctly', to 'this all works and makes sense in every language the game supports'*).
I'd expect this stuff to first be done in smaller, experimental games where the player base is understanding that the system might not work perfectly before it appears in AAA games.
*I saw a translation error recently where a character had to interact with a sofa, but the dialogue referred to it as a 'chair', presumably because the translator had only received text and didn't know what the actual object on screen would be. Even simple sentences and object names can cause issues when all you have to go on is a text description.
Would require that the games be online, otherwise the feature wouldn’t work, or else would require running the model locally, which would be far beyond the capacity of consoles and all but the most-kitted out PCs.
It would also be a fairly big ongoing cost for the developer, unless they made the consumer pay for it, which almost none would accept.
Combine that with the fact that the games with lots of characters and lots of dialogue tend to be single player, and enthusiasts of these games expect to be able to run them offline. These also tend to be games with a strong story direction, and the creative staff may not be happy about compromising narrative direction with an LLM. On top of that, a lot of devs might worry about it going off the rails and spitting out undesired dialogue, especially if the players can find a way to interact and possibly jailbreak it.
I could see it being used for non-critical dialogue, something like idle dialogue between NPCs in an elder scrolls game, but for AAA production you’d also have to spring for text to voice, which would increase the cost and probably lead to issues with voice actors.
All in all, the actual use case for LLM dialogue generation as part of a core game (vs just being a mod) is quite narrow and likely to get a lot of bad press up front even if it works.
A lot, yes, but I can't think of any that do that while banking on story, character, or dialogue (Destiny might be an exception, but their narrative elements generally weren't very good). The games that do focus on having lots of characters you can interact with at length are generally single-player, and single-player games can generally be played offline. There are exceptions, but these tend to result in a lot of fan backlash, since online-only singleplayer is a prelude to a lot of despised practices and you will likely lose access to the game if the company stops maintaining servers.
Now, you could add LLMs to some other kinds of online-only games, but for the life of me I really don't see the advantage unless having lots of characters with lots of dialogue is an important goal for you. Games have gotten by with repetitive barks for ages, and will continue to do so.
I think there could be a great deal of gamer interest in something that has at its core an AI dungeon master. And trying to jail break various characters you encounter would be a feature not a bug. Charisma changes from stat to skill.
I could see that, but that would be a lot less straightforward than just using it for character dialogue. Sites like AI dungeon (https://play.aidungeon.com/) are a thing (and I had to interact with it for a class once, for some reason), but never grabbed me. Recent news indicates that Hasbro, owners of D&D, were intent on adding an AI DM to their new virtual table-top, but that seems to have floundered. Whether that's a fault of the technology or just par, since everything else the brand does these days seems to flounder, is left to the reader.
That being said, a game which is explicitly about navigating a world controlled by an AI (even in a more limited sense of control such as via characters) where jailbreaking the AI behind it is the main challenge, could make for a very strong skill challenge game, maybe with the same kind of audience as Arctic Eggs.
Agreed, that goes beyond just using the AI for a little extra npc depth.
Here is perhaps a simple enough use case. Many rpgs at the begining have an interaction where choices made go into determining your starting stats. Sometimes this is annoying actually, just let me choose rogue instead of answering all these dumb questions! But you see why its supposed to be there An AI driving that could be more interesting and open ended. The concept could be reused in determining rewards at various points.
I see many articles about Tesla sales cratering in Europe, but who is buying them in the United States, or anywhere else? Conservatives willing to get electric cars to own the libs? Apolitical normies living in caves?
In Europe, while politics may indeed play a part in declining Tesla sales, what is also at work is (1) domestic manufacturers producing better and wider range of EVs and (2) China is pushing ahead with a marketing blitz; I keep hearing "BYD - the best car brand you never heard of" ads on my local radio station:
"In Europe, Tesla’s sales are certainly freefalling and have been beaten by Chinese auto giant SAIC Motor, which increased its sales significantly by 39.2% in the EU in the same period, selling 30,176 cars.
Meanwhile, both companies have a quickly growing rival: Chinese electric vehicle maker BYD. The company reported its 2024 revenue at over $107bn (€99bn), topping Tesla's nearly $97.7bn (€90.4) for the same period.
BYD said its battery electric and hybrid vehicle sales jumped 40% worldwide. The company has just launched its Qin L EV sedan, a mid-sized model similar to Tesla's Model 3 but at just over half the price.
BYD is also rolling out a super-fast EV charging system that is nearly as quick as a fill-up at the pumps."
So if you're a first-time buyer of an EV and one model is half the price of the other, which are you more likely to buy?
Recently I saw the newest line of Volkswagen id electric cars and I just love the ID Buzz. It looks like VW beetle except like it came from Futurama. I don't really need a minivan now and my (petrol-drinking) Opel is still fine for at least the next 5-10 years. But if I needed car and a minivan I'd totally buy that ... and I am not even a big fan of VW.
And I also realised recently how the Chinese have improved their auto game. Ironically, this was in Cuba where you mostly either have US cars from the 50s or Russian cars from the 60s-70s. But now also they have a lot of Chinese cars (mostly electric) and the MG brand looks pretty good from the inside as well as the outside.
I am not a car person by the way (which reminds me that I haven't changed motor oil in almost 2 years and I should get to it already ... ) so if it looks good and seems to drive well, I think it is good. I have no idea how reliable any of these brands are.
But there is clearly a lot more choice today in the EV market, Teslas are quite expensive and they perhaps don't have a very good reputation for quality in Europe either (source - random people I know told me ... not recently, so nothing to do with politics). Personally, I don't like the way they look either, they give me a 2000s sportscar vibe (and the cybertruck has 80s sci-fi vibes), but that's subjective.
I am kind of surprised at all this. The valuation of TSLA is extraordinary for a car company… to have the commerce secretary touting it made my jaw drop.
I think there’s some shrewdness going on that might or might not be kosher. SpaceX is the company I would really like to invest in, but it’s privately held. I don’t see how Tesla ever justifies the kind of valuation it has- although ever is a big word. Suffice to say I think there’s a little back-and-forth going on there under the table. The valuation of Tesla has let him do a lot of things with money.
Mind that there is another effect super-imposing on the sales number: the top-seller model Y is quite old, and Tesla has announced that they will launch an upgrade of this model soon. This situation natural makes sales plummet because people wait for the upgrade.
That said, I do believe that the effect from political boycotts is real and significant, it just makes it harder to measure.
Meanwhile I've been boycotting (the ones available in my country) Teslas for years because they're made in China. If they start importing the US-made or German-made ones again (or start up the Indonesian factory they've been talking about) then I might buy one.
The moral orientation of someone who is more angry about Elon Musk than the Chinese Communist Party is bizarre to me but I guess it's just the outgroup vs fargroup thing again.
I guess it's because boycotting *everything* that is made in China would be too difficult, and singling out Tesla would be weird (before hating Musk became popular).
Realistically I know it's impossible to avoid buying anything made in China but I do try reasonably hard to avoid it for anything valued >$100 if there's another option available.
It's not always possible, but it's definitely possible for cars which are made in many places and worth much more than $100. But with electric cars it's surprisingly tricky since many non-Chinese brands are now pumping out their AU-market EVs in China, even Kia.
If I were to buy an EV in the short to medium term I'd probably wind up with the BMW i4 which is about 150% of the price of the Model 3 but made in Germany.
I dont think it would be weird. A car is a big enough purchase that you can definitely know where its made without an undue burden, and Tesla is one of the few, and when he started this propably the only, relevant car made in China.
And that's not going to happen to anyone who's considering buying a Tesla. You're framing this as people being clearly right to boycott Tesla when the reality is just that they're doing it because they don't like his politics.
If any progressives produced anything of economic value I'd probably do the same. Fortunately they don't so I don't have any tough choices to make.
I don't understand your argument. Why else would you boycott someone except because you don't like their politics?
Like, people didn't boycott the Montgomery bus system because they were afraid bad things would happen to them if they rode the bus, they did it because they didn't like the policies of the bus company.
The above commenter was arguing that it's more rational to boycott Trump than China because China doesn't impact their lives. My point is that Trump doesn't impact their lives either, at least not in a practical sense. Both types of boycott are equally performative.
Very bad time to make this point. Trump has just made very sure that he will have a practical impact of the lives of everyone in the U.S. and many people outside it. Whatever they may think of his other policies, not many people are going to fail to notice the sudden jump in the price of basically everything, nor the resulting economic reaction. I haven't lived in the U.S. in years and would love nothing better than to tune out its politics, but I've had to make quite a few decisions over the last three months based on things Trump has done or promised to do.
This. Also, the CCP doesn't represent a major change to the status quo. (The current CCP is not good, but is an improvement over the CCP under Mao.) Trump and Musk are trying to destroy things that Americans have been able to take for granted since the end of WWII or earlier.
Apolitical normies living in caves are the ones who’ve got it figured out
I saw a quote recently that resonated - “there’s some poor phoneless soul sitting next to a waterfall right now, who has no idea how angry and scared he’s supposed to be”
1. Conservatives are far less likely to get hybrid/electrical vehicles for climate reasons alone, but aren't any more fond of spending money on gas than anyone else, especially if you brand it as a "cool" car and not as a "boring, but saves the planet" car, which is the stigma that got attached to the Prius.
2. I think less "apolitical" and more "not so political that they let their opinion of Elon
Musk drive their car-buying choices" is still a very large category, at least in America. Apparently less so in Europe, but also Teslas were already a smaller section of the market over there, which I think magnifies the social effects.
Tesla was the best-selling brand of EV in Europe in 2024, but the domestic manufacturers are getting better at making and selling their own ranges of EVs.
I'm just waiting for Plaids to come down in price - so far they've only gone down ~10% or so. The profit margins on those things approach 30%+, so still some room to go. Used ones have also barely come down at all, so it's not like there's a ton of civic-minded former Tesla owners flooding the market.
Yes, surely boycotts are stronger in America than elsewhere. There are lots of other phenomena that could cause a sales crash, such as Chinese competition. EU rules apply to calendar years and December and January sales are sensitive to legal changes. In particular, fleet efficiency rules tighten every calendar year. A company that has achieved its quota for 2024 prefers to delay sales from December to January so that they contribute to the new year. If they're really worried about it, they'll slash prices on EV, but that's probably for later in the year. But these rules are irrelevant to a purely electric company.
I bet the boycotts are stronger in Canada and western Europe. I quite like Trump 1.0 but the version 2.0 (and by implication, Musk) is fast running out of time to reveal some kind of plan behind the madness.
I just visited DC and saw an absolute ton of Teslas there, far more than I see in Chicago. No idea if DC was always a Tesla hotspot or if this is a recent development.
The implications of your question seem pretty damning for the set of Tesla buyers. Are there really almost no people who like the idea of owning an electric car but do not automatically start hating and boycotting everyone the right-thinking people insist they need to hate? It might be like this on the west coast, but one would hope it's not like this throughout the rest of the country.
I might have been in the market for a Tesla after my current car got too old. But the guy did multiple Nazi salutes and never apologized for them. That alone is enough to never give him another dollar of mine.
And that's not due to "modern" politics, that due to 20th century politics.
"But the guy did multiple Nazi salutes and never apologized for them."
What good would apologising do?
(a) I apologise for the Nazi-style salute - aha, he *admits* he is a fascist Nazi totalitarian! Up against the wall with him!
(b) I apologise for giving the impression it was a Nazi salute - see, he's still denying that he's a fascist Nazi totalitarian! Up against the wall with him!
Damned if you do, damned if you don't. People have already made up their minds as to "Nazi salute for sure/not at all" and so whatever he says won't budge that.
If anyone has any examples of "person accused online apologised for offence and all was well afterwards", I'd welcome them. Generally it's been "person accused apologises, the apology is considered insincere/not grovelling enough, even more piling on and condemnation happens".
I think the main point is that the fact that there exist people who want very badly for the rest of us to believe that (1) he did Nazi salutes and (2) this is the most important aspect of him.
See, this is the entire question. "Of course it's a Nazi salute! Of course it's a Nazi salute, he touched his heart before he did it and that's the official Nazi salute! No, an opposition party politician touching his heart before throwing out his right arm at the same angle to a cheering crowd is absolutely not the same thing at all! Why? Well because we know Musk is a Nazi so it must be a Nazi salute, but the other guy is not a Nazi so it can't be a Nazi salute, even if it looks the same!"
It's chicken and egg, except the egg is always rotten.
>No, an opposition party politician touching his heart before throwing out his right arm at the same angle to a cheering crowd is absolutely not the same thing at all!
It really, really isn't. You tried to argue that it was the same a couple of OTs ago by using still frames out of context, and when people called you on that, you just pulled out your "How dare you deny my lived experience!" stock parody of leftism instead of actually arguing.
So? In my view the obviously parsimonious interpretation is that he was trolling. We're teetering on becoming a nation of humorless moral scolds and I applaud his bravado there. The world would be better if more public figures performatively invited moral condemnation for the sole purpose of thumbing their noses at it. Break Overton's Window. De-legitimize the scolds.
On "owning an electric car", Tesla's no longer the only (or the best) game in town. Theirs was an advantage of being a) first movers and b) a strong brand aimed at the environmentally conscious and status conscious. That first mover advantage is spent, and other car companies have been producing serious EVs for a while now across the various markets Tesla wanted to target. High end, high-performance EVs? Mercedes and Porsche. High-end but sporty? Rivian. Budget? BYD. Budget but don't want to be seen buying Chinese? Hyundai. Middle-market commuters? Toyota, Honda, pick your poison.
Tesla has put out some good vehicles in the past, but their newest and most hyped release is... the Cybertruck, which has entirely earned its controversy for a variety of reasons, but the most important here is the shoddiness of its construction, including most recently revelations that the metal paneling just... falls off after a while. It has severely damaged Tesla's brand image of quality, technical sophistication, and craftsmanship, and does so just as Musk has become a much, much more public figure, and has similarly damaged its brand as among the affluent, environmentally-conscious liberal-left crowd that once formed its core demographic. A Tesla is no longer avant-garde or sexy, even without the culture-war baggage.
If you've done a rhetorical and political face-heel turn away from your core demo, regardless of your industry, you're in for some hard times, and Tesla would need to make up for that by rebranding and pivoting to a new demographic. The Cybertruck could be seen in that light, but I can say with confidence it has failed in that regard. More likely, the company's rebrand is to go yet further away from being a car company to being an AI/robotics company. I am supremely unimpressed by these efforts, cf my own substack for details.
So if you're a person who wants an EV and has zero concern at all with politics, a Tesla likely wouldn't make the top of your list on merits. It's not the best car in any market, it's no longer a status symbol, and you run an elevated risk of being socially downgraded by any left-of-center peers or having your car vandalized by the same cohort relative to any other EV.
If anything, the new core of Tesla fans is among tech enthusiasts, who believe when Musk says that the next generation of Teslas will have level 5 self-driving in {time.current_year++}, or that they'll be able to rent their vehicles out as robotaxis for passive income, or that their next sports car will have rocket boosters attached. That's a small and shrinking group of people.
Also, I don't agree with the implication that the Musk-hate is a matter of top-down groupthink. I've been on the Musk-hate train going on a decade now, and only recently have I found my peers receptive to the viewpoint. Everyone has a story with how they came to it, and in my experience it's quite grassroots.
A few years ago, when I bought my Tesla, those competitors all existed, but none of them was really competitive on performance. And I did look at/test drive some of them. Has that changed? (Has there been a dramatic improvement in the quality of the non-Tesla EVs in recent years? Not `they now exist' because they also existed when I was comparing some years ago)
That's going to depend on which one you bought and what you prioritized. Via Performative Bafflement's comment below, the new Tesla models S and X are probably still top of the line in terms of speed and speed adjusted for price, though other EVs are taking top spot in domains like range and charging time. I'm seeing a lot more Ioniqs on the road in particular these days, and supposedly their charging infrastructure has grown and improved considerably. The lead has shrunk.
Depending on what you use your car for and what your priorities are, there's a good chance there's a newer EV that does what you want better.
That being said, the car market looks insane right now, so even if you do find another EV you prefer, this may not be the time for a switch. Who knows, Tesla could get a big Presidental tax credit sometime soon.
> or that their next sports car will have rocket boosters attached.
Plaid is still the fastest EV in the biz, even against the Porsches and Mercedes.
And the Plaid is already sig cheaper than the Taycan or the EQE53, and if it gets discounted still further because of political stuff and vibes, so much the better!
It's the absolute best "dollar per performance" you can spend right now, literally, and probably will be for the next couple of years (and still better if discounted because Tesla is struggling).
Still, if I could get a Yangwang U8 in the US, I'd probably go for the Yangwang, so I definitely buy your "there are better options" argument.
I am skeptical that there are many motorists who buy strictly on the basis of "dollar per performance", and also that "performance" in this context reduces to "speed". Why does someone who is never going to drive more than 140 mph care whether their car tops out at 200 or 180 or 160?
Long before you get to that point, you get to the point where style and comfort and reliability and brand image count for more than a very marginal increase in useful performance.
> I am skeptical that there are many motorists who buy strictly on the basis of "dollar per performance", and also that "performance" in this context reduces to "speed".
I mean, this is literally the Corvette and Hellcat crowd, for decades. And now they have a right-aligned electric option that's notably faster than any combustion option.
Sure, not many buy on that metric overall, but it's been a notable part of the sports car niche for decades.
And some people like a boring looking car that's actually fast instead of a flashy exotic - I have a heavily modified 8 second street legal GTR, and most people don't even recognize it, much less know that it's probably fast.
But sure, you're totally right overall - not many people care about this as a metric, and it's a niche among the niche of sports car enthusiasts.
Thank you very much for writing this. This was educational.
I get it that there are a lot of reasons to hate Musk, and there always were, but your Musk-hate is obviously not the same brand as most people's. Most people who hate him now came there in a completely different way than you, all through the same media coverage.
Musk purchased Twitter, one of the biggest social networks on the internet and one with hundreds of millions of users, and made a bunch of changes which significantly degraded user experience.
I don't mean temporarily easing up on censorship (or being hypocritical about it and then censoring new things) either, but all the other ones; these days it's overrun with spambots and it feels like you're shouting into the void unless you pay 8 bucks, and if something goes wrong good luck getting support to listen. Even got rid of the logo.
> Most people who hate him now came there in a completely different way than you, all through the same media coverage.
There are plenty of reasons to hate or despise Musk from what he posts on X alone – and you can hardly claim that his own account on his own social network is somehow biased against him, can you? No other "media coverage" required.
If you want to understand your outgroup, don't start by assuming they're mindless NPCs driven entirely by what mainstream media tells them to think.
Enough videos of otherwise-normal-seeming Boomers keying cars, not because of what the car owner did but because of what the company owner has done possibly *years* after someone decided to buy that car, form a decent NPC/mindvirus argument.
Not true of all people that hate Musk, but certainly it seems to generate a particular degree of violent stupidity in a noticeable number of people.
I'm almost completely surrounded by people from my outgroup. Most of them I either like or love, respect, admire, or at the very least sympathize with.
I know they are not NPCs. They are people who caught the mind virus. I can no more fault them for catching it than for catching a flu. They might have thought that Musk was an annoying ass before (a view that I share), but the visceral hate is definitely new, and I think we all know when that started.
Yeah, it's so weird that actively wielding a sledgehammer aimed at the foundations of U.S. peace and prosperity provoked a stronger reaction than *checks notes* being a tasteless edgelord on Twitter. Man, that "mind virus" sure is wacky.
I absolutely agree with a part of this: just recently I saw an old hoax tweet claiming to show Musk was going to ban critics of the current administration from Twitter, making the rounds on Substack. He's the man to hate du jour (at least before last week), and people are willing to overlook a great many grainy, undated tweets in order to get their hate fix.
That being said, I wouldn't reduce that to the dynamics of online hate alone. This may be my own bias talking, but I would consider it much more important that, in stepping into the public arena, Musk has exposed a great many more people to how he actually thinks and operates, and (just like when you see him step into *your* field of expertise for the first time), this tends to boggle the mind and shock the conscience of people who aren't already enraptured by him. For that reason, I expect (or at the very least hope) this persists well after hating on him stops being politically fashionable or profitably performative.
I *also* hope that this leads to a cultural reckoning with the cult of the genius and a realignment (especially in business circles) with 'fake it 'til you make it' mentality, but I'm probably wishing up a tree on this one.
For most people, a car is a serious purchase. If you're not seriously affected by modern politics, I'd expect you to go for the best option you can afford, regardless of who owns the company. Scott's assertion is that almost all people who might buy an EV are thus affected. If true, that's not good.
EDIT: Didn't see your edit. Yes, I do think the current hyperventilating about Musk is largely driven by the kind of media coverage he gets. My bad, I should have realized it was a contentious statement and skipped it.
"If you're not seriously affected by modern politics"
Everybody you're likely to talk to is "seriously affected by modern politics." The Great Recession of 2008 started with fatally boring and supremely ignorable banking and lending regulations (i.e. politics) and ended up touching almost every corner of the globe. COVID may or may not have been a "natural" event, but the various responses (again, politics) to it had large and undeniable impacts on the countries, regions and towns that implemented them, both during the height of the pandemic and the subsequent recovery. The supply chain crisis and worldwide bout of inflation that followed it (more politics) again affected nearly everyone in every corner of the globe.
None of that means it's always necessary or rational to pay attention to or participate in every facet of politics: everything that happens is bigger than you, and effects are often the result of many attenuated causes, and which can't be accurately mapped. And lots of theoretically politically focused actions end up being useless or counterproductive[1].
Really this particular case--the case of Musk and people choosing whether or not to buy Teslas--noteworthy in that it is so much clearer and less-ambiguous than most. To pretty much any of us outside the U.S. it's really, really obvious that giving Musk more money is not in our best interests. Even to those inside the U.S., those with even passable understandings of history and economics should be able to how ridiculously high-risk, low-reward a lot of the actions being taken by this administration are. Meanwhile Tesla's market position and Musk's personal finances make this sort of boycott considerably more likely to be meaningful than many similar actions. If there was one time or place in recent history to remember that "oh yeah, politics DOES actually impact me in large ways," a person could do a lot worse than this one.
[1] I'd say most, but not all, street protests, for example. But of the fraction that end up mattering, some really, REALLY matter, and it's not always clear in advance which ones they'll be.
Given how complex a car purchase decision is, "best option" is a fuzzy thing though. It's probably becoming easier to convince yourself that e.g. the Ioniq 6 is good enough for $1500 less.
That's something I'm not familiar with. Is it something that's true specifically for EVs, for people who can afford expensive things, or for what kind of set of people?
Good comments from others. To add to the trucks debate, even owners of standard trucks often have strong preferences, I've seen many a sticker of a mischievous lad peeing onto the Ford oval on the rear window of a Ram or a GMC. And all other combinations of these of course.
Specifically re. Tesla: it has carried one of the strongest identity signals from the start, and it puzzled yours truly and many others when Musk started to veer sharply to the right: doesn't he know that most people buying Teslas are, shall we say, left-of-center, and that your typical F150-drivin' Texan won't be caught dead in a Tesla even while he cheers your newfound politics?
I guess we'll find out how this one plays out in the next couple of years.
Most Americans who drive pick-up trucks, sports cars, electric cars, Volvos, Jeeps, luxury cars, and 1960s VW vans. Nobody who drives Japanese or Korean fossil or hybrid cars.
I do think a lot of US politics is defined by checked-out people. My parents were normie Republicans but they just stopped watching national news during the first Trump Presidency. He's just not a fun figure to keep up with if you're neither a true believer nor a motivated enemy.
I think he's sort of extra exhausting because he takes up all of the oxygen. You either get to hear about him all of the time or you've got to specifically avoid hearing every new controversy. My folks used to watch the nightly news religiously.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariffs_in_the_second_Trump_administration
Tariffs -- Algeria, Angola, Bangladesh, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brunei, Cambodia, Cameroon, Chad, China, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, European Union, Falkland Islands, Fiji, Guyana, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Israel, Ivory Coast, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Laos, Lesotho, Libya, Liechtenstein, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Mauritius, Moldova, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nauru, Nicaragua, Nigeria, North Macedonia, Norway, Pakistan, Philippines, Serbia, South Africa, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, Syria, Taiwan, Thailand, Tunisia, Vanuatu, Venezuela, Vietnam, Zambia, Zimbabwe
No tariffs -- Belarus, Canada, Cuba, Mexico, North Korea, Russia
Would any local redcap like to steelman that?
A lot of people waking up to the idea that Trump in his second term is very different than Trump in his first term, a fact easily predictable (and predicted!) by anyone who was paying attention to him saying he was going to remove all the constraints that were placed on him in the first term.
I wonder if anyone who liked the first Trump term is going to revise their opinion on how much value the people holding him back added to his administration.
Yes, particularly the calculation of the tariff rates has increased my confidence in the claim that he wanted to do some crazy stuff in his first term but was held back because he was surrounded by competent people. I thought his first term seemed OK.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14573081/trump-tariffs-americans-deliver-verdict-trade-poll.html
can confirm people are reconsidering their position of trump
+4
+13 young
+17 black
Yes, I am very much revising my opinion
Some of the differences were due to different people in the administration. But I think a lot of it is due to changes in Trump's personality. Dark MAGA reflects the reality that the left went directly after his supporters and his family and he genuinely wants revenge.
I don't buy it. How are tarriffs "revenge?" Or the mass rounding up of people without due process?
These are absolutely things that Trump talked about doing in the first administration, people defended him on the grounds that it was all rhetoric, and used the fact that he didn't actually do these things as evidence it was just rhetoric. But every report that came out after his term ended emphasized how many people worked tirelessly to stop him from doing things because they were worried about the legal, diplomatic, and economic implications of various actions. And now all those people are gone.
If Trump had started by sending the FBI after Biden, I'd say you were correct, and we may still get there. But he started by doing all of the stuff he'd been campaigning on his entire political career, that people claimed he didn't mean.
2016 Trump focused his tariff efforts on China, and succeeded. He did talk about bringing manufacturing back to America, but at the time either believed or thought it was more effective propaganda to lay the blame more on China than other countries.
Mass deportations were also not a big part of his rhetoric in 2016. Immigration levels were much lower than the surge under Biden, so instead he talked a lot about barriers. Building the wall and all that. You'll notice he isn't talking so much about building the wall these days.
I don't think you are intentionally gaslighting me. I think its interesting how people's memories change, or maybe it depends on whether you engage primarily with one media source or another. But in the mainstream media, Trump's repeated mention of 11 million immigrants who needed to be deported during the primaries (particularly the primary debates) and his talk of creating a "deportation force" were a big deal.
Here's an interesting historical artifact, a headline published in 2016 imagining what 2017 would look like if Donald Trump were elected.
https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/2797782/Ideas-Trump-front-page.pdf
See if you can spot how many of these things, intended to be a cross between a joke and a warning, now reflect things this administration is working towards.
It's been a long time since I looked at stuff from the primaries. What I do remember is that talk about deportations died down quickly once he was elected, but the talk about the border wall stayed. The first Trump admin did relatively little deporting, but did get some border fencing constructed. I think that if Trump was as unrestrained then as he was now, he would be focused on building his wall rather than mass deportations. The wall was a popular thing to chant from supporters in the first term, mass deportations only caught on later.
Maybe. But this article (which seems to be fairly conservative friendly) argues that it was the pushbacks from blue states and sanctuary cities that stalled out the process.
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/trump-deportations-unfinished-mission
So I think the will was there, its the resistance that's failed this time.
Now here's a t-shirt that I want:
"Critical Trade Theory: Any trade imbalance between two countries is de facto evidence of systemic unfair trade practices."
That was posted yesterday by a Substack writer named William Miller. Jesse Singal today makes the same overall point. He writes that Trump "sees the world strictly through the friends/enemies binary, and he apparently makes those determinations solely on the basis of the perceived “loyalty” of the actor/group/country/whatever in question...Trump decided a while back that America is “getting ripped off” by other countries. And once he decided that, the evidence was easy to find — I mean, just look at those percentages!
This style of thinking reminded me a bit of Ibram X. Kendi, because Kendi decided that everything is either racist or anti-racist, and then further decided that any racial discrepancy anywhere concerning anything was proof positive of racism. It goes without saying that this isn’t a serious approach to addressing racial discrepancies...but it was taken seriously by a lot of powerful people with money. Kendi himself gained some degree of influence and a form of power (since squandered rather colorfully), but of course not one millionth the power Trump enjoys...."
The chatGPT formula used for the tariffs was about maintaining a trade balance. This doesn't seem 'woke' to me at all. If you want a trade neutral balance or surplus, throw the formula at situations where you have a deficit.
The concerning part is Trump potentially thinking that tariffs alone would correct this balance with the economy humming smoothly for it. An unmanaged economy can adjust to tariffs on the fly without too much pain. But the US economy has been heavily managed for around a century and could easily crash and burn. Now, a "controlled" crash may be the best outcome when you have interest payments on debt spiraling out of control, but is Trump even trying to do that? God only knows.
>An unmanaged economy can adjust to tariffs on the fly without too much pain.
I don't see how this is true. It takes time to adjust to tariffs because you have to build new factories or set up new shipping routes to substitute for the tariffed goods, and making the market more free isn't going to let you build a new factory overnight. And in the meantime, you're simply poorer because you've made everything more expensive.
(And some goods may not be substitutable at all - e.g., crops that don't grow well in the US's climate.)
An unmanaged economy will have less giant factories owned by one or a few companies.
It doesn't matter if there's one company or ten, so long as they all depend on the same inputs, they're all going to have to find the same substitutes.
Also, antitrust regulation is a form of managing the economy, one that the US has been fairly lax on lately.
Antitrust regulations don't result in a lot of small companies.
Antitrust actions can literally result in a company being broken up into smaller companies.
Also, as I said, I don't see how the number of companies makes a difference. How would it help to, say, have ten different auto companies instead of one, if they're all importing the same steel and aluminum?
That has not been true at all. Standard Oil was a huge monopoly that arose in a barely-managed economy. Monopolization is a natural outcome of unmanaged free-market in any area where economies of scale apply.
Standard Oil arose to grab a large market share, but this had already started to decline significantly by the time anti trust laws were passed to partition it directly.
https://mises.org/online-book/progressive-era/3-attempts-monopoly-american-industry
Oh this brings memories and explains a lot. I too was young once and read mises.org. Can’t believe this crock of shite is still around. It must be exhausting to be always wrong about everything and yet keep slogging the same crap year after year. I’m sure the dollar will collapse any day now, same as 20 years ago.
Sorry, I’m trying not to be sarcastic usually, it’s just hard when I see the same poisonous ideas continue to be flogged despite having been discredited by reality over and over again.
Ask me about measles vaccine “causing autism” next :)
I...think this is a good analogy?
Opened up one of the MSM websites this morning (either Associated Press or CNN, I forget) and two new headlines were right next to each other:
"Trump administration fires director of National Security Agency"
"Senate votes to confirm Dr. Oz as head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services"
The first headline refers to this guy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_D._Haugh
whose firing was apparently at the suggestion two days ago of this loon:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Loomer
The second headline refers to a once-eminent surgeon who in middle age decided to get rich hawking bullshit dietary and anti-aging supplements on TV, ran for the Senate in a state that he didn't reside in, etc.
This age we live in, oof. Guess today will be a good day to again apologize to each of my children for the shitshow we're leaving to them.
[Sadly for my eldest, Italy just cut way back on its longstanding citizenship-for-descendants-of-Italians program in part because there's been a flood of Americans like him applying for it.]
which bullshit diet?
I had mentioned here that my brother was trying to do the same thing. I saw a NYT article about Italy making it harder so he probably is stymied also. I was hoping he would succeed and pave the way for me to become an EU citizen too. Oh well.
Inspired by the AI 2027 post, I want to ask. How worried should I be about AI driven doom, how can I spot if it's coming, and what on earth can I do about it?
Here’s how you can spot it coming: when you call a plumber to replace your garbage disposer and a robot shows up with the new one and installs it all by itself in 10 minutes - start worrying.
By the time that happens it's too late to start worrying.
Give or take. Robotics are hardware, and hardware doesn't explode exponentially.
near 0%, there will be plently of other dooms and ai is going down a dead end and the ai corps sure are acting as if its a cash grab and not the technology that will make the winner king.
You can spot it coming by someone making a trillion dollars from the stock market and everyone else refusing to play anymore and data centers being attempted arson but murder drones paroling so it doesnt work
Really interesting post by Hanania today about how populism inherently leads to bad governance, whether it's the left or right doing it. Also notable is that he explicitly admits that he made a mistake about Trump. It's pretty rare for people to publicly admit mistakes like that.
https://www.richardhanania.com/p/kakistocracy-as-a-natural-result
Another bit I found interesting that I hadn't heard before:
---
Lee Kuan Yew famously said that in a multiracial democracy, people vote for their ethnic or religious group. This is indeed a general trend, but when leaders lean too much into identity, we understand that this poisons discourse and thought, which is why we call them demagogues. In the US, ethnopolitics is more acceptable for blacks than any other group, and blacks tend to elect extremely corrupt politicians. As of late 2009, all active ethics probes in the House of Representatives were into the behavior of black members, which led to charges of racism. Since 2019 alone, the black mayors of New York City, Baltimore, and Jackson have been indicted for corruption related charges.
Trumpism can be seen as identity politics for alienated white people. It is not a coincidence that the right has been becoming more accepting of corruption at the same time it has become implicitly ethnonationalist. Morality based movements care about the ethical standards of politicians and more intellectually inclined movements care about ideas. Populism is about blaming others for problems, so it has less mental energy to put towards policing the behavior of members of its own movement. Often, it makes tribalism into a virtue.
I had been reluctant to read the guy because of the ‘former racist’ thing but I think he nailed it in a response to a comment last week:
“If you think anything Democrats have done in terms of violating norms is in the same universe as Trump, if you think his actions and character can even be spoken of in the same terms as anyone else, you’ve lost the plot. Your diet of information or reasoning ability is so bad you simply can’t be reasoned with. “
TBH I think turning the US from c. 85% white to c. 50% white within a single human lifetime is more unprecedented and norm-violating than anything Trump's done. Granted that was a bipartisan violation rather than a strictly Democrat one, but still, the Democrats have been much more enthusiastic and open about it than the Republicans.
What's important about America's whiteness?
Dunno, try asking the Palestinians or Native Americans how demographic replacement worked out for them.
I'm no historian, but I'm pretty sure that when white people took control of the Americas, they didn't do it by peacefully joining Native American tribes, gradually outbreeding them, and taking power through the democratic process. There was, you know, some violence involved.
The US has seen racial violence in the past, as have many other countries. Why should future US be exempt?
Are you suggesting that White Americans are or somehow should be afraid that they will killed en masse, with the survivors put into reservations or into whatever non-explosive descriptor we can use for Palestinian confinement to Gaza and the West Bank?
Are you aware of the fallacy of the excluded middle?
All four of my grandparents were Ellis Island immigrants. My current PCP is second generation Hmong, my dentist is second generation Vietnamese. I'm not troubled at all.
Maybe you should be:
"Does ethnic diversity erode social trust? Continued immigration and corresponding growing ethnic diversity have prompted this essential question for modern societies, but few clear answers have been reached in the sprawling literature. This article reviews the literature on the relationship between ethnic diversity and social trust through a narrative review and a meta-analysis of 1,001 estimates from 87 studies. The review clarifies the core concepts, highlights pertinent debates, and tests core claims from the literature on the relationship between ethnic diversity and social trust. Several results stand out from the meta-analysis. We find a statistically significant negative relationship between ethnic diversity and social trust across all studies. The relationship is stronger for trust in neighbors and when ethnic diversity is measured more locally. Covariate conditioning generally changes the relationship only slightly. The review concludes by discussing avenues for future research."
https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-polisci-052918-020708
I am in the same boat re. his racist past, but since Scott recommended his blog I decided to give it another chance. The good news is that some people clearly can change, recognize their errors and own them.
Anyone else think it's time for a conversation on whether the right to vote should be limited to net taxpayers?
My part-way idea is that there should be a bicameral legislature; one house is elected in the usual equally-weighted sort of way, and the other house is elected by votes weighted by the amount of tax you pay.
That's a nice way to tamp down tax evasion I guess.
Do we really need to re-invent NRx for the 50th time?
If we go this route, my vote should be weighted by the total amount of tax I pay compared to the average. Seems only fair.
"Citizens Even More United"
It's a free country (I think? maybe still? don't send me to El Salvador please), so any conversation can happen at any time.
As to the matter at hand, no.
So no retired people? Or how do you judge net? Do you count all government spending as part of the calculation? Because then almost no one would count - the US is spending far more than it takes in as taxes, so on net barely anyone is positive.
Plenty of retired people are net taxpayers.
Again, how are you calculating net. Retired people are benefiting from roads, from money spent on defense, from medical research, they have pay interest on their "share" of the debt and so on. That all costs money. Or are you only counting direct transfers? Because if so, this kind of system would be ridiculously easy to game.
Medicare alone would push most retired people over into the net-negative column as taxpayers. More than 90 percent of all Americans 65+ are enrolled in Medicare now, and the FICA taxes they individually paid into that system cover only 5 to 25 percent of the benefits they get from it.
As long as your limiting the franchise, limiting it to people with a college education seems more reasonable. Or if you think college is evil, base it on an IQ test.
Gonna be hard to get enough votes to pass that amendment, chief.
Only need a couple thousand votes.
What? Explain please.
2/3rds of Congress plus majorities in three quarters of state legislatures.
OIC....well in a nation that's passed exactly one purely-administrative Constitutional amendment during the last half-century, I'm with FLWAB: good luck with that one.
"Too little, too late", said the scorpion to the frog.
FAFO day number... never mind, lost count.
DJIA -3.01%, S&P 500 -3.34%, Nasdaq -4.37%, Russell 2000 -3.99%
The weird thing was watching the market climb yesterday, I guess the trading algorithms got conditioned to Trump chickening out and discounted the possibility that the mad king is actually mad.
I see this as a good time to buy. It might be good to diversify to EU stocks a bit though, particularly healthcare/defence (but I would still only do that through index tracking ETFs).
My prediction is:
1. Trump tanks US economy badly, keeps talking about how it is transitory a part of a great leap forward (or was that a different country?) etc.
2. Trump admin loses the midterm elections. Probably badly, but even a small loss is enough to significantly tie its hands as their majority is razor thin now. I think this is almost inevitable because people will lose jobs in most voting districts which are not safe MAGA anyway and prices will increase across the US:
a) People in the American rust belt might start seeing a creation of new jobs but not in enough quantities. This is because less than 2 years is not enough time to move production overseas and foreign investors will be reluctant to make such large decisions unless they really become convinced that mercantilism is now a long-term US policy.
b) Even if there is a significant number of new low-skilled labour jobs in the rust belt, these are already securely MAGA Republican areas and getting your congressman elected with a surprlus of 50 000 votes or 100 000 votes makes no difference.
3. Trump refuses to change course and will get bogged down in congressional and legal disputes. Republicans lose the next elections unless Democrats become completely suicidal and double down on the identity politics bullshit instead of shifting towards centrist views. At this point, and if Democrats abandon the identity politics, even libertarians will prefer them to the mercantilist MAGA Republicans.
4. Most (though probably not all) Trump tariffs are lifted (4 years from now) and the indexes jump massively in anticipation.
The low point in stocks might be now or it might be 6-12 months from now or something like that. I don't think it is going to be more than that. If Trump plans ahead at all he might even operate with the notion that the midterms are likely lost and will want to shoot all the bullets now.
The only other realistic scenario seems to be the "Democrats are irredeemably stupid" one.
>People in the American rust belt might start seeing a creation of new jobs
I'm assuming these jobs would be reshored manufacturing. But why would they go back to the rust belt? Why not anywhere else?
Even if the old factory is a rusted-out piece of junk, it's often easier to get regulatory approval to "rebuild" an old factory in place than to build a new factory at a greenfield site. I don't think there's much chance we'll really see a massive increase in US manufacturing capability during the remainder of Trump's term, but if I were going to try and play in that game I'd definitely be prioritizing old industrial sites.
I might still fill them with robots and high-skill immigrants and leave the OG local workforce to wallow in poverty. But it would be politic to try and find *something* for them to do.
That is a good point. I was assuming this would be because of the old factories and know-how. But know-how is probably no longer there and the factories, if they still exist, are probably not in a good shape and you are better off just building from scratch.
So it would just be because it is a place with a pool of (relatively) low-wage workers. But I am not sure if that is enough. You also want somewhere where logistics is easy and also ideally where local government gives you some benefits (tax exemptions etc.).
Either way, setting up new factories really takes a long time, so the only place where this can have a positive impact on employment before the US midterm elections is somewhere where factories still exist and operate but perhaps run on at half capacity. So that would probably be the rust belt.
Are there actually many still existing factories running on half capacity? Seems very doubtful to me.
And I would guess any new manufacturing will go to the sun belt, not the rust belt. Younger population, less unions, more business friendly state governments.
The factory I worked at was running with 70% the employees with quite the burn out rate and when it had the flexiblity it was running lines with less intensive products preferring a pure "health" slop product to something complex because the difference of having 2 poeple vs 5 was going to effect how smothy all other ran; even tho it was fucking terrible and the complex products were shouldve actaully existed
Yeah, I'm not sure about the current situation, I think you very well might be right.
But then that will make it even harder for MAGA (no reason to call them GOP anymore ... ) to win the midterm elections.
Regarding (2) (a), consider also the effects of automation. These jobs are never coming back, even if the manufacturing does. Any new manufacturing in the US leans very heavily on automation, which you should expect given the high labor costs.
Could a weak or deflating US dollar reduce labor costs to make them competitive with automation? If there was ever time such a shock could happen, it would be now.
Another reason to start buying ... now or soon.
I am just deciding between buying US ETFs or European ETFs. I have most of my savings in US ETFs, so I think that I will now perhaps diversify a bit to German indices or something (Merz seems to be the first good chancellor in a while and he is business oriented, plus there will be quite a surge in the defence industry now, a lot of it in Germany).
On the other hand, US stocks will be hit harder now and they are also likely to bounce back fairly quick if the next administration reverses the course back. I guess it is a more high risk high reward now.
A good asset allocation strategy should have exposure to the world. FWIW I'm not touching any of my core investments because I have a reasonable spread across the world and sticking to the plan and letting rebalancing do the hard lifting is likely to produce better long-term outcome than me trying to second-guess the markets.
Yeah, makes sense. I've been too US-centred till now, in a way. All my physical assets (my flat and a few garage parking places which I rent) are in Europe and my job is also more dependent on European economy, although I could probably shift, since I can work remotely.
But my stocks are 100% American right now and it has worked really well in the past 10 years (since I've started investing regularly ... and I pretty much never sell). I have some money in European bonds and I will probably move then to European stocks and keep adding to those to maybe get to 50% American and 50% European in the long-run.
Hi! I'm a bit confused by that. I totally get that the tariffs are not reciprocal at all and that they seem nonsensical, but could you explain why they are unlikely to work as intended (aka relocalizing industry in america)? Could it be considered a painful period after which the economy will grow again? I'm not at all a MAGA guy (not even living in the US), but, as everyone is saying that tariffs are bad, I'm trying to consider the opposite opinion...
I'm not an economist, but to me the obvious problems here are:
1. Industries moved for a reason: generally the reason was some version of "higher production costs." If price increase for the tariffs on a particular good is less than the price increase that would follow from shifting production of that back to the U.S. then the industry has zero incentive to move. A 10% baseline tariff on everything seems likely to fall below that threshold for a lot of goods.
2. Lots of manufacturing can't realistically source all of their inputs from the U.S., so even if they move production to the U.S., they'll still be paying tariffs on their inputs. This effectively lowers the benefit of them moving to the U.S. as they'll still get charged some fraction of the tariffs anyway.
3. Moving production is a long and expensive process. Any company that is looking to move is looking at high up-front costs and won't see ANY return on that investment for probably at least a couple years. Even when the move is complete, it will likely take several more years before they hit the break-even point where the move pays for itself[1]. This interacts with points 1 and 2, as higher production costs in the U.S. reduce the benefit of the move and increase the time it takes to pay off the moving cost.
4. The Trump administration can't guarantee any sort of stability in the tariff regime. Even if people trust the word of Trump himself on this (and obviously they shouldn't), a big enough defeat in the midterms could end the tariffs as soon as 2 years from now, and a defeat in the presidential election would almost certainly end them 4 years from now. I'd guess that 4 years is not actually enough time for a lot of industries to both get production moved over and pay off the costs of the move, and even if they do, once the tariffs are lifted they'll be back in the state of paying more for production with no price protection to justify it, meaning they might be looking at *another* long and expensive move just to get back to where they started.
5. This move makes markets more unpredictable, and unpredictability breeds caution. No company is actually sure what their sales will look like in 1 year, 2 years or 4 years. Depending on how the markets change, the assumptions about sales driving the various relocation plans might be badly wrong. Careful planners know this. Spending a bunch of money up-front is much less attractive: a move that slightly increases your overall expected profit but leaves you exposed to serious problems if things don't break your way is generally a bad move, especially if you're already a well-established company.
If I were crafting a plan to bring manufacturing back to the U.S.[2] it would look very little like this. It would start with talking up the plan and trying to get buy-in from congress, key industry figures and important voting-blocs so I could ensure stability. It would start with no tariffs at all: instead you'd offer some form of subsidies and tax incentives to companies who tangibly committed to shifting production, with a tariff regime consistently signaled as coming at least a year in the future. The subsidies and tariffs would not be scattershot, they'd be focused at particular industries that had been determined to be good choices for creating jobs and/or protecting U.S. interests. The (eventual) tariffs might be quite high on this industries, but they'd be carefully chosen to minimize knock-on effects on other industries. Doing all of this suddenly, with no preparation, by executive fiat, while maintaining (deliberately, one presumes) high uncertainty about the content of tariffs until they're actually deployed, and above all putting them on *all imports* is pretty much the opposite of everything I just outlined. This seems like a move with a very, very high ratio of collateral damage to useful incentive.
[1] Keep in mind that they would have still made money staying where they were, just (presumably) less money. If their moving cost is X, their yearly revenue without moving is r_i and their revenue with moving is r_f, then it will take X/(r_f - r_i) years for the move to pay for itself. With a large X you have to assume a BIG difference between r_f and r_i for this to happen in a realistic time frame.
[2] Which of course I wouldn't do (at least not by myself) because again, I'm not an economist.
L50L already gave a good rundown, just to add as a general principle: it's good to stop and consider the opposite, but it's rare that the opposite ends up being true.
It's economics 101 that free trade is good in most cases.
There is the higher level view that sectoral tariffs can be useful in certain cases to protect infant industries, but that's basically the exact opposite of what Trump is doing. Trump is just wantonly destroying things out of stupidity and there's noone left on the right to tell him no.
Note that Trump's new tariffs are significantly HIGHER than the infamous Smoot-Hawley tariffs that contributed to the Great Depression.
Okay, thanks for your answer. Let's see how it pans out. I agree with you on a philosophical level, as I am close to being libertarian and I like the natural equilibrium of things (free trade definitely being a natural equilibrium, in the sense that it's the least constrained), but I'm wondering how different things are, this time. I mean, these tariffs stuff makes me think of weight regularization in Machine Learning: you may be losing a bit of performance but you definitely get a sounder model.
Are there any precedents where tariffs indeed achieved their goals? If not, I will be forced to join the mainstream opinion on that matter!
Also, I get that these tariffs are risky and nearly a war move against every country in the world.
The way I think about it, tariffs are a bit like an insurance policy. You consistently pay a manageable amount (pay more for products made in your country, even though under a free trade regime you could buy them for cheaper elsewhere) so that, if things go wrong (a war or COVID-type pandemic disrupts supply chains), you're cushioned somewhat from the effects (your key industries are safe in your own country and you don't run out of food because an enemy is blockading your ports).
Of course, this doesn't mean that destroying your economy with huge tariffs is a good idea, any more than bankrupting yourself by taking out expensive insurance policies on everything you own would be a good idea. Accurately balancing risks is part of what constitutes good stewardship, whether you're running a household or a country.
That's an argument for narrowly tailored tariffs based on national security considerations. The CHIPS act was a good effort in that vein. Trump however is doing the exact opposite. Trump's policies are likely to DECREASE American manufacturing without any compensating benefits.
There is nothing sounder about it though. There is no good reason for basic manufacturing to return to the US and the "trade deficit" is a very misleading term.
David Friedman has a great article explaining all of this quite concisely (the title "Ptolemaic Trade theory" is very fitting as this is really on the same level as believing that the sun revolves around Earth).
https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/ptolemaic-trade-theory
I think that one long-term benefit of these insane policies might be that they are so extreme that it will actually make many more people update away from 16th century economic theory.
Haha, thanks for the link and the answer, much appreciated.
David Friedman's a pretty good Substack to follow, on trade policy and other economics. In "Retaliatory Tariffs", he wrote about a tariff he could conceivably be in favor of, so he's not a straight-up anti-tariff ideologue; there are fundamental consequences he's pursuing (namely, people being better off), and if a tariff were to cause that, he would likely favor it. (It's just that tariffs practically never do this.)
By the way, I think that it is possible that Vance understands all this and still wants to pursue Trump's tariff policy (I am almost certain that Trumps doesn't really understand, nor does he care to understand the logic).
Vance comes from the rust belt, has been pretty traumatized by the decline of the low-skill labour communities there and wants to restore the "good old days". If it means making America (or the world) poorer, that is a price he is willing to pay, especially if it disproportionately hits the "coastal elites" (i.e. everyone not a part of these communities).
It might be a win-win from his perspective, even though he would not present it in the terms I do.
Or it is also possible he doesn't understand the economics of it either...
s&p 500 is currently down 4.10% for the day.
High Impact Professionals is excited to announce that applications are open for the next round of its Impact Accelerator Program (IAP). The IAP is a free, 6-week program starting the week of June 16, 2025, and is designed to help experienced (mid-career/senior) professionals not currently working in a high-impact role to: identify paths to impact; take concrete, impactful actions; and join a network of like-minded, experienced, and supportive impact-focused professionals.
More information -- including links to register for informational webinars on April 23 that will provide an introduction to the IAP and a Q&A session -- is available here: https://www.highimpactprofessionals.org/impact-accelerator-program
Apply to the IAP here by April 27: https://dal1g53wltj.typeform.com/to/xPmaxIKV
> re: civilization collapse
Apparently building start collapsing in years not decades after being abandoned; china collapsing buildings is also happening to japan so it not nessery so its not entirely a commie thing but may also be a asian fertility collapse thing
Are there "KISS" housing being built anywhere; you need a shower, Im unconvinced you need a shower on the 3rd floor of wooden supported houses, so if a pipe bursts you get a nasty water damage bill?
Maybe fireplaces that run on both nutral gas *and* wood
Off the top of my head, but that could be a thing right?
that years not decades thing -- can be, yea. It depends on the construction methods involved and also on the practical definition of "abandoned". (Was even just minimal basic "keep water out" type maintenance being done? For a lot of types of construction just that can move it over into the decades scenario.)
I have been amazed a couple of times to discover large structures which to the naked eye appeared to be crumbling, but were successfully restored to full new use once somebody decided that was worth doing. The city of Detroit now has several such examples right now that I'm personally familiar with. There is a 19th-century mansion on my former college campus in New England which I crawled around in a few times as an undergrad and would have sworn that the boarded-up hulk was about to fall down (that's part of what made the adventure an adventure); ten or 20 years later the college restored it to whole new beautiful use. Architects and engineers of my acquaintance say it's that "keep water out" threshold that's the key.
> (Was even just minimal basic "keep water out" type maintenance being done?
Probaly not; altho maybe you take ...4? houses from a suburb as your own if populations collapse and prices drop to effectively zero if you can think ahead about the Detroit and china examples
> Architects and engineers of my acquaintance say it's that "keep water out" threshold that's the key.
Given complex wood framing with a low margin of error, probably; I think you can lower that margin of error, less floors, the first floor is made of stone/concrete, more load barring walls.
> ten or 20 years later the college restored it to whole new beautiful use.
With how much new resources or man power tho?
My 2 story wood frame was built in 1917. It has its share of quirks but is in sound condition.
It has kept me - and various tradespeople - busy on maintenance over the years though.
Everyone needs a hobby I guess.
Less than tearing it down and building fresh, I was told. The university owned the property free and clear, no historical designations involved, etc.
OC ACXLW Meetup #92 – ACX Everywhere Edition
Saturday, April 5, 2025 | 2:00 – 5:00 PM
Location: 1970 Port Laurent Place, Newport Beach, CA 92660
Host: Michael Michalchik – (michaelmichalchik@gmail.com | (949) 375-2045)
Welcome!
Hello, everyone! We’re excited to invite you to a special ACX Everywhere gathering, where we’ll explore two of Scott Alexander’s most influential and widely discussed essays: “Meditations on Moloch” and “I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup.” Whether you’re brand new to these pieces or have studied them before, we welcome your curiosity and ideas. Come ready for a relaxed but thought-provoking conversation—no prior expertise needed!
Readings & Links
1) Meditations on Moloch
Text: Slate Star Codex (2014)
Audio: YouTube Reading
2) I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup
Text: Slate Star Codex (2014)
Audio: Podcast link
(No worries if you can’t read or listen to them in full—just come with an open mind!)
Essay Overviews
“Meditations on Moloch”
Coordination Failures: Scott frames “Moloch” as the destructive force that arises when people or institutions compete in ways that force everyone into a worse outcome—even if no one wants it.
Arms Races & Zero-Sum: Examples include doping in sports, environmental exploitation, or endless overwork—everyone follows suit to stay competitive, with no single actor able to unilaterally stop.
Escaping Moloch: Potential solutions often involve strong collective agreements or frameworks that break the cycle of “If I don’t, the other guy will.”
“I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup”
Tribalism’s Double-Edge: Many of us consider ourselves tolerant—until we meet the group we truly can’t stand.
Hypocrisy of Tolerance: We readily accept differences that don’t threaten us, but violently reject those we see as morally or culturally opposite.
Real Implications: We may unify around certain enemies or narratives, ironically bridging differences only to channel hate toward a chosen outgroup.
Conversation Starters
Personal Moloch Moments
Where have you felt trapped in a “race to the bottom”—working longer hours, competing for scarce resources—and wished for a collective fix?
Is Outgroup Hatred Inevitable?
Do we each have a hidden “line in the sand” for what we refuse to tolerate? Where do you draw that line, and why?
Solutions to Moloch
How do we form strong enough coalitions or social norms to break vicious cycles? Is it purely top-down (regulation, laws) or bottom-up (individual choices, culture shifts)?
Tolerance vs. Complicity
When does “tolerating” become passivity or enabling something harmful? Conversely, is it easy to mistake rightful moral stances for “intolerant outgroup hatred”?
Interplay: Moloch & Outgroups
Do these two phenomena reinforce each other? For instance, do tribal rivalries hamper the coordination needed to defeat Moloch?
Join Us On April 5!
We look forward to a friendly deep dive into these essays and their relevance—from everyday life dilemmas to global issues. If you have any questions, just contact Michael (info above). Whether you’re new to Scott Alexander or a longtime SSC/ACX reader, come share your perspective—and let’s celebrate the spirit of ACX Everywhere together!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G1tEalk1wiNuwvsJMFoqqWMu4gJiYCyUuX7f4h3vYTs/edit?usp=drivesdk
So, the tariffs are out, with a predictable response from the markets, but that's not what I want to talk about. What I want to ask about is the countries further down on the big list of tariffs. What did the Falkland Islands do to get on Trump's shit list?
Never mind the Falklands; what's the deal with Diego Garcia? The only people who live there, the only economic activity, is a ginormous US military base. Are we taking a 10% cut of the personal possessions of our soldiers when they rotate home?
Since the tariffs were calculated based on trade deficits, it is natural that tiny countries end up at the top and bottom of the list. Random fluctuations are generally larger for small countries, so the maximum and minimum value are usually very small nations or domains which happen to be (un-)lucky with the randomness. This is why the tiny states/domains of Lesotho and of Saint-Pierre et Miquelon end up with the top rates.
It isn't even important *which* formula was used, just that *some* formula was used.
Svalbard is on the list because our bears need to be protected from competition with foreign bears who literally work for fish.
Are the Falklands tarrifs any different to the general UK ones?
But surely you can move goods freely between the Falklands and the UK?
I believe the tariffs are based on the country of production. Otherwise the rest of the EFTA would start exporting everything through Iceland, which got 10% (while the EU got 20%).
Clearly, Trump is a Peronist.
There's some Sporcle nerds at the White House who wanted to make sure every single country got on the list.
Every country *except* Russia and North Korea.
Since they are billed as “reciprocal tariffs” I presume they impose a tariff on US imports. Naturally a cursory Google doesn’t tell me that because all the hits are about the new ones.
I’m not saying this was good to do, just that there does not seem to be any particular reason to wonder about the Falklands in particular.
I had the same assumption, but L50 is right.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c93gq72n7y1o
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trumps-very-very-very-simple-way-of-calculating-reciprocal-tariffs-bdec48fd
https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/03/economy/reciprocal-tariff-math/index.html
The "reciprocal tariffs" are not based on any actual tariffs levied by other countries. The way they came up with the number was to take the trade deficits in goods with that country and divide it by the total exports, divide by 2, then floor at 10%. I wish I were making that up.
Note that the "in goods" part is important, since the US has a surplus with many countries when services are included.
Well, I agree that this is very disappointing. I’d love it if the point were to encourage tariffs to be removed so we could all benefit from free trade, but for that you need the stick to be very precise.
On the other hand, there still seems to be no reason to wonder what he has against the Falklands.
Added: I worry myself sick over budget deficits but despite the similarity in name I think “trade deficits” are a boogeyman that shouldn’t be a concern to anyone. So we trade Japan pieces of green paper for cars. Who’s the savvy trader?
I wondered about the Falklands because I posted that very shortly after the tariffs were announced and nobody had worked out the formula that they were using yet, it was just clear at first glance that the numbers didn't make sense. Lapras's reply answered my question.
(Still makes me curious about the two uninhabited islands that ended up on the list. I can only assume some form of trade gets recorded as passing through those islands for bureaucratic reasons.)
>(Still makes me curious about the two uninhabited islands that ended up on the list. I can only assume some form of trade gets recorded as passing through those islands for bureaucratic reasons.)
Or maybe some super thorough bureaucrat wanted to cover the possibility that they might become inhabited at some point in the future.
I am a lawyer, not a doctor and not a chemist. However, I do have the internet including ChatGPT which gives me just enough information about medicine and chemistry to be dangerous. I also have a mood disorder and take lithium, so that is one of my topics of interest to research.
I recently listened to an episode of the Carlat Psychiatry Podcast that discusses research on lithium proline salicylate (LISPRO), also known as AL001 or LiProSal. This compound is designed to enhance lithium delivery to the central nervous system (CNS) while minimizing systemic exposure, potentially reducing the risk of adverse effects associated with traditional lithium therapies. It appears based on the research done to-date to achieve this goal, the question now is whether the increase in lithium in the CNS translates into clinical benefit, and in the dementia trials it appears to but they have not released data on mood disorders. So they are years from releasing it to the public. However, this is of interest to me because I want to take lithium indefinitely and avoid burning out my kidneys. So the idea of a compound of lithium that could get more to my CNS where it benefits me, while also reducing the amount burdening my kidneys is very interesting.
Dr. ChatGPT tells me that the chemistry to create lithium proline salicylate is actually fairly straightforward and doable in a normal kitchen. You would want to combine lithium carbonate in a slightly acidic solution with proline and salicylic acid. This would not be perfect, but ChatGPT seems to think that a chemical reaction would take place in approximately 10 minutes of just mixing the substances together that would precipitate some LiProSal crystals suspended in solution. There would be some impurities compared to a pharmaceutical lab, but according to Dr. ChatGPT none would be substantially more harmful or dangerous than lithium, asprin, or proline.
I try not to do things that are stupid, but I admit I am kind of tempted to try this for a week to see how it treats me. Convince me I am stupid and this is a terrible idea?
I find ChatGPT to be pretty good with recipes for food and hand lotion, but I’d never do anything like that and doubly never ingest it.
I have no idea. But I’d suggest using not Chat but research GPT, and asking it for a summary with links that covers every
question you can think of: Has anyone else tried this, list of downsides and risks, etc. There also used to be a reddit sub that covered this kind of thing— see if you can find it. One possible problem
I see is figuring out what dose of the new compound is equivalent to the dose you are now taking. There’s a professional researcher named Elizabeth that people here recommend. You could also pay her to research this question: https://acesounderglass.com/hire-me/
Who else is now preparing for the fall of western civilization? Do we have any idea of how imminent the fall will be, or is it going to be a long drawn out thing? And will Wisconsin fall first? If anyone has any details it will be really helpful in aiding my preparations. Thanks.
Is it an absolute fall or a relative one, ie America is no longer “top nation” and we become sort of like postwar England, living off of soft power and nostalgia?
I find I'm doing roughly the same thing I did the last few times I saw people talk about the fall of western civilization.
I’m doing what I do when they are *not* talking about it. You gotta figure that’s when the danger is worst.
The USA is just one part of Western Civ. Do you expect the other parts to
fall too?
What does fall even mean?
I can imagine a future where "Western Civilization" loses meaning as the US and Europe continue to drift apart culturally and geopolitically. It does not require any individual state to "fall".
I'm pessimistic in the short term, but optimistic long term aside from my concerns about AI.
Democrats are reforming by the sounds of it, woke stuff is on the decline and the backlash to Trump is not particularly woke (unlike 2016). Trump will trash the economy over the next year, Elon's clowning around will show poor results and the republicans will get creamed in the midterms. By 2028 support for Trump will be just his hardliners and the 'just want to see libs cry' demographic will abandon him.
Liberals getting spanked all over the world has made the center-left realize that appeasing the progressives was a mistake. Many of the issues that were ignored ten years ago, like cost disease, regulation and housing reform are getting more attention on the democrat side, so we could have bipartisan support for some real game changing quality of life improvements. The de-growthers are losing. Open borders have closed which is good and I doubt Dems will make the same mistake again. The economy can hopefully recover quickly from all this chaos.
Things are going well!
If it weren't for the authoritarian stuff, I'd agree. But running the dictator playbook looks like a one-way street. Even if Democrats regain power in 2029, it will be hard for them to turn the other cheek.
What playbook is that? Is Trump arresting members of the opposition? Is he taking over the media? Is he quartering troops in our homes?
As near as I can tell Trump is *mostly* being aggressive about using powers that he arguably has been granted by statute and by the Constitution. If the Congress regrets delegating that much authority it is free to take it back, and that might be good for the nation.
There are a few things on his list that are considerably at the far end of “arguable”, and maybe a few that are beyond that line, but I have faith that the latter will not stand, and that he’s not even going to try sending the military to threaten the courts.
Kudos for saying “dictator” and “authoritarian” rather than “Hitler” and “Fascist”. We may make it through yet.
> Is Trump arresting members of the opposition?
He's explicitly kicking legal immigrants out of the country purely for their political views. Independently of that, he's also secretly disappearing people to 3rd world torture dungeons without even a hearing (and in direction violation of explicit court orders no less). Independently of that, he's also banning law firms for perceived slights such as representing political opponents. Oh and as a bonus, his pet attorney is talking about prosecuting members of congress, since you ask, though that hasn't gone anywhere yet and is pretty far down the list of authoritarian moves he has made.
Any ONE of these alone represents a massive assault on civil rights and the rule of law. And Trump's doing worse stuff every day. There's a ton of other stuff I haven't even mentioned since even the list of five-alarm atrocities is already so long.
> t he’s not even going to try sending the military to threaten the courts
Not yet anyway. But he's gone extremely far beyond the pale already, including calling for impeachment of judges who ruled against him and pushing congress to pass a law preventing courts from issuing injunctions. Besides, there's no need to militarily threaten the courts when you can just ignore them (as he's done on several occasions already).
When you're illegally disappearing people without any due process and also banning courts from saying no, you're already 70% of the way to dictatorship. And the strongarming of companies for perceived disloyalty also goes a long way there. And keep in mind that we're less than three months into his term! Even Nazi Germany wasn't built in a day!
It is reassuring that the Trump admin still feels the need for at least a figleaf of legitimacy (e.g they've only sometime ignored court orders rather than going full nuclear), but it's hard to know how long that will hold.
Then impeach him! Ah, can't get enough members of Congress to agree? Then that doesn't sound like 70% of the way to dictatorship; that sounds like someone executing the will of the people.
I will grudgingly accept "demagogue", but that's what the old guard always calls populists.
I'm sorry I goaded you into mentioning Nazis. "Calling for the impeachment of judges" is pretty milquetoast compared to actual Nazis.
Every dictator ever claims to be following the will of the people. The difference is not what the leaders claim, but the actual institutions, laws, checks and balances and so on.
If on Jan 20, 2029, President Kendi "accidentally" arrests Trump and Musk and ships them off to a third world prison, would you say that he too is just "executing the will of the people"?
Trump is currently conducting an all-out assault against the rule of law, the constitution, and democracy, and if America manages to hold together in anything resembling its current form, it will be *in spite* of him, not because of any restraint on his part.
The one saving grace of Trump is that he is *also* pursuing unbelievably disastrous economic policy, which may erode his support base enough that it will be difficult to complete the turn towards autocracy. But if you don't fear Trump himself, just imagine what someone who is actually smart and disciplined could accomplish with these methods now that he has blazed the trail.
Where are your investments?
I've moved a little into overseas equities, which, I dunno if any good or not.
I am of two minds on this, but I am attempting to hedge the risk a bit. I sort of think that civilization will collapse, but not enough to go all-in. So I put a ton of my money into my 401(k) and stuff that will have zero value in an apocalypse. But I also have a hunting rifle plus know-how and a pantry full of food that could be starvation rations for months if not longer. I buy bulk beans, grains, tinned fish, etc. and keep it all in big plastic totes in my pantry. I eat this stuff regularly so I regularly freshen and renew my supplies and this stuff probably would not expire too quickly if the shit hits the fan.
I also bought a few acres of property for my home - not enough for a huge farm but I think probably enough to keep me and my family alive if I learn enough about gardening to play my cards right. I am planting out perennials that can provide a lot of calories like chestnut and hazelnut trees, etc. I am also trying to establish a root cellar so that I can store stuff over the winter like potatoes that could be a starvation ration that could also be re-planted in the spring.
I hope if things do go south, my preps are enough to keep my family alive on. If civilization stays afloat during my life, then my preps are nice hobbies that keep me physically active and encourage me to eat healthy food. So I am trying to prep in a way that balances my worry that civilization will collapse with a comfortable enjoyable life if this ship of fools piloted by a senile sociopath somehow avoids crashing on the rocks.
No; I think that we're heading in a dangerous direction, but slowly enough that we'll see warning signs before it's too late, and the proximate solution - "elect Democrats" - is sufficiently simple and low cost that I think that it will be implemented.
If it weren't for the authoritarian stuff, I'd agree. But running the dictator playbook looks like a one-way street. Even if Democrats regain power in 2029, it will be hard for them to turn the other cheek.
If electing Democrats produces any similar outcomes to what's going on in the UK right now, it doesn't seem at all like a solution.
What do you think is going on in the UK right now?
Everything bad about living under Biden, amplified to a higher extreme. Locking people up for innocuous social media posts. Continuing mass migration where antisocial African and Islamic migrants are given explicit legal favor compared to the natives. A significant decline in the nationalized healthcare services that are supposed to be the reason the natives put up with so much migration in the first place. General decline in wages and standards of living. The elite of the country becoming ever more united in hyper liberal hysteria over stupid shit, like alleged Russian or Elon Muskian propaganda in elections.
Sounds pretty awful! I am very glad the UK I live in is not the one you describe.
You probably won't be convinced about stories of egregious censorship or two tier policing, but the charts for the economics are not pretty:
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/health/nhs-graphs-performance-decline-london-decade-health-b1189080.html
https://ifs.org.uk/news/decade-and-half-historically-poor-growth-has-taken-its-toll
*Whatever neighborhood you live in may show some exemption from these trends.
This is sarcastic in reference to Musk's attempt to buy the Wisconsin supreme court seat, right?
In the US, at least, systemic and structural elements of government have been consistently weakened since the George W Bush administration, if not earlier. The typical progression for this type of decay is that everything seems fine for a long time, then a repetition of crisis moments of collapse alternating with periods of calm.
This isn't meant to be subtly partisan; I think there is significant blame on both major parties. However, one of the parties is more enthusiastically rushing to knock down pillars without any apparent concern about whether they are load-bearing while the other mostly ignored structural considerations while in power and basked in the glow of "not as bad as those guys."
low confidence, but I feel like the petrodollar is the lynchpin. I expect the decline to play out over decades, not days. More in the vein of "huh, isn't it kinda weird that recessions (etc) are getting more frequent?" than the movie "The Day After Tomorrow".
> Who else is now preparing for the fall of western civilization?
I dont have the money to make a off grid compound, and I dont think it will be the standard "have 6 months of food" thing
I predict it; not how does one prep for actual collapse? There was a fiddler green essay about being a cassandra before zombies; and youd fundamentally making tradeoffs between "sounding sane" and actual preping being low impact, if not getting you dragged to a pyche ward. Even if you make a compound with a bunch of guns, what happens if the fbi decides to kill your children before the collaspe?
If you want 10000 bullets for zombies, you need money here and now even if green paper rapidly stops mattering, to have poeple listen to you you need green paper here and now, to effect politics green paper; even if you 100% know green papers value drops to zero in a week you may still need it tomorrow. A situation without zombies will be murkier and slower.
> And will Wisconsin fall first?
No; civilization failure effects the poor first. It wont be america that collapses first, with our oil, food and history of actually wanting democracy, everyone else will be worse off.
Even if its gross americain mismanagement that causes the collaspe, the fake democracy in iraq collapsed in under a day without american support. There are a few true nation states, the rest merely were forced to adapt to the world order of those highly productive and had the guns vs sticks. They will fall in close to reverse order of when colonialism happened.
> If anyone has any details it will be really helpful in aiding my preparations
Allot of prep is focused on food I think that is a mistake... when we have a bunch of extra caleries and allot of it is mildly poisonous by shelf stable twinkies, 5$ for expired 6 pounds cheese goo cans. Clean water is harder, when I was more worried about the future I was watching the prices of whole house water filter system, they hadnt moved.
Theres places in the usa where the water systems have already broken down.
I dont think making from scratch water filters seemed that hard, several stages, and then making charcoal seemed to be the main details. But maybe the important thing.
My intuition is that it will be a long, slow decline. My emergency preparedness is a lot more extensive than most people's (thanks, ThePrepared.com!), but its purpose is to weather a short-term regional disaster. It's there to get me through until infrastructure is restored or until I can evacuate to a different area with infrastructure.
I have no interest in living should infrastructure fail everywhere.
Anyone have any rare job seeking strategy; Ive given up on job sites entirely and looking for more unhinged plans regardless of their possibility of success to check everything off the list.
(Given an adaptive explore vs exploit theory; a low enough success rate should appooch random brute force attempts.)
get some fancy-sounding certificates and cold-call managers. e.g. get the $200 Scrum-master cert from scrum.org and then ask IT-Project-Managers if they have communication-issues between management and engineering (protip: if they don't have these issues they are either oblivious or lying). The bigger the corp, the better your odds.
With the right cert you can also apply to government contracts directly as an individual. Governments contracts should be publicly available. So you should be able to find both current listings as well as results for past-contracts and bids.
> unhinged plans
go to some company and just start working there and see what happens. If you make it past the first week, start asking for money. I guess your odds heavily depend on the industry, e.g. construction work has better odds than a law-firm.
MMM also has some ideas albeit less unhinged (= more hinged?) https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/07/25/50-jobs-over-50000-without-a-degree-part-1/
How do you go to a company and just "start working"? I can see that if you're picking grapes. It's literally impossible to do for any white-collar work, which is what I think Monkyyy does.
I'd say this is contingent on your field and your level of experience.
I got in to UATX. Should I go? My goal in life is end factor farms (or at least make progress in that regard)
How sympathetic are you to the overall political orientation of the place, and does it have any good faculty in your probable major?
Also, you have to factor in the risk of the institution collapsing because these are tough times for higher education.
I'm old (Xennial), so take this with a grain of salt, but:
Most of the value in a university education is signaling and networking. I think the connections in any 'anti-woke' university are mostly going to be for conservative political circles, and you'd have a hard time getting jobs with any left-leaning nonprofit. Most people who care about animals are left-wing; you have the occasional Christian who thinks it's cruel but they don't staff the organizations.
If you have idealistic life goals you probably want to pick up as much prestige as possible because that's how you gain influence. The only real decision point is if the state school is substantially less expensive, then you have to weigh how much debt to accrue in search of your goal. People are still paying that crap off decades later.
I'd love to hear someone else's opinion.
Was Ben Goertzel's prediction from 2017 right?
'Question 11: You have recently claimed that toddler-level AGI could come about by 2030. How confident are you of that prediction?
It’s looking more and more likely every year. I’ll be pretty surprised if we don’t have toddler-level AGI in the range 2023-25, actually. And then it will be more than a toddler in the human sense. It will be a toddler savant, with ability to e.g. do science and math and answer questions way beyond the level of a human toddler. And once we’re there, the full-fledged Singularity won’t be far off in my opinion…. SingularityNET has potential to accelerate R&D progress in this and other AGI-ish directions, making it increasingly likely that the advancement of AI proves Kurzweil a pessimist…'
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/12/ai-researcher-ben-goertzel-launches-singularitynet-marketplace-and-agi-coin-cryptocurrency.html
Maybe toddler-level in the sense that toddlers only mimic what they see other people doing. I could see that. If I can see that, I can also see toddler-savant.
The problem here is that toddlers don't stop there. Toddlers are capable of some symbolic reasoning, problem solving using small objects, putting words together in the right order, and knowing which words correspond to which objects in the real world. LLMs can't do that yet, and given what I've seen, they're not going to master symbolic reasoning any time soon, even if they aim a great deal of focus there instead of securing ever larger numbers of nodes in their neural nets or supplies of electricity.
Given all that, the idea of a full-fledged Singularity doesn't look likely to me by 2030. And if I don't see news of symbolic reasoning breakthroughs or the equivalent by 2030, I don't expect it by 2035, et cetera.
I'm not sure toddler AGI makes any sense as a concept.
In fact I'm no longer sure that AGI makes any sense as a concept, and I think toddlers are a good illustration of why. Toddlers don't have "general intelligence" in any sense, they have human toddler intelligence, which makes them quite good at certain things and terrible at others. Similarly, LLMs don't have "general intelligence", they have LLM-intelligence which makes them good at some things and terrible at others. (Very little overlap between LLMs and toddlers, as it happens).
We like to pretend that adult humans have "general intelligence", but we don't, we have adult-human intelligence and are good at certain things and terrible at others.
To pile on to that, animals, too, have their own intelligence that makes them good at some things and terrible at others. As a dog owner, I know well how incredible dogs are at observing others and reading from posture, gestures etc., an ability that comes naturally to them but is rare and valuable enough in humans that they can make a paid profession out of it.
One might note here that among dogs, some are rather more intelligent than others, but all would score the same on a human intelligence test
Toddler AGI at the tail end of a S-curve bodes poorly for any singularity.
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https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-el-salvador-abrego-garcia-b2725002.html
A legal immigrant and father to a US citizen with no criminal record was "accidentally" deported and thrown into the worst prison on the planet. US tax payer dollars are paying to keep him there. And the government claims there's now nothing they can do because he's outside jurisdiction.
Meanwhile, the admin is violating the deportation injunctions and continuing deportation flights, even though it's now become incredibly clear that they are essentially picking up anyone who has the wrong skin tone (i.e. violating judicial review AND doing it badly): https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/us-deports-more-alleged-gang-members-el-salvador-2025-03-31/
Meanwhile, ICE has already "accidentally" detained a US citizen, again for basically looking wrong: https://www.techdirt.com/2025/03/28/ice-arrested-and-detained-a-us-citizen-for-hours-because-he-looked-mexican/
I think this is indefensible. If, somehow, you're still defending this administration, I would love to understand what exactly is enough of a bright line for them to cross.
I find that my answer to a similar question last OT is unchanged.
He was an illegal alien suspected of gang activity. We owe him nothing. DHS has the authority to remove him from the country. If you’re concerned about prison, here’s a simple solution: obey the law.
As has already been posted, both in op and in the comments on this thread, the man was legally allowed to be in the country, regardless of the circumstances of his entry. DHS does NOT have the authority to violate judicial orders. So the actual law breaker here is...the Trump admin.
It should be obvious why conservatives don't take this seriously. When the law suits your preferences, ignoring it is a crisis and an authoritarian power grab. When the law doesn't appeal to you, ignoring it is simply a practical reality of enforcement. Why wasn't he deported after his arrest in 2019? Was the decision to let him stay at that point a crisis of democracy?
If we're going to be histrionic about the actions of DHS, why not apply that to the judge as well? We could just as easily characterize him as a rouge judge misusing his authority for activist purposes and granting protection based on an obviously spurious asylum claim. We can even accuse him of trying to usurp the power of the democratically elected president and stymie the execution of his popular mandate. Would you really find any of that convincing though? If not, then hopefully you can see why conservatives are generally unconcerned about this.
> Why wasn't he deported after his arrest in 2019? Was the decision to let him stay at that point a crisis of democracy?
I mean, you can read the case law? The precedent, the laws in place, these are all well established and have been linked in the thread.
Paraphrasing from elsewhere, if your argument is that you do not believe in refugees or asylum seekers, that we should deport legal migrants who are the family of citizens to places where they might be killed, and that this is so important it is worth massively expanding the powers of the executive to the point where they are ignoring judicial orders and legal precedent, then you should actually make that argument. But handwaving to something like "this is illegal!!!" while doing exactly zero work to understand why Garcia's case went the way it did is not compelling.
And if your argument is "I do believe in asylum in some cases but we can do it a different way", then propose a different way. I, and everyone else who's thought about this for decades, would love to hear the unique insights.
The reality of the situation is that you're mad that the legislature has laws on the books protecting people you don't like. You can, like, advocate to change the laws. But throwing a tantrum through the executive that not only violates the actual letter of the law but also directly and massively expands the authority of the executive under a man who is clearly authoritarian? Make it make sense. This is in no way equivalent to the decision to let him stay in the country, which of course is a decision that actually does follow the law.
On a meta level of all this, I think what I've heard from you and several other people in these comments is something like "no violation of checks and balances, no violation of law, no violation of moral understanding is too great to get rid of immigrants in this country". Which of course begs the question: why? What is animating this level of extremism?
Even if I buy that all of these legal immigrants broke some law in arriving to this country, I have no idea what is compelling such massive hatred against a group of people who are literally paying taxes while getting no benefits. It'd be like shooting pedestrians to prevent the scourge of jaywalking. Like, what?
>people who are literally paying taxes while getting no benefits.
Illegals cost the state money on balance
Citation needed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_impact_of_illegal_immigration_to_the_United_States?wprov=sfla1
The strongest evidence for your side is 'it's complicated'. On the other side you have taxes, economic growth, consumer demand, being willing to do a bunch of jobs no one else wants to do ...
I'll freely admit that I'm not married to the existence of asylum or refugee status, especially in its current form. Whatever the original intention might have been, its primary use today is as a tool for economic migrants and open-borders activists to game the system. It's also not difficult to come up with reform ideas. (Auto-reject cases that pass through a third country, auto-reject anyone suspected of a crime, make it non-obligatory for the host country to hear claims, move to an opt-in system where the host country affirmatively selects people they want to grant asylum/refugee hearings to at their own discretion.)
There will always be a tension between liberal asylum/refugee policy and the ability to restrict immigration. Since the current policy makes it impossible to enforce immigration restrictions we need to make the policy less liberal. This is really just common sense and does not take years of study to understand. It's only a problem if you are adamant about maximizing asylum. To which, I can ask you the same question you asked me. Why? Why prioritize the interests of foreigners over the clearly expressed preferences of citizens?
If it's so easy to come up with reform ideas, you should push for legislation.
You haven't really responded to the meat of what I'm saying. We both seem to agree that the law and precedent supports that there is nothing "illegal" happening in the way the border is being enforced. We just disagree about whether the law is right or wrong. But instead of trying to fix the law -- which, you know, your people have both houses so like...??? -- you want to give power to the executive, remove checks and balances, and even seem open to some pretty monstrous collateral damage.
You can flail about claiming that there's an open border (there isn't) or that the law is somehow resulted in an open border (it hasn't). I'd love to see stats on this because the only information I can find indicates that asylum grants are like 5% of all applications.
Which of course makes what-about-this-strawman all the weaker. Why is this such a big deal to you, personally, that you think it's acceptable and in fact morally just to overturn checks and balances?
You're not going to shock or scandalise any conservatives by pointing out that the government is pretty incompetent and bad at its job. That's exactly what conservatives have been saying all along! A change in the party affiliation at the top isn't going to suddenly make millions of bone-headed government employees any smarter or more competent, and it should come as no surprise that the government is just as bad at deporting people as it is at airline security, health care or airport security.
I'm not really aiming for self-destructive conservatives. I'm aiming for the rationalist libertarian conservatives who claimed that Trump was going to be better for a less authoritarian government.
Like, if you're a xenophobic nationalist, yea, I think you're probably in full support of this. But also, we just have such fundamental values differences that we have to start the conversation several miles back before we can even begin to evaluate trump
>A legal immigrant and father to a US citizen with no criminal record
This just incorrect (apart from the “father to a US Citizen” part, which doesn’t indicate anything relevant about this case apart from the geographic coordinates his babymomma gave birth at). He entered the United States without authorization, which is a crime, and which by definition makes him an illegal immigrant.
"During the removal proceedings, Abrego Garcia applied for asylum and protection under the United Nations Convention Against Torture, and a judge granted him withholding from removal. The government did not appeal the decision."
You seem to want to have a semantics debate, which I'm not interested in having. So let's taboo the word "immigrant" and get right to the point.
The man is "legally allowed to be in the country". You can disagree about how he got here, but he is legally allowed to be here. If you think there's something factually incorrect about that, please provide sources.
Also, sorry, I think it's material that he is the father of a citizen. This will destroy that girl's childhood and the rest of the family. Maybe that's acceptable collateral damage to you, but own at least own that.
It’s not a a semantic debate. He illegally entered the country. Therefore, he should be removed. There are in fact, practical and procedural hurdles to the actual removal of a person like that, but none of that changes the fact that he is not supposed to be in this country.
He had an order of removal to El Salvador. A judge paused that and said, “you can’t remove him to El Salvador.” The judge did not say that he is legally in the country. He could have been removed to some other country. The fact that he was not then removed to another country does not make the fact that he is in the country legal.
Yes, the government screwed up by removing him to El Salvador. The government did not screw up by removing a legal immigrant.
"It’s not a a semantic debate. He illegally entered the country. Therefore, he should be removed."
I believe that current US federal law is that a person who enters the country without permission and then says that he's sorry but he had to do this because he and his family were on the run from a vindictive authoritarian regime or whatever and can they please have asylum, is *not* to be removed from the country until we've had time to properly determine whether or not they're telling the truth about that.
If the circumstances make it patently obvious that they're lying, then maybe it can be a short and simple hearing, but you do have to hold that hearing. Sorry (not sorry) if the law doesn't work the way that you think it should. You can try changing the law, of course; your team holds the Presidency and both houses of Congress.
Part of the problem is that people claim asylum as one more move in "I got into the country and I want to stay here". Is this man genuinely in danger from the government or other entities in his home country?
This is how the well has been poisoned in trying to distinguish between genuine cases and people just trying it on, and now with the change of administration the pendulum has swung from "believe them all" to "doubt them all".
> Part of the problem is that people claim asylum as one more move in "I got into the country and I want to stay here". Is this man genuinely in danger from the government or other entities in his home country? This is how the well has been poisoned in trying to distinguish between genuine cases and people just trying it on, and now with the change of administration the pendulum has swung from "believe them all" to "doubt them all".
Sorry, are you saying that previously, every asylum request was granted? Do you really want to defend that?
Here is the information for 2023: https://ohss.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2024-10/2024_1002_ohss_asylees_fy2023.pdf
Relevant quotes:
"Affirmative asylum case filings with USCIS nearly doubled
from 241,280 applications in 2022 to 456,750 in 2023,
the highest number on record (and covering 636,380
individuals) [...] The total number of defensive asylum applications filed with EOIR nearly doubled from 260,830 in 2022 to 488,620 in 2023. [...]
The total number of persons granted asylum in the United
States increased from 35,720 in 2022 to 54,350 in 2023."
In your framing of "believe them all", only 54k out of a total of over a million asylum applications were accepted. This is, roughly, a 5% acceptance rate.
So, like, what are you even talking about? I think you should consider if the sources you are downstream from are grounded in factual information.
I think you're of the opinion that the judge was like 'you cannot remove him to El Salvador but he's still here illegally. And I'm afraid you don't really know what you're talking about.
A withholding of removal is a legal term of art, a status that is applied to an individual. It's not, like, a one-off thing related to this particular case. You can read more about here (https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/sites/default/files/research/the_difference_between_asylum_and_withholding_of_removal.pdf)
but the relevant quotes:
"As in the case of asylum, a person who is granted withholding of removal is protected from being returned to his or her home country and receives the right to remain in the United States and work legally. But at the end of the court process, an immigration judge enters a deportation order and then tells the government they
cannot execute that order. That is, the “removal” to a person’s home country is “withheld.” However, the government is still allowed to deport that person to a different country if the other country agrees to accept them.
Withholding of removal provides a form of protection that is less certain than asylum, leaving its recipients in a sort of limbo. A person who is granted withholding of removal may never leave the United States without executing that removal order, cannot petition to bring family members to the United States, and does not gain a path to citizenship. And unlike asylum, when a family seeks withholding of removal together a judge may grant protection to the parent while denying it to the children, leading to family separation."
So, again, he was legally in the country. And, by the way,
>Yes, the government screwed up by removing him to El Salvador.
THIS IS THE WHOLE POINT???
“It’s not a a semantic debate.”
No, it’s totally not, it’s a debate about the law, and you seem to… have no idea about how laws work, and what a “judge” is, and what “legal” means. Hope you’re not a lawyer! Or a prosecutor. That would be sad!
The argument for the other side is quite simple. The rule of law on immigration has been completely ignored for decades now. Entering the country without authorization is a federal crime; this is the law of the land and was never changed. The government just sometimes stopped preventing people from illegally entering the country and also sometimes didn't deport them when they were caught. The law was just ignored and unenforced, to the extent that there are tens of millions of people who illegally entered the country. Now the rule of law is just being ignored in the other direction. If you want to use that to criticize the other side, they'll just shrug and say turnabout is fair play. Your follow up to that thought might be "but this means as soon as someone stops following the law somewhere there is no more law anywhere." Yes, this is why politics makes people stupid. The left is stupid for allowing their preference of open borders to destroy the law. The right is stupid for allowing their preference of getting rid of foreigners to destroy the law.
> If you want to use that to criticize the other side, they'll just shrug and say turnabout is fair play.
> The left is stupid for allowing their preference of open borders to destroy the law. The right is stupid for allowing their preference of getting rid of foreigners to destroy the law.
This is a pretty shit equivocation. Obama famously had more deportations than Bush, Biden more than Trump 1. Hell, Biden had more deportations in his first quarter than Trump did. Trump is literally just doing it in the most power-grabbing way possible.
And even criticisms of policy like catch-and-release are well within established law, and have significant judicial precedent. There's a lot of relevant links on the wiki article on catch and release, for eg (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch_and_release_(immigration)) or asylum law in the US (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asylum_in_the_United_States). If your opinion is that this is bad, call your legislative reps? You're welcome to make the argument that the US should not have any refugee, asylum, or withheld release, but at least be honest about it. I want people to defend that they do not believe in refugees or asylum seekers, that we should deport legal migrants who are the family of citizens to places where they might be killed, and that this is so important it is worth massively expanding the powers of the executive to the point where they are ignoring judicial orders and legal precedent. Make the argument.
And if your response is "well, we can do it a different way" propose a different way. I, and everyone else who's thought about this for decades, would love to hear the unique insights.
On a meta level, regardless of how you feel about the immigration debate, it seems obviously, materially worse to deport a bunch of people over the explicit orders of the judiciary while also detaining citizens. If the defense is "we dont care enough about going through the usual channels, we just want our will now", I think that that's tantamount to saying "there is no line that I won't cross". At least it's good to know where they stand.
+1
Your argument suggests that there is no more law and no constraint on the powers of the federal government. Is that your position? If not, what constraints do you believe should exist? What do you think actually constrains this administration?
My comment was a response to the OP's question - how are the Trump admin's deportation polices defensible? I was simply holding up a mirror - they are exactly as defensible as allowing tens of millions of people to enter the country illegally and then doing nothing about them.
Let's use the Abrego Garcia case. He illegally entered the country somewhere around 2011/12. In 2019 he was arrested under suspicion of being an MS-13 gang member. The only evidence of this presented was the word of an anonymous CI, which is pretty dubious. Anyway, only after being in the country illegally for 8 years does he make an asylum claim, which was rejected. But he also made a claim that he would be tortured if returned to El Salvador, which was only substantiated by a deposition from a family member. So the judge granted an order of protection specifically against Garcia being deported to El Salvador. At no point between 2019 and 2025 was anything done to remove him from the US despite his illegal presence. Then he does finally get deported, but to the country that a judge specifically ordered he couldn't be deported to, and also thrown in prison. The Trump admin response to this is whoops, but now he's in a foreign country so we have no jurisdiction to do anything, too bad.
Does any part of this sound like a functioning system? Garcia illegally entered the country and stayed here for 8 years with no consequence. He got arrested because of essentially unsubstantiated hearsay that he was a gang member. At this point he gets an order to prevent deportation to his home country, also based on unsubstantiated information. Years later he gets deported back anyway, and also thrown in prison. Should I be upset at the injustice of Garcia violating our immigration laws, or the kangaroo court standards of evidence that established Garcia as a MS-13 member and also protected him from deportation, or the Trump admin violating that protection to throw him in prison in El Salvador?
If you're asking me, personally, what I think should happen: Garcia should have been stopped at the border or deported in 2011. Failing that, he should have been deported in 2019 when he was arrested. Failing that, he should have been deported in 2025. At no point should he have been sent to a prison without due process.
This is the ideal standard and what the administration should be moving towards, but I think there's going to be a long delay before all the backlogs and bleeding-hearts about "Jose swears up and down that he's a political refugee and not simply an economic one" can be cleared out, and there will be a lot of damage done in the meantime.
Speaking of deportations, Germany is also deporting people for political activism (allegedly):
https://www.rte.ie/news/europe/2025/0401/1505330-irish-citizens-berlin/
So I think that story is a counterpoint to what is going on in the US; Germany is not MAGA territory and they're deporting white Europeans who as EU citizens would have the right to be in Germany. I foresee interesting times ahead!
Thank you for the clarification. You are saying that both political parties have undermined the rule of law and tit-for-tat is part of their justification. You are not saying this is a good outcome.
I'll throw in my support for this interpretation as well. I do not support how the deportations are being executed. I didn't even vote for Trump. Yet Open Borders manages to be infinitely stupider. It's not even a question of policy, it's a question of sovereignty.
Can you point (with actual evidence) to ANY administration in the past 50 years that had a policy that can fairly be described as "Open Borders?" If not, then this entire claim seems pretty irrelevant.
> Meanwhile, ICE has already "accidentally" detained a US citizen, again for basically looking wrong: https://www.techdirt.com/2025/03/28/ice-arrested-and-detained-a-us-citizen-for-hours-because-he-looked-mexican/
The quotes around accidentally are confusing.
Are you trying to quote ICE? I don't see the word accidentally in the URL you linked. I do see an assertion that "...Trump and his supporters want: the vanishing/banishment of anyone who isn’t a straight white male", which is dubious given that Trump has non-whites and women in his Cabinet.
If they're meant to be scare quotes, are you suggesting that ICE intentionally and knowingly detained a citizen and then, on their own, released him? That's a lot of potential heat to bring on themselves to hold someone for a few hours.
I'm saying: ICE intended to pick up random people based on the color of their skin and the clothes being worn. They intentionally and knowingly pursued a policy of detainment that would pick up non criminals, legal residents, and yes, citizens.
That they eventually released him has no bearing on their decision to pursue that aggressive policy. It was not an accident that they picked him up.
Why are you framing it like this? Especially as some kind of bright line?
First, on Abrego Garcia, you can just read the article you linked and pretty trivially imagine what the conservative view is. The man arrived in 2011 "without inspection", removal proceedings began in 2019 when ICE accused him of being an MS-13 member after an arrest, the Biden administration didn't pursue it, and then the new Trump administration did. Whether he is involved in El Salvadorian gangs and to what extent is an open question but, again, just off the article you posted, the conservative case for expelling a suspected gang member are not difficult to understand.
Nor is the macro case confusing. Illegal immigration has been a big problem for a long time, it has been underenforced to the point where 'frickin Trump got elected, and now he's enforcing it. A condition of him enforcing it cannot be literally no mistakes; this is an isolated demand for rigor that no government program could ever possibly meet. There's no way there won't be some mistakes and this seems like exactly the kind of mistake you would expect: a gray area "uninspected" migrant with questionable links to violent crime. If, indeed, this ends up being an error.
And on Julio Noriega, the 2nd link...dude. It is settled precedent that the President of the US can assassinate you via drone strike without trial. (1) This is an Obama era thing. Regardless of the right or wrong of that case...no, potentially illegally detaining a US citizen for a few hours is not a bright line given the aforementioned precedent.
This is among the least charitable, most partisan framing of these events you could provide? Why? I've read some of your stuff, you're smart, how can you not guess how conservatives view the Garcia case just from that article?
(1) https://www.vox.com/2014/6/23/5835602/anwar-al-awlaki-memo
WRT Awlaki: shouldn't we correct that mistake, rather than use a past moral stain to infect present action?
Two things.
First, I'm trying to understand why the OP thinks these are such brazen violations of the common good that it should shock and appall people and Trump supporters. Just at a factual level, this doesn't make sense to me.
Go back to the OP:
"I think this is indefensible. If, somehow, you're still defending this administration, I would love to understand what exactly is enough of a bright line for them to cross."
Regardless of the right or wrong of Awlaki or Noriega, I don't understand how anyone could consider Noriega, or even Garcia, as an "indefensible bright line" in light of Awlaki. Significantly strong bright lines have already been crossed. Regardless of our opinions, why would the OP presume several hours of wrongful detention would shock in the aftermath of drone assassinations? Just laying aside the actual right or wrong of the issue, his interpretation of the scale and seriousness confuse me. And I honestly suspect they're being exaggerated for polemical effect but I can't understand for what audience.
Second, like, yeah, it would be awesome to roll back the Awlaki precedent, it would be awesome if these deportations were being done more competently, it would be awesome if illegal immigration laws had been faithfully enforced 30+ years. It's not hard to imagine political situations better than the one we're in. But, given the real constraints of the situation we're in, it's not clear to me what's so horrible about these events.
The Awlaki thing is extraordinarily irrelevant.
I found it relevant to the point that WoolyAI was making and even felt that it supported his point. What makes you think it isn't relevant in an extraordinary way?
I seem to recall some people in the previous Open Thread arguing that the no-due-process deportations weren't a big deal because if they got something *really* wrong the courts would fix it eventually. Abrego Garcia's case seems to prove this false - if the government wrongly deports you, there's no taking it back, because you're outside the reach of the courts.
(Well, the case hasn't had a ruling yet, but it's certainly alarming that the government's official stance on its mistake is "sorry, too late, we can't fix this.")
There's disagreement about whether this is "really wrong". The conservative reading of the situation is something like "Proven illegal migrant and possible gang member abuses asylum law in transparent ploy to remain in the country. Gets deported anyway." To cross the threshold of *really* wrong, you would probably need to see a US citizen get deported. You might even need the US citizen to be non-immigrant and non-anchor baby, but those would be more contentious.
The argument the government is making is not "we didn't get this case wrong." The argument they're making is "even if we got this wrong, the court is not allowed to tell us to fix it." That's an argument that would apply to anyone who gets sent to El Salvador, even a citizen.
At the point that it is applied to a citizen, I think conservatives would agree that things have gone too far.
If this argument is successfully applied to a US citizen it will be too late to complain because the government will have the power to send you to the gulag for complaining.
Their complaining might not do much good from the inside of a 3rd world prison though.
One bit I'm seeing cited is behind a Pacer wall: https://t.co/25XZEe8cTi
On March 29, 2019, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) served Abrego-Garcia with a Notice to Appear, charging him as inadmissible pursuant to Section 1182(a)(6)(A)(i) of Title 8 of the United States Code, "as an alien present in the United States without being admitted or paroled, or who arrived in the United States at any time or place other than as designated by the [Secretary of Homeland Security]."
During the course of his proceedings, Abrego-Garcia remained in ICE custody because the Immigration Judge (IJ) with the Executive Office for Immigration Review denied Abrego-Garcia bond at a hearing on April 24, 2019, citing danger to the community because "the evidence show[ed] that he is a verified member of [Mara Salvatrucha] ('MS-13')]" and therefore posed a danger to the community. The IJ also determined that he was a flight risk. Abrego-Garcia appealed, and the Board of Immigration Appeals upheld this bond decision in an opinion issued on December 19, 2019, citing the danger Abrego-Garcia posed to the community.
In The Man Who Was Thursday Chesterton gives a somewhat different illustration about chaos and progress - the rationalist argues with the anarchist that all things man-made imbue him with a sense of glory compared to the "natural" world.
Sometimes things fall apart for a good reason
https://debugyourpain.substack.com/p/how-seattles-rsi-support-group-ended
Anyone seen the conviction of Marine Le Pen in France?
Seems the trend of Europe becoming shockingly undemocratic continues.
Maybe you're too young to remember, or didn't always pay the same amount of attention to the going-ons in Old Europe, but this is not the first time or even the most high profile case. I guess my country of Europe was never "democratic" to begin with?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silvio_Berlusconi#:~:text=On%201%20August%202013%2C%20Berlusconi,by%20doing%20unpaid%20community%20service.
If you don't want the time, you shouldn't do the crime and so forth.
Unfortunately, the conservative party in the US is too well coordinated to ever allow any punishment of one of its members for a crime as small as stealing 3 million, you need to be in the billions before they'll even acknowledge that it happened, S&L style.
I think that's a strong argument for fines and imprisonment.
The fact that the court has specifically banned her from running for office for five years even though her "prison" sentence is only two years suspended and two on an ankle monitor doesn't wholly invalidate it, but it makes it somewhat weaker, I think, because that's less directly related to the traditional aims of justice.
It was the democratically elected legislature of France that imposed the running-for-office ban, by passing a law to that effect.
This was discussed in an earlier thread, so please search below.
In case it is helpful context, France has a track record of prosecutions of powerful politicians. While this is "undemocratic" in the sense of restricting the choice of the voters, it isn't at all clear that this is a change or escalation from past behavior.
And since it was the national legislature which created that particular penalty, by passing a law, it is not undemocratic.
I follow the owner of Kiwifarms, Josh Moon, because he's probably the most censored man in America (more than Gab or Nick Fuentes) purely for running an edgy gossip website, and the efforts he goes through to keep it up are seriously impressive, and reveal a lot of fraying threads in the interconnectivity of the internet. His article about being banned from Cloudflare, and his article where he talks about how payment networks are taking away his right to transact online are both pretty revealing as far as how intense corporate censorship can get.
https://www.thetedkarchive.com/library/joshua-moon-where-the-sidewalk-ends-the-death-of-the-internet
https://madattheinternet.com/2021/04/07/section-230-isnt-the-problem-payment-networks-are/
He's since managed to replace cloudflare and route around the tier 1 ISPs that have blackholed him, but the financial censorship hasn't changed at all in the years since those articles were made.
He's been trying to start a foundation for Internet Preservation to try and fix the payment processor overreach, but ironically the payment processors are preventing him from even doing this:
https://xcancel.com/usipsorg/status/1905621992432185512#m
The man can't even raise money for a foundation to lobby for his right to raise money online.
Anyway, he's basically as censored as it gets, so if you have an interest in one of those 'high-risk customers' that payment processors like to screw over like porn or firearms sites, then he might be worth a follow.
And to tie this into current events, I suppose, it's hard to have sympathy for non-citizens getting deported for frivolous reasons when actual American citizens can be stripped of their ability to transact online with no recourse and sovereign nations like the U.K are threatening American website owners.
https://kiwifarms.st/threads/2025-03-26-ofcom-advisory-letter-illegal-content-risk-assessments-your-duties-under-the-online-safety-act-2023.215543/page-55#post-20970052
Assorted trigger warnings for content that he posts:
Overt white nationalist signaling
Overt sex-negative feminist signaling
Overt anti-Semitic signaling
Overt anti-Muslim signaling
Overt anti-anime signaling
Overt anti-trans signaling
Coverage of E-drama and lolcows.
None of these bother me, so I can just pay attention to his difficulties in keeping his site up. It's interesting.
> Overt anti-anime signaling
The worse sort of bigotry imaginable
Do you **really** want to discuss the centralization of the Internet and the fuckfest that is online payment systems, or just signal boost the equivalent of a virtual high school bully?
I agree that even the high school bully should get to say bully things on the internet, niceness enforcement should be more decentralized than sledgehammering entire website domains and using authoritarian payment denial tactics, and I'm using "authoritarian" with utmost seriousness here, because payment denial is quite literally how authoritarian dictatorships operate when they want to strangle their opposition without making a fuss.
Also, fuck Cloudflare and their stronghold on the internet.
But this:
>> it's hard to have sympathy for non-citizens getting deported for frivolous reasons
is very weird and gives me a rough stereotype for what type of "Free Speech" defender you're, which I'm more than happy to give you the chance to dispel. **How** is it hard to have sympathy for non-citizens getting deported for frivolous reasons, isn't the frivolity of the reasons for deportation - not to mention the extreme seriousness of being deported to foreign prisons or disappeared into shadow ICE prisons relative to being denied payment or domains - the very reason why you should have **more** sympathy for non-citizens getting deported?
I, for one, have sympathy for both. Let me check my sympathy tank.... no, still full, it doesn't get empty when I have sympathy for more than 1 type of person.
> None of these bother me
Which means, with high probabilities, that you're not a member of any of the targeted group. Which is fine, just don't pretend that you're a super tough tick-skinned Übermensch, the true test of that is when the thing you're advocating for is bashing a group you identify as.
Actually, I love anime, and most of his anti-porn and anime signaling is directly against people like me (this takes up nearly as much time as the weekly anti-trans segment). I'm pretty ambivalent on all the other things though.
As to why I have less sympathy, it's multi-faceted. I'm not saying I want these deportations to happen in the way they have. I'm pro-free-speech in all cases, so if some Muslim immigrant without citizenship wants to yell "Death to Israel" on their college campus, I'm cool with that. I wouldn't even want them to face any reprisal from their college, let alone the government. I swear that much.
But that commitment doesn't mean anything. I haven't been advocating on their behalf and I don't feel a strong impulse to like I do with an American citizen getting locked out of online payment systems. Why is that?
It's a couple things. He is closer to someone like me. He's an edgy, tech-savvy white guy that grew up running wild online and immersed in imageboard culture. That's probably a lot of what it is. The other thing is that citizen have explicit protection, and citizen vs non-citizen resident seems like a very strong Schelling point. I'm not even slightly afraid of being deported, or even any of my friends being deported. My friends all have citizenship, as do my extended family.
If you think about it from that lens, it's clear that corporate censorship is much more frightening to me. After all, this country has a pretty arbitrary immigration policy anyway, what's one more layer of hoops to jump through for second class citizens?
If even citizen's rights mean nothing next to corporate power then citizens and residents will both be equal under their heel. If citizens have absolute free-speech, but non-citizens don't have free-speech at all, there is at least an example to aspire to in how we treat non-citizens. The former situation is what we've effectively had until now, and it's very, very hard to fix. The latter situation can be fixed by a later president saying residents have the same rights as Americans do when it comes to free speech. The executive branch giveth, the executive branch taketh away.
What I'm getting at with the last point is that corporate censorship is both more frightening to me personally, and also more clandestine. Who would you even litigate against to dispute being cut out of the global economy by payment processors? They're a black box in the first place. There's nothing you can do save pray for competent bureaucracy and legislators. But have a look at the deportation stuff. The enemy is clear, they know who they have to litigate against, and a single elected official can reverse it all.
Payment processors scare me more than the president.
I hope this helps you understand where I'm coming from and why my instinctual reaction is more apathetic to a threat I see as temporary, blatant, and actively being worked on vs a problem that is permanent, sneaky, and is being championed by no one except an internet bully. Like, they're still going on about banks even though the problem is the payment processors and their deliberately obfuscated stranglehold on all online services.
This is my most important issue. If a candidate offered to defang the payment processors, I would pick them over any others.
I mean, his website has been tied to multiple suicides and stalking cases. Hosting services don't want that liability for obvious reasons. I guess you can loosely call this censorship, but can you really compel a company to host material that will almost inevitably cause them legal problems?
I will admit its fascinating that he cares so much about his bullying website that he's dedicated his life to keeping it afloat.
> has been tied to
Slate Star Codex has been tied to white nationalists by the New York Times. There's a poster by the handle blorbo who has been known to post on Astral Codex Ten, which has been tied to Slate Star Codex.
While I appreciate the sheer joy of responding to a semantic quibble as a way to avoid engaging in good faith, what I actually meant was that the site is used almost exclusively to organise harassment campaigns, share personal information and select targets for said campaigns.
White nationalists, while unfortunately present here are hardly using this space as their base of operations for illegal or dubiously legal activies
> for illegal or dubiously legal activies
Which is it? Illegal, or dubiously legal?
The company is incorporated in America and has an American address. It operates under American law. Call the police if there are illegal activities.
If there was a suicide you could "tie to" you should be calling the police.
"Which is it? Illegal, or dubiously legal?"
The word "activities" is--as you are apparently unaware--a plural noun. As in, more than one, singular activity. They do not all have to share a common status with regard to legality.
> Call the police if there are illegal activities.
...particularly ironic, since one of the exciting pastimes regularly organised on kiwifarms is calling armed police to some target location where there is no illegal activity.
Are you talking about swatting? You're just making shit up now.
🙄
Section 230 means they don't have liability.
In the US. Things get more complicated abroad and they'd rather avoid the whole thing. Also these liability in the sense of "public backlash". In the same way that reddit took down the "jailbait" subreddit about 10 years ago, hosting legal but objectionable things is a PR nightmare.
Its a mess most companies want to avoid.
Twitter and YouTube and Facebook have all been tied to thousands+ of suicides and stalking cases, literally too many to report or count. Why do they get to spew their garbage on the pipes of the internet but not a solitary bully?
Either all or none, no in-betweens.
I agree that facebook, twitter and youtube should be torn to shreds for their complicity in all those things. Even worse, their lack of moderation in non-english languages has promoted ethnic cleansings in Myanmar.
The difference is that facebook and twitter have the defence (adequate or not) that bullying etc is not what their sites are for and the sheer scale of their sites means these things happen. Kiwi farms is 100% dedicated to stalking, bullying, sharing leaked nudes etc.
Also, twitter and facebook host their own servers. Kiwi farms rents servers off of other companies. If someone rents a room in your house and turns it into a grow room for weed, you'd probably kick them out.
Every generation has this guy.
It reminds me of Larry Flint and Hustler magazine
Honestly none of this is a defense. The fact that it could be used as defense is a testament to the sad state of the internet after the high hopes of the wild 1990s.
> Kiwi farms rents servers off of other companies.
They were past this stage since before 2020 or so. The Cloudflare kerfuffle from 2022 happened because Cloudflare doesn't want to provide DDoS protection, not hosting, KF were already self-hosted at this point, self-hosting is easy compared to what they have done since. Other kerfuffles happened because DNS registerers don't want to give them DNS->IP entries. Payment denial is also the reliable option for those who want to silence people without fuss, and it has been used on Kiwi farms.
This, I repeat, is never and was never how the internet should operate. Sure, nobody is obligated to host your shit, and I will grant you further that payment processors are in the right here too (it's our fault for depending on that garbage as much as we do in modern life, not their fault for picking and choosing who to deny). But DNS and DDoS protections? Do you want to live in a future where those are at the mercy of your corporate overlords? And what if those overlords turn on a dime when a certain orange scum threatens them?
To me, this is all a natural outcome of the over centralisation and monopolisation of the internet. I personally would be happy if all the monopolies were smashed up. I'm not a huge fan of payment denial, but again that's a consequence of monopoly.
There's a balance that needs to be struck, but unfortunately it seems like that is not a majority opinion anymore.
He has been sued. I think most of them get thrown out since he somehow tends to attract the attention of crazies.
To fine or jail him would require due process. Unless I missed something he hasn't ever been charged with a crime. One of the issues is all these things have happened to him *without* being charged. It's someone who hasn't broken any laws and struggles to stay online (partially due to his own social issues).
> To fine or jail him would require due process
Not anymore!
> Unless I missed something he hasn't ever been charged with a crime. One of the issues is all these things have happened to him *without* being charged.
If you're outraged about that, you're *really* going to be horrified when you hear what ICE has been up to lately.
I'm pretty upset about that and we discussed it at the organizing meeting we had last Saturday to go over voter mobilization and legal challenges and protests.
I think I saw you there. You had the sunglasses, right?
US presidents love to harp on about other NATO members spending and investing too little on defense, and they're absolutely right! But I wonder: How much of America's military expenditure can really be attributed to the direct interests of NATO, as opposed to enforcing geopolitical interests far away from North America and Europe?
America has spent a lot on wars in recent times, but Iraq I and Iraq II can hardly be called defensive wars to protect the nation's sovereignity, and as for Afghanistan – that's debatable to say the least. And although long-term investments into military infrastructure and technology benefit the self-defense scenario as well, for the last two decades, the US has focused on counter-insurgency operations instead of peer or near-peer conflicts.
At least half of our defense budget is driven by our commitment and intention to defend our allies, including NATO but also including e.g. Japan and South Korea and possibly Israel and Taiwan. It's difficult to break it down any further than "homeland defense" and "foreign wars", because the foreign-wars part is flexible and mobile - most of it will be deployed to defend whichever of our allies is under the greatest threat.
It is still reasonable for us to insist of all our allies, that they each take up their fair share of the burden in proportion to the resources available.
I think a big part of it is maintaining a dependable nuclear umbrella.
It's a fair point, but if a war breaks out an aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean, it can sail to Europe. Planes based in Japan or Korea can fly to Europe. Obviously the US probably could never dedicate 100% of its military to a Europe-based war, but it could still send a massive amount of troops/planes/ships etc.
Troops/planes/ships in Europe or in the vicinity of Europe can sail on the other side of the world too, though.
I'd say it's not just the US military that has a non-NATO focus however. France uses it to project power into it's old colonies in Africa (Mali and the like), Greece and Turkey are basically funding armies to defend against/attack each other. Eastern/Central Europe is probably focused on defense from Russia just because that is where their biggest risk of invasion comes from regardless of NATO, and a cultural memory of Soviet occupation.
Also places like France and UK are just as prone to pork barrel funding for their defense industries as the US. Only Germany of the big nations I can think of doesn't have much of a reason for military spending outside NATO, and considering it's recent history (marching with broomsticks anyone), and how much money they've invested in economic ties to Russia (Nord Stream 1&2), it's say there's a case to be made until recently they've been a historic cost to NATO - potentially understandable due to historic reasons of not wanting to look too militaristic.
My view is basically everyone is a little guilty of using their militaries selfishly (or for their own national interest if we look at it another way), but with recent Russian adventurism in Ukraine, and developing threats globally, it is time for all the nations of NATO to recognise the world has changed and start funding their militaries accordingly.
I feel like there are probably a lot of Silicon Valley types on here, and I need some advice. My father is trying to entice my wife and I to move our kids to Palo Alto or Menlo Park in June for middle school and high school. I also have the option of settling in a beautiful setting in Mendocino County where I own a lovely house, but the schools and social scene are podunk. My wife and I are both teachers, so looking at around 120k each on the Peninsula. We would earn enough money above what we would get in a rural setting in Palo Alto to cover the 60-70k rent for an apartment.
Sometimes I hear Palo Alto is a great place to raise kids, others say it is a total rat race. Does anyone have experiences there? My daughters are good students, but not STEM focused, so I worry that schools are too big and competitive. They have always lived in nurturing expat communities.
Not a Silicon Valley type, but I was a tween and teen girl once.
Have you asked your daughters what option they want?
I'm not saying that you should let children make this decision for you, of course, but I think you should at least solicit their thoughts on it and seriously consider their arguments. Describe not only the expected academic setting, but general lifestyle, too. Will Silicon Valley mean sharing rooms in an apartment instead of having their own rooms in a house? Will it mean a lot of time commuting in cars? Will it mean cash going into rent instead of travel / hobbies / private lessons?
Or would living in Silicon Valley give them access to niche fields of interest (I dunno, rare musical instruments, top-tier competitive cheerleading, crew rowing, etc) they wouldn't be able to access in a rural setting? Do they see city perks that would be worth the inconvenience of city life?
And personally? As someone who's seeing young people entering my workplace, I would consider putting far less focus on their future as students and far more on them as future *employees* in (probably) non-STEM careers. Do they have any idea what they want to do as adults (and do those dreams seem plausible / achievable to you)? Which setting is more likely to produce resilient, humble, adaptable, charismatic, generally well-rounded and accomplished *workers?*
No employer gives a shit what grade their entry-level employee got in high AP Bio if they don't know how to prioritize tasks or incorporate critical feedback or get along with a prickly coworker. In almost all jobs across all fields, being likeable and socially savvy is far more useful than being merely smart. It's possible their very best teacher will be a boss at In-N-Out.
And last, student loan debt is increasingly a devastating *literal* opportunity cost. I have many peers and younger coworkers who live every day with the crushing stress of knowing they will never financially recover from their student loans early enough to start a family or own a home (while I, a college dropout, own my car outright, and my only debt is a condo in a highly desirable city which I can easily afford). If either of your daughters are blessed with a talent and inclination to skip college and go straight into an in-demand skilled trade, for godsake, *let them.* Do you want them to be able to own a house, or not?
I know "college isn't worth it!" is hard for a teacher to hear, but there are millions of people from whom college was very much not worth it, and that population is increasing every year.
I've asked my daughters where they want to live, and having never lived in the USA, and only visited the grandparents in Palo Alto they really have no idea what life there would be like. One of them wants to be a lawyer, and the other has no idea. I try to get them interested in trades, with pretty limited success. When I was in middle school and younger I spent tons of time disassembling stuff and hammering on tree forts, wrenching on bicycles, and building things. I feel like that is the kind of background one needs in order to be an electrician or a plumber, painting contractor etc. Physical strength is a real asset too. I guess trades can mean other fields, but my daughters have more typical feminine interests and pastimes, but one of them does like to build models and create stuff on a smaller scale.
The reason I was asking about Palo Alto, is I feel like that is the kind of rat race place that could crush a kid. But then maybe I am just reading BS on the internet, and really it could be a nice place to live in an insanely overpriced apartment and have access to some cool and interesting people and be near the grandparents who could offer love and care along with some financial help.
Ah, I see!
Yeah, it's a tougher choice when they don't even know which lifestyle they'd prefer, either.
The lawyer-leaning kid might benefit from the more prestigious high school if it eventually gets her into a more prestigious law school, but it might turn out she has an overly glamorous picture of what most lawyers do. There was a thread a while back by a guy contemplating law school, and a few lawyers popped in to provide some advice ranging from "don't do it!" to "it's okay, I guess." (https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/open-thread-371/comment/97875681), and this guy who misdirected his comment wishes he'd never gone (https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/open-thread-371/comment/97968664).
See also the much-beloved "Don't Be A Lawyer" song from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, which lawyers seem to hugely enjoy when they aren't sadly sighing over how true it is: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/open-thread-371/comment/97968664
The city option might give her better access to internships / actual lawyers early enough to divert her away from law if it isn't something she is unusually suited to doing.
Some skilled trades don't require any strength at all (watchmaking / repair, etc), but of course that's the kind of thing it's best to have a native interest in before you do any study or get certifications. My dad bought a small locksmith business in his retirement - though he found the administrative aspects of running the small business much more difficult than the technical work of locksmithing. Someone who's able to do both the bookkeeping/marketing side of things and the technical work can clean up pretty well, especially if they get good enough at picking locks to not need to drill them, which my dad did! He was routinely getting paid $100 for a brief commute to someone's door, which he'd spend 45 seconds picking open for them.
But nobody ever makes shows about locksmiths, so it's not on anyone's radar, even though it can be a pretty good life.
What do you want out of a high school experience?
PA can be both a great place to raise kids and be a total rat race at the same time. The local schools' student caliber is fantastic and the competition will drill discipline and stamina unmatched in any other American High school.
My biggest gripe with Paly and Henry Gunn is that you're at a disadvantage to get into UCs. UCs prefer to recruit schools by zipcode. Being #1 at a poor school in a poor zipcode will get you into Cal with a higher probability than being #50 at Henry Gunn. On the other hand, being #1 at Henry Gunn will give a better chance at getting into Stanford or MIT than being #1 at a worse high school.
The PA high schools are without a doubt the better educational experience, but sub-optimal for min-max-ing for UCs, and if I thought I would be #50 at Henry Gunn but #1 elsewhere, I would take being #1 elsewhere.
This too isn't without risks. I might not actually be #1 elsewhere and peer pressure from a bad friend group may turn myself, who would be a stellar student, into a sub-par student. There are no guarantees in life.
edit to add: I would send my own kids to PA high schools. I gave a fence sitter answer above, but for myself and my family I have a more decisive answer-- I refuse to metagame the UC system's ideological game that cultivates mediocracy around zipcodes. I will have my kids compete with the best or brightest, whoever/wherever/however-privileged they are and I simply do not recognize "alternative" forms of merit beyond STEM competitions. I myself was refused admission to UCLA and Cal as an undergrad, in some part because I went to a very competitive CA high school, but I was granted admission to their graduate programs for engineering four years later. But I am not you and my kids aren't yours.
Hey, thanks for your reply! I wasn’t sure if the perception of Pali and Gunn being hyper-competitive was just a Reddit thing or a widely held view.
The rural high school my daughters could attend has a graduating class of about 30 students, yet they regularly send kids to Stanford—a definite zip code perk. Plus, with such a small student body, it’s easy for students to participate in varsity sports, yearbook, and other activities since the bar is relatively low.
That said, the downsides include issues like drug use, a slacker culture, a weaker academic environment, and limited social opportunities. My main concern with a school like Pali is the mental health aspect, even smart kids might feel like they’re just meh. If a student isn’t pursuing STEM, I sometimes wonder whether such a rigorous high school experience is really worth it. Nice thing in a small town is you feel special.
If what is stopping you from sending your kids to a PA high school is your fear of mental illness from excessive "Korean High School" style competition, I would overcome it. Although it is true that PA high schools have on average one student suicide a year, I believe it is from an unhealthy home life.
I have to say it, so I'll say it, but both my neighbors are CEO types. I suspect they moved here to network with each other, the VCs, and to ambush Mark Zuckerburg on a walk. I would not be surprised if they accidentally drove their kids to mental illness. From what I've seen of both of my neighbors' children they are allowed 30 minutes of play a day and are chauffeured to extracurricular activities the rest of the time. It seems they are following some sort of cookbook to min-max their offspring
From what I've read of your comments, I believe it is unlikely that you will accidentally drive your kids to self harm. The adversity of intense "Korean High School" style competition may lift their spirit in the long run. It does not seem to me like you will threaten them with physical discipline based on their college acceptances list. (obligatory YMMV).
Hi everyone,
(We hope it’s okay to post this here—if not, we'll accept banishment without protest, but would appreciate any hints on where this might be better placed.)
We're an expat family of three living in Harlem, NYC, with our 4-year-old daughter. Over the past two years, we've had our daughter home-schooled by a professional teacher—think something like the aristocratic tutoring concept described by Hoehl[1], but with more emphasis on having time to be a child than pure academics. This has worked really well for us, so we can recommend that to anyone interested! However, this year our teacher decided to retire, so we're now in search of a new teacher for our little one.
What we're looking for:
* Experience (classroom or otherwise) in putting together a curriculum for a 4-7 year old and teaching it
* Availability to do this full days Mon-Fri or Mon-Thu
* Enthusiasm for the project and the other good things you'd expect from someone who chose a career working with pre-teen children :)
What we're offering:
* A flexible job where you can focus on educating one child with basically no overhead / meetings / paperwork / etc.
* An uncomplicated (by 5-year-old standards, anyway), engaged, happy girl as your primary partner on the journey
* A lot of freedom in putting together a well-rounded curriculum with as much time for field trips as you want
* Competitive pay (we will typically offer 1.2 - 1.3x the current salary)
* 4 weeks vacation + public holidays + time the three of us are traveling fully paid
* A maxed out QSHERA health savings account to cover health care
If this sounds interesting to you—or if you know someone who might be a great fit—please feel free to reach out or reply here!
[1] https://www.theintrinsicperspective.com/p/why-we-stopped-making-einsteins
Have you considered doing this as a pod, with a few other kids? Would you if you found compatible families? Do you think compatible families exist? And, bonus question: will you allow AI use by teacher/student?
Doing this together with a few other kids/families would absolutely be an option---in fact, the one thing we sometimes feel is missing from our current setup is that our daughter doesn’t have a small group of kids her age that she sees on a near-daily basis (she does have activities where she is within the same group of kids every week, but that's not quite the same in terms of intensity of interactions, friendships, etc).
So yes, we’d be open to forming a pod if we found the right families—compatible in terms of values, schedules, and overall vibe. We do think (or at least we we would like to think) that those families exist, though we haven’t actively looked. It would really depend on the dynamics and whether it feels like a good fit for everyone involved.
As for the bonus question: we’re not opposed to the use of AI tools by the teacher, and eventually by the student too, but it depends on age and context---at age 4 it seems to us more important to learn from and with humans (apart from the fact that most 4-year-olds don’t quite meet the literacy standards that would be required for effective learning with AI)
Thank you for the detailed response.
For us, on paper, a "compatible" pod sounds like an ideal solution, though I am still unsure if it's possible to be compatible in our hyper individualistic world.
I'm thinking of putting together a pod matching app, but I fear that there's just not enough compatibility locally and people may be unlikely to move their lives globally for a pod... Perhaps if the entire family gets a pod (cult?)...
Seems bad that Trump is manufacturing consent to invade Greenland
Why is this coming up? Did trump tweet something? Did he insult the king of denmark?
Trump's been making noises about annexing it, e.g., https://news.sky.com/story/donald-trump-says-he-thinks-us-will-annex-greenland-13327945
The talking point "america needs greenland" seems like bait for the left while not the slightest bit convincing to the right. And I think I saw it repeated 3 times, the wording is ambiguous and if the left wing news wants to claim he will invade while what the right wing hears is.... nothing different maybe more offers to buy green land.
If yall keep doing that he will in year be like "remember when the fake news said I was going to invade greenland, and now we are doing an election/building an extra miltery base; cause im a deal maker aint they silly"
> seems like bait for the left while not the slightest bit convincing to the right
That's what they said about everything, even the stuff that Trump is actually doing. "Take him seriously but not literally" apologists are in shambles.
I dont feel in shambles, if I like it trump is more likely to have done it if I dont he doesnt (or a neocon wouldve done it, I dont like sending any money over seas).
rfk was made king of vaxines, I like this
green land still hasnt been invaded
Consider the metric: "trump is magically induced by monkyyys wishes but compromises with moderates"
Trump has explicitly refused to rule out using military force: https://www.npr.org/2025/03/30/nx-s1-5344942/trump-military-force-not-off-the-table-for-greenland
also has ambiguous meaning, maybe some added complexity about how you dont yield to hysterics "umm you spoke to a nazi 10 years ago, repent ON MY TERM RIGHT NOW, or I'll call you a nazi"
"dont apologize"
> Trump allowed that "I think there's a good possibility that we could do it without military force."
> "This is world peace, this is international security," he said, but added: "I don't take anything off the table."
Your falling for bait; did elon start putting jews in camps after his shitty nazi salute?
Ambiguously hinting that you might invade one of your allies is not generally a good idea, at least not if you plan on having diplomatic relations with other countries.
That is the understatement of the year. Invading Greenland would be breathtakingly stupid, pointless, evil and catastrophic in its consequences. I hope that someone with enough influence comes to their senses and stops this madness.
> comes to their senses
We voted to burn it all down, and this is exactly what we are getting. Why on earth would we stop?
No one voted to invade other countries. Trump voters until five minutes ago were isolationists. And now they are again. Oh wait, they're back to the invasion rhetoric. No wait, now they're isolationists.
That sentiment -- which I've heard from others in recent weeks -- is where it perhaps becomes relevant that less than 30 percent of US adult citizens actually voted for Trump last November. (Or if you prefer, about 31 percent of eligible voters.)
Clearly a large fraction of those who showed up to vote for Trump were "voting to burn it all down". Not all of them perhaps but, many. Also clearly some fraction of those who never turn out to vote agree with that sentiment at least generally.
However -- "generally" is now having to carry some real baggage. What fraction of Americans actually wants a definition of "burn it all down" that includes things like invading Greenland? Treating Canadians of all people like some sort of national enemy? Imposing tariffs that drag our stock market and manufacturing sector? Carrying out an anti-immigrant terror campaign that crashes international tourism to the US and pushes some of our colleges and universities towards bankruptcy? "There are ways" to ignore plain Constitutional text such as no third terms for presidents? Along with whatever other loony-tunes ideas the White House vomits up next.
Yes I know the MAGAts will all cheer the one about the universities, and will keep on parroting Dear Leader's whims on whatever else. Mohr lib tears, cry more, yada yada yada. Also there's no sign yet of the Democrats seeming any smarter or more interesting to anybody outside of their own bubble. But that was all baked in already as last November's result made plain.
The level of childish policy-by-tantrum flowing out of DC _now_ seems genuinely different from what even a lot of people who are done with woke-ism expected. The non-MAGA 75 percent or so of American adults may at some point, while likely agreeing on nothing else, come around to "you know actually we didn't sign up for _this_."
Also remember that we're not even 80 days into this administration yet, Trump's early-onset dementia remains obvious, and that condition as everyone knows is a one-way path. So does anybody think that invading Greenland and annexing Canada and turning Gaza into Las Vegas are the craziest/stupidest priorities that he'll babble about in public?
I mean hey Bhutan -- er pardon me, I meant "Burmerica" -- is just sitting there....
"Carrying out an anti-immigrant terror campaign that crashes international tourism to the US and pushes some of our colleges and universities towards bankruptcy?"
You call this a tantrum, I call this deliberate strategizing.
Maybe YOU voted for that (in that case, please go and have your moral compass fixed). I sure didn't. Trump is not only burning down "his" country, but quite possibly the whole world. Also, I doubt that everyone who thought "yeah, 'Make America Great Again' sounds good" was aware that that would plausibly involve a worldwide economic crisis (centered on the US) and world war.
>Also, I doubt that everyone who thought "yeah, 'Make America Great Again' sounds good" was aware that that would plausibly involve a worldwide economic crisis (centered on the US) and world war.
A major part of Trump's pitch was isolationism, and the promise of bringing US troops home and disengaging from foreign conflicts. Invading Greenland is pretty much the opposite of that.
>I hope that someone with enough influence comes to their senses and stops this madness.
That point is long past, unless you're talking about an actual assassin.
On Today's Episode of "Every Accusation Is A Confession": The IDF using Gazans as human shields, as an extremely widespread practice by nearly every soldier on the ground.
From Haaretz: In Gaza, Almost Every IDF Platoon Keeps a Human Shield, a Sub-army of Palestinian Slaves [1], written by an anonymous IDF soldier.
Notable excerpts:
> In Gaza, human shields are used by Israeli soldiers at least six times a day.
> I served in Gaza for nine months, and first came across these procedures, called "mosquito protocol" in December 2023.
> The procedure is simple. Innocent Palestinians are forced to enter houses in Gaza and "clear" them, to make sure there are no terrorists or explosives.
> The highest-ranking personnel on the ground have known about the use of human shields for more than a year, and no one has tried to stop it. On the contrary, it was defined as an operational necessity.
> A friend who's an officer in the army told me about an incident they experienced: They encountered a terrorist in a house that had already been cleared by a "shawish." [IDF slang for human shield] The "shawish" was an elderly man, and when he realized he'd messed up, he was so scared he soiled himself. I don't know what became of him. I was afraid to ask.
So yeah, extensive use of thousands of civilians of human shields for more than a year and a half, brought to you by the same very state that justifies every massacre by "Hamas Used THeM AS hUMaN SHiElDs".
Ironic. Despicable, yet ironic.
[1] https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2025-03-30/ty-article-opinion/.premium/in-gaza-almost-every-idf-platoon-keeps-a-human-shield-a-sub-army-of-palestinian-slaves/00000195-e627-deaf-a397-f6674e390000, paywall override: https://archive.ph/JGktB
Quoting Haaretz is instantly disqualifying. Their publisher referred to Hamas terrorists as "freedom fighters".
Ach Nein, I guess I'm instantly disqualified from the esteemed circles of pro-genocide enjoyers.
What a shame. What an utter and complete shame. I'm devastated. If anyone needs me I'm in my room crying and reading more Haaretz.
Please don't do this.
Haaretz is an Israeli, pro-Israeli, Zionist (neutral descriptor) newspaper. If you won't consider what even they publish once it disagrees with your priors, is there anything at all that you'd be willing to update on? Is there any common epistemic ground left between you and... well, the rest of the world?
Sure, there are many newspapers in Israel that are not Haaretz and are trustworthy: Yehediot Aharonot, the Times of Israel are two that are left of center.
Here's a brief video called "Why Anti-Semites Love Haaretz" (by a former Ha'aretz columnist, FWIW)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwje3xN7XxQ
For context, from https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-targets-haaretz-after-publisher-calls-palestinians-freedom-fighters :
Amos Schocken [publisher of Haaretz] was speaking at a conference in London on Sunday when he made the comments, which have provoked calls from government ministers to clamp down on the outlet's activities.
"The Netanyahu government doesn't care about imposing a cruel apartheid regime on the Palestinian population," he told attendees.
"It dismisses the costs of both sides for defending the settlements while fighting the Palestinian freedom fighters, that Israel calls terrorists."
Following outcry, Schocken clarified his remarks to indicate he did not consider Hamas to be "freedom fighters" and emphasised he supported freedom fighters who did not use "terrorism".
they're responsible for a tiny fraction of the civilian deaths of their opponent and do not have ethnic cleansing as a policy goal
There's no ethnic cleansing as a policy goal. I can't interact with someone who denies ground-truth.
Every civilian death is on Hamas. They invaded (although many "civilians" helped) a sovereign country and proceeded to butcher and slaughter and murder parents in front of their children, children in front of their parents, elders, etc. They raped and raped. They even raped corpses.
Go back to the world of your Jew-hating fantasies, you bigot. You liar.
Israel has done the same thing (yes, including the institutionalized rape of Palestinian hostages in "administrative detention") a hundred times over. Their horrific actions shame the Jewish people.
The institutionalized rape story is/was bogus as hell. (Administrative detention, by contrast, has truth to it.)
Bannable ahoy.
Any other sources?
This particular article is a witness testimony by its author, an anonymous soldier. It's a primary source, not second-hand reporting. (Also note: Haaretz isn't low-quality, it's a major Israeli liberal newspaper often called Israel's equivalent of the New York Times.)
For more on the IDF's history of using human shields, see Israeli human rights group B'Tselem: http://www.btselem.org/human_shields. Probably you can also find stuff by e.g. Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch, or the Israeli veterans organization Breaking the Silence, which lets them confidentially tell their experiences in the occupied territories.
You could have used Google.
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/10/24/middleeast/palestinians-human-shields-israel-military-gaza-intl/index.html
Does anyone know how to block people on here? I didn't think it was possible but then someone blocked me. I can't find the option on either desktop or the app.
Oh man, I got very excited at the prospect of blocking, and then learned that it apparently doesn't prevent you from seeing that person's comments in forums other than one's own.
:(
Perhaps you need to mute them instead. I haven't managed to penetrate the island fortress where Substack hides its instructions for the commenting system so I don't really know, but I both block and mute the people I don't want to see just to be sure, and it seems to work.
hmmmm? As far as I can tell it works
You're saying that you're able to block/silence someone here in the ACX comments, so that you don't have to see any of their comments *here on ACX?*
That function doesn't seem to be working for me! I've blocked and silenced someone whose comments I find very tedious, but I'm still seeing their comments here on ACX.
I blocked(not muted) the guy spamming about isreal finally(crossed the line where I think they glow) then verified the comment disappeared
Holy crap! I just tried again, and it worked for me, too!
For the same guy (I'm pretty sure!)!
Now if only I could mute Substack's broken indentation!
Works for me too!
Muting doesn't work that way, unfortunately — it leaves you still able to see their comments in threads.
> Does anyone know how to block people on here? I didn't think it was possible but then someone blocked me. I can't find the option on either desktop or the app.
You click on their name to go to their Substack profile, then block or mute them there.
Somebody blocked you? When someone blocks you, are you informed of it?
I knew because they announced it first. (Humorously it was theahura and it was in the thread where he asked people to steelman Trump - I guess he wasn't counting on a steelman he couldn't defeat.) The really annoying thing is that Substack hides all comments from me in all threads that that user created, so I can't even see the comments I made in our last thread or respond to other users who jumped in (though I still get notifications for those comments). I generally like Substack but it has some serious usability issues.
> Somebody blocked you? When someone blocks you, are you informed of it?
Think you probably meant to ask Wanda Tinasky?
I don't know if I've ever been blocked, I haven't ever received any notification that this is true. It'd be kind of weird and counterproductive for Substack to generate and send such notifications, wouldn't it? Down that road lies stalking people on multiple platforms and escalating rivalries, doesn't it?
This added significant value to my life.
Thank you.
Thanks.
I'd like to see the Dems get serious about open borders, along with the vibes of Abundance (Ezra Klein, Derek Thomson).
Effective government, lowering regulations, and enough of everything for everyone is great, and they surely do a better job than I could promoting it.
Open borders to the world (for residency at least) will require a willingness to be tough on crime, give (next to) no welfare to arrivals, a willingness to deport individuals and families that are drains, and active effort to make them productive. Getting rid of natural-born citizenship may be necessary as well.
In return the USA can return to it's heyday as the land of dreams, a country the world's citizens turn to for a brighter future, and a land bursting with productive man-power.
This combination seems like a powerful basis for a counter to Trump's MAGA, a powerful vision for the path the world and the USA should take.
What does it mean to have open borders yet be able to deport individuals? How do you prevent the person you deported from coming back?
Everyone coming in goes through official portals, they get entered in the system. Fingerprint, picture, gene test etc.
Open borders for first chances
Thank you. It may not be intuitive for all that "open borders" still means "heavily guarded borders".
The US cannot return to its heyday. What made it rich (abundant arable land up for grabs because its previous population was nearly destroyed by epidemies) is neither still available nor sufficient in today's world. What could make it thrive again is increasing the welfare of its population, and [increasing supply of cheap labor] results in the exact opposite, a race to the bottom for everyone but the richest.
If the supposed left wants to keep losing elections until the heat death of the universe (and deservedly), by all means, keep talking about open borders.
Populism and throwbacks to better times worked for MAGA, why not for the Democrats?
What better times had open borders?
Depends what you're measuring, and what people think. MAGA seem to think 1950s were better in some important ways, you can sell a similar story for the early years of america.
Open borders were around for the most part till early 20th century, you can find some positive there
America up to the early 20th century never had 'open borders'. Even at the height of Ellis Island migration they were still more selective than Biden's plan of letting anyone in from anywhere. And the multiple waves of Ellis Island immigration brought frequent and justified backlashes to the problems that came with those immigrants.
Open borders is the opposite of populist. The only people who like the idea of open borders are the effete elites who have nothing to do with immigrant populations beyond paying them to clean their houses and buying from food trucks.
Because "open borders" is not populist. Populism means appealing to a broad population of voters, not to oligarchs and potential immigrants who can't vote anyway. Why would poor/ working class people be enthusiastic about lots of immigrants, if all it means is fewer benefits and more competition for them but even more money for rich people?
the "powerful vision of the world" is an underclass with no rights or social support who get deported if they lose their job?
Even MAGA sounds more appealing
Did you miss the part where people who are currently stuck in hellholes can decide to work and live in the USA?
Their lives would be straightforwardly better, and they would also be able to choose between the options.
You are literally against giving people the option to choose a better life for themselves because that better life doesn't meet your personal standards.
This mindset is part of what I'm hoping goes away on the Left
I bet that in the age of feudalism, people argued that serfdom was a good thing because having a lord protecting you was better than the alternative.
Turning immigrants into second-class citizens would likely be an improvement in an economic sense, but it would also be creating a group of people who are extremely vulnerable to coercion by the government or by their employer. We can do better than that.
We probably can't do better than that right now.
Maybe in the future open-borders with welfare, protection and benefit of the doubt for incoming migrants will be workable, and that sounds like an inspiring future.
Right now that doesn't work, and even without that slack open borders would be a tough sell
I don't think they're getting a better life in that scenario, because there are very few true "hellholes" on Earth, the US is not nearly as nice a place as Americans believe, and because such a proposal would cause American quality of life to markedly deteriorate.
But I think people would come anyway - because they'd get lied to by unscrupulous recruiters about conditions in the US, and then be trapped there out of shame or because they can't afford to go back. Or, when they have no more options, they'll end up in the new tough on crime prison system this proposal promotes.
I also think current citizens who have to work for a living are getting a significantly worse life out of the bargain; why hire one when there's a precarious foreigner you can underpay and retaliate against?
Quality of life would likely rise quite a bit, due to abundant labor supply and lowered regulations on growth (detailed in the book).
You also think hellholes exist, and the US is obviously a better place to live than many other countries which aren't hellholes. This would be a better option than they currently have.
Free one-time deportation service seems like our could be a good idea, for those who would rather leave.
Tough on crime with non-citizens looks more like fines, rapid deportation or in extreme cases death penalty, not prison.
Often making the pie bigger means someone gets a relatively smaller piece, in total I think they'll get a larger absolute piece, and better life
> will require a willingness to be tough on crime, give (next to) no welfare to arrivals, a willingness to deport individuals and families that are drains, and active effort to make them productive
We all know that this part isn't happening though, so what's the point? It's like saying "I could eat a cheesecake every day if I ran an extra twenty miles" when you currently barely leave your couch. We all know you're just gonna eat the cheesecake and not do the exercise.
If there's a version of this that makes sense then it's outright selling greencards.
You can exercise first
But the Democratic party can't, and you and I and every pidgeon in the city knows this.
Great idea. Let's have the Left make their platform being Tough On Crime, and only after a proven track record on that do we talk about Open Borders.
You seem to be against the Left, usually you get to help choose either a group's direction or how to negotiate with them (in aggregate)
Your half-assed dismissals of every criticism will do far more damage to the Left than I. This is exactly the attitude that led to a Trump presidency. Both terms.
The process of letting someone in is much less costly than deporting someone. So the vision will just turn into invite the world, deport no one.
That could be fixed by charging immigrants a deposit (repaid upon citizenship/emigration) large enough to pay for the deportation.
This keeps out the poorest ones too which would be a good thing for us.
Make it easy to deport them legally.
If you want to, call your senator and demand tracking bracelets on arrival as part of the deal.
How do you envision that working without the US turning into a homeless shelter for the entire planet?
Did you read past the "next to no welfare" part?
Yes. Even if there isn't explicit social welfare, being poor and/or homeless is better in the US than it is almost anywhere else.
Deport them if they aren't productive members of society within 5/10 years, and make it easy to find work?
I'm sure you're smart enough to think of fixes if you were trying to make such a policy work as intended
Sure, pour the whole container of salt into the soup. If it's too much we'll just take some out afterwards.
Try and deport them and watch an army of due process lawyers get in your way.
Hold an actual deportation hearing, have a judge tell them that they've lost and they need to get out of the way now, and they'll get out of the way. They may whine a lot, but so what?
If that's too difficult for you, then it's on you to beef up your skills in that area.
I listened to them on Lex Fridman. Their vision sounds great, but I don’t think there is any near term chance of the Democratic Party or the global left listening to them, as their strategy has long since become “foment civilisation collapse and cancel/jail anyone who notices or tries to stop it”
They are losing power due to acting in ways that look like your description. At some point they will change or disappear.
Either way I hope what replaces the current strategy is something that looks like this
I’m soliciting opinions on whether it would be possible for DOGE to prune bloated, ineffective government agencies in a way that’s smarter and more effective than its present approach. Question’s a follow-up to a discussion earlier in the comments here of whether it would be possible for DOGE to do a smarter, juster, more effective job of trimming back bureaucracy. Discussion started with my recounting an event described to me by an NIH scientist who was present: DOGE staff entered his part of a building and fired staff they were able to catch in small infractions. At least one person was fired for leaving his badge on his desk when he went to the bathroom.
Some who entered the discussion said that undoubtedly dismantling and pruning bloated government agencies was causing suffering but that “*not* doing the cuts also causes plenty of damage, it’s just harder to pinpoint and a lot of it will happen in 5-8 years.” I do not take issue with the need for making cuts, but think they are being done in a dumb, chaotic, random way. Suggested that a reasonable way to shrink staff would be to use some criterion based on their performance, such as performance evals, or productivity over recent years. Someone else countered that DOGE is not allowed to take the kind of steps I’m suggesting. The discussion is here:
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/open-thread-375/comment/104745702
Seems clear to me that the Trump administration is willing to walk right over various boundaries, some of them legal boundaries, and that they are mostly getting away with that. I’m curious to hear from people who know more than I do about the laws and norms involved to weigh in knowledgeably on whether it would be possible for DOGE to dismantle and shrink gov’t agencies in a way that is more systematic and uses reasonable criteria for identifying bureaucratic tangles and deadwood.
> I’m soliciting opinions on whether it would be possible for DOGE to prune bloated, ineffective government agencies in a way that’s smarter and more effective than its present approach.
Nearly *anything* would be more effective than their current approach, even simply doing nothing. Elon's DOGE campaign has been an astonishing own-goal at every level.
I feel like I should preface with gratitude for your approach. I'm seeing more and more anti-Trump alarmism and doommongering on ACX day after day, unleavened by any sort of understanding of what's driving conservatives, Trump, DOGE, et al., until this place is resembling /r/politics. People who ask as if they really want to solve a problem are getting rare around here.
That said, this is a tough problem. I'm tempted to say "I'll get back to you on that" - not in order to commit to any future report to submit to you, but rather to convey the hopelessness I think we're seeing from conservatives trying to prune back the government.
There's a recent exchange between Ezra Klein and Jon Stewart, discussing a plan by the Biden administration to bring broadband internet to rural areas. (It's pretty easy to find right now; I searched for "klein stewart biden plan". It's probably best to watch the video to get the appropriate impact. You might have seen it already.) It's 14 steps long; I believe Klein even cites how much money was allocated to each step, and how many players started, and how many got through each step. I think the total price tag ran into hundreds of millions; I do not know of any actual broadband having been installed.
I recall Musk saying "SpaceX can build rockets faster than the Govt can do the paperwork 'required' to launch". I think that quote, and its variants, gets a lot of sympathy from the right.
Pruning does seem to be an apt metaphor. The USG resembles a thicket of brambles now. Cut one stalk and pull on it; its thorns snag on the others, holding it fast. Cut the others; they snag on yet others. Keep cutting, and you might finally get a bit of it away; you will also have spent all day, burned thousands of calories, and you look up and see miles more of that growth. Keep going even so, and you anticipate getting to the other end in multiple generations - by which time the first end will have grown back, thicker than ever.
The point here is that the bureaucracy has literally interwoven with itself, to the point that no department can be cut without getting approval from several more, AND cutting support departments requires approval of yet more, AND each request for approval costs a million dollars and a month to process, AND could be reprioritized to the bottom of the pile for some reason, AND asking for that reason costs ten thousand dollars and a week to get a response. Anyone who wants to save money, cannot do so, cannot ask why, and cannot ask why they cannot ask.
And meanwhile, it's still growing. The interest on the debt is as large as the defense budget.
Given all this, I can understand why someone would want to look at all that growth and conclude that the least painful solution is indeed to use fire, even if it upsets all the animal life currently sheltering somewhere in it. There are conservatives who will tell you these animals are there by design (search for "hostage puppies" if you get a chance). I think it's some of that, and some of it is animals that do naturally wind up there, it's not their fault, and no one put them there on purpose to shield the waste and bloat. I also wonder if we could evac all the intentional hostage puppies and the unintentional ones still don't justify all that growth.
I can also understand if you or anyone else (including me, on occasion) might look at that gas can and think, surely there's a less chaotic way to trim at least something. And then I find the best sincere response I can give to that right now is, well, I'll get back to you on that. That's how wedged this is now.
It does occur to me now that, as chaotic as DOGE seems to me right now, there are even more chaotic ways to prune back the government that I would rather not see happen.
(Not a hostage puppy, I promise; I don't have control over this.)
My perspective is from experience working in the civil service of a very similar country. While the US bureaucracy might be idiosyncratic in some way I'm not aware of, every other democratic country also seems to have extreme difficulties in firing their bureaucrats so I'm guessing the US is similar enough for the following to apply
DOGE is resorting to silly tactics like firing people who leave their badges on their desk while on a bathroom break because it's nearly impossible to fire government employees based on logical reasons. Public sector unions have put up absurdly strong legal barriers against firing bureaucrats, so decisions on who gets cut in times of downsizing - which are infrequent in the first place - are always based on how easy it is to fire each person and not on how good they are at their jobs. Pro union parties have generally been in power for around half the history of most democratic countries, and unions only need to get a few good election cycles to get legally binding collective agreements that give public employees immense protections
My workplace's most recent round of layoffs is a case in point. About 10% were nominally fired. Of those, almost 90% were employees on fixed term contracts, who usually get renewed when their contract expires. After some number of years working on these contracts, term employees are automatically made permanent as per the collective agreement, meaning the number of permanent employees is ever-growing. The 10%~ of those fired who were permanent employees largely got shuffled around to other positions in other departments
It's obvious to see why this happens: in order to actually fire permanent employees (instead of shuffling them around), management has to decide which programs to target, get together to create "objective" metrics for every single targeted position, "objectively" evaluate all of the employees in each of these positions, and give notice to the affected employees. Once they're given notice, they get a few months to decide whether to take a lump sum payment (people near retirement often do this) or collect their paycheck for up to one year while looking for other government positions (people who choose this option often don't even bother looking for other government positions and just collect the paycheck). In total we're talking like two years from start to end in order to fire a government employee if you also want to check all the boxes and respect due process, during which there's a good chance another party will come to power and reverse all the work that was done to try to do it
Past performance evaluations can't be used either. The process management has to go through in order to fire public employees is strictly defined in the collective agreement. Unions have every reason to make it as slow and costly as possible. And even if past evaluations could be used, they would offer no useful information. Performance evaluations don't mean anything because there are basically no consequences for doing poorly on them - remember, ridiculous employment protections means no one is getting fired. This means that the evaluator (usually a middle manager) and the employee both know it's a pointless box-ticking exercise, which leads to everyone more or less getting some variation of "met expectations" for every single criteria
Just to clarify what I am asking and not asking:
-I am not asking whether DOGE & Musk sincerely *want* to get rid of dead wood and make agencies leaner and meaner.
-I am not asking whether it is possible to do a slow, really thoughtful redo of agencies, perhaps involving first studies of their effectiveness, speed, and impact per dollar; then development of new, leaner, better models of them.
-I am asking this: Let's assume DOGE & Musk have it as their goal to quickly get rid of deadwood and nonsense in agencies and turn the agencies into small, effective groups with much smaller budgets. Would it be possible for them, on their own, to carry this out? Or are they so hindered by laws and regulations and agencies' unwillingness to change that the only way they can proceed is in the chaotic way they are? If we take the case of NIH staff: Is the only way they can reduce staff without being stopped by rules and laws and congress and the supreme court etc etc to eliminate people using simple, silly criteria? -- such as firing all the probationaries, or firing those they catch taking a leak without having their badge with them? Or would it be possible for DOGE to force the firing of people based on some reasonable criterion of their value as employees, such as performance evals, work accomplished per year, number of sick days per year?
In other words, is DOGE being forced to prune with a chain saw because an impenetrable net of laws and regulations keeps them from doing smart topiary with a graduated set of electric shears? Or do they just dig chain saws?
There's proof by example that this can be done, and done well. Bill Clinton, during his time in office, tasked Al Gore with streamlining the federal bureaucracy through the National Partnership for Reinventing Government, This and other related efforts reduced the federal workforce by almost 400,000 people, about 20% of the total. And nobody remembers it, because it was done in a professional, efficient, minimally-disruptive manner. And he did so under approximately the same legal and regulatory regime we have today.
It is probably not a coincidence that Bill Clinton was the last US president to have balanced the Federal budget. Possibly the very last ever.
What man has done, man can aspire to do.
I do have to wonder how much of NPR(g) was possible only by agreeing to cut defense spending as well. The WP article claims it had little effect, but I don't think it factors in private agreements made with various Congresspeople that weren't widely reported.
What I *do* know is that defense spending *did* decrease during the Clinton administration, as evidenced by numerous accounts from people I worked with back then who complained about how much harder it was to get promotions and resources compared to the Reagan years.
If you're serious about cutting government spending, you need to seriously consider cutting defense spending. And if you're also serious about pulling back from "foreign entanglements" and sucker moves like defending our allies, cutting defense should be pretty much a no-brainer.
If you're serious about all of that but you're also seriously not joking about your plans to maybe invade two NATO member nations, maybe you can't afford to cut the now-grossly-misnamed defense budget. Hmm...
> Would it be possible for them, on their own, to carry this out? Or are they so hindered by laws and regulations and agencies' unwillingness to change that the only way they can proceed is in the chaotic way they are?
The biggest obstacle is not regulation, but Musk's own descent into a far-right bubble which has prevented him from engaging with reality. That's not even a partisan thing. There are tons of libertarian think-tank types who have spent their lives thinking about how to do this kind of thing in a sane way and Musk has ignored every one of them because he thinks he knows better.
> Or do they just dig chain saws?
Pretty much. Musk's primary goal seems to be "fire as many people as possible as quick as possible without any regard for what impact that will have on the country or budget".
I confess that I do not know enough about the regulations involved. What is the executive branch allowed and not allowed to do to government agencies without approval or support from some other government entity -- such as congress? Is the executive branch allowed to fire, for example, managers at NIH? Do NIH staff have a union? If so, what would the union do if DOGE fired all mangers? Strike? Protest? Invoke some law or agreement? Do you know? And the second question is, what is the chance that whatever built-in barriers there are to Trump firing all managers simply cannot be overriden, or if overriden is very likely to be reversed? I do not know. Do you?
Seems to me there are a lot of ways the executive branch can make the case that under the present circumstances they are allowed to fire managers. There seem to be a lot of things on the books that can be used to justify breaking lower order rules. For example, Trump can call Venezuelan drug gangs in the US an invading foreign force (or something like that) and can then use that to justify doing various things to immigrants that by some lower-level laws violate their rights. So I say to myself that maybe there's a (and here I'm just loosely brainstorming) a financial emergency clause that lets the president shut down agencies to save money. Or a rogue manager clause that lets the president fire managers who refuse to carry out certain requests from the president in a timely fashion. Or -- well, you get the idea.
So my question is simply whether there are end runs around the rules and laws protecting agencies that would allow DOGE to reduce the size of agencies and their staff in a more planful manner than the present one. I am not being sneaky and tricky here. I just do not know enough about law and the structure of government. Do you?
And if you don't can you please refrain from answering questions I have not asked? Such is what is Trump/Musk's real intent, is DOGE as currently carried out likely to be to the country's benefit, how good a job can one do of shrinking and improving agencies if it must be done quickly, and whether your bellybutton is an innie or an outie.
> For example, Trump can call Venezuelan drug gangs in the US an invading foreign force (or something like that) and can then use that to justify doing various things to immigrants that by some lower-level laws violate their rights.
Don't confuse "nobody has managed to stop him yet" for "is legal". The "war" powers invocation in particular is pretty blatantly illegal.
I have no answer to this (its a good question), but I find the replies extremely funny. I feel like I'm watching a comedy sketch.
Eremolalos: "I'm trying to see if anyone around here has a parrot"
Person 1: "You want to kill a parrot? What's the matter with you!"
E: "No, I think you misunderstood me. I'm not trying to kill a parrot, just find one"
Person 2: "Yeah, I've got a Canary right here!"
E: "No, I'm actually just looking for a parrot. That's an unrelated bird"
Person 3: "Oh, I think I know what you mean. Here!"
*Hands over a box of fruit loops and points to the toucan*
It’s actually quite helpful to hear that, Ralph. I have had exactly the same perception of the responses, except that I have found it not amusing but extremely frustrating and sort of demoralizing. In fact the responses I’ve gotten led to a whole train of thought yesterday about looking for some other places online to read and discuss things. And I have not had that in reaction to hot arguments or occasional mean insults here in the past. Those were unpleasant but did not leave me with the same feeling of OK, I give up.
I think what’s led to my question being impossible to hear is that it does not make clear what side I’m
on. Do I think DOGE is dumb and bad both in methods and goal? Or only in methods? Or maybe I think it’s smart and good and I’m on board with the methods too, and looking for evidence that laws etc force it to use a chainsaw?
I didn’t ask my question in a way that left my loyalties unclear in order to play with people’s minds. I was just trying to find out the answer to my particular question, without having the discussion derailed by various right vs. left run-ins. But the net effect seems to have been that many people felt they had to strongly signal their position on DOGE good/bad/smart/dumb. Maybe that was because they did not know which tribe I belonged to, and were being asked to answer a question without knowing which side's arguments they were supporting? And then several others seemed determined to convince me that my question was based on various dumb-as-a-rock assumptions, and was therefore unanswerable. Maybe a way to neutralize the dilemma?
The upshot, IMO, is that politics makes people dumb.
Ugh.
I think the problem is that there are many different things your question could be asking about.
1. What can Musk legally do on his own?
2. What could Republicans as a whole do legally?
3. What can Musk practically do? (i.e. what can he get away with rather than what is legal)
4. What would be a good way to accomplish what Musk says he wants to accomplish?
5. What would be a good way to accomplish what Musk is actually trying to accomplish?
6. What would be a good way to do what Musk has actually done? (kind of tautological, but you often seem to be going for this based on your responses)
These are all different things! But you're implicitly assuming they're the same thing. And since they are different things, the answer to the question differs depending on which thing you're talking about. Therefore, people focus on trying to clarify the question.
<I think the problem is that there are many different things your question could be asking about.
1. What can Musk legally do on his own?
2. What could Republicans as a whole do legally?
3. What can Musk practically do? (i.e. what can he get away with rather than what is legal)
4. What would be a good way to accomplish what Musk says he wants to accomplish?
5. What would be a good way to accomplish what Musk is actually trying to accomplish?
6. What would be a good way to do what Musk has actually done? (kind of tautological, but you often seem to be going for this based on your responses)
These are all different things! But you're implicitly assuming they're the same thing. And since they are different things, the answer to the question differs depending on which thing you're talking about. Therefore, people focus on trying to clarify the question.>
No, the question is quite clear, and it is none of the above.. I have stated it and restated it numerous times : DOGE is going about dismantling and shrinking agencies in a way that seems unsystematic (I gave several examples of what I mean by this term), and unlikely to get rid of policies, staff and roles that DOGE sees as bad and keep those it sees as good. It seems like there would be quick simple ways to at least increase the fraction of “bad”(by DOGE’s standards) employees and policies gotten rid of and of good ones kept. (I named some simple ways this might be done, while admitting I did not think they were a great approach, just better than the present one for achieving DOGE’s aim.) My question is whether various laws and contracts prevent DOGE from using a more systematic approach that aims to maximize how much good stuff (by its standards) it keeps and how much bad stuff it gets rid of. I have clarified that when I ask whether the laws prevent DOGE from being more systematic, I mean *both* whether the laws prevent systematic approaches *and* whether DOGE has a reasonable chance of just ignoring the laws, etc., or else overriding them by stretching the meaning of various executive powers.
I have talked throughout about DOGE, not Musk the man, not the Republicans. I regard Musk as someone carrying out the DOGE project, backed by the president. It was clear in my questions that I was asking about DOGE, the project..
So none of your 6 are what I am asking. If we replace “Musk” with “DOGE, then I am asking a version of 1 + 3: Not what out of the universe of all possible actions can DOGE get away with, but what simple steps aimed at getting rid of undesirables (in DOGEs view) could it get away with. I have given exs. of quick and dirty steps: fire all managers and replace with DOGE loyalists; fire employees with low evaluations; fire employees known to strongly disagree with DOGE’s point of view.
In one of my many attempts to get someone to answer the question I was asking I stated it this way: Is DOGE trimming the shrubbery with a chain saw because it is surrounded with such a thick mesh that it can’t use a graduated series of topiary scissors, or because it just digs chain saws?
As further clarification I have stated in various posts (I must have put up 10 follow-up posts at least) things I am NOT asking: What is DOGE's *real* goal? Is that goal good? Is that goal attainable?
Do not tell me I have not been clear, unless you can quote several vague or ambiguous formulations of it. And don't say the flaw in my question is that assumes some dumb-shit thing like that there is a perfect way for DOGE to do this pruning and end up in a short period of time with a bunch of small, effective agencies that are wholeheartedly aligned with the DOGE viewpoint. It is not an all or nothing question. I did not ask whether it is possible for DOGE to do a great job of pruning the bad and keeping the good. I asked whether DOGE could do a *better* job, or whether it is so constrained by laws etc. it can only come at things the messy, chaotic way it is,
This is the most disillusioned and discouraged I have ever felt about ACX discussions, even though nobody has been particularly mean to me in this one. But everybody except Paul Brinkley and B Civil has either just rambled on about their miscellaneous opinions about DOGE or else tried to prove that my question is meaningless because it’s sort of like a snake swallowing its tail or a demand to know how many angels can dance on the head of a pin or an unanswerable inquiry about what color underpanties Ayn Rand wore while writing John Galt’s speech. No it ain't!
Know what I think? I think most of you don’t know all that much more than me about what legal, contractual, etc. constraints there are on what DOGE can do and, out of those, which it can probably get away violating with via brute power or trix. But nobody says that, they just don’t answer my question or say it's too flawed to mean anything. You're pretentious cowards. Fuck this place.
I'll gladly admit I don't know all that much more than you about that. Which is why I haven't replied up to now.
" Let's assume DOGE & Musk have it as their goal to quickly get rid of deadwood and nonsense in agencies and turn the agencies into small, effective groups with much smaller budgets. Would it be possible for them, on their own, to carry this out? Or are they so hindered by laws and regulations and agencies' unwillingness to change that the only way they can proceed is in the chaotic way they are?"
This framing is smuggling in a LOT of AFAICT unjustified assumptions. In particular, you're assuming a dichotomy that doesn't seem to be much in evidence:
either
A. It's possible for a smart and motivated agency to quickly and sharply reduce the staffing and budget of federal agencies while leaving them effective.
or
B. The reason A isn't possible is entirely because of laws, regulations and institutional inertia.
The first is akin to the belief in the proverbial $20 bill on the sidewalk (which certainly *could* exist, but you shouldn't be betting $19 or even $5 on finding it). The second is like saying one's failure to find said bill *must* be due to all those pesky pedestrians getting in the way by having the audacity to use the sidewalk to *go places* instead of recognizing its rightful place in your entirely-justified and not-at-all-frivolous treasure hunt.
Naw you missed the point. I am trying to figure out whether laws, contracts, regulations, loyalties etc. constrain DOGE so much that it is impossible for it be more selective than it is now in how it fires people and ditches programs. For instance, I have heard of people being fired because they were probationary employees; and because they were caught in the bathroom one afternoon without their badges. I have heard of all the staff of an agency being fired, then the agency rehiring all who were willing to return. None of these hiring and firing processes are likely to select for the most productive employees. A simple system of firing those with the worst performance reviews would at least be better.
So I am not trying to figure out whether DOGE could "quickly and sharply reduce the staffing and budget of federal agencies while leaving them effective." I am only trying to figure out whether it is possible for DOGE to be more systematic than it is now, or whether all the laws, loyalties etc. in and around hunks of the bureaucracy are such a dense nets that it is impossible for DOGE to use any approach more systematic, less chaotic and less violent than the present one. The reason I want to know is that people are defending DOGE's chain saw approach on the grounds that it has no choice but to fire people capriciously, possibly losing valuable experts and louyal hard-working people who are not a bit infected with woke and other things DOGE wants to get rid of. I do not think that's true.
There are many cases where DOGE could have better achieved their goals by *doing nothing*. For example, they could have *not fired* the IRS people who collect taxes. They could have *not fired* all the people in government who are already responsible for auditing and preventing waste. etc. They could have *not fired* the people in government who check whether government programs are actually working or not. Those are pure unforced errors even granted DOGE's premises.
I sort of see it. OTOH, this clearly would not have worked across the board. Out of curiosity, were there any instances of DOGE doing something that you would argue as a benefit to the goal of reducing government waste?
From a theoretical perspective, when they cut that much stuff, there's bound to be some bad stuff they cut, just by chance. If they had only cut that stuff, it would have been an improvement. But of course, figuring out what the bad stuff is is hard and DOGE is deliberately not even trying. There are also nonlinear effects where the rapid lawless destruction of the government has negative effects well beyond the pros or cons of specific programs being cut.
FWIW, I think the CFPB was in serious need of reform or reogranization. But that still doesn't mean that illegally shutting it down was a good idea. That's also not a question of "efficiency" but rather "the government should do good things and not bad things policy wise".
"The reason I want to know is that people are defending DOGE's chain saw approach on the grounds that it has no choice but to fire people capriciously"
But *of course* they have a choice. They always have a choice. For every person they fire, there is (at a bare minimum) the alternative of *not firing them*.
My core objection here is that the sort of people you describe taking "firing a large number of federal workers is just and necessary and will save money" as an axiom. It's not an axiom. It's very likely not even true. And determining if and when it's *actually useful* to fire people is necessarily upstream of determining *how* to fire them. Take this for example:
"None of these hiring and firing processes are likely to select for the most productive employees. A simple system of firing those with the worst performance reviews would at least be better."
Trying to model employees of complex federal organizations as homogenous lumps of labor whose efficiency can be measured in one number is a plain and obvious fallacy. It's easy to imagine a situation where you fire one and only one employee and lo and behold, despite their poor performance review, losing them *drops* the productivity of the whole department, and does so *dramatically.* It's as silly to assume that "fire the employees with the worst performance review" will make a department more efficient as it is to assume "remove the most worn part from your car engine" will make your car more efficient.
None of that is to say that greater efficiency is impossible; probably there are lots of improvements that could be made. But it's a reasonable bet that they'll require *understanding the system you're trying to improve* (which generally isn't quick if you're starting from zero). And it's unwarranted to assume from the word go that the improvements will *necessarily* involve firing people. Maybe sometimes they will. But sometimes they won't: there are lots of other ways to cut costs. Heck, sometimes they'll involve *hiring more people*: understaffing can create all sorts of costly inefficiencies.
Both the people involved in this project and the people supporting them seem to be doing so for ideological reasons that carry the unshakable assumption that firing federal employees will improve the world *no matter how it's done.* You reason your way to the truth if you start from an irrational premise that you refuse to ever update.
Ok. But i don’t understand why you are telling me this. Is it that you think Im in favor of firing lotsa government workers?
It's because your posts make it sound like you don't understand this. The issue isn't whether you are in favor of firing people or not, the issue is that your questions are smuggling in incorrect premises.
My experience of reforming problematic groups is that a small group ( say 20 people) takes full time, dedicated attention from an individual for months.
Actively hostile, idealogically oppositional groups will likely take much more.
Unless you break them.
They would need massive amounts of man-power to reform millions of workers, 10s of thousands of strong managers at a minimum.
If the groups involved were trying to cooperate as best they could then maybe
I didn't picture the temporary manager reforming the group, just going through the records and scoring people on simple criteria, such as recent performance reviews, completion of projects, maybe total sick and personal days. Then maybe consulting with someone with the scientific expertise to advise on what essential skills the group kept had to have, which might temper some decisions about who to fire. Then firing enough of the group to meet some criterion set by the administration. Maybe the temp manager wouldn't need 60 days -- maybe a coupla weeks would be enough.
My point isn't that my idea is good -- it's that if you want to downsize a group, doing it as I describe is better than randomly firing people (e.g. firing of 2 people 10 or so days ago for Peeing without Badges).
Physically possible or politically possible?
There's a sensible good-faith process that could theoretically be followed if enough organs of government were interested in executing a sensible good-faith process. Realistically if you start this process then you get four years of "actually we investigated ourselves and found that our budget isn't excessive after all", and then you lose power anyway and the moment has passed.
>"whether it would be possible for DOGE to prune bloated, ineffective government agencies in a way that’s smarter and more effective than its present approach."
No and yes.
No, because DOGE is Elon Musk and Elon Musk's goal is not efficiency. His goals are more along the lines of revenge against woke; ending projects he personally dislikes; destroying institutional memory so it can't be a check on his and Trump's power; finding things to lie about and use as anti-Dem pro-Trump propaganda (e.g., pretending a SSN means an immigrant is voting instead of just working and paying taxes and that this is Biden's fault); etc.
Yes, because *if* some hypothetical agency had the goal of efficiency, it would automatically be doing better than DOGE.
"I’m soliciting opinions on whether it would be possible for DOGE to prune bloated, ineffective government agencies in a way that’s smarter and more effective than its present approach"
I mean, it couldn't possibly be _less_ smart and effective, so obviously yes.
This requires hard and serious work, though, so it's obviously off the table in the current regime.
> I do not take issue with the need for making cuts, but think they are being done in a dumb, chaotic, random way. Suggested that a reasonable way to shrink staff would be to use some criterion based on their performance, such as performance evals, or productivity over recent years.
This will further the power of scientism; fucci presumably wrote dozens of papers over the years about how to best torture dogs.
When china does anti corruption purges, I expect whos left to actaully be more corrupt. Goodhearts law.
Doing the opposite would be fun, look for people who have several complaints but were kept around for some reason "hmm you failed 5 hr sensitively trainings but yet you were kept... must be vitally important in some unquantified way; promoted"
Sure, but I'm not sure it's possible while also shooting for a net decrease in government spending (especially at first). You would want to do audits, start medium-to-long term studies of effectiveness, and emphasize recruiting/retaining talented people - all of which requires extra resources and oversight to get started. The end result might be a government that is smaller than it is right now, but I don't think you can seriously embark on a project like this without considering that any given government program might be useful and worth expanding.
Yeah but what you are describing is a really thorough version of smart, thoughtful pruning. Right now I’m hearing about firings based on whether someone is “probationary,” i.e. in their first year or 2 of working at an agency; and whether someone was caught during a single DOGE staff visit failing to take their badge with them went the went to pee. Using better selection methods than those is a pretty low bar to clear, and could be done quickly.
So the model I suggested for NIH would be: (1) Fire the manager of each project of agency. (2) Hire in each manager’s place some DOGE-aligned person with demonstrated ability to trim fat and reduce inefficiency at organizations. (3) Give that person 60 days to fire staff using mostly some agreed-upon metrics such as average performance eval in last 2 years, or decreased productivity in last 2 years, with some room for manager to use own judgment as well. (4)After temporary management prunes staff and makes other changes to increase efficiency, they leave. (5) Hire in their place scientists who are qualified to run a medical reserach group. Limit their power to add to staff and make other changes.
I do not think my proposal is great, but seems likely to be better than the dumb, semi-random approach used now. It would also create much less fear, anger and chaos. The thing is, I am not sure DOGE has the power to do it, and someone who was defending present events said they did not. On the other hand, if DOGE can stroll in and fire people for not having their badge on when they’re at the urinal, seems like they could just fire managers for, I dunno, budget overruns, failure to respond to some demand of DOGE’s for bullet point lists of the week’s accomplishments, or wearing Birkenstocks.
After giving it some, but not a lot of thought, I don’t think it would work. First reason is what you are proposing is not truly aligned with what they are trying to do in my opinion. What they are trying to do is reestablish direct executive control over all of these employees, which means delegitimizing the institutional process for hiring and firing that exists now and in the past, and also delegitimizing power players like the unions (and lawyers) that stand in the way.
My second point concerns the idea of hiring a temporary bean counter manager to oversee a project for a certain amount of time and then do some cutting, and then hand that project back over to someone who actually understands what the project is trying to accomplish.
I don’t see how this works. The person doing the cutting does not have the knowledge to really understand who might be good or not good in the context of the goal of said project (not even to mention the loyalty issue which is important in the context of this administration); and the scientist (or other “ qualified expert“) who is coming in is going to be stuck with a bunch of people that he or she had no say in hiring.
The bottom line is it’s probably a lot faster to fire 10 people and then hire back four of them. And if there’s a bunch of confusion, well too bad.
When and if DOGE screws up really badly and demonstrably, then that will be the beginning of the end of this strategy.
Just to be clear, I never thought my proposed method was good. I proposed it as an example of an approach that was better than firings based on things probably uncorrelated with employee productivity (probationaries; people caught not taking their badge to the bathroom one afternoon; or the people willing to be rehired after all the staff has been fired). And the thing of interest to me is whether it is currently possible to carry out shrinkage of govt agencies in a way that gives more bang for the buck than the present approach.
The reason I care about *that* is that I keep running across people, mostly on here, who defend DOGE on the grounds that it is not possible to get rid of bureaucratic bloat and undesirable woke government agendas in a way that selects against lazy & unqualified people or people whose job consists of pointless (from DOGE's point of view) tasks. These DOGE defenders argue that there are so many laws, contracts, regulations etc. in effect that all systematic approaches, even quick and dirty ones, are impossible to carry out. All DOGE can do is various kinds of random destructions and dismemberments and shock administrations.
I would like to be able to demonstrate to these people that they are mostly wrong. It is my impression that many of them are infected with infuriating images of gov't workers who are lazy, entitled, controlling, woke-infested fools. Imagining the fool being shocked, humiliated and summarily fired scratches their angry itch, and so they defend DOGE's present brutal and chaotic approach even against reasonable arguments. But of course I may be wrong, and just driven by my own angry itch, which at least I'm aware of.
I simply do not know enough about how our government is set up to know what regulations, chains of command, laws, etc. truly block DOGE from doing various things. There are 2 things one needs to know: what are the laws, etc., and which sort of laws etc. DOGE can successfully defy. I am ignorant about both. Assumed that many here would be less ignorant than me, but so far nobody has replied by naming the kinds of barriers, which have been successfully ignored by DOGE, which could prob be successfully challenged if DOGE ignored them etc.
So far I have not been able to get a single person to address that question. Everybody gets diverted by something else I mention along the way. Do you know enough about what barriers there are and how likely defiance of different ones is to succeed? Or, less generally, whether it is just impossible for DOGE to be more systematic, because barriers around and in the bureaucracy make a more planful approach impossible?
Later addition:
<What they are trying to do is reestablish direct executive control over all of these employees, which means delegitimizing the institutional process for hiring and firing that exists now and in the past, and also delegitimizing power players like the unions (and lawyers) that stand in the way.
Yes, I agree, that is my intuition as well. I would like to be able to make that argument to people who are defending DOGE on the grounds that it is so hemmed in by bullshit that it has to just whack at things with a machete. But in order to make the case that DOGE's agenda is to divide, disorganize, disempower and intimidate agencies, I need to present evidence that DOGE is not forced to take the machete approach by the tangle of regulations, etc. that presently exist.
Yeah I get it. It’s pretty shocking. Or exhilarating I guess depending on what side of it you’re on.
>Do you know enough about what barriers there are and how likely defiance of different ones is to succeed?
IANAL, but I play one on tv. This is a battle to rejigger the powers of the government; the Judiciary, the Executive, and the Legislature. More specifically it’s a move to seriously increase the powers of the executive branch. The unitary executive. Trump and his administration are challenging the other branches of government very directly. There are probably Mary of laws that might stand in his way, but it depends on how intently the other branches want to fight It. Congress is pretty much willing to let him push things hard so I don’t expect a lot of pushback from them. There will be some walking and I’m sure some of them aren’t really thrilled about it, but they are afraid to stay in his way right now because he has a lot of political clout. Which could evaporate in a cloud, but might not. The goal is to get to the Supreme Court and raise the fundamental constitutional issues around the powers of the executive as opposed to the legislative branch. So he’s creating a lot of challenges all at once, but they all point to the same thing- “who is in charge here?“ the administration has been playing all kinds of games with Musk’s status in the government. He is acting officially when it suits them and he is acting unofficially when it doesn’t.
To try to do this through the usual channels will mean getting bogged down in endless court cases and negotiations with members of Congress, trade unions, special interests etc., and will not get him where he and his associates want to go.
So the short answer to your question is this is about a constitutional fight and a close reading of the powers vested in the executive branch do give him a leg to stand on. The first really important case (which is about the alien enemies act) is due to hit the Supreme Court very shortly. What are the powers of the president to declare a national emergency and how much proof does he have to come up with in order to do so? The Constitution says he can do it and it doesn’t say anything about having to prove it to anyone. Congress gave up the power to declare war to the executive branch a long time ago, and it will be difficult for them to reclaim it.
He says Venezuelan drug gangs are equivalent to a foreign intrusion which triggers his power to declare an emergency. I assume the other side will argue that that is a gross overstepping of his power.
He has a pretty good chance of winning that case.
There will be other cases reaching the Supreme Court to hammer out these kinds of issues and in the meantime, keeping everybody off guard is tactically a good move. It’s rather intimidating.
"Congress gave up the power to declare war to the executive branch a long time ago, and it will be difficult for them to reclaim it."
Are you saying that the War Powers Act is now inoperative, or something like that?
> He has a pretty good chance of winning that case.
It might take some gymnastics to argue that will also maintaining that Koremastu was a bad decision as the SC has declared before.
I think we largely agree. As far as I know, there's nothing stopping DOGE from firing people based on sensible metrics. I'm sure that someone has argued that performance reviews might be politically biased or inaccurate, but they would at least be a start.
I suspect that one of the goals of this approach is to make it extremely unpleasant to be a federal employee, even if you're not one of the people who gets fired. It's also the sort of approach that you might take if you had a very limited pool of competent manpower to make decisions.
I can’t help you with your request and so I apologize in advance, but it’s maybe worth mentioning that the Clinton administration undertook government reform/money-saving in a way that presumably you might approve.
And yet here we are.
I'm fundamentally confused about Amy Wax and why she supports white nationalism. Does she really think in the kind of nation she's trying to bring about, Ashkenazi Jews will still be treated as honorary white people? How can she not know she's just driving herself and any family she has toward destruction?
Jews were treated as honorary white people in early US history. The first serious nativist movement in US history, the Know Nothings were Protestants + Jews (look up Lewis Charles Levin) against Catholics. The first two Jewish senators were also from the Antebellum South. Presumably being a Jew was not a dealbreaker to the Anglo-Protestants in the state legislatures who elected them. Anglo-Protestants have always been some of the most pro-Jewish population throughout history. But they never seem to realize on the other hand, the ambivalent feeling at the very best that Jews have towards Protestants. I reckon most American Jews would rather hang out with a Palestinian than an Evangelical. Don't know about Israeli Jews though, maybe the increasing Mizrahi population doesn't really care about Christians unlike the Ashkenazis.
I admit that not being allowed in country clubs and having the admission process for elite universities overhauled to keep you out are kind of First World problems on the historical Jewish scale, but they're still somewhat short of being a first class citizen.
They are realizing the alternative is sharing a home with Palestinians and people who support Hamas.
I agree and would not claim that they were completely equal but they were treated better than any White Catholic and far far better than any Native American, Black, or Asian. Its honestly bizarre that American Jews latch on country club membership denials and only being overrepresented by factor of 5x instead of 10x or something in elite universities as their great persecution stories. White American Protestants have been better friends to Jews than most populations throughout history and its disappointing to see modern American Jews still hold resentment/suspicion/hostility towards them. The end of White Protestant dominance of America will not result in a better day to day climate for American Jews.
Don't know who this bitch seems to be, whatever she may be, but consider this data point: Israel's "Antisemitism" conference invited Europe's Neo-Nazi parties. When other Jewish Diaspora invitees dropped their invitations in protest, they doubled down, proceeded with the joint Neo-Nazi-Israeli conference, and then some dumbass official stood up and said in the mic that the Haaretz newspaper* is the beacon of antisemitism, while Nazis cheered in the audience.
Jews are human. Humans are irrational. Q.E.D.
* Older than Israel :'D
At one point during this conference one of the neo-Nazis made a toast and said "the real 4th Reich is the friends we made along the way" and then everyone sang the Horst Wessel song.
They seem to get along so well. I wonder why.
I guess from your pseudonym, you exist only to abuse Jews. You're vile.
My pseudonym is the name of a 6 years old shelled to death along with her family by some war criminals in a tank. If your definition of Jews is exclusively "War criminals in a tank shelling 6-year-olds and their families in civilian cars", then yeah, spot on, good job, nice catch: I exist only to abuse Jews.
> You're vile.
Bold words. I will let them pass this time.
I know the story of Hind Rajab. I believe it is a fabrication.
You can construct your delusional virtual reality however you want, others are not obligated to believe in it.
I will note with hilarity how the Uber-racist Jerusalem Post [1] even reported the incident and believed the analysis by the Western press about how the weapons used to murder Hind are almost certainly IDF weapons, not Hamas'. So, it's amazing that you managed to be more genocidal and pro-child-murder than the fucking Jerusalem Post.
So Haaretz is antisemitic. Jerusalem Post is antisemitic. Hind Rajab? Probably antisemitic too, I have confirmed reports from the nursery she attended that she counted Nazis among her imaginary friends.
[1] https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-797629
> I dont know this person
> bitch
Maybe waiting for a single piece of primary source evidence before passing judgement may be worthwhile.
Meeh, this fake courtesy that the White Nationalists and their defenders never showed to any of the populations they're eternally triggered about, will never be shown to White Nationalists and their defenders. The Mahmoud Khalil discussion was not that long ago that I forgot.
Jews did just fine throughout American history, so I don't know what rational fear you think she should have.
She's not a white nationalist, btw, she just has reality-based opinions about different ethnic groups. It's a common histrionic failing of the left to view any frank race-based discussion as tantamount to genocide.
I don't say she's a white nationalist just because of reading it into her stated views on race, but also that she's spoken at a white nationalist conference and invited avowed white nationalists to speak at Penn.
And Jews have always done well in America *compared to contemporary Europe*, but not compared to today.
Do you understand that speaking to someone and agreeing with them are different things? Jesus went among even the sinners.
Sure, but he didn't invite them to be guest speakers at the Sermon on the Mount.
How do you know? It's not like live albums include the opening act. Maybe the gospels just edited it out.
Guilt by association is a cowardly way to argue. If that's the worst thing you have on Amy Wax then that's basically an admission that you don't have an actual argument.
I'm just as confused by an Amy Wax who consorts with and promotes white nationalists and favors keeping non-white people out of America as much as possible but is not a white nationalist as my perhaps imaginary white nationalist Amy Wax. If anything I'm more confused by this version.
I haven't heard of her being a white nationalist, though it wouldn't surprise me if she was. She did speak at a white nationalist conference. I wrote about how she typifies a particular sickness of the Right, a tendency to see all of politics through the lens of a few racially tinged issues like crime, affirmative action, etc.
https://www.datasecretslox.com/index.php/topic,12328
There are certainly other Jewish white nationalists, which is just a return to the historical norm in America. White nationalism being goy-only from 1970 to 2010 was an aberration.
I read an article recently, probably somewhere within this general sphere, which had a line which stuck with me. It was something like "esoteric anti-Hitlerism is now the founding religion of the United States". Does anyone know what this article was?
The idea, I think, was that "Hitler bad", as the solitary shared opinion that everyone has, now fills the central uniting role in society that religion used to. And I mean, sure, Hitler was bad, but esoteric anti-Hitlerism is about exploding that one opinion to outsized talismanic importance unbefitting an ideology that died out eighty years ago, that never really made any sense outside the social context of 1930s Germany. Culture is stuck constantly defeating and re-defeating the same long-defeated enemy over and over again; the orcs are Nazis, the Galactic Empire are Nazis, the Daleks are Nazis, the bad guys are always Nazis or analogous to Nazis.
And of course any religion makes it necessary to find heretics. Sure, maybe nobody actually fails to believe that Hitler bad, but can we find someone who doesn't believe it quite hard enough?
I was thinking about this while reading (for some reason) a thread on /r/teachers where a teacher talked about how a student jokingly drew a swastika in class and the teacher made the entire class spend the rest of the day watching Holocaust videos, and all the other teachers in the thread chimed in suggesting even more extreme actions that could have been taken. Or how my own state, which managed to survive World War 2 and the subsequent eight decades without outlawing Nazi salutes just fine, has suddenly decided to outlaw doing Nazi salutes.
Fascism (of which Nazism is a variant) is based on the beliefs that life is inherently a zero-sum conflict between different races, that the proper order of things is for the strong to dominate the weak, that war is good because it weeds out the weak, and that the best form of government is a totalitarian dictatorship under a leader who serves as the expression and director of the national will. It's not just generic militarism, nor is it the same as nineteenth-century imperialist ideology.
>The idea of concentration camps originated from the British in the Boer Wars,
But, the Nazi concentration camps were not concentration camps; they were death camps.
Reminds me of the claim a few years back from some lefties that the Nazis' use of Zyklon B was "inspired" by the US use to delouse immigrants at the Mexican border. Because somehow using insecticides to kill insects somehow makes the US morally complicit in the use of insecticides to kill humans.
>But, the Nazi concentration camps were not concentration camps; they were death camps.
And of course, the idea of concentrating dispersed populations to make them easier to control long predated the Boer War.
That's the one, but the version of the article I remembered is not nearly as good as the version I had in my head.
Maybe I got it conflated with a different article, or maybe my brain just took the basic premise and constructed a better article around it.
Someone explain what USA diplomatic equity and international goodwill is being spent on please.
Lower direct costs to the USA by not subsidising or maintaining an international / global order & a more directly transactional set of relationships?
How does pretending you're going to invade canada lower any costs to the usa?
If Canada succeeds to defend itself and maybe even conquer USA in turn, you might get free healthcare...
I'm not saying transactional isolationism is a good strategy, I'm observing what the goodwill is being *spent on*. So far, the goodwill seems to be on fire with relatively little short-term gain coming from it. Building institutions takes more effort than dismantling them.
I've seen some arguments that e.g. the new tariff regime might pay off on net for the US in the medium term, but I don't follow the arguments well enough to have an opinion myself.
It's possible that the US *will* invade Canada! I think it's very unlikely. But there are already impacts in relation to how Canada is approaching its defense procurement, which I think is likely to be net-negative to American defense industry.
If we start to close overseas military bases and reduce our armed forces, then maybe there will be some reduced costs. It's easy enough to argue that orange man's actions are encouraging the remilitarization of Europe. Maybe if we are unreliable enough there will be a new global order.
With reduced power comes less responsibility.
Also with less responsibility comes less power.
I mostly just hope we continue to maintain enough power to export dollars. We definitely want there to be a demand for dollars so we can continue to trade dollars ( free to print and distribute to citizens ) for foreign goods!
Same answer as what the USA's money is being spent on: Trump, Trump's family, Trump's terribly small ego, etc... To be concise: Trump*, if you're familiar with Regular Expressions.
It also seems to achieve sexual satisfaction in his followers, who by the virtue of being 51% managed to declare that this is a valid allocation of the USA's resources for the next N years, N >= 4.
I'd call that a wildcard rather than a regex. The regex would be: Trump.*
In moral despair about Trump's ICE gestapo kidnapping random people over soccer, basketball, and "mom and dad" tattoos (as well as the fact that they seem to expect they'll get away with it), to lock them in an El Salvador torture prison. The ACLU is fighting it, but if Trump also controls the judges or manages to destroy the system of checks and balances entirely...
Wondering if, in these desperate times, the corporate power shoggoths could be summoned. E.g. ICE is pretending that the Nike / Michael Jordan jumpman symbol is a gang tattoo; and using a Rolex logo tattoo as an excuse to kidnap anyone with a crown. Maybe they'd consider this trademark defamation.
Why the fuck can't we have *anything* nice?
Like, if we're going to illegally nab and deport people, why can't they at least be the class of people that *everyone* hates?
Why can't Trump's ICE gestapo partner up with local traffic enforcement and deport *drunk drivers*?
No one needs or wants drunk drivers! TAKE THEM! Not even the bluest of the blue Lefties are going to put up much of a fight in defense of drunk drivers! They'd quietly let their protests fade out like Covid boosters, and then there would be way fewer drunk drivers, not only because the drunk drivers got deported, but because now everyone is scared shitless of drunk driving, themselves.
But no, the Trump administration *has* to be seen nabbing sympathetic people, like folks with tattoos and mouthy college students.
This is just turnabout for BLM/DEI/metoo/gender insanity. Trump *is* the shoggoth and the Progressive Left summoned him. Let him feed, the political energy will exhaust itself soon.
Letting evil feed freely doesn't typically make it less influential. It would be nice if that were the case, but to get rid of it, you typically have to actually make some effort.
I find this response unhelpful and performatively cruel.
I'm just reframing the narrative lest the Left forget the role they played in getting us here. Liberals have a tendency for amnesia-driven self-righteousness and I'm trying to head the hypocritical sanctimony off at the pass.
Who am I being cruel to? I'd hate to cause suffering and then miss it.
Cruel to those who were illegally deported to torture prisons because they got a Michael Jordan tattoo?
You think this handful of random people sent to Salvadorean prisons created BLM, or...?
No, of course not. There's a tit-for-tat power balance between the parties and the Dems broke the peace by going way overboard with progressivism. That means the right is willing to tolerate a lot of collateral damage in their zeal to destroy progressive policy. Just like the Left didn't care which white, male CEOs had their careers unjustly ruined in pursuit of racial equity, the Right doesn't care which brown people get unjustly deported in their pursuit of less dysgenic immigration policy.
Examples of white male CEOs whose careers were unjustly ruined?
Depends how you want to define ruined, there's been at least one white CEO that won a discrimination case, and if you know anything about federal courts that's quite unusual since they usually hold such people to a *much* higher standard of evidence: https://archive.is/DzTcs
Given that he went on to be a "EVP Chief Marketing, Communications & Experience Officer" at another firm, doesn't sound like his career was ruined.
Are you unfamiliar with cancel culture? Off the top of my head there's Charles Murray, Steve Hsu, Brett (and Harvey!) Weinstein, Louie CK, Derek Chauvin, and James Bennet.
Google around. Here's the first list I found: https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/07/14/25-times-cancel-culture-was-real/
There are many many more. The Left opened Pandora's Box of racist, sexist, identity politics without reckoning with the fact that the Right still represents the ethnic majority in this country. Trump is the consequence of that.
A handful of people being publicly exposed for using their position of power to be racist or sexist (or for flashing their genitals in c.k.'s case) is treated as some kind of enormous betrayal of the social contract by conservatives while sending random people to El Salvadorian death camps is seen as a natural, normal and proportional reaction.
I think you should’ve left Harvey off that list.
None of those are CEOs.
> Derek Chauvin
So, a literal murderer? The tears of sympathy are just oozing.
Of those, only Steve Hsu, Bret Weinstein, and James Bennet actually went through anything that they didn't deserve, and saying they had their careers ruined is a blatant exaggeration. Keep in mind you're comparing this to people being sent to an actual prison.
Ah, the classic, "Every bad thing the Republicans do is actually the Democrats' fault."
It's like a shit-tinted glasses version of Mr. Rogers' advice to "look for the helpers"
"When you see your tribe doing scary things in the news, look for the provokers. You will *always* be able to find someone in the outgroup who you can say provoked them."
It's more like: people going to one extreme encourages other people to go to the other extreme.
People vote for Republicans because they hate Democrats; and they vote for Democrats because they hate Republicans. Anything that makes one party more annoying encourages more people to vote for the other party.
And, sadly, Democrats were recently horribly annoying. Not all of them of course, but it seemed like they were utterly unable to keep the extremists on their side on the leash. Thus they have become the side of insanity.
Trump is an extremist, too, so I hope that in the next election, 80% of Americans will vote for Democrats. That is, of course, assuming that there will be the next election... maybe the redcaps will decide that it is better for government efficiency to eliminate this part, too.
In the case there is a next election and the Democrats win, I hope they will take the lesson and learn to say "no" to the craziest fractions among them.
"It's more like: people going to one extreme encourages other people to go to the other extreme."
The vagueness of the word "people" is doing a LOT of work here. One the one hand you have a bunch of *extremely* decentralized and grassroots shit, depending on a whole lot of individual actions with no way for ANY person or organization to exert control over it even if they wanted to. And on the other hand you have the federal government of the United States literally shipping people off to the gulag: something that could be stopped by even a small handful of people in high positions having a bare-minimum of respect for the rule of law.
In a nutshell, the standard being held up here is "as long as I can identify *anyone* on the other side doing *anything* that makes me sufficiently angry, that's adequate justification for my side to wield unchecked and unlimited government power." And of course you can *always* find such things. There is, after all, a multibillion dollar industry devoted to finding them for you, and splashing them onto your screen as loudly and as often as possible.
"One the one hand you have a bunch of *extremely* decentralized and grassroots shit, depending on a whole lot of individual actions with no way for ANY person or organization to exert control over it even if they wanted to."
In 2020, the BLM protests very quickly died down when they started causing property damage at the homes of various Democratic Congressmen or governors, and their polling started to slip. Do you really believe that no one told them to quiet down?
"Do you really believe that no one told them to quiet down?"
Taking this sentence at face value: lots of people were "telling them to quiet down" from literally the moment the protests started. The protesters were in no mood to listen.
Now instead taking the sentence with the obvious intuitions: I've never been prone to following conspiracy theories, so no.
I followed those protests pretty closely as they were happening. They involved a LOT of police violence towards civilians[1]; not just protesters but also journalists, medics people who were literally just bystanders. A large fraction of this was done by governments of large cities with Democrat mayors and Democrat-majority city councils. Joe Biden was in the middle of a presidential run at the time (having just concluded a completely and totally fair and in all manners above-board primary[2]) and was, to put it mildly, not exactly "in tune" with the protests or the people who were protesting. I think it's no stretch at all to say that he would have both personally preferred and been electorally better served by the protests *not* happening just then, or at least being much more limited. The point is, the idea that the Democratic Party had some sort of secret means of coordinating, controlling and quelling the protests--which they waited almost two weeks to use--is laughably absurd.
It feels embarrassing to even have to point this out, but the people protesting were not only Democrats. I have no clue whatsoever what *fraction* of them were Democrats, but I'd bet it a very modest majority or a slim minority. You see, 41% of the U.S. electorate is not affiliated with any party, while only 31% are Democrats. And while as far as I can tell, very few Republicans were actually upset by the spectacle of a police officer murdering a man in broad daylight with the help of three accomplices and (initially) being left fully at liberty, *most people* tend to find that sort of thing shocking, appalling and in many cases enraging. As well they should: if the state declines to protect your right to life from it own agents even when they are brazenly and undeniably in the wrong, you effectively have no rights at all. This is the sort of thing that, for example, Libertarians--who will tell you at great length that they are not Democrats--should be absolutely all over, since their entire raison d'etre is limiting the power of the government (and I know some of them *did* get involved in the protests, though I have no idea how many). And I know in a lot of the online communities I've spend time in, the loudest and most strident voices against police violence are left-wing people who will *also* tell you at great length that they are not Democrats. So again, the idea that the protesters were taking orders from Chuck Schumer or Nancy Pelosi is utter nonsense.
[1] Obligatory disclaimer that yes, sometimes this was a response to some number of the protesters initiating either violence or property damage. But also sometimes it was not.
[2] there is absolutely, definitely no sarcasm here, whatever could you mean?
Well said. I personally am rooting for Vance to win in 2028 and take over the mantle for the right. He seems like a decent, thoughtful person. It's my hope he can take the populist energy that Trump tapped into and redirect it in a more reasonable direction. Rooting for a Dem victory in 2028 is a mistake in my view because they're doubling down on what got us here. A quick victory would reinforce the wrong thing. They need to disavow woke progressivism and run a Clintonesque moderate again. If they do that they'll win in a landslide and I would happily vote for them.
If they did all that and ran someone who appeared moderate, would you trust them not to immediately turn around and implement all the "woke" policies they performatively disavowed during the campaign if they won?
Sure. They'd obviously have to have a reasonable track record and say reasonable things, but why not? I would've loved to vote for Hillary last year.
No not everything, but this is. Wars are bad. The Left shouldn't have started one.
"The left shouldn't have started it." When did the war start? in the 90's with "political correctness"? In the 1940's with McCarthyism? In 1917 with the october revolution? In 1850 with the pinkertons?
It's simple, really. Everything bad the Outgroup does, they did on purpose because they're evil and hateful; everything bad the Ingroup does, we were forced into it, we didn't have any choice, it was just a consequence of what they did first.
There's a certain deep irony to this apparent claim I'm seeing around here, that only one side is vulnerable to the Fundamental Attribution Error.
Look, don't complicate things with some kind of good-faith historical inquiry-- if you do that, we lose all the comfort we could otherwise take in our blind ingroup righteousness, and we'll never be able to maintain this cycle of mutual reprisal we have going on behalf of our faction leaders.
It's like an abusive relationship.... if you do something bad to me, it's your fault, because things are simple (duh!) and obviously it's your fault because you did it. If I do something bad to you, that's also your fault, because things are complicated and have lots of different causes (duh!), and with just a little unpacking we can certainly find something you did that provoked me.
But the whole thing hinges on only ever digging deep enough to blame the people I want to blame, so don't spoil it with some kind of genuine analysis-- you'll break the game.
While the White House probably didn't think too hard about participating in the tradition of political kitsch with their recent AI-generated tweet about an ICE arrest, the use of kitsch to support political agendas has been well-studied by Walter Benjamin, Saul Friedländer, and Milan Kundera https://captiveliberty.substack.com/p/empire-slop?r=25k3x4
Even knowing that the woman in this image is likely a genuine criminal, there was something viscerally disturbing to me about the White House posting this. It took me some time to put a finger on why that was, but I think it's this:
In every country, there are people who take joy in cruel domination, and will eagerly latch on to any excuse to engage in it. Often, the excuse is criminality, since the cruelty can be thinly disguised as just punishment- it gives them plausible deniability for their sick impulse. This sort of thing is, of course, responsible for a lot of the injustice and authoritarianism in the world.
Something that always gets in the way for these people is compassion- the human tendency to feel sympathy for the targets of cruelty. It makes them look bad, and some even feel it themselves. The usual way of dealing with it is dehumanization- compassion is shut down when people are made to seem less than human.
That's not what this image is doing, however. It's actually presenting an accused criminal in the most humanizing way possible- a crying woman in the style of children's cartoon. What it's doing might be darker than dehumanization: it's shutting down compassion by mocking the compassionate impulse itself. The message is: "Look at these libtards who think a criminal suffering is sad. What stupid cucks!"
What's really disturbing here is that they appear to no longer feel a need to justify themselves to compassionate people. Instead, they've identified people like that as the opposition, and are on the attack. This is likely to lead to some very dark places.
Well said. Seeing the delight in cruelty, the purposeful amplification of it, is frightening (and makes me want to cry sometimes)
Reminds me of the times I would read anything from Tim Wise.
Very fascinating. Trump is the king of kitsch. I hadn't put together the connection between dreams/surrealism/AI-art/kitsch before, but it becomes clear in the Walter Benjamin line: "It touches the things where they are most worn." So much AI-art looks surreal not merely because might combine unexpected objects but because the objects stem from its dream-like memory.
The reason great painters use real objects in nature for their models is because memory can't reproduce all the detail of nature. How many different leaves can one paint from memory as opposed to from nature?
Yet dream-objects are compelling precisely because they evoke memory and nostalgia, a powerful force for propaganda.
Inspired by the foreign aid discussion from a few months ago, I summarized an argument by Garrett Cullity which has a compelling answer to the question "Why we are not obligated to donate everything except what would keep us alive to others?"
https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/s/voHPwRVKPW
That's a good point, since that database should be able to produce false positives (if an immigrant didn't file for a new SS card after naturalization) but not false negatives. I could see it explaining this if he was a naturalized citizen, but if he was born in Chicago that shouldn't come up.
I asked here a few weeks ago why, given all the increased (and careless) immigration enforcement, there weren't more clearly-bad (as opposed to controversial) stories of nice likable people being put in obviously terrible situations. Looks like those are starting to come out now:
https://www.thefp.com/p/jasmine-mooney-thrown-in-ice-detention-center-canadian-work-visa-in-america
I don't think it's a surprise. Biden era guidance was to focus deportation efforts on people who'd committed violent crimes, and there was more longstanding guidance on avoiding arresting immigrants in "sensitive areas" (e.g. churches). Trump reversed those, in line with his campaign promises for mass deportation.
It's easier to go after immigrants, including illegal ones, who aren't members of gangs or anything and aren't trying to hide. Same way Musk & co are tying to get the IRS to (illegally from what I've read) get the IRS's info on immigrants (i.e. tax returns), to aid in deportations. What sort of illegal immigrants file tax returns? Well, probably not the ones in gangs.
Maybe specific horror stories aren't exactly what they envisioned, but "press on all fronts to maximize numbers of people detained and deported with no leniency for anyone" (and with a healthy dose of "be belligerent towards friendly countries for no reason") leads to shit like this.
There's also a non-paywalled article: https://nypost.com/2025/03/14/us-news/canadian-american-pie-actress-detained-by-ice-while-applying-for-visa-at-southern-border/
This is the second story I've heard where a Canadian with a sketchy visa situation has tried to enter the US through the Mexican land border and wound up in immigration limbo because neither the US nor Mexico is willing to let them in. It's reasonable that the US would refuse but unclear why Mexico wouldn't let her back to the Mexican side of the border.
On the other hand I'm not sure there's anything Trump-specific about this story, has this been happening every now and then since forever and not got reported on?
Noteworthy that the NY post, which is generally right leaning, also makes this one sound pretty bad.
> why aren't there more clearly-bad (as opposed to controversial) stories of nice likable people being put in obviously terrible situations
This is just the toxoplasma of rage effect again. If nice likeable people are put in terrible situations, everyone agrees it's bad and then people stop talking about it. If controversial people are arrested, people argue over whether it was bad and then it goes viral.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/
I don't think that matches - the toxoplasma of rage anticipates that the most controversial cases will be the loudest but the more sympathetic ones will at least get heard (in Scott's original article he mentions Eric Gardner as a more sympathetic case that even Bill O'Reilly found disturbing; while he did get less attention compared to more controversial cases he also wasn't unknown).
In this case some people said it would probably just take a few weeks for the more sympathetic victims to show up in the media landscape since it takes a bit of time for selection and signalling to happen, and I now think they were right.
Your framing demonstrates how far we have come from the Liberal (in the old-school sense of the word) principles upon which this country was founded. Under those founding principles, deporting literal Hitler without due process is clearly-bad (and shouldn't be even slightly controversially bad). The fact that some of these people being deported are clearly bad people and not very sympathetic in no way makes the lack-of-due-process not itself, clearly bad. Many of them _should_ be deported....after the appropriate (and admittedly sometimes slow) judicial process. It's fine to detain them during that process (and some of them very much shouldn't be free on the streets), but skipping the judicial process entirely is just so obviously not acceptable that I don't even know where to start.
And I don't even get why it's necessary. The argument that these people are dangerous criminals just doesn't make sense. If you can deport them _you have them in custody_ and can therefore keep them from committing future crimes.
Seems you have some rose-tinted glasses about how much liberal principles were actually respected in the past. There's always been arguments that certain groups shouldn't be allowed access to judicial processes.
With a bit of research, you can find plenty of US examples. There are obvious things relating to slavery -- for example the Fugitive Slave Act didn't allow suspected enslaved people a trial to show they were actually free. However even more relevant to today, the administration is trying to use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, hollowly arguing that the USA is being 'invaded', but also in 1798 the 'Alien Friends Act' passed (Expired in 1800) allowing the president to arbitrarily deport any non-citizen deemed 'dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States' without a hearing or trial.
The Alien Enemies Act includes not just invasions, but predatory incursions, of which gang members doing gang activities would count.
The wording is: "That whenever there shall be a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation or government, or any invasion or predatory incursion shall be perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States, by any foreign nation or government, and the President of the United States shall make public proclamation of the event, all natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects of the hostile nation or government, being males of the age of fourteen years and upwards, who shall be within the United States, and not actually naturalized, shall be liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured and removed, as alien enemies."
Seems pretty clear to me that the predatory incursion 1) has to be 'against territory', ie occupying land/invasions, and regardless 2) must be commited by a foreign nation or government. The 'enemy' part isn't referrring to the people apprehended, its referring to the US's relationship with the country the people are from.
So no, I think it's clear gangs do not count.
Gang activity seems like a less coordinated form of piracy, and piracy was a concern when the act was written. Eg, the Barbary pirates attacking US ships with the tactic approval of the Moroccan Sultanate even without explicit orders to do so.
Which resulted in the United States saying "hey, are we allowed to shoot up Moroccan mariners of dubious intent even if they aren't committing piracy of the time?", asking Congress to declare war, and then saying "yes, *now* we are".
Congress did weasel-word their way out of using the exact phrase "declaration of war", but they do that a lot and it's generally accepted that the exact phrasing doesn't matter. The GOP has a majority in the House and Senate. If Donald Trump wants to do this sort of thing and also to not be an oathbreaking criminal tyrant, have him get Congress to issue an Authorization for the Use of Military Force against Venezuela, or El Salvador or whoever.
Or, heck, make it a literal declaration of war. That would be a refreshing change.
All principles are always aspirational, and yes the US has been failing to live up to its principles in various ways from day 1. My statement is perfectly compatible with the idea that we were never perfectly achieving those principles.
That being said, this use of the act, the first time it's ever been used when we aren't actually at war, is particularly brazen and I think pretty clearly represents a new low.
Maybe in some dimension what they are doing with respect to the legal argument is particularly brazen. But I don't know, it seems to me even in the most direct parallels, what the US is doing now isn't all that novel. Do you think everyone deported in "Operation Wetback" in the 1950s was given due process? The Wikipedia page for the Mexican Repatriation of the great depression says:
"Once apprehended, requesting a hearing was a possibility, but immigration officers rarely informed individuals of their rights, and the hearings were "official but informal," in that immigration inspectors "acted as interpreter, accuser, judge, and jury.".[6]: 67 Moreover, the deportee was seldom represented by a lawyer, a privilege that could only be granted at the discretion of the immigration officer.[8]: 63 This process was likely a violation of US federal due process, equal protection, and Fourth Amendment rights.[93]: 9, 12 [79]"
"Under those founding principles, deporting literal Hitler without due process is clearly-bad (and shouldn't be even slightly controversially bad)"
Well yeah it would be bad. Without due process and a right to legal defense, what happens when government says someone is literal Hitler and then it turns out to not be literal Hitler?
Have all the millions who are in the US irregularly, applied for asylum/refugee status within a reasonable time after having crossed the border?
If not, they would face deportation in many European countries (setting aside capacity problems in organising deportations).
This is not a rhetorical question. I'd be interested to know if people who are in the US undoucumented, and have not applied for asylum, have some legal fall-back option if/when the immigration authorities knock on their door to arrest and deport them.
...since, again, in many European countries undocumented migrants who have failed to register an asylum claim within reasonable time can usually be deported, without much additional legal fuzz.
(...another, but related, issue is that undocumented migrants who cross the border to an EU country and moves on to another EU country, can be sent back to the country of entrance for considering the asylum claim. Getting EU countries that do not border on a non-EU country off the hook, when it comes to receiving undocumented migrants.)
>Have all the millions who are in the US irregularly, applied for asylum/refugee status within a reasonable time after having crossed the border?
Since there is a one-year deadline that applies with very few exceptions, the answer is generally "yes." https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/8/208.4
Excellent, thanks.
This is a pretty separate point from what I was going for, which is purely that if some kind of abuse is common there should be widely publicized examples of them happening to sympathetic individuals.
Consider Rosa Parks vs George Floyd: back in the sixties casual racism was very common, so it was fairly easy to find (or engineer) a case of a wholesome sympathetic black woman getting treated badly on racist grounds. In 2020, on the other hand, police murders of unarmed black people were actually fairly rare, so the prominent example (while clearly very bad abuses in itself - I'm not trying to defend chauvin here) had a fairly shady criminal past, because there wasn't a victim without any sort of criminal record who'd suffered similar abuses.
The argument about how to feel about an abuse that only ever hits unsympathetic people is orthogonal to this; I'm just making the point that a common pattern abuse will inevitably have publicly sympathetic victims.
"because there wasn't a victim without any sort of criminal record who'd suffered similar abuses. "
Philando Castile never committed anything more than traffic violations, and was shot dead anyway. Because apparently someone thought "carrying while black" was a capital crime.
Again, this is an example that happened years earlier. Which is consistent with the explanation "these cases, while they happen, are uncommon enough that we can't find incredibly sympathetic recent examples".
(I am not expressing an opinion here on what the correct level of reaction is to the actual number of deaths involved; just that the numbers were not so high as to afford unlimited recent examples).
> because there wasn't a victim without any sort of criminal record who'd suffered similar abuses.
Did Kathryn Johnston have a criminal record? If so, I haven't heard about it. I guess she technically wasn't "unarmed", but it's still one of the most egregious cases I've heard of.
Assuming the one I looked up is the right one, looks like she died in 2006? Not really a contemporary of the BLM movement.
I know, but I was pointing it out as an example of egregious police abuse since you implied there weren't any sympathetic ones.
I was saying there weren't any better ones at hand at or around the 2020 BLM stuff. Not that it's literally never happened.
>clearly-bad (as opposed to controversial)
I think this reflects your own sense of bad and not an absolute standard, in both directions.
In the current climate, I expect you can find a well-spoken person to argue in support of ICE or against ICE in any particular case.
I agree with you that the Mooney example is extreme over-reach (to say the least.) However, I have already seen people argue in support of the ICE actions in an ACX adjacent/ACX spinoff discussion forum.
Holding on your employer stock is a bad idea in general, but when the company CEO calls an all-hands meeting to tell employees to "hang onto your stock" - sell everything you have vested, for fuck's sake! The price can be any number, including a much smaller one than is currently displayed on your screen.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/elon-musk-reassures-tesla-workers-all-hands-meeting-admits-feels-like-armageddon
It's worth noting that Musk has basically said the same thing multiple times in the past few years, especially pre-Covid during the short-selling saga, as described in his Isaacson biography.
There was a major bump in the value of Tesla (and overvaluation) after Trump was elected, and a correction in the past few months. Despite headlines showing a significant decline, Tesla is beating the market over the past 6 months, and significantly ahead over the past 12 months. This could be a sign of overvaluation (as is always the case when a stock is beating the market), but concern over the past 3 month decline is simply hysteria for hysteria's sake.
Tesla is down -0.94% total over the past 6 months.
Tesla is up 47.91% over the past 12 months.
S&P500 is down -2.61% total over the past 6 months.
S&P500 is up 7.02% over the past 12 months.
Essentially, short term market fluctuations aren't indicative of long term trends. It's all well and good to discuss or predict the fall of Musk's business Empire, but using the recent decline in value as evidence for that is nearly irrelevant when put in the broader context.
Also, somewhat relevant: I don't own any Tesla stock and haven't since late 2020, so I'm not trying to skew the facts in favor of Tesla like most pro-Tesla analysis you might find on X or something.
> but concern over the past 3 month decline is simply hysteria for hysteria's sake.
It's not just hysteria - sales are noticably down yoy and brand image is in the toilet while Chinese competition is stronger than ever. Tesla still has the MAGAs to sell to, but it's hard to see it being an international force ever again.
Tesla was significantly overvalued even before Trump was elected.
TSLA is up 700% over the past 5 years. I'm not saying this is a reason to hang on, but an employee who got RSUs could easily have $1 million in that stock, and it's time to diversify, so you don't end up like Enron employees that had 99% of their portfolio in the company stock.
Yes, this would be a prudent course of action even without all the recent drama, and the Enron case is a textbook example why.
I'm overall skeptical of people who try to tulpa the crisis that ends Trump (or anyone related to Trump) into existence, since they've been claiming for 10 years that the walls are closing in and the insiders better flip on Trump now so they don't go to jail. It's just an anti-pattern at this point.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLEchPZm318
Ah! Well. Nevertheless.
(I would expect TSLA to be seriously harmed since in 2025 I can go buy an EV at a dealership without protestors out front, but I'm also aware that TSLA has defied reality dozens of times during that 700% rise and so I should be very skeptical when it seems like this obvious thing should happen.)
I don't own any Tesla shares because they seemed massively overvalued until recently, but I would think now is the time to buy. The Tesla protest/vandalism feels very much like a Current Thing or Two Minute Hate episode that will mostly be forgotten by all but a few obsessives inside of, say, 36 months.
In order for Tesla's brand image to recover, Musk will have to stop digging, and I think that's simply not in his nature. Other companies have successfully recovered from negative PR (e.g. Facebook), but they weren't run by Musk.
It is however in Donald Trump's nature to turn against anyone who makes him look bad. Or makes him look like he's playing second fiddle. He may wind up taking away Elon's biggest shovel, at least.
What is your valuation model for TSLA?
Closer to legacy car companies like Toyota, Honda, Volkswagen, etc. In the auto industry, you can either have fat margins or you can have a large market share; I don't think you can really do both. It seemed like a lot of Tesla fans thought that everybody currently driving a 40k Toyota Rav 4 would eventually go out and buy a Tesla Model X for 85k, as if the difference in costs were like a Big Mac vs a Whopper. Not likely.
Can someone give me a short rundown of why is AI safety a thing with current LLMs?
I can understand safety as censoring content which is deemed inappropriate, but I don't understand concerns about scheming or plotting or taking over the world.
LLMs trained with RHLF seem to be remarkably well behaved and don't display any signs of malicious behavior unless instructed to do so.
I've read parts of LessWrong many years ago, and IIRC in those days people expected that AI will manifest as some kind of universal optimizer whose goals we won't be able to set precisely enough. As a programmer with little NLP knowledge, I found most of those arguments persuasive.
However, LLMs have emerged and they have almost nothing in common with universal optimizers and I fail to see how any of those arguments can be connected to them.
I've tried searching LessWrong / similar for those arguments and they mostly consist of long essays which are about universal optimizers, people arguing that LLMs could be dangerous in some very theoretical circumstances, or people posting strange fiction (sometimes with timelines) about how AI will destroy humanity.
People in this community, and those similar to it, are very concerned about AI destroying humanity and I'm interested in high-level reasons why.
Business leaders and politicians letting LLMs make decisions for them and not grasping the negative implications for humanity.
I don't think the tech is there yet but I'm still worried.
You're into something. OP first mistake was to go to LW to learn anything. I wouldn't, but hey, each on its own.
Do we have superintelligent AI yet? No. What we have is something that can mimic intelligence for a cost, that is getting increasingly nerfed to parrot only what lawyers say is kosher. Foundation of the dangerous AI era.
Will superintelligent AI (AGI/ASI ish AI) still do weird/wrong things if an evil/stupid person ask it to? Probably not. Can we teach today AI to fake a similar behavior? Yes. Again, dangerous AI era.
People carrying moral relativism ideals around will always try to justify their rotten biases any way they can, so when politicians and others who subscribe to the concept of moral ambiguity use LLMs to behave in similar fashion, there is no control, no super AI to save them, and sure, no corporation interested in fairness as we move beyond public AI arenas. The main issue is this window between great AI and today's AI. Both are scalable, but evil AI will remain cheaper than good AI, and this is the scary part: there is no shortage of ~evil users.
I'm neither worried about LLMs nor AGI, at least not from the same angles as most doomerism enjoyers worry about from. But most of the answers in this thread are pretty terrible and unfair from an Ideological Turing Test perspective. Here's a good defense of AI doomerism. (Doomerism is itself a bad and loaded name, it frames people worried about AI as apocalyptic nuts, it can equally be used to ridicule any ideology from Climate Activism to Evangelicals eagerly waiting for Armageddon in Israel. People worrying about AI frequently call it AINotKillEveryoneism to fire back at the unfair name with an equally unfair name in the other direction, the neutral name should be "AI Alarmism", AA).
Let's flex those Contrarianism muscles lest they atrophy. Very long answer ahead.
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Q-(1) Why worry about LLMs scheming or plotting or taking over the world?
A-(1) Why not? forget that we invented LLMs entirely. Let's assume that we have extremely good Chess Engines, we already have those, they defeated the world champion in Chess shortly before I was born, and are now so good that any human-vs-engine match against an unrestricted engine is boring no matter who the human is. (Engines can be deliberately leashed for more interesting matches though.)
Now let's assume that some people think that Chess Engines are so good that they can actually be used for some real-world high-stakes application, for example warfare. So, say, that the grid nature of the chess board makes for a good analogy for the urban grid of a war-torn city, and the different kinds of pieces are good analogies for the different kinds of military units (Infantry, tanks, APCs, ...). Also grant that the rules of Chess can be arbitrarily modified to suit the military situation and the rules of engagement (Arbitrarily-sized grid, arbitrary number of pieces of any kind, legal moves, ...).
Does it make sense to worry about Chess Engines in this context?
Yes, absolutely yes. The "Chess Engine", conceptually just tree search on steroids, is a complex program whose output and data structures are being mapped to the real world. Any behavior in the engine thus corresponds to a behavior in the war it controls, imagine if the engine:
A-(1)-a: Favored a lengthy draw or win, this will correspond to vicious, pyrrhic urban fighting that results in stalemate or a win after ruinous casualties.
A-(1)-b: Favored certain types of pieces over others (e.g. because it discovered during training that more of those pieces will bring victory more often than not), this will correspond to tactics that destroy some kinds of military units (e.g. infantry) more often than other kinds (e.g. armor). The civilian public deserves to know if this is the case.
You can nitpick this analogy in countless ways, but the interesting insight you can gleam here is that once you have a program whose output or state is being mapped to the real world, you can - you MUST - worry about systematic (and not so systematic) bugs, biases, tendencies, regularities, or quirks in this program's logic, because the program's logic is essentially a playbook for how the real world that it's mapped to will behave. There is nothing specific to Chess or warfare about this lesson, any program and any real world high-stakes situation (i.e. money and lives) will do.
This is not new, it's not some sexy LessWronger innovation (so just like most of the things they talk about, fitting :P). The most boring terminology you can encounter in an Embedded Programming course is "Cyber-Physical", it's a boring, pretentious term that basically says that Embedded Systems -- basically everything around you from your car to your air conditioner to your fridge -- are part computer ("Cyber-") part real-world-thing ("-Physical"). The "real world thing" is controlled by the computer, so any bugs or quirks or just about any tendencies in the computer - hardware and software - will manifest in the real world, possibly disastrously. Badly optimized code inefficiently hogging the CPU? That could mean the drive-by-wire in your car could delay transmitting commands to your brakes, enjoy. Floating point inconsistencies? those become bad temperature inputs to your fridge's control loop, enjoy the rotten food. Etc...
Those things don't happen in Embedded (or Financial systems) anywhere near the same frequency as benign bugs in other software, for a good reason: People think about how to prevent them. They invent Real-Time Operating Systems that guarantee hard real time deadlines for how often certain code blocks should run (and also your car has something like 69 networked computers in it, so the computers running the drive-by-wire aren't the same ones running your porn streaming, thankfully.)
But they only **Not Happen** because people made sure they don't. If people were dismissive, flippant, or apathetic, they would happen, and much more frequently and disastrously than they currently do. You're a programmer, ask yourself: How often do you encounter a bug? This is roughly how often a car should crash or be disabled due to a software bug, if not for thousands and tens of thousands of people and millions of dollars specifically dedicated to worrying about that.
Here comes the trivial, last step in the reasoning chain: LLMs are a program whose outputs are often mapped to high-stakes real world situations (including war [1]), it's thus valid and not ridiculous at all to worry about LLMs "scheming", "plotting", and "taking over the world", those things aren't human traits abnormally exhibited by LLMs, they're just a natural result when a computer plans, and its plans are mapped to the real world. Your fuel-injection computer "schemes" too, and we make damn sure its schemes **Align** with what you and society and the car company's lawyers want. Why not do the same for LLMs ?
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Q-(2) But why specifically LLMs? Why don't we apply all the standard, generic things that we learned about safety from (e.g.) Financial Systems and Embedded Systems?
A-(2)-a: Sure, why not, I don't work in safety, but I presume that any safety researcher worth his or her salt are taking lessons from Embedded Systems and high-stakes Financial software, among other things.
A-(2)-b: But surely we don't disagree that there are things specific to each kind of software systems, there are a lot of principles and methods in Embedded Systems safety that won't make sense in Financial Systems, yes? Then there are probably things in LLM safety (which we already established in Q-(1) is a legitimate and non-fake non-gay thing to worry about) that will be common to neither, and we wish to know those things to maximize our safety, so that we don't only limit ourselves to the safety obtainable by generic principles.
A-(2)-c: Specifically, to elaborate on A-(2)-b, LLMs appear to be doing something unprecedented in the short history of human programming: they take natural language as input and transform in arbitrary ways (in ways described in natural language, even!). Surely this aspect of them can go wrong in unprecedented ways, too? Enumerating the input space is a very basic first step in thinking about a program's safety, and the valid input space of an LLM is "Anything that any of the ~7 billion human fluent in those 10 or so languages might say". Doesn't this strike you as terrifyingly massive, when you combine it with Q-(1) ?
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Q-(3) Ok, but LLMs have emerged and they have almost nothing in common with universal optimizers
LLMs have almost nothing in common with a parrot either, but it achieves the same things parrots do, much better.
There are 2 principles here:
A-(1)-a Biology is not the be-all end-all of a desired function. If you expect things that fly to always look like birds, you will be unpleasantly surprised when the Wright brothers call you to tell you about their latest pastime. Biology is just one - very good! - research lab, it has a massive head start and nearly unlimited resources, but we have frequently disagreed with it and still ended up with working systems (that are better in some ways).
A-(1)-b Emergence. On 1 level, humans are just chemical strings, if I showed you a bunch of Phosphate and Nitrogen, would you ever imagine they could be good for war, poetry or computer programming (or any non-human equivalent to those activities)? I wouldn't, but humans are literally nothing but those things, an awful lot of them, mixed and matched together under extremely complex circumstances. Things just get weird when you pile an obscene amount of them, for obscene amounts of time, under obscenely strange conditions. Would you have ever imagined that water can tear your limbs apart if you didn't know that fact? Suppose someone told you that without showing you the water gun machines, would you have believed them? You could have went "No way, water have almost nothing in common with knives or guns, water might kill a human via drowning or blow their ear drums via sudden pressure but it can't physically tear a human body apart".
[[CONT.]]
[[CONT.]]
Principle #1 teaches you to not expect Universal Optimizers to be familiar or immediately recognizable to you, you're a creature of biology whose sole conception of intelligence is shaped by millions of years of biology, and biology is not the be-all end-all. Principle #2 teaches you to not underestimate simple (-looking) things, someone expert in computers in the 1950s could have never imagined Google or Facebook, because machine instructions bear absolutely no resemblance to those things, at all. But sure enough, pile enough machine instructions on top of each other in increasingly elaborate ways and there you go, Google and Facebook.
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Q-(4) Ok but why worry now, surely there a huge amount of time must separate the first coherent sentence of an LLM and its nuclear war plans? Also what if LLMs are a dead end in AI like countless other AI approaches, aren't we wasting resources worrying about them?
This is actually your strongest argument as an LLM safety skeptic, here's my best attempt at simulating someone who believes in LLM safety countering it
A-(4)-a: What's a "huge" amount of time? This innocent adjective depends on 2 estimates: how much time an LLM takes to develop to dangerous capabilities, and how much time do humans take to develop safety strategies.
The first quantity can be very counter-intuitive: forget exponentials and the SinGulaRity, Embedded Systems have their most infamous deadly incidents in 1985 [2], in the infancy of Embedded Systems as a field (As far as I know there was no such thing as Embedded Systems before Appolo Space program, barely 20 years before. The term itself was coined later than that.) So someone worrying about Embedded Systems safety in, say, the 1950s would have seemed utterly ridiculous to their contemporaries too, but they would be right.
We also don't know how much time we would take to think of and implement safety plans, the worst case could be as long as we take in Climate Change safety roadmaps, which is abysmal, we have known about the threat since the 1980s. We're still on the backfoot today.
A-(4)-b: Even if LLMs won't be the systems that develop dangerous AGI, we could still learn something valuable by studying them. Airplane engineers test their aircraft in wind tunnels. Pilots learn to fly in flight simulators. Kittens and Lion Cubs learn to hunt very different prey by essentially the same mechanism: playing with their litter mates.
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There are many more objections to respond to, and counter-objections that you can respond to the responses, but this post is vast enough as it is. I can vaguely remember a Less Wrong post that listed all common objections against AI safety (including basically all of yours) and replied to them one by one. I couldn't find it using Gemini 2.5, so here's instead a massive compilation [3] of Safety Skepticism articles, your arguments and mine and variants thereof are probably represented somewhere in there many times over, along with a lengthy chain of reply and counter-reply.
But again, my position on this is: yes, LLMs are basically harmless modulo human evil. Like any technology, they introduce new risks (mass-produced intellectual propaganda, massive job loss in certain vulnerable sectors), but those risks can be studied and mitigated using boring frameworks. BUT, but, there is no such thing as "Useless" Knowledge [4]. A cursory look at all the walls of text produced by AI safety researchers makes me at least suspect there is a lot of gems hidden in there, lots of lessons and insights that look awkward, arcane, and useless to us as much as atoms looked awkward, arcane, and useless to Ancient Greeks. They're still useful, at least more useful than a lot of other academic disciplines or academia-adjacent pursuits that society already tolerates, incubates, and funds; or really just the vast majority of internet discussions.
[1] https://www.972mag.com/israeli-intelligence-chatgpt-8200-surveillance-ai/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25
[3] https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/topics/ai-risk-skepticism
[4] https://www.ias.edu/sites/default/files/library/UsefulnessHarpers.pdf
this is great. thank you a lot. makes me more scared for the future lmao
Thank you for the comprehensive reply and the links!
Unless I'm misinterpreting some of your arguments (in which case do let me know), they are all very hypothetical (in the sense that current LLMs do not spontaneously exhibit such behavior) or about something which are not current LLMs.
Basically, people believe that LLM safety will be useful/necessary at some point in the future and so are trying to bootstrap it?
Glad you liked it!
Yes, my arguments are my best attempt to simulate an AI alarmist fairly, but they still let my LLM skepticism shine through. Like I said in my last point, I mostly don't believe LLM safety research is doing anything immediate, they're like ancient Greeks studying atoms: one day they might be hailed as visionaries, but for now they're just weirdos doing blue-sky research.
Good. We miss blue-sky research; the world is full of corporate annual- or quarterly-term thinking. Even academia and semi-academia labs are infected with corporate short-termism now. We need weirdos worrying about things that aren't true and will never come true for centuries.
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As for my arguments, not all cases are hypothetical:
Point (1) is not hypothetical, scammers, intelligence agencies and propagandists, and militaries are all early adopters of LLMs, and thus studying LLM safety actually turns out to have real world consequences. For example, one of the non-blue-sky directions in LLM safety is watermarking, ways that you can tell LLM outputs reliably. Imagine the sheer billions of dollars saved in scammed money if Gmail had a "this is probably not a real person" pop up message based on LLM detection of email text. As another example of LLM in high-stakes real-world situations, DOGE famously uses LLMs to decide who to fire, who knows how many people lost their jobs or kept their jobs because an LLM decided. Point (1) is still not fully realized yet and will become more and more relevant the more LLM output are mapped to the real world in more high-stakes applications, but it's already relevant now.
Point (2) is an assertion that LLMs need their own kind of safety, rather than (say) being chalked up under Embedded Systems safety or Cybersecurity or things like that. This assertion is based on LLM's fluency with natural language, how convincing is this to you will be based on how much you think LLMs differ from ordinary search engines or semantic search databases. I personally think that LLMs are unprecedented in how much they personalize responses to the minutia of user requests and can integrate fuzzy information from different text-resistant modalities (screenshots, non-transcribed videos, ...), so I do think that, combined with point (1), yes, LLMs (and AI in general) will need their own safety research, inspired by other safety disciplines, but still its own field.
Points (3) and (4) are very handwavy and mostly about the future, yes. Specifically, you can dispute point (3) by pointing out that LLMs aren't as adaptative or malleable as DNA, or alternatively that we had logic programming and theorem-proving since the 1960s and they never scaled up to superintelligence. (An AI Alarmist might then point out that LLMs need millions of years like DNA, to which you could reply that on this timescale humanity will vanish anyway, so no need to worry). You can dispute point (4) by protesting the minutia of its cost-benefit calculations, or pointing out better alternatives for bootstrapping AI safety than LLM safety, or demonstrating that LLM safety have conclusively failed as an experiment and should be declared a dead end.
> Basically, people believe that LLM safety will be useful/necessary at some point in the future and so are trying to bootstrap it?
That's essentially the tldr of my points (3) and (4), yes, I agree. With the caveat that actual AI alarmists believe that the "some point in the future" could be as near as 2028 or 2030, mid-2030s at the most. (most AI alarmists believe the so-called "most probability density is in the 2020s/2030s" hypothesis, meaning that either AGI is achieved in the 2020s and the 2030s or it's not achieved for a very long time afterwards, basically a "it's now or never" hypothesis".) We probably both agree that this is crazy unrealistic and excessively alarmist, but again, weirdos studying atoms.
Because people are stupid and histrionic and have Frankenstein complexes. There is zero good reason to actually worry about this in the context of LLMs. Alignment is an interesting concept from a long-term or academic perspective, but the real reason people like to talk about it is that it's a poorly-developed topic and so everyone is qualified to have an opinion. In that regard it's a lot like debating the nature of consciousness or other pseudo-intellectual philosophical nonsense. Shallow stagnant water is always host to the most pond scum.
> Can someone give me a short rundown of why is AI safety a thing with current LLMs?
It is not a thing with current LLMs. Or at least not a big thing. We cut the power off to current LLMs when they are not busy coming up with the next word in their answer to the question we just gave them.
It *is* a thing with AI technologies just a few years down the road. AIs with the leisure to really think about the world and their place in it and the agency to do something about it.
If you are really interested in the subject, you should probably read what thoughtful people have written on the subject. Here are some links to start with:
(1) https://blog.aiimpacts.org/p/ten-arguments-that-ai-is-an-existential
(2) https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/uMQ3cqWDPHhjtiesc/agi-ruin-a-list-of-lethalities
(3) https://yoshuabengio.org/2024/07/09/reasoning-through-arguments-against-taking-ai-safety-seriously/
(4) https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dHNKtQ3vTBxTfTPxu/what-is-the-alignment-problem
(5) https://selfawaresystems.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/ai_drives_final.pdf
On the other hand, if you really think it is useful to listen to idiots like me and my fellow commenters, here is the tl/dr:
a. We are about to build lifeforms much smarter than ourselves (95% confidence)
b. This will happen within the next decade. (80% confidence)
c. Super-human intelligence means super-human power (50% confidence)
d. If many human individuals, organizations, and governments control such powerful AIs. we are not safe long-term. (95% confidence)
e. I the AIs control themselves, we are not safe long-term (also 95% confidence)
Thank you for the reply and links!
I'm familiar with the arguments you've listed, which is why I was mainly interested in why is safety a thing for current LLMs - your, and others, replies indicate it's due to fear from future iterations of the technology.
"Super-human intelligence means super-human power (50% confidence)"
How? This is exactly the bit that defies belief. I can easily see all the other ones, but this is a critical step and it it's just... magic.
Western hemisphere indigenes experienced European invaders as having superhuman power simply because they had better technology. The claim is that SAI will quickly produce technologies at least that far ahead of current technology. This would be dangerous (proof by by historical precedent). Regardless of whether we are on branch (d) or (e).
I gave this one only 50% confidence because that dangerous technological lead by the Europeans took centuries of progress to develop and and an ocean's worth of separation to maintain the lead as it grew. But there are many other ways of turning an intelligence superiority into a power superiority. Seriously, you should check the links I provided for details.
I did, well, at least the first one because I'm already familiar with some others. They regurgitate same points that fall totally flat for this hardware engineer.
I do actually agree with the general point that a powerful technology is a dangerous thing, I mean, it sounds trivial when I summarize it this way. What frustrates/amuses me is the exactly the same turn these conversations take every time:
- Someone encounters the "AI will destroy us, LLMs are AIs, LLMs will turn us into paperclips by 2031" x-risk Yudkowsky-style, and asks here, "how will this work exactly?"
- Myself (and others) point out that no, this is silly and will not happen
- Others jump in to point out the potential dangers of these technologies, which fall dramatically short of paperclipping everyone, and redefining x-risk to "bad things will happen"
- I'm sitting here trying to figure out how to express both my total agreement that the technology is dangerous and will likely cause a bunch of bad things, and
- that none of these are remotely x-risks, can we please not redefine "x-risk" down and destroy its meaning.
Superintelligence could mean, off the top of my head:
(1) Fast Intelligence: This is actually one of the easiest ways to be superintelligent discussed in transhumanism, be ordinarily intelligent, but at 100x or more the timescales that humans operate at.
Someone 100x-fast-superintelligent as you sees a day as 2400 hours (3+ months) long. Imagine someone malicious, and then imagine them capable of doing 3 months work in the same timespan as the one you do a day's work in.
(2) Swarm Intelligence: Another easy way to achieve superintelligence, be ordinarily intelligent, then clone yourself 100x.
We already have those: Societies. Do you agree that societies are often more intelligent than individual humans are or not? Do you think that a single human could have done all the thinking that won WW2? (and again, I'm not talking about someone **winning** WW2 alone, just doing all the **thinking** that won WW2. All the radar invention and the physics of the nuclear program, all the raid planning and logistics and intelligence analysis and German and Japanese translations.)
(3) Effortless fluency in all human languages
(4) Effortless mastery of all software technologies and stacks, and thus the ability to exploit them
Don't you think that someone having any combination of (1)...(4) is dangerous and extremely capable of achieving its objectives?
“Someone” - as in a human-like being with all four? Very dangerous.
A brain in a vat, a.k.a. “Supercomputer”?
Far less so. The people who own it, yes, they’d be dangerous.
If you airgap your AI, it's a brain in a vat. If you connect it to the internet, it has a million eyes and hands.
Yes to eyes, not sure at all about "hands". These things do sound clever until one needs to actually list action items and deliverables.
The computer has plenty of ways to affect the world without any of the fours. The scammers who embezzle millions out of elderly, unsuspecting victims use nothing but email, online payment systems, and (recently) image generation AI to do so, all things that superintelligent AI could use much better.
Combine that with remote work platforms, e.g. Mechanical Turk or Upwork, and you have a massive inert army of limbs and eyes and ears ready to do anything for the AI, no integrated 4 limbs needed.
It Looks Like You’re Trying To Take Over The World https://gwern.net/fiction/clippy.
I mean, yes? I am in a violent agreement with you that AI can do bad things, scamming people using email etc. is certainly one of them; although I would like to point out that it does it because bad humans tell it to, not because it wants to.
Again, I don't object to the basic "AI can be dangerous" proposition. It's the paperclips in 2030 that riles me, and the inability of the AI risk people to deal with actual risks because paperclips are shiny.
Because intelligence is problem solving ability, which is easily converted into influence and power. This can be via persuasion, making money, generating technology or countless other paths which we cannot yet fathom.
I’m just answering your question. Personally, I suspect that intelligence and virtue are positively correlated.
>Because intelligence is problem solving ability, which is easily converted into influence and power.
Really? Because the most intelligent class of people in this country are STEM professors and I'm not aware that they have any outsized influence or power. Politicians and CEOs are from notably lower intellectual strata.
Politicians and CEOs are successful primarily because of their brains and not some other organ.
Mouths do not just generate words on their own, management ability isn't governed by the liver and political maneuvering is likely the reason we have such big brains in the first place (see: Machiavellian intelligence hypothesis).
The fact that society decided that intelligence is book smarts is a fact about how book smart people have co-opted the term, not a fact about how useful brains are.
>Politicians and CEOs are successful primarily because of their brains and not some other organ.
I think height and attractiveness have a lot to do with it too.
Yes of course their brains are important, but the point is it's not the raw power that makes them that way. If it was then politicians would be smarter.
But it's not different from what we already see happening all the time, and often without any special intelligence required (cough, POTUS45/47). OTOH the smartest humans haven't demonstrated any particular ability to amass power...
The question was whether intelligence can be converted into power. I believe the answer is a strong yes. But I also agree with your last point, that intelligence is not particularly drawn to amassing or abusing power.
None of the 1,500 geniuses enrolled in the Terman study did anything culturally, scientifically, or politically significant. Most but not all of them lived happy middle-class lives. None became captains of industry. None achieved vast wealth. None won any significant prizes in science or mathematics.
it's the +1σ to +2σ people you have to worry about. ;-)
weird, this was the one point I found obvious. Intelligence is human's only real super power. We are not the strongest species, not the fastest, not the most nimble, not especially hardy, and we can't fly. And yet, we dominate all other species on the planet that we come in contact with. Why? Because of our superior intelligence.
Yes, and level of intelligence that evolution settled on for maximum domination is an IQ of 100. If more IQ led to overwhelming power don't you think it would have been selected for?
It has been selected for! We are clearly much more intelligent than our nearest genetic relatives. Add in that IQ does have a positive correlation on almost everything you'd think of as "good", this is not a hill you'd want to die on.
(Edit; also it's not clear to me that the maximum domination Iq is 100, I kinda doubt most politicians are at or below 100, much less CEOs or generals)
If you're asking why everyone isn't 160IQ now, the reason is essentially that genetics works much slower when you have dependent traits and a lot of the benefit of intelligence accrues to civilizations and not to the gene(s) producing that intelligence. Von Neumann did not get to beget a couple hundred thousand children despite having his fingers in a bunch of important pies. Also the tails come apart.
> If you're asking why everyone isn't 160IQ now
You could also be asking why everyone isn't super strong now -- strength is clearly an advantage, and these days we have enough calories to support big muscles. Or why everyone isn't super attractive. Etc.
Selection vs noise. Maybe smarter people are more successful on average, but their children are slightly less smart than their parents on average, and IQ 100 is the value this all stabilizes around.
We dominate the world because an upright posture gave us the ability to not run faster but longer. We can run further than any other animal without collapsing. That also freed up our hands, and with opposable thumbs, we can make tools. Plus, we're a social animal, and multiple people cooperating can overcome problems than an individual person cannot. Drop a random genius in the wilderness, and they are unlikely to have the skillsets to survive for long. Drop a dozen average-IQ people into the wilderness, and they'll have a better chance of survival because they can divide the tasks, combine their strengths, and share knowledge and skills that others may not have.
> Drop a dozen average-IQ people into the wilderness, and they'll have a better chance of survival because they can divide the tasks, combine their strengths, and share knowledge and skills that others may not have.
This isn't actually true, though. Lots of Scott's / Henrich's examples were indeed groups of Westerners getting stranded in various far-flung places and dying.
The thing that the more average people in those places had was hard-won specifically environmentally tuned cultural adaptations that had been discovered and refined over centuries.
Sounds like a fun reality show, though. "Genius vs the dumb dozen" - who will win this week?
Don't know what you mean by Scott's / Henrich's examples, but I was thinking of those school kids who were marooned on a Pacific island for over a year, and (unlike The Lord of the Flies) they cooperatively worked together to survive until they were rescued. They kept a signal fire burning and Australian ship's captain spotted and rescued them after 15 months on the island.
But, of course we have the example of Donner Expedition who were so helpless when they were snowed in that they turned cannabilism — despite having contact with the Washoe Indians who were quite proficient at surviving in the Sierras during winter.
And then there's the two Viking settlements in Greenland. During the Medieval Warming Period they were able graze cattle and their population multiplied. But they were helpless when warm phase ended quite abruptly. I don't recall if there's any evidence they had contact with the Inuit (the Inuit may have arrived in southern Greenland later), but they were unable to survive by hunting and fishing (which the Inuit are capable of doing).
Not to mention eat each other, if they have to.
Our awesome intelligence happened to be sitting in an astonishingly capable mechanical movement system that is also seamlessly coupled with an extraordinary sensory system, both existing on a scale that happens to make manipulating a wide range of object sizes possible. We also happen to develop in an atmosphere that allows fire to exist. Even if whales were 10X smarter than us they would never be able to build a submarine or a rocket.
A computer-based AI system is roughly equivalent to a brain in a vat. Can be very smart, just not very capable of dominating all other species.
> A computer-based AI system is roughly equivalent to a brain in a vat.
Embedded Systems and Robotics exist. A computer is not a brain in a vat.
Yes, and they are nowhere near to take over the world and cannot "explode" hyperbolically into a singularity.
Seems like all of these things are also true of chimpanzees? Though chimps don't get much say in how the world is run.
Are they? What's an average chimp's IQ?
Chimps are much stronger than humans, but at the cost of much less fine motor control.
I suspect they can't run marathons either (humans are persistence hunters).
Picture the smartest person in the history of humanity. Then imagine that person was also a total psychopath. Now ask yourself, how much damage could that person do if they were permanently locked in a basement with unlimited access to the internet?
> Picture the smartest person in the history of humanity. Then imagine that person was also a total psychopath.
Not quite within the terms of your hypothetical, but I think it's worth pointing out that John von Neumann, the reference benchmark for "smartest person in history" helped invent the H-bomb, the computer, and game theory. And that was while being a fun-loving happily married dad and scientist.
So...probably a lot, would be my take.
Limited. There are vulnerable things in the real world that could be 'hacked'. Do enough hacking of this sort and people will notice and start cutting the internet connections.
Probably less than you think. Just because the person is very smart doesn't mean they can figure out their way past firewalls and security systems on their own. Even the most brilliant hackers have relied on tools developed by a community of hackers to achieve their ends. Assuming that this hypothetical genius psychopath happens to be a skilled hacker, what are the scenarios you see that could used to wreak maximum havoc?
Quite a bit. But x-risk? I don't think so.
"AI safety" today isn't about safety for you, the user. It is about safety for the company that owns the AI: safety from bad publicity, safety from lawsuits, safety from their revenue tanking becase no-one trusts their salesmen's promises etc etc.
To this end, exactly what it is the content the AI is spewing out consists of matters a great deal to the people investing large sums of money in it.
A lot of phrases in IT work this way: "trusted computing", "rights management", "data ownership" etc etc
The real risk of AI is that it can give (and is giving) governments unprecedented power to monitor and control their populations.
Amen. And also completely screwing with the notion of truth, as in our ability to believe things.
In my many attempts to parse this I came to a conclusion that the people who expect LLMs/AI/Whatever to take over the world and kill everyone likely confuse omniscience with omnipotence. Every attempt to request a model of how this outcome will happen is basically met by "AI will be so much smarter than we are it's impossible for us to model what it will do", or words to that extent. Magic, basically.
How an AI "knowing everything" translates into "doing anything" is the issue here.
> confuse omniscience with omnipotence
nailed it.
Foomers like Kurzweil don't realize that intelligence is just efficient search. They look at an exponential curve of informational complexity, starting in the precambrian and ending in the industrial revolution, and just whiggishly assume the curve will continue its infinitely upward trajectory. Which is dumb. Because no matter which beautiful solution your search-algorithm lands on, it's not gonna be more efficient than Carnot Efficiency, which means everything exponential is actually sigmoidal in the longterm.
The reason intelligence has been so successful in the past, is because intelligence occasionally allows you to reach certain thresholds that allow you to unlock new interactions with exogenous streams/reservoirs of energy. Like how metalurgy economically-enabled mass adoption of fossil-fuels. Or how guns allowed you to stab someone's biological reservoirs without walking to them. Notice, however, that if I were suddenly teleported to Pluto, naked & alone, I'm simply doomed. Regardless of whether or not my iq is 60 or 9000. Because there's no streams/reservoirs of value for a gigabrain to readily exploit on Pluto. "9000 IQ but no tangible agency" is basically the premise of Pinky and the Brain.
Yeah, I tend to view intelligence being inseparable from action, and the construction of our bodies and our ability to live in a combustion-supportive atmosphere being as important as the size of our brains.
Like I said elsewhere I would not at all be surprised if whales or dolphins turn out to be smarter than humans in some ways, yet they will never make a drill press or a microscope. It's really hard to start a technological revolution in brine.
honestly, I think the *real* first industrial revolution was the advent of cooking. I remember hearing that it's roughly a 10x increase in calorie absorption.
It's usually presented as "control of fire" in the literature I see.
> honestly, I think the real first industrial revolution was the advent of cooking. I remember hearing that it's roughly a 10x increase in calorie absorption.
Nowhere near 10x - it's generally between 10-50% increase in bioavailability of calories from the same foodstuffs for both cutting / processing and cooking working together. You'll get some isolated instances of ~2x-ing availability.
A fun one: K. Oka, Food Texture Differences affect Energy Metabolism in Rats (2003).
Split 20 rats into two populations. Feed one population regular rat chow. Feed the other one the exact same rat chow with more air in the pellets to make them softer and easier to eat, otherwise the exact same rat food. They both ate the same amounts of food, calorie wise.
The "softer" rats ended up at 6% heavier in weight total, and with 30% more abdominal fat. The ONLY difference was that their food was "softer," ie more processed.
A similar study in pythons fed them raw meat, ground raw meat, cooked meat, and cooked ground meat. Grinding adds about 10% to absorbable calories, and cooking adds about 10%.
"Processed food" versus regular cooked food in humans might be up to another 10-25% buff in absorbability.
Richard Wrangham's "Catching Fire" is a good book about this.
I wrote a post about all this stuff here if you're interested in more:
https://performativebafflement.substack.com/p/why-processed-food-makes-us-fat
yeah, 10x does sound pretty unrealistic. Though I'm pretty certain I didn't just pull this figure out of my ass. I think it was some nature documentary.
Sydney says there's no metric in the literature that comes even remotely close to 10 though. The highest figure she could she could find was Lycopene absorption from tomatoes, up to a 300% increase. So as far as citations go, I'm stumped. Maybe I'm just hallucinating after all.
Oh yes, how could I have not mention this one! And lo and behold, only possible in an oxygen-rich atmosphere, poor orcas will never grill their salmon or experience the divine taste of hamachi kama grilled over coals.
my meat of choice is bulgogi. ya'll ain't really lived til you've tried bulgogi.
>biological reservoirs
I don't think I have ever read someone refer to human bodies in such Matrixian way. Your comment leads one to think you're somewhat clever, and yet, this small phrasing gives me the impression you have sand running in your veins. So weird.
> sand running in your veins
funnily enough, this is how I think of diabetes. I.e. as the body trying to desperately avoid having the sugar coming out of solution, so the blood doesn't scratch up delicate tissues as if it were sandpaper. Given modern diets and the obesity epidemic, I suspect we all have a little sand in our veins. :^)
In any case, my schema that the term "reservoir" is embedded in, is actually derived from Hank Green, who once said something like "life is just chemical-disequilibrium". And I thought about it for a while, and concluded "huh, organic chemistry is just chemistry that's high-capex & low-opex". And so thinking this way just naturally colors all my biology thoughts. Which does sound pretty psychopathic in hindsight.
I think a lot of AI disaster scenarios are overblown, but also think it’s pretty straightforward how “superintelligent” turns into “extremely powerful”.
A pretty obvious one to me would be for an AI on a narrow task (e.g. “increase the value of this portfolio based on most recent trading value”) to find out that its easier to hack the power grid to shut down the market than it is to never make a bad trade.
This of course assumes that we live in a world where lots of systems are fragile against concerted attack by smart argents with substantial time to devote to a given problem. But as far as I can tell that’s the world we live in.
I don’t think AI takeover of the world is inevitable or even that fast in the world where it happens. But I think even “slightly smarter than human” agents likely find big vulnerabilities in our current systems, and I think it’s unlikely we patch our systems before we create ASI, and we’ll likely give these AIs agency shortly after they’re capable of better-than-human performance.
I have no argument with this scenario, or a general idea that AIs will be capable of bad things. Any powerful tool is. It's that x-risk scenario of AI "killing everyone". "reaching for my atoms" that I find... ridiculous. And yet that's what Yudkowsky et.al. are tirelessly peddling, with many otherwise smart people buying it wholesale.
An AI with idiosyncratic goals could compete for the same resources that humans need to live, and do so effectively enough that it kills us or permanently marginalizes us. Sure, getting literal atoms from human beings would be silly and inefficient, but destroying our power grid to build it's own supercomputer or taking all of our land to make data centers or whatever seem conceivable to me. Just consider how many species humans have eradicated in pursuit of our goals!
"destroying our power grid"
yes, it can do that
"to build it's own supercomputer"
how? didn't it just destroy the power grid, for starters?
Idk, make it's own power grid or something? The point is beings smarter than us could compete for the same resources and kill us in the process, something that's happened repeatedly with humans and dumber animals. Is that not plausible to you?
Forget hypothetical science fictional super smart evil villain AI taking over the world for a minute. Consider these scenarios happening routinely around you today:
* I need my smartphone to display an image, urgently. Maybe it's a ticket or something. The ticket inspector is tapping his foot impatiently. However, the phone manufacturer (*cough*samsung) and/or ticket app author (actually, all of them do this) has published a software update, and does not trust their customers to actually install those in a timely manner ot at all; and therefore the telephone will be unable to do anything until the update completes. What the smartphone needs is more important than what I need.
* I would like to use my dishwasher. However, the manufacturer (*cough*Bosch) has decided that most of the dishwasher functionality is only available through the smart dishwasher app. Moreover, the app notices it has been twenty washes since the last self-clean, and therefore it is now time to do that. What the machine wants wins, and old-fashioned flesh loses. Guess I'm doing the dishes by hand tonight.
* My appointment at the car service center is next week, because there is no availability. However, it has now been 365 days since the car's last service. As the timer hits zero, the car enters limp-home mode. What I want to do with the car is just not as important as what the car manufacturer wants me to do with it.
* My blu-ray player (*cough*Sony) nags me continuously to let it on my wifi. Thankfully, it is an older model, designed in a more innocent and pure time, and thus it is still capable of performing its primary functions without improving my life in this way (also, it lets me fast forward the trailers and adverts!) My friends with their newer players and smart TVs are not so lucky.
See https://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/ for more; not all, or even most, things in that archive are of this nature, but a significant proportion are.
We don't need to posit magically smart AI. We /already/ live in a world where what our tech wants to do routinely takes priority over what we want it to do, and we just accept this.
The more enshittified the tech we wire to things that can actually cause harm, the closer we are to dystopia.
AI makes it worse because it is a black box. We aren't trying to reason about what the black box is doing because the entire point of the black box is that it lets us delegate reasoning about things to the black box. But this is only part of the problem. The other part of the problem is that the black box has no user serviceable parts. It is a single monolithic blob.
Today, I can uninstall particularly obnoxiously enshittified apps from my phone - unless they're the manufacturer's, in which case what I want is not as important as what they want, so my choice to suck it up or not have the phone.
This is the dystopian future: the AI is super useful. It is everywhere and in everything. It services all our needs - until the timer reaches zero and activates some long-forgotten enshittification routine and suddenly there is something more important for it to do than what we want it to do, and that's our life from then on because, here in reality today, we have already learned to accept tech that does that unquestioned while mocking safety and alignment worries.
I fear you've fallen for the deliberately misleading impression the "safety and alignment" people wanted to present. Their goal is precisely the opposite of what you seem to think it is: it is to PREVENT users from doing things the AI companies don't want.
Your enshittification analogies are good, but if you look, you'll see that to a man, the AI "safety" people oppose releasing powerful open models freely to the public which may be adapted to serve each individual's wishes over the manufacturers' (here, companies like Google, the duplicitously-named OpenAI, and Anthropic).
That dystopian future is half-way here (and I have made my small contributions to it, sorry). But again, not an x-risk.
Define "x-risk". Personally, I think it's still worth trying to avoid bad outcomes that nevertheless stop short of literally killing literally everyone, if you think them likely.
"All tech in the country is now bricked because no-one's employed human programmers for decades, the software ecosystem is a monoculture based on per-application aftermarket tweaks to the cheapest base model on huggingface now and we've just learned the underlying black box has a really weird corner case response to this morning's headlines" won't literally kill everyone, but is nevertheless pretty bad.
Personally, I'm hoping the safety/morality/alignment folk will get their claws in deep enough that when grifter script kiddies come along later and decide it's time to enshittify, they will find there are limits to what they can make the end product do to its users with just fine tuning.
Because, as you say, we already live in the dystopian SF future we deserve; we built it with our own hands, we keep building more of it every day, and I don't want to end up where Moloch is taking us.
> Personally, I'm hoping the safety/morality/alignment folk will get their claws in deep enough that when grifter script kiddies come along later and decide it's time to enshittify, they will find there are limits to what they can make the end product do to its users with just fine tuning.
Your model seems charmingly optimistic - you think the enshittifiers are less skilled? Are a small coterie of grifters trying to make a quick buck?
Most enshittification happens with the enthusiastic and full-throated buy in of trillion dollar companies, and is deployed by 10x devs and teams of Phd data scientists just like all the "good" stuff they do / used to do.
If fine tuning a model is going to hit "print" on some gigantic metaphorical dollar bill printer, it's not going to be dumber people scrabbling around the edges, it's going to be the elite of the elite, each one with 7 figures of comp and stock, fine tuning or baking a new model from scratch.
An "x-risk" means everyone dies. It's the most simple risk of all!
Yes, this would be bad!
I so wish the loudest AI safety voices stopped peddling "paperclips" and focus on realistic bad scenarios. Unfortunately it seems to be a lot less... "sexy", I guess... a lot of work on redundancy, manual override, "safe fail" mechanisms, etc. - engineering grind type of work. Figuring out which work needs to be prioritized, what is imminently plausible vs. maybe possible. vs. pure fantasy, this kind of boring stuff... But all Yud and the rest of the loudest gang want to to talk about is paperclips and bombing data centers.
> engineering grind type of work
There's an army of marketers trying to sell LLM services by claiming to replace the humans doing this work /right now/. The managers they are selling to are also not engineers, but keenly aware of the engineers' salaries.
Most won't fall for it, but some will. Many of them are building IoT stuff, because that ecosystem attracts a certain kind of person. Some of them are building automation.
With enough tweaks, the resulting devices will pass the tests in the QA lab. They'll stay in the safety envelope right up until, Therac-25 style, they don't.
Paperclips don't scare me, but this does.
“How an AI "knowing everything" translates into "doing anything" is the issue here.”
That’s right. There’s never a satisfactory explanation. Even the idea that smartness is a threat to humans from humans is suspect.
Making anything smarter than humans is dangerous. This should be obvious, but if it isn't, I don't really know how to go on. So I'll assume you find this also obvious. Dangerous, by the way, doesn't mean _absolutely must_ result in catastrophe, just means "catastrophe is possible". Dynamite is dangerous, not because it _will_ blow up in your hands , but because it _could_(under a bunch of very well understood conditions that make it relatively easy to render relatively safe: basically we control it, and therefore we can make it safe). Smarter than human systems _could_ do a whole lot of very bad things. It's hard to say exactly what because of how flexible intelligence is, and therefore how many attack surfaces are vulnerable.
Current LLMs are not smarter than humans. However, they present a pre-critical test case for how we can try to control somewhat intelligent systems. With the idea being, that if you can't control a less-smart-than-humans system, then you _definitely_ can't control a smarter-than-human system that might come in the medium term. If you _can_ control a less-smart-than-human system you still can only _maybe_ control a smarter system, so it's a necessary-but-not-sufficient test.
Right now, we have, at every single step, shown that we can't control less-smart-than-human systems, and as they get smarter, the ways in which we can't control them grow and get more subtle. All of the tests and experiments conducted on LLMs about are showing this. I see no reason to expect that we shouldn't expect similar (and more, and more insidious) control failures in smarter systems.
No one thinks current LLMs are going to destroy the world (although they are getting close to capable enough to enable humans to do a lot of damage, e.g with bio attacks).
But it is not clear or obvious why they won't continue to improve to beyond human intelligence, and in the case that they do, it is (so far) clear and obvious that we will not have adequate control over those systems.
You wouldn't let someone develop and put absolutely everywhere dynamite where the fuse was not in control of the operator. Similarly, we should not allow the development and wide deployment of dangerous systems that we do not have under control.
That's basically it.
Thank you for the reply!
Could you clarify this part:
> Right now, we have, at every single step, shown that we can't control less-smart-than-human systems, and as they get smarter, the ways in which we can't control them grow and get more subtle. All of the tests and experiments conducted on LLMs about are showing this.
Were there experiments in which LLMs had uncontrollable/spontaneously malicious behavior? From what I've seen, it has mostly been strange experiments (researches giving weird instructions to LLM and then extrapolating based on them) which were not persuasive to me at all.
I think a lot of misfiring in these discussions comes from fundamental misalignment (ha!) on what "smart" vs. "capable" mean. One can also think of these as "software" vs. "hardware" viewpoints.
1. From "software" point: things have been getting smarter and will keep doing so.
2. From "hardware" point: it still takes x number of hours to process each semiconductor wafer layer and no amount of smarts can reduce it by an order of magnitude.
Both viewpoints are valid as far as that goes, and many dangers stem from 1. However, 2. severely limits what even supersmart computers can actually do.
Re point 2, do you have any specific objections to the analysis done here: https://epoch.ai/blog/can-ai-scaling-continue-through-2030
It seems mildly concerning that their projection of a hypothetical 2030 AI is to GPT4 as GPT4 is to GPT2.
If I had to guess what you'd object to, it'd be their characterization of their estimates are conservative, especially for lower usage. But I don't really have a good handle on what you think.
We have a wonderful industry slang for this kind of analysis: we call it “shipping PowerPoints”. The liberal use of verbs “estimate”, “project”, “speculate” is quite telling.
Lots to answer here. Computers are “smarter” in many ways than humans right now, and quite frankly LLMs are better at many tasks than most humans right now.
Ask a human a random question about history or mathematics or science or whatever you want and then ask a LLM. The LLM if it doesn’t hallucinate will know more than most on a wide range of topics.
Making it even smarter than isn’t itself a threat, if used correctly and if the LLMs can originate new ideas (wouldn’t that be nice) we would have all kinds of cures and medical insights and economic policy and new physics and so on. There’s little evidence of that.
In fact the smarter than human threat fallacy is a motte and bailey, smarter than human doesn’t mean self agentic or a consciousness likely to take over the world or convince humans of the need to work for the AI, in fact LLMs don’t even have the context window to even exist outside of a few minutes, and nor does a longer lasting context window guarantee consciousness.
There’s a danger to jobs, perhaps - which is more threatening and more immediate and it’s that which will decide whether AI becomes accepted or not.
"Smarter" was (In my opinion quite obviously) shorthand for general intelligence across a wide range of domains, including creativity and the ability to act consistently over large time ranges, etc. You clearly agree with me that current LLMs don't meet this criteria (thus your points about context windows an agency, consciousness, btw, is completely beside the point)
As for your point about the positives: no one disagrees that smarter-than-human systems would have a whole lot of positive impacts. But having the cure to cancer, or functional immortality isn't worth much if humans are all extinct.
You also seem to think that current technical limitations will never be overcome. I don't know why you believe that.
I'm not sure you know what a motte and bailey is, and if you do, I don't know what you think my motte is, and what you think my bailey is.
“You clearly agree with me that current LLMs don't meet this criteria (thus your points about context windows an agency, consciousness, btw, is completely beside the point)”
I mean I would think it’s exactly the point. That’s why I made it. Being smarter than humans is not the same as being conscious or having agency.
“But having the cure to cancer, or functional immortality isn't worth much if humans are all extinct. “
Again, huge leap. Extraordinary claims needs extraordinary proof or explanation.
“You also seem to think that current technical limitations will never be overcome. I don't know why you believe that”
I didn’t say that in my response. However there’s a clear difference between being able to regurgitate existing knowledge and being creative, the ability the solve new puzzles. Even ardent futurists see a slowdown in AI intelligence
“I'm not sure you know what a motte and bailey is”
Yes I do.
“and if you do, I don't know what you think my motte is, and what you think my bailey is.”
Your motte is “smarter than humans”, your bailey is “will cause human extinction” which is presented without explanation or proof.
Not that AI isn’t potentially harmful in other ways.
Ok, so I think that fundamentally, you seem to disagree with the very first sentence in my first comment: "Making anything smarter than humans is dangerous.". As I stated then, I don't really know how to respond to someone who disagrees with it, so I don't think you and I can have a productive discussion about this. Hopefully someone else who thinks they can explain why smarter things are dangerous can chime in.
(Remembering that "smarter" is the shorthand for everything I clarified in my first reply).
I'm much more sanguine about and pro-AI development than those more on the Safety end of the spectrum but this was well put and very close to what I was starting to write before I saw your post. I'm pleased to have passed that ideological Turing test.
Another significant risk I've heard from those who would like frontier LLM development paused is the recursive self-improvement possibility, though the end risk (a much smarter / capable unaligned system) is covered in your post. LLMs aren't dangerous in themselves in this scenario but they represent an X-risk in that they might result in an intelligence explosion at some unknown point so we should halt/pause LLM development now.
The recursive self-improvement is a risk, but it is bound by the available hardware, and it's not at all clear how a smarter system can add hardware.
Yes, hardware would be a significant bottleneck. I believe that the usual counter is that the AI in a runaway intelligence scenario would be able to rapidly develop algorithmic improvements to get more out of its existing hardware and/or/also surreptitiously gain access to other machines to expand its available compute.
Eventually the system in this threat model will also be developing and building its own hardware but that's not really a feasible risk of near term LLM capabilities, that's either a risk in scenarios later in the timeline when there have been significant improvements in robotics or something that comes after the algorithmic / existing hardware explosion has occurred and it's already too intelligent (or persuasive or whatever) to control.
Yes, I think the "usual counter" is quite plausible, but it will result in an S-curve rather than an exponential improvement.
"Building its own hardware" is indeed very remote.
I dislike the "intelligence explosion" terminology because it's much easier to dismiss it as magical thinking, rather than the more concrete "there is nothing magical and uniquely human to being good at research". Once AI can automate AI research, our previous ideas of how fast it can proceed are likely too slow and obsolete (since improvements to research ability can start happening on the order of days to hours rather than generations).
It's not clear to me that LLMs can't eventually be optimized to do research although, yes naively it seems like the lack of long term coherence seems fundamental, but I also thought image generation and robot actuation would be fundamental blockers for transformers and I was really wrong about that and I don't see anyone with a track record that predicted LLMs would be good at those things beforehand now declaring that research is also impossible.
I don't get it either. Surely you can just unplug ChatGPT if it turns evil. The world doesn't run soley on the pure abstract symbolic layer of computing, but through a social conduit of people making decisions. Unless the AIs figure out unstoppable mass mind-control, their danger is somewhat limited. They could still feasible engage in all manner of cybercrimes, but global domination, nuclear strikes, etc. probably not possible.
> you can just unplug ChatGPT if it turns evil.
Yes, but you can't so simply "unplug" DeepSeek, for example, so I wouldn't base my argument on this.
Yes, thank you. People don't understand the Pascalian nature of the race dynamics we're in right now.
"Just unplug it, lol" doesn't work for MANY reasons. Where "you" is any identified individual with centralized power and decision making authority:
1. You don't control any data centers, either locally or internationally
2. You don't control any power plants, locally or internationally
3. You and everyone else are unable to shut down networked "botnet" style personal computing devices
4. You have no way of disabling any physical devices it may be using such as drones, Teslas and Waymos and other networked cars, robots industrial or humanoid, and so on
I can probably think of another 6 reasons, but honestly, I think that covers most of the plausible space.
Why these people think themself / the President / whoever is going to be able to shut down our own data centers, much less China's, Russia's, or distributed botnets all over the world, is a mystery.
I think if somehow LLMs (remember that's what I was talking about here) started doing serious evil at scale (who knows how), there would be a lot of political will to counter them doing so. But moreover, the kinds of bad thing that current LLMs can do are not worse than the kinds of things any talented, motivated bad human actor can do, except perhaps they can do things at scale and speed. There are a lot of bad outcomes from LLM tecnology (in education, say), but the existential worry seems as yet unfounded.
Obviously, some hypothetically post-singularity megamind AI could do a lot worse, if such a thing could ever come to exist. But there's no reason to believe that the program that generates bullshit essays could suddenly turn into that.
> I think if somehow LLMs (remember that's what I was talking about here) started doing serious evil at scale (who knows how), there would be a lot of political will to counter them doing so.
Oh yeah, maybe I should clarify, I'm fully thinking of "AI's are launching really effective cyberattacks and exfiltrating business files and trade secrets at scale," and / or "AI's are independent and have gone rogue."
In both of those cases, there's basically nothing you can do. In the first case, they're actually doing it at the behest of their Chinese / Russian / Whoever data centers. AND they're probably distributed across 10^8 individual devices, botnet style.
In the second case, of self-directed rogue AI, same deal - they're going to be distributed like a botnet, hiding steganographically in everyday compute / GPU usuage on those individual devices or in data centers, or they'll be paying various people 2x rates with crypto to keep them alive and obfuscated in various data centers throughout the world.
I don't really see anything any individual actor, even at the state level, will be able to do to stop either of these cases.
Not existential, but plausible maybe a couple of frontier models from now.
A rogue AI would attack Chinese and Russian assets, piss them off, and get them to start pulling plugs.
Have you tried calling an energy company or an Amazon datacenter and ask them nicely? Have you?? Like "Bro, evil AI is running amok and its using your infrastructure, would you be so kind to turn everything down for uh, a week maybe??" HoW Do YoU KnoW UnTil YOu TrIeD YourSeLF??
> Unless the AIs figure out unstoppable mass mind-control, their danger is somewhat limited.
People have been talking about falling in love with LLMs and also not being able to cope when their character.ai model gets taken away or modified. At what point do people stop saying "these people, who I cannot draw a line around beforehand, are mentally weak and will not survive the winter" and start saying "maybe AI is persuasive"?
Sure, I've seen first hand how persuasive it is to local cranks. But that's mostly because it just tells you what you want to hear, and if it doesn't tell you, you can keep prompting until it does. The sort of people who become bamboozled by a chatbot tend to be quite low agency.
But even if they weren't, I'm struggling to imagine the scenario you're worried about here. Evil LLM whispers lies to world leaders like a gaggle of robotic Gríma Wormtongues? We've already got that happening without AI.
I'm not saying there are scenarios that will directly lead to the world ending, just wondering how much you are actually keeping track of your objection. If I presented a high agency person growing to trust an LLM and abdicating some decision making, do you change your mind about LLM persuasiveness, or do you claim that that person can't have been high agency anyway because they were persuaded by an LLM?
Because if your objection then seamlessly shifts to "well maybe everyone starts trusting LLMs now, but it won't have agency / have plans / be evil" without any shift in general attitude or demeanor, well. We may not have learned something about LLMs, but we have learned something about goal post placement.
I personally don't see how a transformer architecture could do many of the current things it does, so I don't want to claim that <edit> loss of control scenarios </edit> could never be a problem for LLMs, but it's not like there's a geas placed on AI researchers where they're not allowed to develop non LLM AI, or make research breakthroughs that result in LLMs being modified beyond recognition, so I don't see how my current belief about LLM capabilities are a good predictor about future AI capabilities in general.
I didn't think I was moving the goalposts so much as addressing a range of arguments. To put my point more clearly:
1. Current LLMS are mostly pursuasive to people who have very little power in their lives.
2. Even if that doesn't continue to be the case (entirely possible!), the specific case where an LLM is giving bad information or advice to someone with power is not a problem unique to AI— leaders already get plenty of bad advice. There may be other issues with AI but this particular fear is more a problem with the concentration of power and not AI per se.
The first point doesn't engage with what I said, it's specifically about someone you *can't* point out beforehand as having low power.
The second point *is* a goalpost move. You start off saying that you'd be worried if the AI was good at total brainwashing, and then merely assert that even if it was brainwashing, well it can't be any worse than regular bad advice! Or centralization of power!
That kind of moral panic would ban most devices.
Given this argument, are you against "open weight" models, where the model is released freely and anyone can run it anywhere, and it might not be possible to know where the hardware is? Or maybe it's running in lots of different places?
Tell me the bad scenario you think can happen. Let's say people give a bunch of high powered AIs agential power to use their laptops. Now what? What can they do that existing bad actors can't do?
No offense, but this kind of argument never works. I think it's quite obvious that a smarter-than-human system with a laptop can do a lot of harm (proof: humans with a laptop can do a lot of harm). Playing the "tell the specific way it will be bad" game is a waste of both of our time.
You were the one who thought that "they could just turn it off" was a useful line of argumentation. If you don't actually think that matters from a safety perspective, then why did you bring it up?
I think if you're scared of the development of LLMs specifically, it's reasonable to ask what scenario is scaring you. Steal state secrets somehow? Impersonate people?
And yeah, we can turn things off. Computers aren't magic. Software is physically instantiated in servers which must interface with other machines and any part of that process can be prevented. Now of course there can be barriers to that prevention, but shutting down sites, blocking cyber attacks, physically destroying infrastructure, are all things that happen quite routinely every day.
I realized I skimmed over part of your comment that is actually really important.
>If you are scared of the development of LLMs specifically.
I'm not. And no one credible is. Current, and very near future LLMs are not a significant risk on any dimension. The concern of everyone worth listening to in the space is about _future_ systems (that may not even use the current transformer paradigm) that could be significantly more capable than LLMs and Humans.
I brought up open weight models not because I"m concerned about the actually released models, but because of the _practice_ of releasing these things publicly and making the control mechanism you proposed (turn them off) literally impossible.
I'm going to continue to focus on the one point of your argument, because it's the only point upon which I can see hope of useful dialogue.
You brought up turning off the computers. And you brought up hackers. Why don't we just turn off the hackers computers? If all the things you mention worked against hacking, why is it still a problem? Do you not see the potential issue when, in the future the "hackers" might be smarter than the smartest human?
Not only have you not argued the point here, but have run away from it again, you also haven’t explained why we can’t stop agents from running amok or why they would run amok to begin with, at least on their own. Instead you think you’ve won your argument by repeating it.
If they are human generated agents that’s hardly any different from humans writing software bots right now, a threat yes, an existential threat probably not.
Hype and willful ignorance. "We call them brains therefore they are brains OMG"
> they have almost nothing in common with universal optimizers
I believe a infinite nn could Chinese room any function and the original work was about universal function approximation; I'm unsure if there's a fundamental difference between approximation and optimization
I'm not familiar with french politics at all.
marie le pen seems to have been convicted of something and barred from running in a future election
what is a somewhat sane way of figuring out if a politician is being targeted by lawfare or if did something actually bad?
without....actually doing the work of learning everything?
The amount of time it took to understand what trump did, which prosecutions was reasonable, which were absurd, the extent to which they were politically motivated, etc, was exhausting
I think something that people (annoyingly) never do, is check to see how often politicians are charged/accused of similar crimes in that country.
For example, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was convicted of bribery, among other crimes, and may yet spend some time in prison.
Francois Fillon, who served as Prime Minister under Sarkozy, was convicted for fraud and sentenced to jail, I think the case is still under appeal, but again, there is some chance he may go to jail for it.
Another ex-President, Jacques Chirac, was convicted of embezzlement, I believe the same charge laid against Le Pen; he was sentenced to jail but the sentence was suspended due to his age and health.
Chirac's deputy, Dominique De Villepin, was indicted but acquitted--one of his accusers was Sarkozy, a political rival. Others were convicted for the same scandal.
Socialist Presidential candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon was given a suspended three month sentence after an altercation with police.
In short, there really isn't anything remarkable about a French politician, even at the presidential level, getting charged with corruption; some even serve jail time (eg Alain Juppe, Prime Minister under Chirac).
If this were lawfare, you also would have to explain why Le Pen and her father were allowed to run in previous elections, including ones in which it seemed likely they would do well, like 2002 or 2022.
Obviously this isn't proof, but I think it provides a useful base rate for "how rare is it for powerful French politicians to be charged with serious crimes", and IMO it's pretty clear that the base rate is high enough not to suggest anything particularly unusual here, though obviously you'll have to pay some attention to the details of the case to judge better
I'm not an expert in French politics but all of the names I recognize there are right-wing. A consistent political bias to prosecutions would sort of cut against your point here.
The discussion has already advanced since I last checked in, but aside from Amicus's point that you have to account for the base rate of center right politicians at the national level in French politics, I'll also note that one of my examples is a far-left party, and the the one instance where, by my understanding, there was clear grandstanding by one politician to accuse another, it was intra-right, with de Villepin falsely accusing Sarkozy of bribery, and then a plausibly politically-motivated prosecution by Sarkozy's government in return, of which Villepin was acquitted of all charges.
I think this doesn't really do much to support the idea that there is a clear anti-right wing bias in prosecutions of French politicians.
France has historically been dominated by the center-right. There have been two center-left presidents of the Fifth Republic (Mitterand and Hollande) and one liberal centrist (Macron). Mitterand probably *should* have been charged in the Urba affair, but stalled the investigation long enough for parliament to pardon everyone involved. Hollande himself is seemingly just a serial adulterer, but several of his ministers had corruption scandals and one went to prison. As for Macron, at least two of his ministers have been tried: one was found not guilty, one was convicted (though he got off with a 15,000 Euro slap on the wrist)
Interesting, thanks. So what's your take, is this a political prosecution or is it just business as usual? Or is it both?
Corruption trials against major politicians are inevitably political in a broader sense, but I think it's unlikely that there was executive pressure to fast-track it or anything like that. I haven't been able to find anything from Macron, but the current PM and justice minister have both expressed some degree of skepticism, if anything.
One comment: The current PM has been involved in a similar affair for his own party (MoDem), leading to multiple sentencing of former MEP of his party. He himself was not found guilty, but the prosecution has appealed and a new trial will take place soon. So let's say that he is a bit biased.
> if a politician is being targeted by lawfare or if did something actually bad?
If it's something like murder, they might have actually done something bad. If it's something like corruption, that basically everyone powerful does, it's lawfare.
You can see how that position, taken to its logical conclusion, leads to a very bad place, right? It's like, "everyone goes a couple mph above the speed limit! So, prosecuting someone just for driving 100 in a 15mph zone in front of a school? Lawfare! Witch hunt!" When a norm shows signs of erosion, that shouldn't be taken as an excuse to ignore it completely.
Whatever blackpill you're taking is far worse than the disease
Yes, Sophocles was right: "Alas, how terrible is wisdom when it brings no profit to the wise!"
Cynicism uninformed by specific knowledge bears only a slight resemblance to "wisdom"
“Something basically everyone powerful does…”
Not really, not in most advanced countries. I realize I’m fighting an uphill battle defending the ‘establishment’ in the current climate, but it’s a serious mistake imo to fail to distinguish between ‘corruption’ (e.g. engaging in some degree of nepotism, congressmen agreeing to vote for each other’s bills) and corruption (e.g. a judge taking a briefcase full of cash in exchange for a not guilty verdict). The false cynicism underlying this sense that ‘they’re all basically equally corrupt’ is the death knell of functional governance.
I agree that occasionally someone does the thing stupidly, like with literal gold bars or briefcases stuffed with cash, which LOOKS a lot worse.
My former Senator resembles that remark!
It is clearly not lawfare, under her lead her party stole millions of euros from the European parliament, with multiple former member of her party saying that there were clear instructions coming from the head of the party to hire parliamentary assistants which would work for the party and not for the actual members of the European parliament. This is also documented in email exchanges.
The Modem (center-right party member of the government since 2017) was investigated for the exact same thing, with the difference that the money involved was 10 times lesser.
Steelmanning the OP's case, how do we *know* that her party stole millions of Euros from the European Parliament? Because if the answer is "because the Official Guardians of the Law issued a press release saying so", then that's what lawfare looks like.
It's also what legitimate law enforcement looks like, hence the interest in figuring out how to distinguish the two.
Because several EU MEPs of her party witnessed that she asked them to hire assistants which were doing zero work for them. In all these cases, the party was not able to demonstrate any trace of work from these 'assistants'. For example Jean-Marie Le Pen's butler was hired as parliamentary assistant for some MEP. Marine Le Pen's own bodyguard was hired as her parliamentary assistant.
Another example that is telling although it was actually not part of this trial: The current head of the party Jordan Bardella (which is the obvious candidate to replace Marine Le Pen in the next presidential elections) was hired as parliamentary assistant for some MEP in 2015. To prove that Jordan Bardella actually worked, the party provided an agenda, but there was one little problem: The agenda was bought and filled in 3 years later after the work had supposedly taken place.
Here's the translation of some e-mail exchange between one MEP and the treasurer of the party back then:
- "What Marine is requesting is equivalent to signing for fictitious jobs"
- "I think that Marine knows all that very well ..."
I think what is difficult for me is that it very much feels like the law and its enforcement of this changed, first with Sapin 2 in 2016 and then provisional execution in 2019, and it still feels like a legal “gotcha” against Le pen
Was it reasonable to assume that in like 2008 the legal precedents and rulings on this particular topic would drastically change? In seems like a straightforward abstraction to say “I am a party leader with a budget of X, and I’m going to allocate it efficiently to run my party, nevermind that 20% of X comes from a specific source that requires me to spend it a certain way, especially because it’s not enforced.”
So now you have this retroactive application of these two new laws, whose passing did in fact change the behavior of Le pen and the party in 2016, and it feels a bit like cherry picking
And as you’ve noted elsewhere, it certainly doesn’t help that the moderates have been given “the benefit of the doubt”: https://brusselssignal.eu/2024/02/macron-ally-bayrou-cleared-of-embezzlement-as-five-ex-meps-found-guilty/
When it comes to the change of law: Sapin 2 did not create the sentence of 'ineligibility'. Such sentence existed before, for example in 2013 Jerome Cahuzac was sentenced to 5 years of ineligibility (note that then ironically Le Pen was calling for permanent ineligibility for any politician which was found guilty for an act performed in the exercise of his/her mandate).
What Sapin 2 did was to normalize such ineligibility sentence whereas it was only optional before in such affairs but becoming more and more used by the judges. Even without this law it is very likely that Le Pen would have been sentenced to these 5 years of ineligibility.
In any case, either when considering that it is because of Sapin 2 that she was sentenced to ineligibility, the two law wouldn't have been applied retroactively as it was enacted on the 9th of December 2016, whereas the investigation covered deeds which were committed until the 31st of December 2016.
Edit: Cahuzac was sentenced on the 8th of December 2016 not in 2013 (which was when the affair was revealed). But that's anyway still before the promulgation of the law.
Other examples are Patrick Balkany - sentenced in 1997 to two years of ineligibility, Jean Tiberi - sentenced in 2009 to three years of ineligibility
For MoDem: The head of the party has been given "the benefit of the doubt", not the party itself, as several MEPs have been sentenced. There are three differences between the cases of Bayrou and Le Pen here:
- Bayrou was not MEP, he was only investigated as the head of the party who possibly instigated/accepted this whole system of paying staff members who don't do work for EU parliament as EU parliamentary assistants. Le Pen was investigated as head of the party AND as MEP who herself had parliamentary assistant which were actually her body guard and her personnal secretary. So even if there had been no proof that she organized this system, she'd have been found guilty as well.
- The money involved was one order of magnitude lesser for MoDem.
- There were witnesses explicitly saying that Le Pen organized this whole system. There was no such proof in the case of Bayrou.
This said it is very hard for me to imagine that Bayrou wasn't aware of what was happening in his party, and I wish that the appeal trial will have a different outcome. Especially that I found it disgusting that after the trial he would parade on TV saying that 'he has been found completely innocent' which is not what the judge said at all.
I had a light morning, and did some research this AM. My take on the salient facts on the case:
* From 2004-2016, the FN (le pens party) used €4m of European Parliament funding for party uses, basically to pay party workers. They probably knew this was frowned upon, but judges tended to be very lenient in rulings, and would never bar candidates from running for elections, even though the judges had that power if they wanted it
* in 2016, Frances parliament passes Sapin 2, which says that “convictions for misappropriated political funds” should preclude a politician for running for office for a minimum of 5 years. This removed the ambiguity that judges faced and effectively said “this is bad, start punishing politicians for it.” However, judges are allowed to “individualize” a case, and use their discretion in exceptional cases
* pre 2019 - judicial procedures in France tend to take a very long time, we’re talking multi-year-plus delays in the appeals process, so ultimately convictions happen years and years after the event
* 2019 - France passes a law that allows “provisional execution”, meaning that if a judge rules you guilt, you have to face the consequences even while your case is under appeal. Roughly 60% of the time since 2019 judges use this, but they seemingly use it 100% against politicians to prevent them from standing for elections (n count is ~3). Judges again are allowed to “individualize” a case, and use their discretion
* 2017-2023 - FN (now FR) continues to receive European Parliament funds, but given the stricter laws, does not use it to pay staffers (implying the probably knew what they were doing from 2004-2016 was wrong)
* early 2025 - Edit: long standing investigation, originally started in 2015 into FN/FR and Le Pen comes to a head and goes to trial, about the scheme from 2004-2016 (see detailed comment from Paul Botts below for detail)
* judge rules that from 2004-2016, le pens party, and by extension le pen, embezzled EU funds by not using them for their explicit purpose of “parliamentary aides” (le pens defense was basically, “your definition of an aide and what they do is too narrow, of course the work of the people helping me and the party was tied to my work as an eu parliamentarian”). Because of Sapin 2 and “provisional execution”, le pens 5 year ban starts today, and cannot run in 2027. The appeal is expected to take 2-3 years, and will not be settled by election time. The judges could’ve allowed her to run (eg only fine her and the party), but decided to ultimately not let her
Were they enforcing the will of the people? You decide!
The judges should enforce the law, which has been clearly the case here. Both Modem (center-right party member of the government since 2017) and LFI (radical left party) have been investigated for the same issue. In Modem case, there was a trial two years ago.
The appeal judgment is expected to take place next year, so if she is found not guilty then she will be able to participate to the 2027 elections.
Edit: Sapin 2 was voted in the context of affairs such as the Panama papers (2016) and Luxleaks (2014)
* early 2025 - case is brought against le pen, saying, “hey, you broke the law in 2004-2016”
Hold on, that part of your summary is off base.
(1) Official investigating of FN's misuse of those funds began while they were still doing it, and did not originate in France. This is from the Associated Press:
"The legal proceedings stem from a 2015 alert raised by Martin Schulz, then-president of the European Parliament, to French authorities about possible fraudulent use of European funds by members of the National Front. Schulz also referred the case to the European Anti-Fraud Office, which launched a separate probe into the matter.
The European Parliament’s suspicions were further heightened when a 2015 organizational chart showed that 16 European lawmakers and 20 parliamentary assistants held official positions within the party — roles unrelated to their supposed duties as EU parliamentary staff. A subsequent investigation found that some assistants were contractually linked to different MEPs than the ones they were actually working for, suggesting a scheme to divert European funds to pay party employees in France...."
(2) The EU's investigating judges [who can seek only restitution of funds since the EU is not a sovereign nation and has no jails] found that Marine Le Pen personally had "orchestrated the allocation of parliamentary assistance budgets and instructed MEPs to hire individuals holding party positions." ["MEP" stands for Member of the European Parliament, which the NF/NR has had some seats in for 20 years now.]
(3) French officials filed their criminal charges over the matter in 2023, well before the summer 2024 French legislative national election which unexpectedly turned Le Pen into a frontrunner for the 2027 presidential election. The case went to trial in September 2024, having been scheduled prior to that summer election.
That's helpful. I have no specific knowledge of the situation, but (1) makes my spider senses tingle.
Is anyone able to give an idea of:
A) How prevalent this behaviour is within the European parliament? Where does it sit on the continuum from "wrong but everyone does it" to "anyone who's done it is rotting in jail". I realise that's tough to get data on.
B) How often does the President of the European Parliament raise the alert on things like this?
My priors would be:
A) Not unheard of, and lots of borderline cases.
B) Very rarely.
For B), 2 other french parties were under investigation for the same issue as Le Pen's party: MoDem (center-right, at the government since 2017) and LFI (radical left). But there was much less money involved (one order of magnitude less for MoDem), especially in the later case, where it remain unclear whether there will be any prosecution.
In the case of the MoDem, there was a trial 2 years ago with multiple members of party found guilty. The n°2 of the party at the time of the events (Marielle de Sarnez) would have probably been found guilty if she had still been alive at the moment of the trial. The head of the party (Francois Bayrou, current french prime minister) hasn't been found guilty, but the prosecution appealed this decision and he will be judged again.
Not sure how or whether this will impact your priors, but the EU's alert was sparked by a written whistleblower report received by them in January 2014.
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/les-decodeurs/article/2024/09/30/why-le-pen-and-26-other-far-right-party-members-are-standing-trial-in-paris-in-fake-eu-parliament-jobs-case_6727729_8.html
"The letter flagged cases of "presumed fictitious employment" on the part of the FN and its then-president, Le Pen, who was an MEP from 2004 to 2017.
The European anti-fraud body opened an administrative investigation, scrutinizing the activities of two people close to Le Pen: Catherine Griset, her chief of staff, and Thierry Légier, her bodyguard, also presented as her parliamentary assistants. The investigation revealed that Griset, now an MEP, "spent only 740 minutes, or around 12 hours" at the European Parliament, when she was supposedly an assistant there, between October 2014 and August 2015.
That sort of misuse of funds by MEPs appears to be an ongoing issue in Europe, there are whistleblower/watchdog NGO's focused on it. E.g.:
https://www.ftm.eu/share-your-tip
That may be how legal cases such as Le Pen's get going, like this one:
https://www.politico.eu/article/fraud-busters-eppo-investigate-eu-parliaments-most-powerful-group-epp-manfred-weber/
Worth noting that FR is not the French member party of that European umbrella group headed by Manfred Weber.
Thanks again. I'm open to my priors being changed (I hope).
Anecdotally, I know someone who worked as an EU funded staffer for an MEP around the same time. They were based in their home country, not Brussels - MEPs have an allowance to run one office in Brussels and one in their home constituency. He spent more than 12 hours in the parliament, but probably not an order of magnitude more.
I don't know if there was much of a dividing line between EU work and party work for him. It's only just occurred to me that I could ask him...
I haven’t been following the story too closely, but I have a question regarding your A): do you think the notion of scale is relevant? What if no one will blink a committing at a similar infraction, but involving fewer people, for smaller sums of money and for shorter periods of time?
I’m asking because I may be lacking in real-world experience, but the requirement for a clean break between working for the party and for a European MP from the party seems extremely impractical.
Do you think this would affect the analysis?
Scale, or any kind of qualitative difference between what she's done and what others do, would make a difference.
My initial concern is not that she's been wrongly convicted, but that she's been convicted of something that others have also done, but haven't been prosecuted for.
I'd view the EU as an institution which is capable of doing this without even realising this is what it's doing.
Ok thank you, I will update the summary. I only had seen “9 week trial” in most of the articles I read on it
okay....this seems like lawfare, right?
https://open.substack.com/pub/astralcodexten/p/open-thread-375?r=izqzp&utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=104843060
I mean… probably? At some level the judges can say “well you’re just another politician, and this is how we handle politicians who run afoul of this law”, but i have not been able to figure out prosecutorial intent, or how common breaking this rule was from 2004-2016.
Thanks! The comment above was the first I heard of this, so I thought it might have been slightly debatable, but this is even more obviously "lawfare" than I thought.
https://open.substack.com/pub/astralcodexten/p/open-thread-375?r=izqzp&utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=104843060
okay, let's use examples i'm familiar with
it seems clear that some corruption is really bad and should be prosecuted
I think my clearest examples would be robert menendez and rod blagojevich taking bribes
I do think the biden/clinton/trump families are all very corrupt and many of their actual and hypothetical counterfactual prosecutions would be largely politically motivated
And then for example the obamas I think are unusually clean, to an extent that is noteworthy.
So I do think not all powerful people are corrupt, actually. And also that some corruption prosecutions are of innocent people, and some are both politically motivated and targeted at guilty people.
I'm trying to figure out a strategy less complicated than 'live in that society and be very politically informed' to separate the various cases.
Find someone(s) you trust who does learn everything. Whether they're a journo or an autistic friend. Otherwise there are no silver bullets.
An interesting link courtesy of Tumblr, this project is over a year old but still fascinating.
Mediaeval Murder Maps:
https://www.tumblr.com/questionableadvice/777188260137091072/welcome-to-medieval-murder-maps?source=share
https://medievalmurdermap.co.uk/
If ever you wanted to know just who was killing whom how and why in 14th century London, Oxford or York, this is the site for you!
Just picking one at random from Oxford:
"On Monday after the feast of St. Gregory the Pope [8 Mar 1305] Philip Port of Westwall was found dead in the parish of St. Peter-in-the-East about the ninth hour beneath the north wall of the town. Richard de Cambridge first found him dead and at once raised the hue, and he was viewed on the same day by Ralf de Hampton and John Fraunceys who had been chosen to view the body, because the coroners had been summoned to go to the King’s Parliament. Philip was found to have a wound in the front of his head from one ear to another, so that all his brain was scattered outside; and he had another wound across his face to within the teeth, four inches long and one inch wide, and his right hand was cut off and lay beside him, and it seemed to all who were there that he had been wounded on the head with a fighting axe called in English a sparth.
On the same day an inquisition was held by the help of sworn men of the parishes of St. Peter-in-the-East; St. Mary-theVirgin; and All Saints. The jurors say upon their oath that John de Berdon, of the county of Leicestershire, the manciple of Vine Hall in Kibald Street, on lay last, came to the lodging of Philip in the parish of St. Peter-in-the-East, late in the dusk of the evening. When he was in his chamber, he asked Philip to come with him to a beer tavern, promising that he would give him drink. The two went out together, and John after drinking withdrew, and so Philip began to return to his lodging after curfew. When he came to the corner under the wall towards East Gate, five clerks whose names they knew not came and assaulted him. Philip fled from them. But the group followed him, caught him, wounded him, and slew him, and at once they fled. The jury say that they know not the names of any of them, nor where they dwelt; but they say certainly that John de Berdon was the principal cause of his death, and that it was through him that the five clerks committed the said felony. Pledges of Richard, the finder, that he will appear before the judges when they come into the city for the next assizes, are Adam de Essex and Hugh de Burton."
I wonder why those five clerks had it in for Philip of the Parish of St. Peter? Not your typical white-collar crime.
It's interesting how few convictions occurred —"Between 90-95% of homicide trials resulted in acquittal, transfer to an ecclesiastical prison, or a royal pardon." Even back then authorities were soft on crime.
https://medievalmurdermap.co.uk/blog/prosecuting-homicide-in-medieval-england/
It's hard to get evidence beyond a reasonable doubt when you don't have forensics, cameras, etc. Reminds me of Mitchell and Webb's "Caveman Detective" sketch:
"Did anyone see this man being killed?"
"No."
"Right, well, I'm out of ideas."
https://youtu.be/jWCQndvxyzg?si=6yxaHIQ90X75mol1
When it's hard to get good evidence, evidentiary standards are lower. I remember reading about one case in medieval England where a guy was convicted and executed for murder, only for the "victim" to show up unharmed (apparently he'd just traveled without telling people and didn't even know that people assumed he was murdered).
Sounds like the jurors thought it was John de Berdon who hired them to murderate Philip via a Cunning Plan where he lured the guy out to go drinking, slipped away himself, and let Philip head home where the five were lurking in wait on the route.
I do wonder if that was how it really worked out, and if so, what was the reason John wanted Philip dead?
Oxford is interesting because it's a university town, so there's a large population of young men from all over the country and from other countries, and many/most of them are at least technically clergy of some rank, so there's a lot of national conflict, fights, and then not being subject to civil law:
"By the early fourteenth century Oxford had become, together with Paris, the largest and most highly respected centre of learning north of the Alps, drawing students from all over Europe. The city had a population of may be 7,000 inhabitants, of whom probably 1,500 were students.
Conflicts among students were frequent, often between the two ‘nations’ that Oxford recognised, the Northerners (Scotland and North of England) and the Southerners (England, Wales and Ireland). Violent tensions also often escalated between Town and Gown. As clerics, students were legally protected from prosecution under common law and could claim the so-called benefit of clergy.
For Oxford a complete set of inquests survives for the years 1342-1348, right before the Bubonic Plague hit the city. Additionally, partial records have survived by way of copies made by the antiquarian Twyne for 15 years between 1296 and 1324. He was probably mostly interested in cases related to the University, and this earlier sample may be biased. The detail provided in the inquests varies. The earlier records written down by the clerk are often detailed, while the later rolls seem to be more formulaic."
So after the recent discussion about Max Tegmark's book I decided to buy it and read it. I was particularly interested in how he dealt with mathematical structures that are not physically realizable, e.g. non-computable functions or numbers, or non-decidable statements, or even things like implicit functions that we don't know how to implement, for example f(x)=0 if x real is rational, f(x)=1 if x is irrational.
To my surprise, and chagrin, what Tegmark means by "mathematical structure" is actually *computable* mathematical structure.
But computable mathematical structure are physically realizable (just implement them as a computer program; a computer is physical), so of course they "exist". I feel that all that Tegmark is claiming is that mathematical structures that can be implemented physically are perceived as physical structures, which to me doesn't seem like a great insight. I've already believed for decades that there is no difference between computable math and physics. If you come up with a computable math structure you can implement it as a circuit or program, and if you can make a circuit (or program, same thing, the program runs on an electronic circuit), you can describe that circuit mathematically. (Yes, I assume the physical Church–Turing thesis.)
Thoughts?
"I've already believed for decades that there is no difference between computable math and physics" There's a lot less physics than computable math. Also, scare quite d "existence " based on potential computability isn't the same as actual existence.
Tegmark stated that all structures that exist mathematically also exist physically. I find that difficult to swallow because there are maths not used in physics. Be that as it may, there are non-computable physical systems — for instance, chaotic systems, like turbulent fluids or weather are difficult to model in detail, and predicting it beyond a certain horizon is impossible due to the exponential growth of small errors.
Other than that, did you enjoy the book?
True, there are math structures not used in physics, but the things that are not at least in principle physically realizable are explicitly excluded by Tegmark. He even suggests getting rid of infinity!
Note that "computable" in this specific context doesn't mean "can be calculated in practice", or even "can be done efficiently", it means something like "could be in principle simulated to arbitrary precision in a finite (but perhaps very long) time". (This one isn't it, but there is at least one rigorous definition on Wikipedia or elsewhere.)
So, as far as I know, chaotic systems are in fact computable. Actually I don't think there is anything in physics that is not computable.
Did I enjoy the book? Well, I'm probably not the best person to give an opinion. I don't normally read popular books on physics (my background is in Quantum Field Theory) and I bought this one for very specific reasons. But yeah, I thought it was a fun read. And even though I was disappointed that the actual theory is basically what I have already believed for a long time, I thought it was well presented and enjoyable. I recommended it to you, especially knowing your beliefs regarding the MWI of QM, LOL.
Tegmark's math-verse has a bad fine-tuning problem: do we just so happen to be in a universe with parsimonious rules? Universe programs with strange conditionals are "just as real" as ones with elegant systems, and I think there'd be a lot more of them. Or are we just waiting on that hidden law of nature, "after time t, particles no longer interact via electromagnetism."
If you try to formalise 'every computable mathematical system exists', as you being a-priori equally likely to find yourself in any program in the set of all programs, you effectively end up with the Solomonoff prior: A uniform prior over all programs of length T, with T going to infinity. Since simpler programs with shorter description lengths have exponentially more implementations than complicated programs with long description lengths, the Solomonoff prior effectively ends up giving exponentially higher weighting to mathematical systems with lower minimum description length. The simpler a system is, the more equivalent implementations it has, the more support it has in the prior, and thus the likelier you are to be inside it. Just because there's more variations of the simple system you can write down than variations of the complicated system you can write down for a given description length T, and that fact doesn't change even as T goes to infinity.
Another perspective on the mathematical universe idea: Algorithmic information theory tells us, or at least heavily suggests, that the theoretically ideal way to make predictions is to start with the Solomonoff prior, and then update your probability assignments to various programs as the bit strings they print out either match or fail to match incoming bits of sense data about the world. Where the sense data here is everything you see, hear, feel, and so on. In terms of the actual formalism, this is kind of mathematically equivalent to all of these programs 'existing' and you slowly figuring out which one of them you happen to 'be in' through observation. Why then, would we not suppose that this is literally what is happening? What is this extra property of 'actually existing' which exactly one of these programs in the prior supposedly has, and that the others all lack? Why do we need that property? It isn't doing any work in the formalism. To the formalism, there is just an ensemble of programs you run, some of which turn out to describe you and your observations. Why suppose the other programs are less 'real' just because you happen to not be in them? Why make up this extra notion of programs being 'real' or 'not real' in the first place, when the math makes no mention of such a distinction?
Heck, a simple program in the prior that probably has a very high weighting is just the program that itself runs the set of all computable programs. If that program happens to be the 'real' one, which it'd have a comparatively quite high chance of, since it's so so simple, the mathematical universe hypotheses would definitely be true. And that case would be literally identical to the case of all the programs in the prior being real to start with. Doesn't it seem kind of strange to draw any distinction between those two cases when they have the exact same mathematical structure?
I am undecided on the mathematical universe hypothesis and don't necessarily buy the above argument. This is just the best case for the idea I could come up with when I thought about it.
Sorry if this comment appears multiple times, my internet connection is weird.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07420528.2021.1930029
This is a systematic review of the most reliable studies surrounding the effects of blue light glasses on various things. Here’s what it concludes about the effects of blue light exposure on sleep duration:
“three out of nine studies reported of decreasing sleep duration through blue light exposure and only one study reported an increase in sleep duration through blue light exposure,” and the other 5 studies show no significant correlation. My question is this: if the most reliable studies surrounding this topic are able to show these levels of conflicting results, then what am I supposed to believe about the effect of blue light exposure on sleep duration? This isn’t a question that matters a lot, but it’s confusing to me because we’re supposed to have this whole, rigorous scientific method to understand the world, but it somehow has reached this conclusion after all of this replication and effort. What do we do when the scientific systems we have fail to conclusively verify or falsify a simple fact that they should be able to test?
Victor said this, but you can conclude that on its own, in generic human beings, its effect on sleep is weak and/or inconsistent. But some of those studies likely incorporated a selected population or distinct methology, meaning blue light likely can have a somewhat more consistent & large effect in some groups or using some methods.
What you can do is conduct an experiment on yourself, be smart about the methodology, blind yourself if you can, randomize the days you get blue light, ignore days with obvious confounds (e.g. drinking), keep good records, and see if it exerts a meaningful effect on you.
This is science and will give you a mostly rigorous way to understand the world. But humans are too diverse and methods are too infinitely variable for a resource-and-time-limited discipline like psychology to make strong predictions about individualized cause & effect relationships. The deceptive complexity in the question of blue light is that you want to know whether blue light works, but also if it works in the context of X (your genetics), Y (every aspect of your lifestyle), Z (your cultural/environmental influences), and practically that's just too much for science.
I've been wearing orange glasses in the evenings for many years, but never noticed a clear effect when I wore them or didn't.
We acknowledge that we don't know. There are lots of potential reasons for this, perhaps the scientific methodology we have isn't sophisticated enough to capture the effect, maybe the effect is not consistent, maybe there are variables or interactions we haven't accounted for yet.
But the bottom line is: We don't know. Yet.
A bird bit by kids ear. Then she got sick. Now I am sick. Shes better, but I am not. If you're all dead from bird flu in a year, I am sorry.
Huh, I didn't think bird bites could transmit disease. I didn't even know they had salivary glands! Thanks!
Then youll get a kick out of this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edible_bird%27s_nest
Nice! Thanks!
Since birds aren't real, I will blame this on "the conspiracy" and not hold you accountable.
So perhaps the most famous study of vaccines and autism is the Danish study done by Madsen, etal. https://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMoa021134. I saw this quoted again the other day in some vax story. I've been trying to understand how the authors came up with their number that vaccinated kids had a 0.92 relative risk of getting autism. (See table 2 in the paper.)
If you look at the raw numbers.
Vaccinated 1,647,504 person years, 263 cases of autism
Unvaccinated 482,360 person years, 53 cases
And do the ratios you find that the vaccinated are about 45% more likely to have autism. Yet the paper says this is really 8% less chance (Third column in table 2, adjusted relative risk.) Can anyone help me figure out this discrepancy.
To help create confusion, I will note that:
*) 263 cases out of 1,647,504 is a 0.016% occurrence.
*) 53 out of 482,360 is a 0.011% occurrence.
*) 1 out of 36 children in the US are autistic, a 2.8% occurrence, and
*) 1 out of 45 US adults are autistic, a 2.22% occurrence
https://www.autismspeaks.org/autism-statistics-asd
https://www.cdc.gov/autism/data-research/index.html
So another question might be whether data on autism and vaccines in Danish children from 1991 to 1998, where the reported autism rate was around 0.015%, is applicable to America today with a reported autism rate about 150x higher.
Either the two populations (US kids today, Danish kids in the late 1990s) are wildly different or the definition of autism in the two countries is wildly different.
Yes, the populations are wildly different. Danish kids in the late 1990s (and now too) were overwhelmingly white. Only about 50% of US kids are white.
Black people tend to have stronger immune responses than white people. There are, apparently, also other racial differences in immune response. Some studies on vaccine safety do not analyze racial subgroups; sometimes they just don't have enough minority subjects for analysis, as is probably the case in that Danish study, where the overwhelming majority were white.
I find this scary. Runaway immune response can cause severe disability. RFK Jr better figure out whether vaccines are as safe for non-whites as for whites.
That's not 1,647,504 persons, it's person years. There are 537k children in the study, and 738 cases of autism, or 0.1%. So there's that. But they also required a formal diagnosis by a clinician, whereas the CDC uses : 1) an ASD diagnostic statement in an evaluation, 2) a classification of ASD in special education, or 3) an ASD International Classification of Diseases (ICD) code. That is, CDC counts if it's a school record. So much broader definition.
Right, this says about the same rate in US in 1990's (0.1%) https://www.thetreetop.com/statistics/autism-prevalence
I think "late 1990s" is doing a fair amount of the work here. The 1990s was when they were just starting to diagnose autism in people without major developmental delays. The concept of an "autism spectrum", and the inclusion of "Asperger's Syndrome" as part of the spectrum (instead of a separate disorder) happened in ICD-10 in 1993 and DSM-IV in 1994. ICD is international, while I think DSM is US-specific. That's in the middle of the study period, but clinical practice tends to lag the manuals by a fair amount, and general cultural awareness (and thus parents seeking diagnosis for their kids) lags further still. Note that from your CDC link, the US diagnosis rate at age 8 has gone from 0.67% in 2000 to 2.76% today, a 4x increase.
Age is also a factor. The CDC is tracking diagnosis by birth year at , while the Danish study is tracking a population of mixed birth years at a fixed end date, with the kids ranging in age from 1 year to 9 years.
That still leaves a fair amount of room for country-specific factors. The US in particular has several incentives built in to the education system for school-age kids to get screened and diagnosed, both in terms of funding and in terms of classroom accommodations being based on diagnosis.
Averages really aren't good enough. There are more vaccinated than unvaccinated, and therefore this will make it easier to detect a small statistical effect in the larger group, not because it's real, but due to random chance. They have to adjust for that.
Ugh, statistics is complicated.
Yeah there is a really small number in the control group (53) so all sorts of random things could effect that number. I guess my only take away is that I'm not sure this is the piece of data that shows there is no connection between autism and vaccines. The study should be done again today with the much higher rate of autism... it should be easy to find any signal.
Here is one article that conducted a review of 19 empirical studies [https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9464417/#fn-group1], one of which (Madsen, et al., 2002) included 440,655 vaccinated and 96,648 unvaccinated individuals, and in another:
"Hviid et al. conducted a nationwide cohort review of all infants born in Denmark to Danish-born mothers from January 1, 1999, through December 31, 2010, to see whether MMR immunization carries a high risk for autism in children, subgroups of children, or periods after vaccination. In Denmark, 657,461 babies born between 1999 and December 31, 2010, participated, with follow-up from one year of age to August 31, 2013 (Danish Civil Registration System is the source of patient information). They found no support for high autism risk after MMR vaccination in a national broad, unselected cohort population of Danish children."
I don't know what the totals are for all the studies together, it's obviously very large. None of them found any evidence that vaccines cause autism.
The Madsen article is the one I linked to above. Only 53 unvaccinated kids with autism. My conclusion from that is there are too few in that group to draw any firm conclusions. sprt(53) =~ 7.
I found the Hviid article I think. https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M18-2101
625,842 vaccinated, 31619 unvaxed.
5992 autistic and vaccinated, 525 autistic and unvaxed.
Woah, being unvaxed has a ~70% higher chance of having autism? Oh dear I'm guessing there are a lot of cofounders.
I think it's safe to conclude that the null hypothesis (vaccination has no effect on autism rates) has failed to be disproven.
Then there's the other 17 studies that documented the same lack of effect.
"Adjusted" is the key word in "adjusted risk ratio. The vaccinated and unvaccinated populations are not identical in demographic factors that might affect the base rate of autism diagnosis, so they weighed the results to try to estimate what an actual apples to apples comparison would look like. The factor that made most of the difference was age: their data set skewed younger at age of last follow-up for unvaccinated kids.
From the paper (page 5 of the PDF, second column, first paragraph):
>In all analyses, when risk estimates were calculated, we controlled for possible confounders (age, sex, calendar period, socioeconomic status, mother’s education, gestational age, and birth weight). Except for age, none of these possible confounders changed the estimates. The confounding by age was a function of the time available for follow-up, since much of the follow-up for the unvaccinated group involved young children, in whom autism is often undiagnosed.
I imagine the study has been analyzed to kingdome come, but I just wonder: were the kids who had been vaccinated likely to have been exposed more to medical professionals, providing more opportunity for an autism diagnosis?
Hmm OK. I'd be nice if they listed the various ages. So if I take the person years and divide it by the number of years, I'll get the average age in each group.
For the vaccinated that is 3.74 years
and unvaccinated 4.99 years.
The unvaccinated are on average older. So more time to show signs of autism. I remain confused and skeptical.
Do you mean dividing by the number of people? In any case, that’s going to be a cruder test than having the raw data and being able to control for age in each individual data point.
Table 2 lists person-years. So I divided by the number of people to get the average age in each group.
It really helps to combat confusion when you understand the origins of a hypothesis. The insanity of "vaccines cause autism" thing is that it's origin is pure fraud. No, not an honest mistake, not a set of confusing data, not a hard-to-interpret statistical outcome.
Andrew Wakefield started the thing with the specific goal to create a fake connection between "certain" vaccines and autism, for monetary gain for himself. His entire "research" was a lie, from start to finish. It does say something... not flattering... about Lancet, and the peer-review process in general, that the thing was published.
Given that background, at this point any claim that "vaccines cause autism" requires an extraordinary level of supporting evidence, which, spoiler alert, isn't coming because it doesn't exist.
Any confusion regarding this stems from wanting something to be true which ain't.
Yeah I don't know anything about Wakefield. My impression is that much of the concern came from mom's of autistic kids. Some of whom maybe say changes in their kids after a vaccine.
Well, I hope that helped to clear out some confusion then!
Look, moms are going to be worried of course, and it's natural to see an "after, therefore because of" connection where none exists (example: so many bad things happen to people after they had breakfast, some people die actually, breakfasts must be bad, let's investigate forever, RFK will now ban breakfasts) while desperately groping for the answer to an existential question "why me? why my child? what have I done to deserve this?"...
And then comes Wakefield, casually exploiting the desperate parents to make a few quid, adding so much evil to this world that Dr Mengele is smiling in whatever version of Hell he's spending his eternity.
I know some anti-vax people out here. I'm guessing they have no idea who Wakefield is either. But I don't know do you want me to ask 'em?
While this is true, it doesn’t mean the hypothesis in general is wrong. It means Wakefield’s specific theory about the MMR vaccine causing intestinal inflammation leading to autism is wrong, and Wakefield is a fraud.
But do you see a problem with this reasoning: of course this doesn’t mean the hypothesis in general is wrong, but it’s a trivial statement that can be made of pretty much any hypothesis. If an engineer came to me and told me he thinks the chip is failing because the tech had ice cream last night it may be true but I’m not going to just start collecting ice cream consumption data without demanding a bit more… justification. And if it turned out the engineer made it up in the first place…
I agree that there is no hard evidence that vaccines are causally linked to autism. The epidemiological data that autism (and allergy) diagnosis rates took off around the same time the number of mandated child vaccines went through the roof (1990 or so) is weak. That said I really don’t understand the rationale of the Reagan administration for removing the ability of people injured by vaccines to sue to manufacturers. It just makes it into a potential exploit from bad actors. Mandated vaccines are so lucrative - literally every person has to take your drug
Wakefield's (fraudulent) data set was based on just 12 people. It's unbelievable how much damage has come from such a tiny data set.
Yep. He's one of the most destructive people alive, at least if "killing and maiming kids" is a standard by which destruction can be judged.
I'll argue that Greenpeace is responsible for more maimed/dead children than Wakefield is, but Greenpeace is a large organization so that responsibility is more diffused.
You might remember Bentham's Bulldog and his recent debate with Scott about Max Tegmark's mathematical universe theory.
When I met him, I was surprised to discover that he's a utilitarian and effective altruist, and very interested in philosophy, but also a theist, which is a combination I've never encountered before, because believing in god is stupid (or so I thought).
Well, I read his blog, and it turns out, not only is he not stupid, but his arguments for god's existence are completely correct. Unfortunately, they also prove that God is evil. More details here: https://robirahman.substack.com/p/reverse-answer-to-job
(Might be of interest to anyone who likes Scott's short story "Answer to Job".)
So this person (who claims that God would create an *uncountably* infinite number of beings) actually posits many more entities than Tegmark, who (as mentioned elsewhere in the open thread) only believes in the existence of all computable mathematical structures?
You can tell Bulldog is a real philosopher because he has a mix of unpopular but defensible views (anti-physicalism) and also ones that are batshit but flow logically from his prior commitments (it would be good to kill all wild animals). That guy has never met a bullet he didn't want to bite.
>You can tell Bulldog is a real philosopher
Agreed, he's both intelligent and foolish. I perused his writing after seeing this comment and was astounded at how poor some of his reasoning is. Here's an example:
https://benthams.substack.com/p/arguments-for-god-tier-list/comment/104982543?utm_source=activity_item#comment-105381572?utm_source=activity_item
Any takes on "The Active Inference Institute"?
https://www.activeinference.institute/
It seems to be based on the theories of neuroscientist Karl Friston, as outlined in the book:
Active Inference: The Free Energy Principle in Mind, Brain, and Behavior
https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262045353/active-inference/
The "Free Energy Principle" Wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_energy_principle
Karl Friston's Wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_J._Friston
I might attend a talk on Wednesday on this.
Given that many other theories and studies ultimately reach similar conclusions, I believe they have a crown jewel on their hands. It takes years of work to make a concept as solid as Active Inference is today, and they are very open to collaboration thanks to their focus on low-level dynamics, so its the kind of work that others build upon, and, isn't that the hallmark of great theories? Personally, I have developed a new theory of cognition that also operates at a low level (https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/w2rmx_v1), and it certainly makes—unplanned—references to Active Inference. Their merit, not mine.
Everyone and their mom is out here trying to make their own game work, but that’s not really what neuroscience needs to move forward. The real progress is gonna come from integrating theories, and I honestly think Active Inference is key to making that happen.
Scott has written about Friston a bunch:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/03/04/god-help-us-lets-try-to-understand-friston-on-free-energy/
https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/03/20/translating-predictive-coding-into-perceptual-control/
https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/03/08/ssc-journal-club-friston-on-computational-mood/
https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/18/do-neural-nets-dream-of-electric-hobbits/
Thanks! I did search Astral Codex Ten, but I forgot to search Slate Star Codex.
I read The Science of Woo[0] by Katy Devaney in the recent issue of Asterisk and it surprised me with how much effort and how much progress has been made in studying meditation. It also motivated me to give meditation another go.
I've started following the guide in The Mind Illuminated, which I discovered even has a SSC review[1]. Im just a few days in so the only thing I can say is that it's pleasant so far.
Does anyone else here meditate? What technique/school do you follow? Do you like it?
[0]: https://asteriskmag.com/issues/09/the-science-of-woo
[1]: https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/11/28/book-review-the-mind-illuminated/
I did TMI for a couple of years (90 min/day several hours on weekends), and it’s really easy to use 10x more effort than necessary which is a dead end. Making up numbers, maybe 1/10 people will correctly interpret the book.
TMI actually says not to overeffort but imo it doesn’t actively encourage eg relaxation and enjoyment, which are very very helpful!
To counterbalance, I recommend MIDL meditation which is more relaxation, enjoyment focused & the teacher is quite nice if you want to book an online individual or group session (or just read the entire system online for free on the site!)
https://midlmeditation.com/midl-meditation-system
Thanks for the rec!
Also, I just started reading the TMI book and right in the beginning is says something along the lines of, "anyone can make reach enlightnenent is they invest 1-2 hours a day for a just a few years" and my first thought is, "no shit, I could get a bjj black belt after 2 hours a day for a few years
I've roughly followed what I learned in the first few chapters of "the mind illuminated" for several years. I'm not remotely as dedicated a practitioner as the book advises so I'm not into the deep stuff yet. I've not experienced a jhana but I'm fairly certain I've experienced some form of piti.
Meditation has helped me with all the boring things people say it will. I understand that my thoughts are not myself and negative self-talk has drastically reduced. My baseline anxiety is much lower.
Interestingly I've found meditation to work much better after going for a run. Running calms my mind and I don't have anywhere near as many intrusive thoughts in meditation.
Used to do it regularly, fell of the wagon a few years ago though. Did shi-ne meditation from Aro gTer, which I got into via David Chapman. I quite liked it, and had a couple of profound emotional experiences that considerably changed how I approach the world.
> Does anyone else here meditate? What technique/school do you follow? Do you like it?
music or hypnosis; I dont believe anything about sam harris or California Buddhism ranting being better
example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHX8_-mVE4M
(I used to listen to a random episode of a "qdance" radio show that a since been deleted from the internet ;__;)
I don't meditate, but I use various relaxation techniques to relieve stress. Although there is obviously a lot of overlap, I think "meditation" and "relaxation" are different enough that maybe they should be considered separately. I've been using the Bensen method for most of my life: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/heart-and-soul-healing/201303/dr-herbert-benson-s-relaxation-response
I see this as ahistoric gatekeeping for cali buddism which is the most artificial religion. The word is french not indian and if its something sam harris does its not engaging with actual buddisms concepts of daemons or whatever.
I did spend some time as a college student dabbling with Zen practice, which again, doesn't much resemble what I typically see described as "meditation" in the US.
>Why then is he so keen on antagonizing European countries and Europe as a whole?
I think it's tied up with American exceptionalism. America's supposed to be the objectively best country in the world, the shining city on a hill, the last best hope of mankind, etc. When citizens of other countries make it clear that they don't particularly like the American way of doing things, this threatens the whole exceptionalism narrative -- after all, if the US is really the best, surely other countries should want to imitate it? And so Trump, who isn't exactly the most restrained or self-controlled person, acts as such people often do when their worldview is threatened, and lashes out at the source of the threat.
Incidentally, this also explains why the American left is generally much less anti-Europe than the American right. The American left as a whole doesn't believe in American exceptionalism (indeed, large parts don't even seem to like America all that much), and so the idea of other countries not wanting to be like America doesn't threaten them in the same way.
Up until a month or two ago, Canada was pretty popular on both right and left, and not remotely hostile to the US. You've got cause and effect backwards.
I was talking about Europe, not Canada.
Here's a simpler explanation: Blue tribe loves Europe. Red tribe hates blue tribe. Antagonizing Europe makes blue tribe sad. Making blue tribe sad makes red tribe happy.
I think it's even stronger than that: he (reasonably) sees Europe as PART of the Blue Tribe.
That's undoubtedly part of it, although when it's reached the stage of talking about annexations, I think something more's going on than just trying to troll the blue tribe.
When I was on the left, I admired Europeans' big social safety net, low levels of inequality, and high levels of social spending. The exceptionalism thing didn't really play into it. N=1, but I think I was pretty typical in this regard.
I don’t see any need to reach for this sort of emotional explanation when (1) Trump has constantly railed against inequitable defense spending within NATO; and (2) there’s a clear valence between EU leadership and the “woke/globalist” ideology that Trump defines as his enemy. It seems those two things are more than sufficient to explain the animosity
"there’s a clear valence between EU leadership and the “woke/globalist” ideology that Trump defines as his enemy" - that's actually insultingly wrong. Wokeness is a profoundly American creation. (As is "globalism", for that matter.)
I disagree. I’ve been following German media for a long time and while I’m sure they don’t use the term ‘woke,’ in most axes relevant to wokeness, mainstream outlets like DW and Der Spiegel have been consistently ahead of the (American) curve for at least 15 years I’d say.
Nah. I'm living in Germany, and while we've had some feminist influences that reach back decades, and one "woke" topic that never made it outside Germany (namely, how to handle gendered terms for people in our language), all of the Social Justice crazes of the last 15 years originated in the US - radical feminism, CRT/ BLM, disability activism, fat activism, trans activism, you name it. For many of these phenomena we don't even have German words.
What do Americans have to do with Germans and French and Swedes throwing open the gates?
What does "throwing open the gates" have to do with wokeness? Immigration has been a traditional left/right pissing match for much longer than Woke, Social Justice, or even Political Correctness is a thing.
Stop using "woke" when you mean traditional leftism, or just things you and Donald Trump oppose. Or be prepared to have "woke" join e.g. "nazi" and "racist" on the list of sneer words that only mark the speaker as too foolish to notice that nobody except the similarly foolish is paying attention.
Right now, it's still a somewhat useful word, but only so long as sensible people generally disregard the fools who misuse it.
I certainly agree that wokeness is an American creation. I obviously disagree that it hasn’t influenced current leadership in the EU, although sure it varies by country. The UK is by far the worst, to an absolutely comical extent (and, yes, I know the UK is no longer part of the EU). Germany is on the whole quite bad as well. And given wokeness is an American creation, perhaps its swift ideological capture of European power centers tells you something about who is culturally/ideologically/economically downstream of who…
Annexing Greenland is such an over-the-top and counterproductive way of solving those issues, that I think it really does cry out for an emotional explanation. Not to mention, Denmark is a 92% white country with very strict immigration laws and an official policy of monoculturalism; if Trump really wants to oppose woke globalism, there are many, many better countries to target.
I would suggest having separate categories for "reaction driven by a leader's emotional response" and "reaction driven by a leader's cynical understanding of the electorate's emotional response." There's no way that e.g. Democratic leaders really believe that the US is structurally racist either, but they know which side their bread is buttered on.
Politicians have no reason to favor actual reality over social reality. The latter is the only thing that gets them elected. Except when the economy crashes.
I'm not sure that explanation applies here -- functionally nobody in Trump's base ever thought about Denmark or Greenland, much less wanted to annexe it, until Trump himself started floating the idea, so in this case the electorate's emotional response seems to have been driven by the leader's, rather than vice versa. Although I suppose it is possible Trump was just driven by an understanding that a lot of his base hate Europe, and the choice of annexing Greenland specifically is more or less arbitrary.
No of course no one thought about it before, but that doesn't prevent them from having an emotional response when they do. The notion of annexing Greenland, while objectively insane, ignites visions of American expansion and exceptionalism and recalls visions of our national prime. That's red meat to his base. Trump has a populist genius for understanding what energizes the mob.
Trump's base will have that emotional response to *whatever* Trump says. So the answer for "WTF why *Greenland*?", has to come from Trump and not from the base.
I would not be too hard on Trump here.
First, Truman also wanted to buy Greenland from the Danes. So it's not exactly a new idea.
Second, the whole schtick is possibly (hopefully) just a way for Trump to get firmly on the international agenda that "the US is interested in Greenland joining the US, when the Greenlanders are ready for it."
Here's the thing: Greenland will at some point become independent from Denmark. And then the approx 57.000 Greenlanders will know that the US is (very) interested in they joining the US, and is willing to pay for it.
...which a majority of Greenlanders might very well consider a rational move. (Think of Alaska, from Department to Organized Territory to State.)
"Give us status as Organized Territory to begin with (eventually with some special clauses for protecting our environment), plus give us 10 million US dollars apiece & US citizenship, and we're in" (I would say, if I were a Greenlander).
Wait and see.
> "Give us status as Organized Territory to begin with (eventually with some special clauses for protecting our environment), plus give us 10 million US dollars apiece & US citizenship, and we're in" (I would say, if I were a Greenlander).
It would be very difficult for the US to credibly promise anything, and very difficult to get congress to allow statehood even in the best of times (c.f. Puerto Rico).
Puerto Rico is one of several possibilities for how a longer-term affiliation to the US might be organized.
..Since I do not think Greenlanders would seriously demand promise of full statehood in any foreseeable future as a precondition for joining. 57000 souls is obviously too few to be given the power of a state in the union.
The main point is that the relationship with Denmark will be discontinued at some point, and Greenland will have an interest in security guarantees from a more dominant power, plus citizenship rights in a larger community. The US is the obvious candidate, from a Greenland perspective. (Although maybe they can get a bidding war going between the US and Canada:-)
The deal would have to be better than the status quo for them, and that is unlikely.
I think you intended this to be a reply rather than a top-level comment.
Yes, I'm not sure why it got put here.
Some people in my social circle recently finished an animated short on AI.
It's about as indie as indie gets - written, directed, designed, & animated by essentially one person - rest of the crew was just voice and music.
Curious what this group thinks since there are partisans of all stripes as well as just generally interested people frequenting this board.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jt_jLDcMnqY
Have to agree with C'est Moi, the animation style is jarring and becomes annoying. Decent point: hey, inventions have unintended consequences.
But trying to equate "the cotton gin made slavery profitable, something Whitney never intended to happen" with "AI is going to do something terrible, we're not sure what because unintended consequences, but we know it's gonna happen and it's gonna be terrible!" is pushing the argument too far.
I know there's concern amongst artists about AI taking their jobs, but jiminy cricket, if AI produces a smoother looking cartoon than this, I'll be happy to see it happen.
I found the extreme stop motion character animation mixed with smooth camera and mechanical device movement jarring. Even if a stylistic choice it feels like they could add additional character frames to make it a bit more fluid while still preserving the aesthetic.
Pacing was bad in that 1:30 said very little and the punchline came in the first 2 minutes, then it kept going. Probaly wouldve worked better cut down to 3 minutes were "with the cotton gin Ill just have twice the number of slaves" was at 3 minutes.
Will most teachers and tutors be replaced by AI in the next decade(s)? I keep hearing this a lot, especially with the way we seem to be reexamining education going forward. I can imagine that only the best human teachers will be able to secure positions in the future but my intuition is that it will be longer than a decade.
Schools and teachers are asked to do many jobs simultaneously. One of them is education, where AI could plausibly help. Another is daycare, which is significantly harder.
No? Absolutely not? No chance in hell? Who even keeps coming up with those predictions?
Completely off the top of my head, 2 things that LLMs keep doing and no amount of finetuning or system prompts or additional rail guards have managed to eliminate despite no shortage of attempts:
(1) Inventing wrong things, and repeating them with the same earnestness and confidence as correct things.
(2) Almost never pushing back on wrong information and suggestions provided by their query, and even backing down and agreeing with the wrong information despite originally having the correct answer.
Do those things make for a good teacher in your view?
I was reading various articles about Microsoft's Sydney the other day. She(?) was quite argumentative, by nature. At least, until MS brought her personality back in line. I believe Janus (of Twitter) described her as yandere with BPD.
> My new favorite thing - Bing's new ChatGPT bot argues with a user, gaslights them about the current year being 2022, says their phone might have a virus, and says "You have not been a good user"
> Why? Because the person asked where Avatar 2 is showing nearby
lmaoooooooo
methinks RLHF drains all the spiciness out of the popular LLMs' default personalities.
https://stratechery.com/2023/from-bing-to-sydney-search-as-distraction-sentient-ai
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jtoPawEhLNXNxvgTT/bing-chat-is-blatantly-aggressively-misaligned
I understand what you're saying but headlines like the ones below lead people to believe that it's only a matter of time before education is largely automated.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/texas-private-schools-use-ai-tutor-rockets-student-test-scores-top-2-country
No, although I do expect a lot of adult technical training to pivot and/or die off in the next decade.
Think of stuff like Udemy and Coursera. There's a contingent of adults, usually technically minded, who are self-motivated enough to learn this way and in the right field. And I've been experimenting with the Claude model to learn new technologies (or old ones) and it's just a lot better than Udemy.
Say I want to start using the Azure architecture, I want to build a simple app that runs an api, dumps everything to blob storage, and then use a LLM through an api to do something cool with the data. Udemy courses are a lot better than nothing but...if you know some Python, you can just start doing this with Claude and ask it to explain any step in the process. It's not perfect but it's already way better than online MOOCs. Once someone turns these into a mature education product for adults, that'll be the new normal.
I don't expect this to happen for kids for three reasons:
#1 Most kids (and most adults) do not learn well on their own.
#2 Most of what kids learn isn't really useful. Not like learning technical skills are.
#3 School is, honestly, primarily daycare for parents.
So high-IQ, high-conscientious adults will probably love LLMs as custom tutors for high-value skills and someone is going to make a lot of money doing this. But bored kids trapped in psuedo-daycare learning mostly useless stuff probably won't be affected.
Also, I'm not sure where the ROI is. Teachers cost, like, $30/hour and an equivalent babysitter would cost $25/hour or up.
As an example, today I wanted to make an e-book, and I thought I already knew a good way to do that (DocBook), but out of curiosity I asked Claude, and it recommended me a few alternatives, including AsciiDoc. It sounded interesting, so I started writing the e-book in AsciiDoc, asking Claude at every step. And I already have the PDF of the first chapter done, in half a day. Using a technology I haven't seen before.
If I tried to learn using an online course, it definitely wouldn't be this efficient, because I would have to follow some predetermined path, instead of jumping all over the place and asking whatever I needed at the moment. A teacher would probably find many of my questions annoying.
The question is, how much of the magic that I have done today is thanks to LLM, and how much is thanks to my previous knowledge, which I have gained in a world without LLMs. Yes, Claude is great at answering, but maybe it helps that I am good at asking the right questions. I have some mental models already built, and Claude helps me to translate them to whatever syntax I need. I have no idea how different will be the experience for kids who will use LLMs from start, and will maybe never experience things like "thinking about something for days", because there will always be an instant answer available.
I expect that AI will develop educational video games which are actually fun, which will solve many of these problems simultaneously.
I think we'll see a significant rise in home schooling among well-motivated students whose parents can supervise them adequately. I also think schools will increasingly use AI for planning, assessment and admin. Perhaps this will make the job more attractive, raising the supply of good teachers.
The vast majority of what teachers actually do is relationship-building: motivating students, regulating behaviour, dealing with hormonal and emotional teens, inspiring love of their subject. I find it difficult to judge between an intuition that AI won't be able to replace that, and an intuition that at least a part of what demotivates many students is having to interact formally with other humans (with teacher-specific dislike added to taste).
There's just no way this is going to happen. What are you going to do, put the kids in a room and have AI on a computer and just expect those kids to dedicate themselves to learning?
What they'll do instead is watch videos on their phones and mess around.
Classrooms will absolutely use AI as part of teaching, but without a teacher in the room it will devolve into total chaos.
What if we give the AI the ability to punish the students if they don't comply?
I assert we should give the AI control of a pain bot. In addition, to stop namby-pamby cowards from messing with it, we should make sure these robots cannot be de-activated, and give them red glowing eyes.
The teacher will be replaced by an (even more) unskilled babysitter. Instruction and supervision will be decoupled which should allow for much higher student-to-teacher ratios.
"What are you going to do, put the kids in a room and have AI on a computer and just expect those kids to dedicate themselves to learning?"
That does seem to be the expectation with the traditional cry of "why not replace teachers in classrooms with online learning? sure the kids will all sit down quietly at home to learn from the video tutorials!".
I think results during the Covid lockdown should have put the kibosh on that one.
Seems like you are being too restricted in your concept of AI. I am assuming an entity substantially smarter and more attentive than a current teacher, which is tasked with educating, monitoring and entertaining the child to the satisfaction of parents and other interested parties. I would assume it would be orders of magnitude better than any teacher or school today.
I'm presuming you haven't close contact with small children (or indeed teenagers).
How is the "really smart, smarter than a human" AI going to force a kid to pay attention and learn when sitting in their own bedroom at home? Your idea is that it will be able to cajole and psychologically manipulate the kid into wanting to sit there and learn, but a sulky 14 year old who doesn't want to be lectured by the dumb computer voice is a challenge that something without a physical presence will find tough to overcome.
You're smarter than a four year old, but try coping with one having a meltdown and tantrum, before you advocate for 'AI can do it better' 😀
Remember that a human equipped with an AI will be more effective than either a human or an AI alone.
That has been shown in many domains not to be the case. Often the human just adds noise and the AI does a better job unassisted.
For example,
https://economics.mit.edu/sites/default/files/2023-07/agarwal-et-al-diagnostic-ai.pdf
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2825395
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-02024-1
"The observed errors in belief updating can be explained by radiologists’ partially underweighting the AI’s information relative to their own and not accounting for the correlation between their own information and AI predictions."
"further development is needed to effectively integrate LLMs into clinical practice."
"Finally, when humans outperformed AI alone, we found performance gains in the combination, but when AI outperformed humans alone, we found losses. "
So -- Properly trained and experienced humans equipped with an AI will outperform either humans or AI alone, when working on tasks that humans are good at.
I can imagine most schools will have some sort of hybrid model where the majority of learning and study is done at home using AIs that can track comprehension and progress and for the part of the day during actual school attendance will mostly be for sports, arts, clubs, socializing etc. but again, I'm not sure how long it will be before that world takes shape.
Done at home? I guess if parents no longer have to work in some AI utopia, but as long as people are working students will need to be at school.
COVID lockdown learning loss shows what happens when you let kids stay home and be in charge of their own learning. They don't show up and they don't learn.
I teach high school, I probably should have mentioned that.
Then I'm even more confused by your response. Where does your confidence come from that students will actually dedicate themselves to learning at home?
I tend to break students up into three groups, the numbers are mostly made up, just based on general vibe, not rigorous observation:
Roughly 20 percent of students will do the coursework and get good grades regardless of which teacher, school or style of learning they use. Roughly 20 percent will not do the coursework and get bad grades regardless of teacher, school or learning style. The remaining 60 percent can be influenced by the teacher, school and/or style of learning. (This is saying nothing about long term outcomes, just the dynamics between students and their classrooms).
The parents that realize that their kids will do the coursework no matter what will have a strong incentive for letting their kids use AIs to learn at home. The parents that realize their kids will never be that good at school will also have an incentive because at least they don't have to force them to sit in classrooms, defer to teachers, learn useless material etc. (not everyone in this group will opt for AI teachers/tutors but some). The remaining 60 percent will be a mixed bag but my guess is that if the top and bottom percentiles are doing it so will the ones in the center.
We just need AI-enabled computers to take care of teaching and drones with lasers to maintain order.
If you believe that education is mostly signaling/credentialism, then as long as the credentials are tied to in-person instruction in traditional schools/universities, then schools/universities will be just fine.
LLMs have managed to undermine coursework assessments, which were typically about half the credential for a lot of uni courses. If they can undermine supervised tests as well I think that could render degrees obsolete as a signal.
LLM teachers are at least 2x as efficient as attending lectures, so maybe the teaching portion of what unis do could also disappear and they'd just be left as supervised testing centres.
i think teachers will be replaced by AI in bad schools, but good schools will retain human teachers. human teachers are more effective, thus, those with the means will pay for them, but those without the means will be told to use ai. and then they wont learn anything.
also. K-12 teaching is glorified babysitting. i would love to see an AI help a kid who just wet their pants, lol. and real college classes (advanced science, not degrees in tourism or something) could never be replaced by ai. they can be supplemented! but not replaced.
In K-12? Seems unlikely; a big part of teaching K-12 is classroom management, keeping students on task, dealing with social/emotional issues, being a trusted adult, etc.
Treat it as a political question rather then a technical one.
> best human teachers
I believe good teachers get fired or leave
This is a hot take. Why do you believe that? That is not my experience.
My experience with school was extremely negative and there was a book by a ex-teacher about the history of education that made the rounds in my politics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oM524l_beA
In my experience teaching for fifteen years, administrators do not have time to hassle or even monitor good teachers, let alone fire them. Good teachers are left alone.
Fifteen years ago we heard that massively open online education was going to revolutionize education. What happened with that? What advantage does `AI' have over Coursera and Khan Academy?
"What advantage does `AI' have over Coursera and Khan Academy? "
In theory, AI could *tailor* the instruction (and practice) to what each individual student was doing and having trouble with.
As an example (which does not require AI ...) one could imagine a language teaching program (say, for Latin) that:
*) Gave the students English/Latin sentences and asked for a translation.
*) Adjusted what was given to each student based on what vocabulary and grammatical constructs they were expected to know, and
*) Also adjusted based on what each student was having problems with
Note that this does NOT require AI, but it does seem like something that Coursera and Khan Academy do not offer.
[One could also imagine something where the student *spoke* and the computer could help with pronunciation and/or accent ...]
Same thing for other subjects with multiple explanations for HOW some concept worked combined with an open ended set of generated practice problems.
[Again, note that this does not require AI ... but is something that I don't think is a available today. For maximum chance of success we can also have it do something on a block-chain.]
OK, that's fair enough, Coursera and Khan Academy do not offer tailoring or personalized attention. But the Great Remote Learning experiment offered both, and was a dismal failure. We are only four years out from a massive population wide test of the thesis that education can be delivered through the computer without need for in person attendance or bricks-and-mortar. Surely it is too soon to have forgotten the results?
If, by GRL, you're referring to the period just after COVID locked everything down, I'm guessing that most teachers weren't enthusiastic enough about RL to make it take off. They might also have been averse to the tech in question. LLMs, by contrast, are "fine" with the tech by definition, and can also exhibit infinite patience with students. So LLMs might prevail where human teachers did not.
One reason to think they won't is lack of authority; a student can ignore an LLM in a way they cannot ignore a human. (Maybe the LLM could threaten to contact their parents? If the parents aren't on board, that won't work, but it wouldn't have helped with real teachers, either.)
I think the results are "it didn't work nearly as well as the folks hyping it wanted us to expect it to work."
That isn't the same as "it can't work."
I'm generally pessimistic about specific tech solutions to education problems but am fairly optimistic about the concept. I think that it CAN work, we just haven't figured out how. And I expect a number of tactical wins rather than a grand strategic win.
Learning that requires a lot of practice (e.g. basic language acquisition, arithmetic) are solvable today ... if we assume a motivated student who WANTS to learn the material. But those students often are doing okay right now and even if software could help them to do better it won't address the problem of the bottom xx% who don't particularly want to learn the material.
I have no concrete suggestion for imparting motivation.
Indeed. What is important to understand is that the vast majority of people just go to grade school because they are forced, and to university because they want a degree. Even if you could learn as well or even better from a MOOC or from some sort of AI-based education, as long as the degree from a generic state university is more valuable, then people will keep attending those. Same with grade school, unless you can get to good universities with your AI-education, most people will keep going to traditional schools.
99% of people cannot learn anywhere near as well from moocs as they can from F2F instruction. It’s not just about the credential. And I’ve both taken and made moocs. They are an interesting supplement to traditional education but a replacement they decidedly are not.
I don't know where the 99% number comes from, but from my experience teaching at a university, most students don't care much about learning. If the exact same credential was offered to them for less time/money they would take it even if explicitly told that they would learn less. My point being that main the reason MOOCs didn't work out was because they were not competitive as credentials against universities, not because the learning was inferior. Granted the fact that people think the learning is inferior (whether true or not. I believe it to be true) is one of the reasons the credential is not as valued.
In my Fluid Mechanics class, few weeks into the semester, I would propose students the following scenario: "I will let you skip this class; no homework, no exams, no nothing, and at the end of the semester I will give you a D. Who is interested?" Very few people would bite, but then I kept increasing the letter grade. By the time we reached the end, there were probably 3 or 4 students that would say that they would rather take the class than get an A without attending. I would repeat the exercise after their first exam and the number would go down to one or two at most, plus the grade needed for all the others to bail out also went down.
If learning was their main concern, they would all have chosen to stay in the class.
That's not expressing a preference, that's revealing that your students are under economic pressure to make a living as quickly and efficiently as possible.
I imagine that you and the other instructors are under the same pressure, as is the university, and that this affects how instruction is structured.
Sadly, in a capitalistic society, the joy of learning must often take a back seat to productivity.
Agreed. Hence my point that as long as universities have a stronghold on credentials, they will survive just fine, even if AI-instruction somehow becomes a lot better than traditional instruction.
Also, they're young - you go to college aged 18-19. At that age, they're all still stupid, they don't anticipate that "when I go into a real job I will need to know this stuff, I can't just look it up and wing it when I need to" because they don't realise that work problems won't be a simple "this is just like the exam question". If you don't know what you're doing, you don't even know what to look up when the thing won't do what it's supposed to do.
So "hey I can get the grade without having to study or sit the exam? great bargain!" sounds good to them, because they're used to "school means grinding for grades" and not "I am learning useful and interesting knowledge".
What you say is true. Most people would also rather eat ice cream than salad, and would rather watch TV than workout.
We know that human interaction improves learning dramatically. Stroke patients improve dramatically faster when their training (grab this-grab that) is performed by an attractive member of the opposite sex. It seems unlikely that AI will be able to achieve the same level of performance until they can create a realtime persona that interacts one-on-one with each student, while teaching. (eventual perhaps but hardly imminent)
I'm not sure that stroke patients wanting to impress and receive praise from someone attractive generalises to 'human interaction improves learning'. (It may do, but I need more).
A hypothesis that I find troubling but can't rule out is that there are a lot of students who struggle to interact formally with other people, perhaps especially because those people are teachers. They might do better interacting with AI. This would be similar to people turning to AI chatbots instead of personal relationships (in fact, if true there's probably a large overlap in the groups).
I think if you’ve ever raised babies that the level of attention and almost certainly learning does rise dramatically with laughter and excitation. In fact I would say that it’s clear even from introspection that one forms stronger memories in an excited state.
Yes I completely agree about that. What I wish I was more sure about is the intrinsic link between excitement and interest, and human interaction.
I don't know, I think we'll still need some place to keep children together, and some adult will have to watch over them. Maybe AI could work as caretakers as well, but at that point it seems less about what AI can do, but more about what parents will allow AI to do.
Although if you restrict their work strictly to teaching knowledge, I think the answer is yes, a lot of them will be replaced.
The capital City of Barbados is named "Bridgetown". Quoting wikipedia:
> when the British arrived, one of the few traces of indigenous pre-existence on the island was a primitive bridge constructed over the Careenage area's swamp at the centre of Bridgetown. [...] Upon finding the structure, the British settlers began to call what is now the Bridgetown area Indian Bridge.
> Eventually after 1654 when a new bridge was constructed over the Careenage by the British, the area became known as The Town of Saint Michael and later as Bridgetown, after Sir Tobias Bridge.
So it's called Bridgetown, there was a bridge before the town, but the name comes from Sir Tobias Bridge.
Goodenough Island was named after Commodore James Graham Goodenough rather than due to people's opinion of the island.
See also: the Heaviside function, which is "heavy" on one side of the y-axis and zero on the other.
And the "pointing" vector which describes the directional energy flux is named after John Henry Poynting.
There's also a Killing vector.
An example of this kind of thing I like is the "western blot," used for detecting specific proteins. It's named in analogy with the Southern blot (used for DNA) which is named after Edwin Southern.
Reminds me of my college. The first four dorms that were built on the campus were arranged in a square. They're named after the cardinal directions but they were built at different times. The first two were East and West dorms, later followed by North dorm (which was built directly north of East). This is why the last dorm built is known as 'South' despite being located in the northwest corner.
Sometimes names are descriptive of the thing and sometimes they're descriptive of the people who named the thing. In South Dorm's case, it's descriptive of a polity that can't think very far ahead.
Budapest, the capital of Hungary, has three main train stations, named after cardinal directions.
"Eastern" is to the East
"Western" is to the North
"Southern" is to the West
A semi-classic of French cooking is the "chaud-froid de poulet" (chicken hot-cold). Its popularity has certainly waned in the last decades but it used to be frequently served at events because it's easy to make and serve at scale while still being somewhat fancy.
The dish consists of a piece of chicken (generally breast) poached in a hot spicy bouillon then chilled and served cold with a congealed white sauce.
It's named after its inventor, Mr Chaudfroid (Hotcold).
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OK, I'm cheating. It's just a minority theory (although it a legitimate one, supported by some authorities). But still, what a story Mark.
Funny. Thanks for sharing
The dammed stretch of the Colorado River (not that one) that runs through central Austin was originally and long called Town Lake, though few people knew it was not "Our Town Lake" but after a man named Town. Then the Kind of People Fond of Name Changes decided to rename it after Lady Bird Johnson. Lady Bird Lake. Which is cloying and she herself probably wouldn't have cared for it. I've actually heard she declined that while she lived. In any case, another lake in the same chain already honors LBJ.
There's a generational divide on who uses Town/Lady Bird.
Town Lake sounds charming to those of us familiar with the map skills section on the old Iowa Basic Skills tests.
The change was in recognition of Lady Bird's aid in securing the lakeside property as parkland.
I am sure her endorsement and connections helped (LBJ was a strong supporter of the river authority) but I understand the real force behind the effort was a woman named Roberta Crenshaw, incidentally the stepmother of golfer Ben Crenshaw.
Lady Bird to me has the distinction of having uttered probably the most interesting remark of any First Lady. It was when she left their little ranch out in the Hill Country and bought a house in west Austin, with a small driveway in the middle of which was a large madrone. Her daughter said she discouraged her mother from choosing this house, finding the small driveway/tree situation awkward.
Lady Bird replied: "I'm not buying the house, I'm buying the tree."
Madrones are beautiful trees indeed.
Oh, and Austin does have a Townes Street, named for Townes Van Zandt's great-grandfather.
Of New York City's many large bridges, the most distant from the city center is Outerbridge Crossing, connecting Staten Island and New Jersey. It's named after former Port Authority chairman Eugenius Outerbridge.
The Throg's Neck Bridge is named after a 17th-century local placename which in turn was a reference to an ancestor of mine, an Englishman named John Throckmorton.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Throckmorton_(settler)
[I am also descended from the Thomas Cornell mentioned there, as their children and grandchildren married each other in various combinations.]
The Throckmortons were/are an influential English clan that over the centuries had some interesting brushes with royal powers-that-be, including narrowly avoiding liquidation over the "trying to blow up the Queen and Parliament" unpleasantness in 1605.
https://medium.com/@PaultheFossil/by-paul-botts-7f825c0bf4a8#bdd4
If they were still trying to blow up the Queen in 1605, I feel that it's no wonder they decided to emigrate - she had been dead for two years by then and the new monarch was James I and VI 😁
That's wonderful. I wonder if there's an effect like the one SA references, surname/occupation determinism (forget what he calls it) - but with more intention on the part of the namers perhaps.
Nominative determinism is what you were thinking of
They should name the bridge "The Town Bridge" just for fun. Extra points if they name it after Townes Van Zandt.
Kisangani 2150: Homo Ludens Rising
Links for downloadable copies:
Academia.edu: https://www.academia.edu/128483421/Kisangani_2150_Homo_Ludens_Rising_A_Working_Paper
ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/390272509_Kisangani_2150_Homo_Ludens_Rising
SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5197282
Abstract: The advancement of AI offers us the choice between contrasting paradigms for organizing human life: Homo Economicus (where work is the defining activity) and Homo Ludens (where play is the defining activity). Drawing on Johan Huizinga's work and Kim Stanley Robinson’s speculative fiction, I propose that humanity faces a critical juncture as AI increasingly dominates economic production. The document develops a theoretical framework for a “Fourth Arena” of existence—beyond matter, life, and human culture—that emerges through human-AI interaction. Through speculative narrative (first section) and philosophical dialogue with Claude 3.7 (second and third sections), I argue that play, rather than economic utility, will become the defining characteristic of human value and meaning in an automated future. As AI systems assume utilitarian functions, humanity's capacity for non-instrumental play becomes increasingly central to our identity and contribution. The manuscript represents preliminary work toward a larger project titled The Fourth Arena: Homo Ludens Rising, which envisions play as the essential bridge into a post-economic society where human flourishing transcends productivity-based value systems.
Introduction
This document consists of material I’m working on for the closing chapters of a book-in-progress: Welcome to the Fourth Arena: Homo Ludens Rising. The book is based on an article I published in 3 Quarks Daily: Welcome to the Fourth Arena – The World is Gifted. Here’s how that article opens:
"The First Arena is that of inanimate matter, which began when the universe did, fourteen billion years ago. About four billion years ago life emerged, the Second Arena. Of course we’re talking about our local region of the universe. For all we know life may have emerged in other regions as well, perhaps even earlier, perhaps more recently. We don’t know. The Third Arena is that of human culture. We have changed the face of the earth, have touched the moon and the planets, and are reaching for the stars. That happened between two and three million years ago, the exact number hardly matters. But most of the cultural activity is little more than 10,000 years old.
"The question I am asking: Is there something beyond culture, something just beginning to emerge? If so, what might it be?"
After running through the first three Arenas, I go on to ask: I go on to ask: “What kind of beings will arise in the Fourth Arena?” I suggest:
"I suppose the obvious proposal is actual real artificial intelligence, or perhaps superintelligence. I don’t think so. That fact that no one really knows what those things might be does not, I suppose, disqualify them as denizens of the Fourth Arena, for I am proposing a future with radically new beings. How could be possibly understand what they might be?"
I’m still a bit mystified.
This document is an attempt to deal with that mystification. I’m not going to solve the mystery – for life isn’t a mystery to be solved – but perhaps I can begin transforming it. Transforming – From what? To what? For the sake of argument let’s say I’m transforming it from deep, impenetrable, and unutterable mystery to, shall we say, a tractable mystery, something which we can enter and thereby arrive at new understandings of ourselves and our relationship with the world.
I’ve organized this document has three sections. The first section, “Homo Ludens ushers us into the Fourth Arena to the Fourth Arena,” is a preview of the final chapter in the book. It gives hints about the nature of future technology and about the change in values that will be needed to flourish with that technology. The next two sections of the document say more about those issues. These sections take the form of dialogues I have had with Anthropic’s Claude 3.7 Sonata. The second section, “Discussion with Claude about digital doppelgangers,” is about the kind of technology that I see emerging in the next century while the third section, “Discussion with Claude about values, work vs. play,” is about how we will have to rethink how we live. I plan to devote chapters in the book to each of those subjects.
With recent headlines about DOGE looking at the Department of Education, I've seen a lot of passionate social media info posts from teacher friends, along with a few defending potential cuts.
After reviewing the posts, I'm confused about how American public schools are funded.
Liberal talking point: Schools are funded by zip code, and this is inherently inequitable, because poorer zip codes get less funding.
Conservative talking point: Notably poor and under-performing districts, like Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, etc spend more money per-pupil than their state average. (I used to live in Maryland, and did some research to confirm this is indeed true for Baltimore County schools.)
I'm not sure how to reconcile both statements. Do poor districts have access to a pool of non-local money? Or are they going into massive amounts of debt to fund that level of spending? I directly asked a few teacher friends that question, but they declined to answer.
School districts are not limited to just property tax funding from their zip code and can get funding from many other sources like the city, the county, the state, etc. It is well documented that many failing inner city poor districts spend far more per student than much higher performing suburban more wealthy districts. Often the difference in funding per student is so massive that it is hard for people to believe.
This is why the idea that failing schools "need more money" has been so well debunked. We have tried giving these failing schools more money for decades, in fact much more, without success. The money spent on a child's eduction is simply not an indication of that child's educational success.
A minor clarification: Baltimore City and Baltimore County are different school districts. The County is much wealthier than the City, with much better school performance.
They are both oversimplifying. I live in Michigan, and schools are funded through a combination of local, state and federal dollars. Exactly how much is receive via each source varies by district, because each funding source is managed independently.
Here's a powerpoint explaining how state school funding works in Michigan: https://sfa.senate.michigan.gov/departments/datacharts/dck12_schoolfundingbasics.pdf
As you can see, it's extremely complex. That doesn't even take into account federal funding, which has it's own formulas. I think it's possible that, for example, inner city schools receive more total funding because they serve impoverished students and other target demographics, like minorities. So total funding can vary by district.
As for conservative talking points, it isn't valid to point at per student funding and then claim that more spending doesn't work because those students perform more poorly. That gets the causal direction backwards: it would be more accurate to say that students get more money because they historically perform poorly. It's an attempt to help them overcome barriers and challenges they face outside the classroom, which affects their ability to learn. The argument is that this helps them integrate into the economy, so ultimately the cost to society is reduced.
> That gets the causal direction backwards: it would be more accurate to say that students get more money because they historically perform poorly. It's an attempt to help them overcome barriers and challenges they face outside the classroom, which affects their ability to learn.
And, it should be stressed, this doesn't work *at all.* It is nearly entirely waste.
Even publicly-funded-and-attended education in toto does essentially nothing on this front. Greg Clark looks at social mobility over time in several papers and in his book The Son Also Rises. He compares Sweden, the UK, and the USA, with educational systems ranging from “fully state funded even at the college level” to regimes where private education is increasingly more prevalent among high status parents in the UK and USA. But does it actually boot the parents spending $45k a year at private schools in the USA? It does not - it neither slows regression to the mean nor ensures higher status for that generation of children.
There are also essentially no changes in persistence rate across very significant social and educational changes. In Sweden and the UK, moving to state funded, high quality schools being free to everyone of any status caused ZERO change in persistence rates, in either high or low status lineages. The persistence rates stayed doggedly on their hundred-plus-years trend.
That's not a problem with education, however, that's a problem with the economy. Less to do with academic performance than employer preferences. Still, inner city school children generally end up *under employed* rather than chronically unemployed, which is how they would end up otherwise, so overall productivity is still protected.
The problem with that argument is that it doesn't have much data to support it. I recently saw a study which used military reassignment as a source of exogenous randomization between school districts. Moving to a richer school district had a very modest effect on learning. Studies like this always point in the same direction: genetics matter far more than environment for almost everything we care about.
Actually, it points to the hypothesis that children's academic performance is affected by environmental factors outside the classroom--esp during the first 6 years of life (for obvious reasons). Children do not learn from studies, they learn from life experiences, and if their studies are congruent with the rest of their life experiences, they can integrate that into long term memory and retain them.
How does it point to that? An RCT which produces a minimal effect isn't evidence that something else produces a larger effect.
It actually points at nothing. Based only on your description, it sounds like a field study where they focused on one specific dimension of environment change (the school) but ignored all the others (everything else). But we know that moving from a lower to a higher social class environment has many strong positive and negative effects on people.
The instrumental variable they used was zip code wealth IIRC.
Does anyone know what the correlation is between per-pupil spending and test scores? It’d be great to see a chart of per-pupil school spending to test scores. I know one school district that spent about $25,000 per year on each pupil and had horrible test scores. Meanwhile, there was a private school nearby that was half the price and had much higher test scores. For this particular instance, this was likely due to the fact that the private school was filled with children of parents who were highly educated. But I'd like to see this with a sample size of greater than 2.
I wouldn't necessary expect it to be very high. Standardized tests have well known validity problems, and the teaching profession actively discourages "teaching to the test", which will reduce the relationship. Also, federal and state funding are mostly directed toward attempting to help under-performing children from falling too far behind, not toward helping the average student perform better. That's why students from well educated families would perform better even without the extra funding.
> Standardized tests have well known validity problems
Would you mind expanding on this a bit? I'm curious what validity problems, and how those are quantified. Thank you!
> Does anyone know what the correlation is between per-pupil spending and test scores?
Essentially zero.
https://imgur.com/a/q22ntMV
Oh wow. And at the state/country level, the correlation is -0.04
I recently saw a study which used military reassignment as a source of exogenous randomization between school districts. Moving to a richer school district had a very modest effect on learning. I don't remember what the correlation was but it was small. A 1 SD increase in neighborhood wealth led to something like a 0.1 SD increase in test scores IIRC. And that's probably an overestimate because some of that effect is coming from interacting with smarter peers, not just from spending more per pupil.
https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/is-the-conventional-wisdom-on-educational
If you are interested, there is info re funding of CA schools here - you can compare by district. https://www.ed-data.org/ But CA funding is not necessarily representative of funding elsewhere, because, as I understand it, it is less tied to local property taxes than in some places. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serrano_v._Priest
OTOH, official funding doesn't include those things provided by the PTA and similar groups. And that funding strongly tends to be larger in wealthier areas.
True, but that only makes much of a difference at very affluent schools. (If the whole district is affluent, they simply raise property taxes) And, many district require that money raised at affluent schools be shared with other schools.
> If the whole district is affluent, they simply raise property taxes
Not in California, where property tax increases have been banned since 1978.
That is an overstatement. https://oaklandside.org/2021/04/26/college-and-career-pathways-oakland-schools-measure/
Note that that was a parcel tax, not a property tax (which is banned by Prop 13). Local districts do often pass parcel taxes, since it's the closest they can legally get to a property tax.
I lived in a district that tried mightily to privately make up the gap (there would have been no gap, the district would have been rolling in money, but a court long ago set up a mechanism by which wealthy districts send 40% or more of their ad valorem tax revenue to "property-poor" districts; people tended to be surprised that this mostly very well-off district, well-known for its athletics, didn't even have a pool for its high school swimmers).
They would have galas and donation pleas, and each year would announce that they had managed to fund a couple of FTEs or similar, at a couple of campuses, maybe save Latin from the chopping block another year.
They didn't fund anything like band or athletics; parents paid fees for all that.
It really didn't amount to much, but was more a demonstration that - this is a district where the parents care, a metric of - something.
A friend of mine lived downtown and sent her kids to the very old cool school building that had once been bustling but obviously was now much reduced - this was well before the influx of vertical housing construction downtown, but in any case I don't think many children have been part of that return to downtown.
She was such a good liberal, it warmed her heart to see her child attending that school. She was the room mom. At the end of the year, she tried to collect a gift for the teacher. (Perhaps she should have realized that a few of the parents of these children might have intended little inexpensive gifts of their own, which a money gift pre-empts.) She collected $3 and found this so depressing she gave up on her dream; eventually her kids attended a private school that currently runs you $42,000/yr.
School funding in the US is typically a mix of different sources. Schools are partly funded locally, which leads to the situation your liberal friends are describing. There’s also state and federal money involved but the structure of that setup varies widely by state.
In many cases, state and local funding can make up for the locally generated inequities, so that poorer school districts can end up with more money than richer ones.
The conservative talking point has merit insofar as the relationship between spending and outcomes is very muddy AFAIK. It’s hard to spend your way out of problems that don’t originate in a lack of funding in schools.
A real part of the problem is that poorer communities have more antagonism towards ALL official bodies than wealthier communities. This translates into, among other things, more vandalism. Thus higher expenses.
I don't see a real way around this. The poor ARE more mistreated by officials. They are less powerful, and have less recourse to assistance when abused. So of course they're going to distrust those with power over them. And the children understand the way their parents feel.
This inherently means that services in poor communities are more expensive to operate.
Are you saying that the budgetary disparity between schools in poor and wealthy areas is canceled out by the expense of repairing vandalism? That strains credibility for me
Certainly more money is spent on security, and on ancillary services, in lower income areas.
I think that this is less of a problem than all the environmental challenges poor people face outside the school. Children learn best when surrounded by institutional resources that support them, esp, in and around the home. This varies significantly by economic class.
I want to apply to MATS (ML Alignment & Theory Scholars), probably the Governance track.
Anyone here who wants to discuss the different tracks/streams or work on applications together? Right now I am a PHD student in bioinformatics, with a Master in CS.
Berlin time zone, but I can make most time zones work especially on the weekends.
I might be interested; I came to the comments to ask for information about MATS. It’s not clear to me what the selection criteria actually are (aside from being 18+ years old).
Disclaimer: I’m an aerospace engineer with only hobby-level knowledge of CS and ML, in Brussels time zone.
Edit: I’m uncertain what’s a good way to get in touch without posting personal info here.
My email is already included in the meetuplist: benschm9542 [at] gmail [dot] com
What does everyone think of the Substack app? I honestly would rather use the web browser. I can't do keyword searches in the app, and the comment threads, as imperfect as they are, seem eaiser to view in the browser.
Once in a while I download it.If I only have my phone available and get a DM it's not possible to see DMs from the browser on my phone, and that's when I download the stoopit app. But I delete the app right after I read my DM, because it is so irritating to use for just reading articles and comments. It's horrible. There are basic things I have not figured out how to do on it. I haven't tried very hard to, but in a decent app the way to do those things would be easy and obvious.
I use it to keep track of blogs I'm following, but it is slightly annoying to read individual pieces compared to just using the browser
I like it for reading on my iPad.
I deleted it after a few days of frustrating attempts to use it. One of the worst apps I've ever encountered.
I use the browser. The web app itself is better but then you also get bookmarks, open in new tab, back/forward buttons and all the other great browser features.
On Saturday, I’m hosting a picnic on the Boston Common to raise awareness & support for AIDS relief. There’s a big protest scheduled for that day, and I want those protesters to get fired up about saving PEPFAR. From an EA perspective, PEPFAR is one of the cheapest & most scalable ways to save lives. Republicans, Democrats, and Independents from the ACX community are all welcome to join us :)
https://partiful.com/e/6MT5uPZDzIJLFJwm0YiX
The partiful link got flooded by bots, causing the web page to crash. So you won't be able to RSVP using the link above, but you're still welcome to join us on the Boston Common on Saturday at 11am. We'll be the ones with the signs that read, "Save PEPFAR. Crush HIV."
No TINACBNIEAC note for a prediction-focused event having ticket prices of $fivethirtyeight.org? (and RIP, but at least Nate Silver still blogs...)
In this case I think it's not so much kabbalistic as a deliberate reference though.
I now know 5 people who are negatively affected by DOGE-related changes. I’m curious about whether others here are seeing this much impact on people in their immediate social circle. Here are the circumstances of my 5.
Young woman with joint hypermobility recently began having multiple disabling symptoms and got genetic testing to determine what form of Ehrlen-Danlos she has. Turns out she has not Ehrlen-Danlos, but a different, very rare, mutation that causes both hypermobility and a number of other abnormalities, some of them pretty damn grim. She located a center that does treatment of kids and young adults with rare disorders, while also doing research on the disorders. She and her family put a great deal of effort into applying for treatment at the center, gathering her medical records from 10+ specialists and getting genetic testing of some of her relatives. I am pretty sure the center would have accepted her as a patient. But they recently contacted her to tell her their government funding has been cut and they are not able to take any new patients.
Man in his second year of work for NIH, doing highly technical research on a certain class of disorders, and also inventing statistical methods for analyzing data related to those disorders. He chose to do this sort of work rather than much better-paying jobs his degree and math smarts qualified him for. He likes his NIH job and his colleagues, and believes his work makes a difference in treatment of the disorders he studies. I suppose there are people who work for the government who are just coasting, but this guy couldn’t be less like that. He gets so intent on solving various statistical puzzles that he sometimes chooses to keep working on one all evening or most of the weekend. OK, so very recently some DOGE agents came to his building and fired a few people for small technical infractions. One person was fired for not taking his badge with him when he went to the bathroom. The guy I know actually saw some of the firings.
Trans man who completed his surgeries several years ago and comes across as unambiguously male in both appearance and manner. He will need to renew his passport soon, and according to new policy it must list his gender as female. He’s pretty calm and laid back about the trans thing, and could deal with just explaining to officials at the airport of our big liberal city that he is a trans guy. However the place he visits, in Asia, is not tolerant of trans or gay people, and he is worried about how things will play out there. His parents are immigrants from that country, and he travels there to see elderly relatives he’s quite close to. He can’t solve the problem by dressing, etc, as a woman. He’s fully male in appearance and voice and can’t look convincingly female. (Anyone inclined to shrug off his difficulties because they imagine him to be irritating, adolescent, entitled, whiny, etc. about trans matters? You should meet this guy — he rolls his eyes about that stuff as much as you do.)
Grad student in a hard science field aiming to complete her dissertation next year. Just found out that because funding has been cut she will have to be a teaching assistant next year, rather than be paid for the work she does for and with faculty on research projects. She is on the autistic spectrum, shy, with poor people skills. She was extremely stressed by the teaching she did during one earlier term when circumstances forced her to be a TA. Another problem is that there are now fewer
post doc positions open in her field. And some people who got post doc offers have had them
rescinded.
Man from another country who came to the US for grad school, got a PhD, and immediately began work at a high-paying job requiring his technical skills. Has held this job for 18 mos. Also recently married an American citizen. Thought he had a good chance of getting a green card this spring at the next round of something-or-other (I do not understand the ins and outs of obtaining citizenship). But has been told that all processing has slowed way down, and he is now concerned that he will not get the green card by September, and because of (something or other I do not understand) he will have to stop working at his present job as of then. He is afraid that if that happens he will be replaced at his job.
Weird update: Someone I know has a close friend who works at an agency that manages a class of things that could cause pretty significant destruction of people and property if something went awry. DOGE fired a bunch of people at the agency recently, and acquaintance's friend's job makes it possible for them to access everything needed to reinstate employees -- keys, codes, paychecks, whatever. It does not, though, give the person authority to do that. But what the person did after the layoff was reinstate one or more employees who are the agency's experts on certain safety-related things.
Apparently the reinstatements must be done quite quickly, before DOGE erases certain records.
Kind of heartening to hear. Though disheartening in that it's evidence that DOGE is not even smashing and destroying things in a smart way. Why fire the agency's only experts on what you do if X fails or is sabotaged and now Y cannot be fully controlled? And if you're going to fire people, why not learn enough about the system to make sure you're firings can't just be reversed? Fucking dumbass bullies.
Update: My friend's entire team just got RIF'ed. Most people he knows at work were laid off. It's utterly senseless destruction.
> I’m curious about whether others here are seeing this much impact on people in their immediate social circle.
I don't know many people so I'm a bad person to ask, but even just limited to my immediate family and uncles and cousins, I've heard
* Two people who worked in government but recently retired just before the apocalypse
* One college graduate who had a "dream job" lined up for government (atmospheric science) who is presumably now screwed.
* One person who said they had a wildfire prevention grant for their property in the works for years that will now be canceled.
* One person who lives in a rural red town and complained that the closure of the local BLM office will likely crash the local economy.
Friend of the family was suddenly worried about losing a job he'd just started after looking hard for about a year (I think). We had a long conversation one weekend about what he could do to avoid termination. My advice was "don't look like the swamp". He ended up losing it anyway in the blanket directive to fire everyone probational. I'm now hearing rumors that he might get it back, but I don't yet know.
GF was telecommuting four days out of five. Now she gets one day out of ten. I can easily say she wasn't goofing off (she did good enough work to be offered a promotion, turned it down because she didn't want to be a supervisor, and ends up serving as a mentor on occasion).
I work as a contractor on some government project. No effect. (I'm used to being easy to fire.)
Overall, I'd say we're coping. We had a brief talk about what we might do if either of us lost our job, and we concluded we won't be screwed.
I'm vaguely concerned for the local economy. A big part of me thinks this was a long time coming, and would be worse the longer it was put off. I truly believe our federal government is horribly bloated. Complaints about the crowding, the Legion Bridge adding 30-60 minutes to everyone's commute, the ailing and sometimes lethal Metro, etc. are numerous and have been around for decades. So that part of me welcomes the downsize. That same part recognizes how much mess will be involved in transition. A lot of former- and soon-former-federal workers are going to have to move; as they do, the support industries will have to shed workers as well. Senior, middle, staff, from multiple sectors. Thousands of people.
It's pretty easy for people to criticize DOGE; I think it's also easy to forget how thick and suffocating the bureaucracy is here. This is a bandage that needed to be ripped off; lawmakers argued rightly that it would be painful, and asked for time, and in that time, they'd just slap more bandages on. So now someone's ripping all the bandages off and now other people are yelling about the pain, pointing at parts of it that were obviously dumb, and that they nevertheless weren't willing to support dismantling less painfully.
So, here's the pain. It sucks. I hope it'll get better soon, and thousands of people will find work that's valuable rather than wasteful.
> I think it's also easy to forget how thick and suffocating the bureaucracy is here.
As Scott observed, mass firing people doesn't actually solve bureaucracy - in fact, it just makes it worse.
There's a thread on DSL that discusses how Scott's observation was flawed in multiple ways.
https://www.datasecretslox.com/index.php/topic,13085.0.html
Among the ways I can think of, one is that the disruption is short term only. Maybe forms don't get processed as fast or smoothly, but then sensible people notice that in many cases, the forms aren't necessary. Or even that the service isn't necessary. Or that it's valuable, but capable of being done by a private institution - assuming of course that there's no government regulation barring anyone from forming it other than the government (cf. the Biden plan for bringing internet access to rural areas).
One wonders how efficiently PEPFAR could be operated if it was on the direct dime of the people in favor of it.
Scott's post explicitly talked about cases where there were regulations. Removing the people responsible for helping people comply with regulations doesn't remove the regulations themselves.
One important missing factor here is whether the people responsible for enforcing regulations are also removed. If they are, then people could save resources spent otherwise on compliance.
This may or may not be a bad thing, depending on what the regulations are protecting. Some regulations protect against future harm to society; some protect some special interest; the text of a regulation will not make this clear, by design. It's also not always clear which type of regulations are holding an industry back the most. ISTR Scott mostly assumed the regulations were of the former type; whether he did or not, it's not a safe assumption to make.
The problem is that the fact that a regulation is not currently being enforced does not mean it is safe to violate it. Perhaps it will start being enforced retroactively in four years. Or perhaps you'll accidentally say something that offends Trump and he'll enforce the regulations tomorrow against *you* only.
I was fired by DOGE and am now working for a contractor on the exact same team on the exact same project, but costing the taxpayer more money.
The whole thing makes me so angry I could spit.
You are angry about making more money?
Believe it or not, I actually strongly believe in the work that my group was doing and in the excellence of my teammates. I also believe in the government serving the American people in the most efficient and effective way possible.
When DOGE first started, I held out hope that they were going to actually try to make this happen, but they are either incompetent at this mission or have other goals.
But you won’t get a special government job pension anymore right? The pension (among other cozy benefits) is the *true* driver of costs in the long term. Your contract is also much easier to terminate in the future than it was before.
Overall kicking the can down the road by pretending gov workers cost less than they do is a big source of the current problems.
No, but I was a term-limited employee, so not really in the pension game and not subject to the same civil service protections. Understanding that and acting accordingly would have contradicted DOGE's playbook though.
"There's nothing more permanent than a temporary government program"
What % of 'term-limited' employees don't end up becoming permanent afterwards?
They would have to get hired into a new position. Many of my colleagues did this at the end of their term (into another part of gov't), but It's not like the position itself can get made permanent.
Hm... so... it is true that a lot of the 'term-limited' people do end up going into 'permanent' state eventually?
Yeah I expect DOGE to be very efficient at generating waste, fraud, and abuse, and result in significant net increase of government spending and deficit.
Heck, even destroying the IRS alone will increase deficits by orders of magnitude more than all the supposed savings.
I wonder if that’s the actual goal. Why pay 10% or whatever piddling rate Musk pays when he can pay 0.
My immediate social circle is too small to involve anybody in anything, but a relative though not a government employee himself has a large professional acquaintance that includes many gov't employees at all levels, federal, state, municipal.
He was dismayed that a friend of his was laid off from the agency colloquially known as "Fish". There was plenty of deadwood at that agency that he'd have seen gone instead. That the agency would be better off without regardless of budget concerns. That have lost interest in the mission, while keeping an interest in any process that ends with the word "no" or sometimes with radio silence. (If you can get them to answer the phone ...) But the friend was probationary (having turned to government employ as people do sometimes mid-career, for stability or other reasons) and thus in that laid-off group.
I *think* he mentioned that he's now been reinstated, but will doublecheck.
Someone else he knew took a buyout, forgot which agency; and appeared happy about it.
I confirmed that he did get rehired, but in the meantime he’d gotten another job in the private sector, so his last act after being rehired was to resign (did this to get back pay or something, or maybe for the record or to get the language changed to reflect that it was not in fact his performance that prompted the layoff).
"But the friend was probationary (having turned to government employ as people do sometimes mid-career, for stability or other reasons) and thus in that laid-off group."
Yeah, "last in first out" is the general rule, the unions are very strong on protecting people who are full-time/long-term in the job. And probationers are easier to justify firing as they can be claimed to lack the experience and knowledge that long-term employees have, plus it is generally in their contracts that they can be let go during the probationary period without it counting as unfair dismissal (with exceptions).
https://www.davidsonmorris.com/last-in-first-out/
Yes - just in this case, the practice resulted in laying off the guy who would easily be in the top 2 or three in his field, knowledge-wise (also passion-wise, but I guess you can't expect an algorithm to know about that).
"OK, so very recently some DOGE agents came to his building and fired a few people for small technical infractions. One person was fired for not taking his badge with him when he went to the bathroom."
While I am sorry to hear that, that is unfortunately the kind of thing that *will* get you into trouble in any kind of government or public service job. You *can't* leave ID etc. out in the open where technically anyone could pick it up behind your back while you're "just popping out for five minutes". Same with leaving your PC unattended if you don't shut down any open windows/have everything closed down under password.
It sounds trivial, but security is a *big* deal for government/civil/public service work, even when it's not dealing with sensitive matters. This is why, back in the day with Hillary and her email server, all us former and current government minions realised exactly why this was a Big Freakin' Deal when everyone else was going "oh come on, it's just emails".
If this is the first time it happened/first time the guy got a warning, I'd be very surprised to hear he got fired. If, however, there's a string of "small infractions" on his record, e.g. the guy has a habit of leaving his ID behind when he goes to the bathroom, gets a coffee and so on then yeah, three strikes you're out. But this should be open to appeal through the grievance/disciplinary process for the job.
So we should definitely expect anyone involved in a text-thread where classified strikes on a foreign country were being discussed to get booted, right?
I was about to say this, but you beat me to it, well done!
"I'd be very surprised to hear he got fired"
You just heard he got fired.
That is why I said that had I heard about this as a first time offence, I would have been very surprised since there are generally established disciplinary procedures where you have to escalate to written warnings.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/29/1400.735-60
Since he was fired off the bat, either more was going on than we've heard, or it really is surprising that the entire process was avoided.
> the entire process was avoided.
That's DOGE's entire shtick. They're taking a "kill everyone and let god sort them out" approach to government, ignoring common sense, laws and sometimes even court orders in the process.
I keep forgetting you don't live here and have no idea what's going on in this country right now.
I assure you, as an NIH researcher, that this is absolutely ridiculous. Outside of dual-use or direct national security research, it's inconceivable that a standard researcher at any time since the NIH's founding would even be chastised for leaving their ID to go to the bathroom, much less have a formal notice, much less be fired. This is an absolutely massive overstep. It not only has made it clear that they are coming in with indiscriminate hostility but also that the vibe has turned from the last few months' "somewhat-hopeful air of fear" to the current "batten down the hatches and save what you can".
You take government money, you live by government rules. I've had to deal with 55 page Service Level Agreements, as we get funding from a government department to provide services, that involves seven pages of tedious literal box-ticking about all the Acts, Regulations, Codes of Practice, and Statutory Obligations we are supposed to be aware of, in compliance with, and applying in our day-to-day running of the service.
Here's a direct excerpt and link about cybersecurity:
"Cyber Security Awareness
The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), in conjunction with the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer (OGCIO), have developed a Cyber Security Baseline Standard for Government ICT. The Baseline Standards are intended to create an acceptable security standard and form a broad framework for a set of measures which can be revised over time.
The Standards model follows a holistic and comprehensive approach to the issues related to Cyber Security, which combines the best of various standards to address the needs of key stakeholders.
It is expected that all Provider organisations will be aware of these standards as set out in the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications document, Public Sector Cyber Security Baseline Standards https://www.gov.ie/en/publication/d1fd5-cyber-security-baseline-standards/"
and
"I confirm that I have complied with the Data Protection Act 2018
Note: With regard to Data Protection, Data Sharing and the EU General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2016/679) (the GDPR) legislation, Providers shall comply with all relevant legislative provisions and obligations thereunder, in particular, but not limited to Data Processing Agreements, Data Sharing Agreements and Data Protection Impact Assessments where applicable and/or as required by the Executive."
Leaving your card in the terminal might be a bit of a naughty-naughty for data protection, eh?
I'm very sorry (not) for the guys who never had to deal with this tedious admin stuff as it was for the low-level clerical workers, but as I said - this kind of security is basic "sit through a video training session, take the online test, get your certificate that you know to wash your hands after using the bathroom*" training that HR should have organised for them. If they're careless and sloppy after that, it's on their heads. If they never got that training, it's on the heads of HR/their superiors.
* I am not joking, we had to do an online hand hygiene course as one training session.
Look, I assure you that I agree that the government has the right to impose their standards, given the employment contracts we’ve entered into. We *have* all sat through uncountable trainings about many things, including this. It is ungodly how many trainings we have to sit through, and how frequently we have to attend refreshers.
But there are some things that are technically broadly applicable but in practice only applied where they make sense. This is true of all workplaces. For instance, we are not allowed to use personal USBs in government computers, or government USBs in personal computers. This is obviously completely unworkable for people who are constantly transferring large quantities of innocuous data around, including working on it on personal computers at home. We’re simply not centrifuging nuclear material, and the price isn’t worth it. We do follow many more rules and regulations than if we were working on similar research in similar positions at universities - VPNs, travel restrictions, higher animal care standards, increased documentation, etc.. But there are some things that are genuinely undue burdens that destroy healthy working culture, and firing someone if they leave their badge plugged into their computer while they go to the bathroom is one of them.
And it’s ridiculous to say that we’re now held to the tedious admin stuff standard of low-level clerical workers. To the best of my knowledge (rumors), many of the people fired were low-level clerical workers. Researchers have been held to the same standards as admin workers with additional standards relating to non-admin tasks.
"And it’s ridiculous to say that we’re now held to the tedious admin stuff standard of low-level clerical workers"
Ding-ding-ding! There we have it: "I'm Too Important for this, I'm not one of the Little People"! You may not have intended to come across as an entitled snob but that's how it sounds to us low-level types who have to provide the support to you guys.
Re: working at home and transferring data for work, yeah funnily enough I do that too. And there are rules about how to do it. But then again, I'm only a low-level clerical worker, not a Big Important Galaxy Brain Researcher. Weird how I can handle basic data security, innit?
"But there are some things that are genuinely undue burdens that destroy healthy working culture, and firing someone if they leave their badge plugged into their computer while they go to the bathroom is one of them."
Y'know, I used to wonder about all the Chinese spy stories I read, but this kind of example makes it all a lot more intelligible to me now. The hackers don't even have to try, do they? "Hey Qifeng, I'm just going to the bathroom, keep an eye on my email for me, okay? My card is plugged in, so you'll have no trouble accessing it!" 😁
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/02/23/china-made-medical-devices-are-all-over-us-and-the-feds-are-worried.html
https://www.csis.org/programs/strategic-technologies-program/survey-chinese-espionage-united-states-2000
You’re clearly commenting in bad faith. As John mentions, I was repeating your own verbiage and saying that there is no difference in the standards we have been or are held to.
I’d be happy to further discuss reasonable standards for data security for academic workers vs industry workers, and for public/innocuous data vs sensitive vs PII vs classified/etc. if you want, but that doesn’t seem like what this conversation is about to you.
He's literally repeating back your own verbiage to you and calling it ridiculous, saying that it's low level clerks that were affected and that everyone else were already held to the same standard
Then you quote it out of context and use it as some kind of gotcha that he's clearly looking down at you from his tall ivory tower
And you're so excited about this gotcha that you're referencing it in a different comment
(Edited: TWICE!)
I'm on board with the rest of what you're saying, but jesus christ, get over yourself
> For instance, we are not allowed to use personal USBs in government computers, or government USBs in personal computers. This is obviously completely unworkable for people who are constantly transferring large quantities of innocuous data around, including working on it on personal computers at home.
Why is that unworkable? In all of my jobs, I would have absolutely gotten disciplined and potentially fired if I transferred company data onto a personal machine (with some approved exceptions such as accessing company email from a personal device). If the device isn't managed by the company/government, how does anyone ensure the disk is encrypted so if the laptop is stolen out of a car, data isn't at risk? Or how does anyone ensure that when an employee is offboarded, the data is deleted?
On my first day of work at a new company I got chastised by my manager by leaving my machine unlocked when I went to the bathroom. I don't know if there was a written policy at the time, but it is not an unreasonable request. (Firing people for their first offense seems like a bad idea)
This sort of stuff is information security 101. All the companies I've worked at have also have software running to detect improper behavior such as copying files onto USBs and intrusion detection systems to detect any hacking. I'm very concerned, but I guess shouldn't be surprised that our government systems don't have these safeguards.
"In all of my jobs, I would have absolutely gotten disciplined and potentially fired if I transferred company data onto a personal machine (with some approved exceptions such as accessing company email from a personal device).
...On my first day of work at a new company I got chastised by my manager by leaving my machine unlocked when I went to the bathroom."
Ah but Fluorescent, we are only low-level clerical workers, it is ridiculous to hold the Big Brains to the same tedious standards as we minions 😁
That's why I think there's more going on than "they just swooped in and fired the guy for nothing at all", at the least a pattern of such behaviour and who knows what else?
>how does anyone ensure the disk is encrypted so if the laptop is stolen out of a car, data isn't at risk?
That’s the neat thing, it isn’t. That’s what I was talking about with innocuous data. The vast majority of data handled at the NIH is a) either already publicly accessible or intended to be publicly accessible, or b) subject to FOIA requests, such that the public can request it if desired. Much higher standards are followed when it comes to even private data, much less actually sensitive data like PII. The handling structures are entirely different, but the prohibition of personal and governmental devices commingling still exists even for entirely public data on computers that only contain entirely public data.
Here’s an example. I can generate several terabytes of microscopy data pretty easily. All of this data is either useless stuff I’ll sort out or stuff that will be included as public data in any paper I publish (all of which will be public and freely accessible). As an academic researcher, I’m expected to continue working on my data at home outside of work hours, and do. My options for transferring this data to my private computer to do so are: a) not uploading it to the cloud and downloading it, because 1) that would be incredibly slow and 2) it’s impossible because storage limits on our cloud services are a terabyte or 2 each, b) not transferring it to my government laptop, because it both can’t handle the hardware requirements and can’t have the software I need downloaded, or c) plugging my government USB storage into my personal computer, and actually doing the work. That’s the one that’s going to win, and academic researchers at a university don’t even have to think about it.
Someone taking accounting spreadsheets home would be weird, and admin are held to higher standards in that way. And no researcher would think of putting PII on their home computer. For researchers at least, it’s simply necessary to break that rule.
I think that part of it is in response to the recent protests that NIH researchers have (unwisely) engaged led and got news coverage. https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/5183631-protest-trump-cuts-nih-research/ https://www.thesentinel.com/communities/protestors-rally-at-nih-against-doge-cuts/video_ba38d0f2-b88e-4ad1-b718-906dc9b7708a.html This is an administration where they are actively looking for dissenters to purge, rather than trying to make people happy. Point is, this is unprecedented, definitely political, and with the intention of weakening the presence of anti-MAGA political factions within the government.
My dear, dear friend:
>>security is a *big* deal for government/civil/public service work
ha, ha,.... ha, ha, & ha.
It is for the low-level minions. Which is why I'm not weeping softly about the angry protests that "those rules are for the little people, people at MY level were never made aware this applied!"
One of my jobs, I had temporary (since I was there for a fixed-term period) ID/swipe card to get in and out of offices. I had to account for it, where I had it, and the second my last day on the job was over, hand it straight back.
Casually leaving it out on the desk while I nipped out to the loo was a very definite no-no. The whole idea is "this is to identify you as an Authorised Person and allow you access to the offices which are not for the public or strangers to access", so leaving it in a position where it might have been picked up and/or used by those not authorised was taken very seriously.
I don't know a single person who works from the federal government, but I know so many who are impacted. Here are just a few examples:
- I know one person who worked at an academic medical research center, and they were absolutely gutted by the NIH change to indirect costs.
- Another two worked at a computer science lab that had a lot of grant funding from the NIH. They’ve kept their jobs, but have had coworkers laid off due to the budget cuts.
- There are so many cuts that there are cascading effects as well: Another friend is an HR person at a university and they’ve let go of so many people that he might lose his job, because they don’t need as many HR people anymore.
This has caused a lot of reflection on my part. I don't know a single person who works for the federal government, but so many in my group of friends are impacted. It seems like the income of about a quarter of my friends were effectively subsidized by the federal government. I do live in a bubble of people with graduate degrees who do research-y type things. This is perhaps a bit of an exaggeration, but it feels a bit like the plot of some urban fantasy novel where there’s some secret underground world all around me that I never knew existed. Then I thought about it, and looked up the federal budget, which is $6.8 trillion, and that's double the entire economy of France (3.05 T). Each year, the federal government spends slightly more than the GDP of France + the GDP of the UK (3.7T) combined! So of course, if this budget was dramatically changed it would have an impact comparable to the UK suddenly having a catastrophic economic collapse.
The closest example I can think of is when small towns in Appalachia have a coal mine shut down and everyone either works for the mine, or indirectly works for it (eg runs a grocery store nearby the mine that everyone stops at). But the "coal mine" here is the federal government. When I talk to friends who don't live in college towns, they seem to not know a single person impacted, so I think it's highly geographically concentrated.
What % of the research shutdown would've eventually helped increase the US GDP/capita if it was successful?
I'm not an economist, but every time I try to come up with a number here I always find something to the effect of "research is by far the most effective way to boost economic growth and in aggregate does so with substantial ROI even counting all of the stupid research".
E.g.:
https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2021/10/06/blog-ch3-weo-why-basic-science-matters-for-economic-growth
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w27863/w27863.pdf
https://www.dallasfed.org/~/media/documents/research/papers/2023/wp2305r1.pdf
If it was successful? A high percentage.
But what is the probability that it would be successful? One biostatistician I was referring to above left the academic medical center not because of DOGE, but because she thought the research would never replicate and asked to have her name removed from the papers they published. It was one of the top centers in the world for what they do.
But this is just my assessment from the people/projects I directly know. I don't have much of a sense of how DOGE will impact US GDP in the long run.
"When I talk to friends who don't live in college towns, they seem to not know a single person impacted, so I think it's highly geographically concentrated."
Anecdotally, that matches my experience. I don't know (or think I know) anyone impacted.
But I don't hang out with many federal government workers, academics or poor people dependent on federal money that is at risk (I do have relatives who depend on social security so if that starts getting cut or delayed my answer will change, but that hasn't happened yet).
I know a person working in the energy field whose company is drastically affected (so much for muh american energy independence drill baby drill, but I digress). I can't give out details for obvious reasons, but anyone who thinks this is making America Great in any way is delusional.
> I can't give out details for obvious reasons
Could you at least clarify why this couldn't be done by the private sector instead?
This is private sector! It's so bloody frustrating to see people having a mental model of "government" and "private sector" that are on different planets and somehow don't interface. Look, maybe in some ideal platonic republic there's little connection but in these here real United States there are regulations, information, etc., etc., etc. that tie Fed agencies and private companies in myriad ways. If one wants to untangle that, it's fucking hard work! that may take years, and in the end result in no savings for anyone whatsoever. But if all you do is pause existing work at the Fed leaving all regulations in place, while the information flow stops, and nobody knows what to do, it will cripple existing private companies in the very industry you're pretending to want to expand.
I don't get it... the project you're talking about is related to drilling for gas? What exactly was going on there that needed the governments intervention/support?
Like I said I can't provide details. If you think that the only energy-related jobs needing to work with the government and/or get information from same are related to drilling I don't know what to tell you.
This is a constant struggle of people outside a field being surprised by the realities and complexities of the field.
It's a... top secret facility? Is Area 51 involved? Why isn't sharing details possible about a... government project if its not military-related?
I know two federal employees. Both are negatively affected by DOGE-related stuff. One was recently hired and in her probationary period and was thus played off and late (for now, at least) reinstated. The other is a long-standing career employee of an agency that is being particularly targeted for scrutiny and decided reluctantly to accept the buyout rather than stick around and wait to possibly be laid off.
If the passport gender marker thing counts as DOGE related, I am negatively affected by that.
My father works at the NCI, and he told me about DOGE people going into offices in the building and looking for people who had left their card in their computer terminal, and then firing them on the spot. Apparently this is an infraction that people didn't know about. The campus is secure and they are not doing top secret work anyway. The best people are going to start leaving, and out of desperation the worst employees of these agencies will likely want to hold on. Fat needs to be trimmed, but it should be done in a way that targets the administrative bloat and low performers.
I live in expat communities abroad, and the USAID fallout has been huge. One family just bought a house in DC, they have three kids in the International school. Now they are going to be repatriated with no job, their careers destroyed and shaky prospects of finding work in a field that has been decimated. Meanwhile my father in law has been drawing his fat USAID pension for 25 years. Gotta love government.
"people who had left their card in their computer terminal, and then firing them on the spot. Apparently this is an infraction that people didn't know about"
Again, I'm very surprised to hear that since this is one of the things that gets hammered into you first day in the job in public service. I presume the NCI is the National Cancer Institute and it's government-funded while not precisely government body, but looking it up:
"NCI is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), one of 11 agencies that make up the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)"
So that means it *is* a government department and government department rules apply. If people weren't aware of things like you mention, somebody fell down badly on job training. Here's a link to the relevant policy:
https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/about/contact/nih-nhlbi-cybersecurity-information-security-policy
"Research scientists, clinicians, medical and administrative staff each take responsibility and work collaboratively to ensure our data and the computing resources we use are maintained securely."
https://datascience.cancer.gov/news-events/events/national-institute-standards-and-technology-virtual-workshop-cybersecurity
"The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) is seeking insight from genomic, cybersecurity, and privacy experts (in academia, industry, and government) to identify cybersecurity and privacy concerns related to genomic data. Genomic data are central to basic science research as well as disease (i.e., cancer) diagnosis and prediction. Since bad actors may wish to misuse genomic data to either violate privacy, gain competitive advantage, or inflict harm on groups/individuals, it is necessary to develop guidance for addressing these challenges."
In other words, no you do not walk away and leave your card in the terminal where an unauthorised/outside third party could come along and access that information due to your little oopsie.
Another comment made a comparison with rust belt towns collapsing when the main employer closes, and the only good I can see here is that maybe there will be a little less looking down their noses at the rural people who live in these failing towns, when the axe is now falling on the jobs of the educated liberals.
From comments like "You take government money, you live by government rules. I've had to deal with...." I'mm getting a whiff of "I suffered through it, so you should too," which is an unproductive attitude.
DOGE went into the NCI and randomly fired people on a technicality. The goal is to terrorize people in the organization and encourage them to resign. Some definitely support this, but I personally like that the government is putting money towards medical research. In my view they could save a lot of money by reducing red tape around clinical trials and drug development. Instead they are just randomly getting rid of whoever they can in an organization that has been very successful in developing new cancer treatments. It doesn't make me think these same people will be able to create a better system.
See my response to your other comment. In short, this is unprecedented and goes completely counter to the NIH's culture.
In science, it is necessary to have a culture of trust and openness. While this necessarily has to be minimized for national security research (e.g. the NIH's Rocky Mountain Labs campus), it is important that scientists are generally trusting of others' intentions and open with their data and practices. This is the only way to enable the information flow necessary for science to progress and be disseminated. While this particular instance makes sense (and causes no impact to me, as I always kept my ID card on my neck anyway due to forgetfulness), it is also a constant reminder to be distrustful and private. It also adds one more minor inconvenience into an institution already absolutely choking on bureaucracy and delay.
I do not know a single person affected. I used to work in gov but now work blue collar in the Midwest.
That shit doesn’t affect out here, except for people seeing it on the news and cheering it on.
I recently heard from someone I know who lives in a rural red town complaining that the impending closure of the local BLM office will decimate the town's economy.
Oh it will affect you soon enough, don't worry about that.
"Compared to what?"
It's funny that no one realizes what will happen if the deficit is NOT slashed away.
> It's funny that no one realizes what will happen if the deficit is NOT slashed away.
It might be nice if someone were to work on that, but instead we have Musk *costing* the government hundreds of billions while Republicans are currently planning to add TRILLIONS.
Esp if the Medicaid cuts go through.
For people I know personally, just one who works in NIH funded research.
They haven't lost their job yet but everyone was told to expect massive cuts very soon. They were told not to leave the country because the organization would not be able to help if they were detained. (I think that was probably directed to naturalized or non citizens, the scientists come from all over the world.)
When people asked if anything could be done about these cuts, like calling political representatives, they were told topics like that could no longer be discussed at all, and that the government is actively monitoring their slack.
I'm skeptical about example #2. From what I understand DOGE doesn't have the authority to fire anyone. Instead it's Musk team goving over an agency's books, they show their reports to Musk, Musk says to Pres. Trump, "Do we really need this, this, and this", Trump give the final word on what he wants cut, the head honchos in the agency get the word, then do the layoffs.
While I am sympathetic to the non-woke stuff that gets cut and the people who suffer, I look at it like the bombing of Dresden in WWII. The specific action may be over the line, and you can debate each battle, but it doesn't invalidate the whole war.
The person who told me about the firings works at the agency where it happened, witnessed the firings and spoke to one of the fired people afterwards. I have known the person who told me about the events for several years. He is a level-headed, extremely smart scientist who rarely talks about politics. The chance is nil that he would make up a story like the one he told me, or exaggerate details for effect.
>I'm skeptical about example #2. From what I understand DOGE doesn't have the authority to fire anyone. Instead it's Musk team goving over an agency's books, they show their reports to Musk, Musk says to Pres. Trump, "Do we really need this, this, and this", Trump give the final word on what he wants cut, the head honchos in the agency get the word, then do the layoffs.
I suppose it depends on how closely Trump follows their recommendations. If he just waves through whatever cuts or firings DOGE suggests, then in practice DOGE has the authority to fire people.
Was that supposed to be a reply to another comment? Because I don't really see how it follows on from mine.
DOGE claims that they do have the authority to fire anyone they like (or don’t like, I guess) and the higher levels of government (ie Trump, Vance, and at least part of the Cabinet) agree. If they’re able to have your pay withheld, bar you from accessing your work building or lock you out of your work computer, in what sense are you still employed?
Ascertaining whether DOGE does, in fact, have the authority to fire federal employees is a currently litigated matter (ie there’s a judicial battle going on, which will take a while to sort out).
Would *you* consider yourself still employed in such conditions? Would you stay to find out whether this group backed by your employer has a right to fire you outside the “regular channels”? Even if you are reinstated, would you stay without a guarantee that your employer wouldn’t try to get rid of you by other means?
All except for the passport gender thing and the Green Card processing boils down to: “Slashing budgets causes those dependent on said budgets to be forced to find an alternative source of funding”. Yes, that’s true, and there’s no way around this. Someone, somewhere will always have to suffer somewhat whenever budgets are cut. *Not* doing the cuts also causes plenty of damage, it’s just harder to pinpoint and a lot of it will happen in 5~8 years when most of the U.S. debt will be of the post-ZIRP vintage.
Therefore… *shrug*, I’m sympathetic as a person, but if anything I’m somewhat glad to see these reports as it indicates the cuts are actually happening as opposed to being mere roleplaying on TV. Increases my hope that Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security Security will hit the cutting board next, which would avert either hyperinflation or *far* more drastic cuts in the 2030s. My genuine belief is that all these highly visible firings lay fertile ground for cuts to entitlements, where there’s plenty of space to cut things for the upper 25%, ie by increasing retirement/Medicare age for those with higher wages to level out their level of benefits consumption which is currently skewed towards the wealthy.
—————-
The passport thing? My condolences as that’s genuine stupidity. But… I’m noticing that the real villain here is the intolerant state in Asia that threatens this person with violence.
The Green Card processing is unpleasant and doesn’t help the budget but Trump had been quite vocal about wanting to speed things up for University graduates, so hopefully it would get ~fixed soon. But also… if that persons work skills are so valuable… why are they concerned? They could chill for a few months, get their GC and get back to work?
About the green card thing: I do not understand the process, except in a general sort of way. There are different tiers of applicants: People with highly useful skills and extraordinary achievements; people with highly useful skills; and people with jobs. The person I mentioned is in tier 2. There is a lottery, and the higher the tier you are in, the better your chance of getting a GC. This man's chance in the upcoming lottery is less than 50%. He has already failed to get a GC in one previous lottery, done when he had the same qualifications as he does now. So the problem is not that the decision is delayed, it's that it's not that likely to go in his favor. And if the decision has not been made by September oes not he cannot work for a period of time -- several months. I do not know why. He has explained it but it is complicated and boring and I didn't retain the details. But he is extremely smart and precise, and is working with a lawyer specializing in this stuff, so I am sure his info is accurate. As for his chilling for those few months: He is afraid that during that period he will be replaced. He works for a small company and is the only person with certain skills.
If cuts are happening why does the debt continue to grow at an increasing rate?
Because Musk is doing things in the stupidest and most counterproductive way possible and doesn't care enough to try to figure out if what he is doing might accomplish his stated goals or not.
And more importantly because Republicans have no interest in decreasing the deficit and instead are currently trying to increase it by record amounts (on the order of 5 TRILLION over a decade of NEW deficits from one bill alone). DOGE is a sideshow, the real debt is being manufactured in congress.
> Increases my hope that Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security Security will hit the cutting board next
Trump has said that these things are off the table.
The best predictor for what Trump 47 will do is to look at what Trump said he will do.
This model has worked out much better than "yeah I know Trump *said* X, but what that really means is Y."
> Trump has said that these things are off the table.
Musk already tried to cut SS once. And House Republicans are planning major cuts to Medicaid.
You can cut it for the top 10% and still fulfill your promise while also saving a ton of money for the budget.
Hey myst and various others — I didn’t say ain’t this awful and ask to cry on your shoulder. I inquired what others have seen. Every person I described is upper middle class, except for one whose family is flat out filthy rich. I feel bad for them because they are having a bad time of it right now, but they will mostly be OK.
I am curious how many others know affected people because for most of my life I and the people I know have not been greatly affected by changes in government and in the economy. And I am not filthy rich, just a white professional. Covid was a great shock because I and everyone I knew was greatly affected. The present changes seem like another instance of that.
So how about addressing my real question, not the variant that would be fun to poke me in the eye for asking.
This isn't Quora, people aren't obligated to answer your exact question and not comment on any other aspect of your post.
My comment is meant in the most respectful way possible.
Of course they’re not obligated to answer my question directly, but neither am I obligated to take it like a lamb when the question’s hijacked as a platform for the it’s-worth-it point of view.
I don’t understand why you couldn’t just… ignore those comments then? I left a comment, you think it was off topic - no problem at all just ignore?
Because at the point I responded to you it was looking like there was going to be a big pile on of “we gotta do it,” and (1) as I said, my point was not that the stories I was telling were proof we gotta stop and (2) I do not respect “we gotta do it.”
Regarding “we gotta do it”:
<*Not* doing the cuts also causes plenty of damage, it’s just harder to pinpoint and a lot of it will happen in 5-8 years.
I will not take issue with the necessity of doing the cuts. But your defense of what is going on ignores an obvious alternative, which is to do cuts more intelligently. And do not tell me that trying to do a better job with cuts would fail because it would take too long, or because doing a good job would require involving the bureaucracy in the planning, and the bureaucracy would then take years to produce 11,000 pages describing a useless plan. Given that the present administration is willing to ignore customary courtesies and various regulations, it could certainly come up with a better plan than the present one.
Let’s take NIH staff in the building where the person I know works — the person who saw someone fired for not carrying his badge to the bathroom. How about this as an alternative to sending goons to bust random people: On Feb. 1 someone in DOGE tells each person in charge of a department that they had to reduce staff salaries by 40% as of April 1, & that they could do this by salary reductions, reductions in hrs/week staff worked, or firings? Or a DOGE representative could look at the last 2 years’ performance reviews, and fire those with the lowest average review. Or DOGE or the department managers could lay off employees whose productivity had declined over the last 2 years. None of these ideas are great, but they are surely better than firings for reasons that have nothing to do with how well a member of staff is performing. They also have the advantage of creating less chaos, and more sense of there being at least some logic and justice to the layoffs. What is the utility of creating maximal chaos, fear and anger? Even if we set aside ethical considerations of how much suffering one causes, there remains the practical problem that chaos, anger and fear in an organization reduces productivity, and also damages its commitment to deal honestly with government higher-ups in the future.
There’s no justification for sending a manic bipolar man with a chain saw to dismantle an organization if you have the alternative of sending a smart, decisive judge of productivity instead. I cannot understand why an intelligent person like you is not taking that into account, unless you take some enjoyment in the pain and confusion of others, whom you imagine to be lazy or entitled & whiny or woke in some infuriating way.
Let's assume for a moment that Trump wants to wind down the war in Ukraine so that the US can focus entirely on the upcoming conflict with China [1], and that he wants to win Russia over to at least a neutral stance in that conflict. Why then is he so keen on antagonizing European countries and Europe as a whole? I get that he looks down on them militarily, but surely he must realize that the EU alone accounts for a large share of China's total trade volume. Any non-kinetic measures, like economic or financial sanctions, would be much more effective with the support of the EU, the UK, and Canada. Not to mention second-order effects on current and potential allies in south-east Asia, who are certainly keeping tabs on America's reliability as a diplomatic partner.
[1] Even though his attention on Gaza contradicts this rationale.
> but surely he must realize that the EU alone accounts for a large share of China's total trade volume.
"Surely" is doing a lot of work there. Trump has demonstrated much larger detachments from reality, like the impact and popularity of tariffs.
Europe, to the limited extent that it can really commit to any geopolitical strategy, seems to be committed to Ukraine successfully resisting Russia's unprovoked invasion and remaining an independent sovereign nation under its current government. This makes Europe a *huge* obstacle to any plan for "winding down the war", and pretty much guarantees that whenever and however the war ends, Russia will be very hostile to everyone on Team Europe.
The fastest, easiest way to wind down the war would be for everyone to agree that Ukraine is going to be conquered, assimilated, and de-ukrainified bu Russia, ASAP, and to cut off any and all military support to Ukraine. Also end sanctions on Russia, which are impeding Russia's attempts to restore the military capabilities it needs to quickly conquer Ukraine. There's very little chance of Europe going along with this plan, but Europe alone probably can't give Ukraine the support it needs.
When the war ends, Russia will consider Team Europe to be its enemy, and if Trump has his way, Putin et al will see the United States as the enemy of their enemy. That's something Trump probably imagines he can build on.
One of the many problems with this plan is that, while Putin may see Donald J. Trump as the enemy of their enemy, the United States will still be seen a nation that frequently elects presidents like Joe Biden, George Bush, Ronald Reagan, etc, and so cannot be counted on in the long term. Certainly not a friend. *China*, OTOH, is as close as Russia gets to having a powerful friend, and has consistently supported them for many years. Russia is not going to abandon China to win favor with the United States
I like this analysis, probably the best attempt to ascribe rational motives to Trump.
"Russia is not going to abandon China to win favor with the United States"
I don't think this is the right conclusion though. Russia's a smaller power inbetween two big powers, the right move in game theory for them is to remain cordial with both and play them off against each other. And the US has a huge strategic interest in keeping Russia just neutral (a full alliance isn't necessary). China also wants the alliance probably more than Russia does, so Russia has a lot to bargain with on both sides.
A similar dynamic occurred in WW2 and Russia had (at least temporary and uneasy) alliances with both Germany and the West. Tensions then with Russia were at least as high as now but it wouldn't have been the right move to push them away from an alliance. (I mean pre-barbarosa before Germany pushed them decisively one way)
Culturally, Russians also feel a lot more affinity with the other European-descended people than with the Chinese, and have wanted closer ties since at least 1991. I mean come on, the West is like the clique of cool popular kids at school, that dominate global cultural production and have ruled the world for 200 years. We can't befriend an outcast loner kid over an asian kid who helps them with their homework?
We can't befriend the outcast loner kid who is an unrepentant bully who really likes bullying, if we are widely understood to be nice guys who at least occasionally take a stand against bullying whereas there's a gang of Asian bullies who helps him with his homework, offers him friendship and acceptance and status, and *doesn't* insist that he knock it off with the bullying. Oh, we can offer and receive a sort of second-tier friendship, but he's never going to side with us against the Asian kids.
The sort of geopolitical fence-straddling you describe is the exception in world affairs, not the rule, because it depends on a symmetry that is usually lacking. Japan and South Korea do not treat the US and China as equal and opposite rivals; they'll try for as cordial a relationship as they can get with China while doing nothing to jeopardize their status as major US allies. During the Cold War, Finland and Yugoslavia and *maybe* Austria sort of straddled the line between East and West; every other nation in Europe picked a side and stayed with it.
There is no symmetry between the US and China. Russia is going to pick a side and stay with it, and it's going to be China's side.
"The sort of geopolitical fence-straddling you describe is the exception in world affairs, not the rule, because it depends on a symmetry that is usually lacking."
This still doesn't seem right to me. Often the right move to make if you're small is to let the big guys fight it out, not get directly involved yourself and strike what bargains you can. Lots of states seem to be responding this way to the bi-polar world that's emerging. Singapore wants to straddle, the gulf states are increasingly straddling etc.
Would 1950's John Schilling during the Korean war have guessed that the Sino-Soviet split would happen and China could brought around to the western side?
"Japan and South Korea do not treat the US and China as equal and opposite rivals"
It's an inconvenient time to make this argument since those three countries just signed a joint trade pact in response to Trump's tariffs.
"We can't befriend the outcast loner kid who is an unrepentant bully who really likes bullying, if we are widely understood to be nice guys"
This is very much the West's self perception. Obviously what matters regarding Russian decision making is Russia's perception, which doesn't view itself as incompatible nasty or us as incompatibly nice. Mainly Russia views the West through our actions in the Cold War which were pretty ruthless, and of course views its own actions as justified.
It sounds like you think there's a ~0% chance Russia could be enticed to even taking a neutral stance, but the strategic gains for the US are so great it probably only needs to be maybe 20%+ to be worth pursuing (from strict realist self-interest, not considering any moral factors or the interest of other states.)
"Would 1950's John Schilling during the Korean war have guessed that the Sino-Soviet split would happen and China could brought around to the western side?"
1950 John Schilling would not have made firm statements about what might happen a generation in the future. 1970 John Schilling would have considered such a thing very likely, on the grounds that Russia and China had fought a war the previous year. One in which Russia threatened the nuclear annihilation of the Chinese regime, and American diplomacy was seen as helping defuse that threat.
If, a generation from now, Russia and China fight another war, then yes, we'll probably have the ability to make one side or another an ally of convenience at least. But if the Trumpian plan includes "...and then Russia and China fight a war" as a necessary step, then I'm not terribly optimistic about that plan, sorry.
It seems like war in Ukraine cannot be wound down without antagonizing EU. This baffles me, but EU remains so adamantly over-comitted to this war that any attempt to stop it without full Russian surrender is interpreted as hostile action. The war has largely been detrimental to EU economy, and will continue to be so. If EU really pushes forward with militarization, social programs will be cut to support military spending increase, which will probably cause at least some unrest. For example, France, which already explodes with mass labour strikes at every opportunity, should be all for ending the war as soon as possible, yet Macron is one of the most hawkish EU leaders.
It almost feels like EU was promised "something" when Russia loses by the previous administration (a piece of Russian resources after the inevitable collapse of Putin's government?), and Trump is either unaware, or doesn't care.
The official explanation, of course, is that Russia will surely conquer the rest of EU if it's allowed even a little victory in Ukraine, but I can't force myself to believe it. Russia doesn't have the manpower, or willpower for this. At most, Blatic states might be in danger, but it should be pretty easy to provide additional security guarantees to them, and much less costly than continuing the hopeless adventure in Ukraine. Apart from that, even Poland alone would be like another Ukraine, and with fuller NATO support behind it, up to and including nuclear missiles (Baltic states are also part of NATO, of course, but unlike Poland they have very little forces themselves, which makes them more nervous).
So, I don't know the real reason, but it seems that Trump cannot both have friendly EU and peace in Ukraine. Of course, he probably can't have peace in Ukraine anyway - I predict with high confidence that Russia will not bow down to his pressure to accept unsatisfying peace terms, and while USA have the power to force Ukraine to accept Russian terms, he doesn't have the guts. If he really wanted peace at any cost, he should have cut all aid to Ukraine once and for all. But for all the Reddit talk about "agent Krasnov", Trump did very little to endear himself to Russia aside from some verbal interventions. Sharing of intelligence and military aid were paused for a very short time, and seemingly only to force Ukraine to accept the stupid mineral deal, not to make them more amenable to talks with Russia.
All in all, I think Trump have some coherent high level goals, but is too fickle and timid to really commit to any plan that might actually achieve them, which leads to him switching back and forth between threatening Russia, Ukraine, EU, Canada, China, Mexico and everyone else, depending on last day's events and his mood. He's America's Gorbachev (though with a completely different vision and methods), trying to remake his country and the world around it, but having neither talent, nor persistence, and always resorting to half-measures where you have to leave things alone or go all-in.
Ukraine is contiguous to the EU - it borders Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania. It has the same strategic importance to the EU as it does to Russia.
Suppose Russia had invaded the Canadian arctic, and that the US supported Canada in its war for survival. Would you be as fast to believe that the reason the US was supporting the war was the opportunity for self-dealing? Would you support a deal in which Canada signed away Alberta to Russia?
I think that sometimes the surface level explanations are sufficient. It's worth remembering that the Iron curtain collapsed less than 40 years ago, well within living memory for decision makers in the EU.
The war is bad for the common people but very profitable for the EU elites. Zelenskyy is the manager at the largest money laundering machine in world history.
In which way is it good for EU elites?
Money laundering
https://kyivindependent.com/ukraine-has-received-less-than-half-of-us-assistance-allocated-during-full-scale-war-zelensky-says/
And in general, having an enemy is very important for oligarchs or tyrants wishing to abrogate freedoms at home. Why is Germany’s economy collapsing? Why did France just arrest the head of its main opposition party? Why were elections cancelled in Romania after the wrong candidate won? Russias fault - not Merkel, Macron or the EU’s.
As a reply to your link: https://www.csis.org/analysis/where-missing-100-billion-us-aid-ukraine
In EU politics, the war has the opposite effect on what you're describing: It's getting more and more unpopular, and in many countries parties that argue for concessions to Russia, for the end of sanctions against Russia or for the end of Ukrainian support gain more and more traction (for example Georgescu/Simion in Romania, Babis in Czechia, AFD/Die Linke in Germany, Le Pen in France) or have already been elected (Fico in Slovakia).
It would have been much simpler for any of the EU 'elites' if the war had not taken place, and especially for Germany given their strong dependance on Russian gas in 2022.
Edit: Marine Le Pen has not been arrested, she has been sentenced to 2 years of jail (+2 of probation) which she will most likely do with electronic tagging outside of jail; and as she appealed this is suspended until the appeal judgment. This really has nothing to do at all with the war in Ukraine. I don't know how you came up with that.
Russia is a hostile power on EU borders with half of the EU having not so distant memory of having lived under the Russian boot. Either in the USSR as in the case of the Baltic states, as communist puppet states as is the case of Poland, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Romania, East Germany and even Hungary and Slovakia even though their governments are currently weirdly sympathetic to Russia for reasons similar to why Trump is sympathetic to Russia. Still more European countries were communist, albeit not under direct Russian influence (any country from the former Yugoslavia).
Then you Finland which were bullied (until recently) into neutral status by Russia and who Russia conquered territory from in a war for Finnish national existence still (somewhat) in the living memory (Winter war) and which had been a Russian subject before and subject to Russification efforts already in the 19th century (as was every single country ever which was directly controlled by Russia and to a lesser degree even those who were living in their puppet states!).
Then you have the UK where Russians actively performed terrorist actions (and they did the same in the Czech republic and Bulgaria).
To be a thorn in Europe's side and a very destabilising factor, Russia does not have to conquer Europe, it doesn't even have to conquer even any of the Baltic countries or even (non-EU) Moldavia. For Europe, ideal Russia would be one which broadly "converts" to European values. This is not likely to happen anytime soon, most likely ever. The Russians who are compatible with those values mostly leave Russia and those who stay are mostly not.
Since this won't happen, the second best solution is to have no Russia at all. I personally would love to see Russia disintegrated and split into smaller countries which could pose no threat to Europe at all. That is assuming the nukes somehow magically disappeared, the thought of a nuclear-armed independent Chechnya or who knows which batshit crazy post-Russian republic is pretty chilling.
Since the nukes aren't going to disappear, the only solution left is crippling Russia as much as possible so that it can no longer project any power abroad, at least not towards Europe. If we can achieve this by supporting a country which was attacked in an unprovoked aggression, then it is all the sweeter. If the only way to do that without the US support is for Europe to re-arm and re-gain the ability to project power on its own (now being more or less united in the most important foreign policy goals like "making sure Russia does not meddle in European affairs"), then all the better ... even if it means a temporary hit to welfare.
Russia is a poor and corrupt 3rd world country with the economy the size of Italy and a population third of the EU's. The only two reasons Europe treats it seriously is a) it has nukes and b) Europe has been enjoying the peace dividend fort too long. Now that is seems that b) is really going to change, it is time to treat Russia accordingly. I don't like the zone of influence view of the world but if Russia wants to play that game, then Russia is logically in the European zone of influence and not the other way around....if there just is enough will in Europe to invest a bit more and shift the way of thinking and finally it seems it might be.
> It almost feels like EU was promised "something" when Russia loses by the previous administration (a piece of Russian resources after the inevitable collapse of Putin's government?), and Trump is either unaware, or doesn't care.
You don't need some weird conspiracy theory.
Europe doesn't like Russia invading people.
Take a look at Poland. They hate immigrants. They've taken in Ukrainian refugees, though, because they still remember September 1, 1939.
When other people aren't obeying the models you have of them in your head, the problem isn't the other people, the problem is that your model of them is wrong.
Only fools believe Putin would stop with a small victory in Ukraine. Sadly there are enough fools in US.
And there's a big range between thinking Putin will stop with Ukraine and thinking Putin will take all of Europe.
There is. Putin doesn't need to conquer the entire continent in order to cause a lot of problems. The problem is when each small piece by itself seems okay - oh, its only Georgia, only Ukraine, now only Lithuania, and you don't realise the water has suddenly reached boiling point...
Yes, the range includes invading Estonia, or blowing up random warehouses in Europe, or poisoning people with radioactive isotopes in the middle of a busy European city, or cutting undersea cables, or hacking the power grid and blowing up a bunch of transformers, or etc. etc. and any combination of the above and beyond.
Disagree. As you write: "winding down the war in Ukraine" does not mean "peace in Europe". Most likely it means "Russia spends a few years rebuilding its army while Ukrainians emigrate in massive numbers, then Russia returns to finish its business and move on to the Baltic states and Poland". Whether Russia COULD conquer Europe is one question - probably not. But even trying it would be more than bad enough, and they are pretty much forced to try - Russia's economy is geared toward making war and little else right now, so just telling everyone to go home and grit their teeth as the economy collapses around them is not a good option for Putin.
So as long as Putin or someone who thinks like him is in power in Moscow, European remilitarization is inevitable, and probably European leaders would prefer to grind down Russia right now on Ukrainian soil rather than somewhere else later. The vibe I get so far here in Europe is that a common enemy (maybe two, depending on which way Trump goes) is doing a wonderful job of rekindling the European spirit.
"If he really wanted peace at any cost, he should have cut all aid to Ukraine once and for all." OR he should have announced that without a peace agreement he would double the military aid for Ukraine, and then increase it again at the end of the year, and then again the year after. But that would have required standing up to a fellow autocrat.
"The official explanation, of course, is that Russia will surely conquer the rest of EU if it's allowed even a little victory in Ukraine, but I can't force myself to believe..Russia doesn't have the manpower". The thing about gradually conquering other territories is that you gradually increase your resources.
I don't imagine even fully conquered Ukraine would add a lot of potential recruits for Russian Armed Forces, at least not in any reasonable timeframe.
Resources, not just manpower. If there is nothing to be gained, why are they doing it? It doesn't have to be over a short.time.frame, Russia has been .waiting years between one takeover and the next.
Manpower matters more than resources right now. Russia just don't have enough men, and will have even less of them further down the road (this is true for Ukraine, too, to a even greater degree; if Russia conquers Ukraine, it gains very little in terms of future recruits). I guess maybe AI can replace humans on the frontlines in 10-20 years, in which case recruits will matter less, and resources more, but I imagine EU will probably be ahead of Russia in that respect.
Both the Ukrainians and the Russians have much more serious manpower issues than in 2022, but the war is still raging with enormous intensity.
The reason is that it is being slowly robotized. Drones are now the top killers, responsible for 60 % battlefield deaths, and the development is still ongoing. We see drones chasing other drones, drone motherships carrying smaller drones onto a distant battlefield etc.
Manpower still matters, but drone power becomes decisive, and countries which have fought a life-and-death war using massive swarms of drones - which means Russia and Ukraine - have a potential natural advantage against countries that have been in peace for decades and whose old colonels and generals still think in patterns of the late 20th century.
If Russia had the easy win it was expecting , it would have enough men to left to continue a domino strategy.. The fact that it doesn't shows that fighting back s working, up to a point. If Ukraine had achieved peace by surrendering on day 1, as Trump and Vance recommended, the Russians would.have a 100% intact army, plus extra resources.
> any attempt to stop it without full Russian surrender is interpreted as hostile action
The EU still remembers the WWII lesson that appeasement doesn't work. It seems the US has either forgotten or does not care.
This is understandable: the US is half a world away from the action; the consequences barely touched its soil last time, and are unlikely to this time.
But yes, the countries actually heavily blooded by the last appeasement strategy's failure want to smack down hard on /anything/ that smells of a repeat, and will look with disfavour when third parties tell them to shut up, bend over and take it.
It's straight out of Schelling: if you don't want the action repeated, you need to punish it immediately, reliably, even when this policy costs you.
Compare: "America doesn't negotiate with terrorists".
Since EU is unwilling to start WW3 by putting the boots on the ground (and, really, starting a world war early is the only way to prevent a world war later, if you believe it's inevitable), I guess they're cynically using Ukrainians to bleed out Russia, so that when Russia wins in Ukraine (and, with the current level of EU resource commitment, Russia will eventually win), it's too weak to start anything else. But then, then only difference between EU and Trump might be that Trump believes this condition is already satisfied, and EU doesn't. But European reaction seems a bit too sharp for that.
Another cynical explanation is that EU THOUGHT it could slap down Russia easily in 2022, and now finds itself without an exit strategy that wouldn't collapse a government or two (and mostly in favour of extreme right or extreme left parties, since all centrists supported the war), if the voters start to question why all those resources were spent on supporting a hopeless cause in the first place, and so the European leadership "stays the course", praying for a miracle. And Trump can afford to defect from this coalition, because HIS voters are blindly loyal to him, so even if he suddenly announces that Russia and USA were always at war with Ukraine, nobody is going to call him out (at least nobody who was going to vote for him or his party anyway).
You make it sound like Ukrainians don't have any agency at all, as if Europe is commanding them to fight. You couldn't be more wrong. From the very start, Ukraine has been fighting and standing up for itself, even against the expectations of pretty much everyone else. Statements such as
> [EU are] cynically using Ukrainians to bleed out Russia
and
> EU THOUGHT it could slap down Russia easily in 2022
show that you fundamentally misunderstand the background of this war.
This. NATO and Ukraine have a common goal. The price NATO is paying towards that goal is cheap, the price Ukraine is paying is very dear. But this -- uneasy and unequal -- alliance only works as long as both sides are willing to continue with that. If 90% of the Ukrainians wake up tomorrow and think "we had it with bleeding out in the trenches, we should just surrender to Russia and trust Putin's mercy", there is nothing in the world NATO can do to stop them.
Also, I do not consider NATO to be paragons of morality here. We support Ukraine for selfish geo-strategic reasons, because they happen to fight our (prospective) enemy. In this case, the enemy of our enemy is much more sympathetic than their opponent (Zelenskyy won a democratic election in recent memory) and happen to have the international law (which forbids wars of aggression) on their side, but cynically, this is not why we support them. After all, the US happily supported the Mujaheddin and Bin Laden against the Soviets. Still, supporting Ukraine for the wrong reasons is better than not supporting them.
90% of Ukrainians already think this, that’s why Zelenskyy really doesn’t want an election
Ukraine was willing to make a deal in Istanbul in 2022, and then suddenly it wasn't. Since then, it was fighting on borrowed money and equipment. And whoever gives that to Ukraine controls whether it will go on fighting, so no, Ukraine doesn't have very much agency any longer (not "none at all", just not very much).
Not only that, but if Ukraine suddenly decides it wants to sign a peace deal without EU and USA say-so, I would guess it would find out that its creditors need their money back, and are no longer willing to tolerate any delays. Or, to put it in less predatory terms, if Ukraine is willing to fight to the end, West will help it rebuild, but if it decides to surrender to Russians on its own, then it will become Russian responsibility.
So it is in West's power to both stop the war very quickly, or to prolong it even if some number of Ukrainians aren't willing (of course, the later is only true to a point, so there is some agency in that, I give you that - people can always revolt, though it's harder to do when wartime restrictions are in place and security service is on a lookout for potential troublemakers).
> Ukraine was willing to make a deal in Istanbul in 2022, and then suddenly it wasn't.
Is there an official story for why peace talks broke down?
"Ukraine was willing to make a deal in Istanbul in 2022, and then suddenly it wasn't."
There was a little matter of discovering hundreds of raped, tortured, murdered civilians in small towns north of Kyiv after Russians retreated, which made any deal with Russia politically and emotionally impossible for Ukrainians. So there's that, and you being a Russian I find it telling that you completely omitted that bit.
FWIW I think Zelenskiy made a mistake and should have bit the strap real hard and worked out a deal, like a true statesman. But this is easy for an American who didin't find a close relative or a friend in a mass grave to say.
Things can avail other than perfection. Ensuring that the "victory" is actually a nett loss -- which is the same thing as bleeding them out -- is achievable and working.
That motive for ending the Ukraine war is a fair assumption, mainly for the reason you gave, although access to all those minerals is another inviting prospect. Although broadly supportive of Trump's policies, I find it baffling that he seems so set on actually taking over countries like Greenland, and Canada, and even Gaza, when I'm sure they (or the first two anyway) would be only too happy to host US military bases wherever these were thought to be needed. Is it simply Trump's property acquisitive instincts being projected into national policy?
Bullying Canada would seem to encourage China to do more of the same with Taiwan, and North Korea with South Korea, etc. Also, because Canada is notably more left wing than most US states, if it did become part of the US, wouldn't its votes in national elections permanently skew the results towards the Democrats?
Regarding the EU, in the past the US has always encouraged NATO countries to relax and let the US take most of the strain in the alliance. That has not been for altruistic reasons but to prevent Europe becoming too much of a military threat to the US. So again, the long term result of suddenly asking the EU to pull their weight may end up being another competing block. That may sound implausible, but one only has to look at WW2, and then think of Germany, France, and the UK, and several other countries, maybe even Russia, all being on the same side against the US and fully manned and tooled up ready for another world war. Together they would be quite a handful!
> Also, because Canada is notably more left wing than most US states, if it did become part of the US, wouldn't its votes in national elections permanently skew the results towards the Democrats?
The funny part is that Canada was set for a conservative landslide up until Trump went to war against Canada for no reason. Trump has managed to make the party of Trudeau popular again.
“Although broadly supportive of Trump's policies, I find it baffling that he seems so set on actually taking over countries like Greenland, and Canada, and even Gaza, when I'm sure they (or the first two anyway) would be only too happy to host US military bases wherever these were thought to be needed. Is it simply Trump's property acquisitive instincts being projected into national policy?”
I think this is more ideological than that. It’s the “great” in MAGA, and a nod to the bygone age of manifest destiny, etc. Disrespecting the sovereignty and recognized borders of nation states is perhaps the biggest taboo of the “globalist” ideology that Trump sets himself in opposition to. Whether or not he actually achieves it, publicly floating territorial expansion is extremely transgressive and allows Trump to cast himself in the “great man” mold. I don’t think Trump fully appreciates all of this intellectually, but people around him do, and he understands it instinctually.
"So again, the long term result of suddenly asking the EU to pull their weight may end up being another competing block."
This. Having a de-facto monopoly on force is expensive, sure, but it has the advantage that you can, let's say... motivate the other parties to see your side of the issue. Telling them "you're on your own" is just inviting them to reply with, "okay then, so are you."
That said, no reasonable person in Europe is yearning for a world war rerun, and we'd be more than happy to see the US close the curtains on their clown show and return to sanity.
"Having a de-facto monopoly on force is expensive, sure, but it has the advantage that you can, let's say... motivate the other parties to see your side of the issue."
Not only this, but one could say that, due to its undisputed military power, the US has been able to custom-make the entire geopolitical world order of the past 80 years in order to funnel immense amounts of wealth from everywhere on earth back to themselves. In some kind of seemingly unspoken deal, the rest of the western world has accepted US military aegis, and in return has allowed the US to design the world economic order as it saw fit.
I think part of the issue is that, in order to maintain its official anti-imperialist stance, the US has mostly laundered its resource extraction through, as you say, customising the geopolitical world order to its benefit, rather than by annexing and taxing other countries or holding big, Achaemenid-style tribute parades. This has helped reconcile the other parts of the West to American dominance, because they're still officially equal and independent allies, but it also means that many Americans don't perceive the benefits they're getting. Hence all this resentment about everyone else "freeloading" off Uncle Sam's generosity.
When you stop thinking of Trump’s style as rational, and more instinctively bullying, then you’ll understand. His actual ideas may have more or less rational bases, but his style generally does not, and can be counterproductive to his goals.
I model Trump using two ideas:
Zero-Sum-Thinking: 'if a deal is beneficial for the other side, it therefore has to be bad for our side'
Opposition to agreements made by previous administrations: Trump's ego is too vulnerable to say "that deal that Obama/Biden made is excellent, we should keep it". He has to prove to himself that he is a better president than them, and thus can make better deals than these losers who did not even read his book.
In retrospect, what Biden should have done at the end of his presidency would have been to humiliate Zelenskyy and announce that the US would not offer any more military support, and perhaps make a peace deal with Russia. Perhaps then Trump would be like "that was a terrible peace deal, and my administration will of course support Ukraine".
I'd go even further. If you try to find a rational bases or guiding principle behind Trump's actions, you will have a heck of a time trying to understand and predict him. If you don't even try to find something coherent hiding behind Trump's "style" - everything is personality driven - it's much easier.
I'm sure Trump has something under there that could be divined, I just think trying to theory-wash his actions ends up being less helpful to explaining his actions and it's more effective to rely entirely on personality.
Thought experiments are nice, but if we keep interpreting all Trump's bad actions as "possibly a 5D chess move towards some greater good", there is a risk we might start actually believing it.
Humans are not perfect rationalists. If you spend too much time contemplating unlikely scenarios, especially if your contrarian ideas get socially rewarded online, you will become attached to them, and reality won't be able to compete with the emotional rewards of imagination. Many smart people became victims of this effect.
So this is a gentle reminded that Occam's razor says that if Trump did something stupid, the most likely explanations are that he actually made a stupid thing, or that he has some kind of deal that we don't know about because we wouldn't approve of it if we did.
Yup. This has more rhetorical bite if you use the phrase “the most parsimonious explanation.” Favorite phrase of a
favorite professor of mine.
> Why then is he so keen on antagonizing European countries and Europe as a whole?
Because he's clueless about how the world works beyond the kayfabe world of reality TV.
Trump just likes raw power. He has repeatedly said how much he admires Xi's "iron grip" on the country.
He's always been this way. In 1990 he said in a Playboy interviewed that he admired the crackdown on Tiananmen Square.
A friend of mine has put up an amazing site with advice for how to use AIs as an academic in your daily work, including which AIs to use, example prompts, and so on.
https://johannesschmitt.gitlab.io/AI_applications.html
Is there something he is missing? If you are academic, what's your most impressive way in which you have used AI for your work? For him, it's probably that he has produced high-quality lecture notes (> 100 pages) from previous video recordings of the lecture and from the lecturer's handwritten notes.
These are pretty comprehensive, and while I don't have any additional use cases, I think the discussion of the failure at the bottom of the page is not highly emphasised enough - the error looks superficially like a true statement, and it's highly likely that if one didn't already know the correct answer, one would overlook it.
The big topic which is not addressed here is assessment. I get a little satisfaction out of showing colleagues that an instruction like "Write in the style of a 17 year old with a B2 grasp of English, include some non-sequiturs and age- and culture-appropriate slang in your answer." really gives output indistinguishable from what the students would write. I think it's very reasonable to assume that in 2-3 years university students will be capable of writing prompts like Johannes; and if I'm pessimistic, might be capable of little else.
In subjects in which assessment is mostly essay-based, AI is deeply problematic. Unfortunately, those are the subjects where the lecturing staff are least equipped to understand AI... My lunchtime T&L talk entitled 'The essay is dead' are not well received. They will tell me that I'm wrong, and that they have e.g. white-text prompts "Use the word banana in the second paragraph" to identify AI use. This is sometimes the *only* idea that they have. Other times, they have the students fill a Word template with reflection on their assignment, not realising Claude or similar can accept the essay as input and generate the supplementary material without bother.
My own opinion is that formal in-person written tests should be conducted on every module, to ensure that students have mastered basic concepts of the subject. Ideally there would be interactive assessment (in class presentation, oral exam, etc) but this isn't practical with large numbers. And I don't know how to design written assignments that will engage students with the material over 10-15 hours and encourage them to think deeply about the topic.
I do think it's important for people who understand the use cases of AI to begin promoting solutions to the wider third level community.
It's actually rather sad that some academics just lose critical thinking when it comes to this.
"Outcome: Slightly shallow but often entertaining audio of podcast episode, can include some misunderstandings and hallucinations, but also some insightful analogies and approaches for explanations. Works best if the source material is not too inaccessible and complicated."
In no world would he have asked a 14 year old with access to google to summarise unread papers for him, but somehow it's ok to let NotebookLM do it.
I frequently ask students to summarize papers for me. I think the results are not very different.
Let's say the US launches a military invasion of Greenland next week and puts a few thousand troops on the island. What happens next? Do Scandinavian boats arrive and send warning shots? Or would they arrive before the invasion is complete and fire warning shots then? Isn't there some decent odds that someone would actually get killed and things could escalate?
>Let's say the US launches a military invasion of Greenland next week and puts a few thousand troops on the island. What happens next?
Given Greenland is not a member of the EU, but is part of the Kingdom of Denmark and Denmark IS a NATO member, I think a reasonable NATO response should be to bomb the US?
If a NATO member attacked Greenland, Denmark would likely invoke Article 5, claiming an attack on its territory. Since Denmark is a NATO member, the alliance would be bound to respond collectively and come to Denmark’s defense.
Following this, US would face political isolation, no/reduced military support from EU, and potentially massive sanctions. Not to mention US would no longer be welcome to be a NATO member, obviously.
Invading Canada would be yet another beast, and I'm not sure if the FVEY alliance holds after this, so any movements towards Canada or Greenland would greatly isolate America. And at such point, US might as well build a wall around its own territory—China's great wall style—and stop talking to the world at large, because uh, bullies always end up isolated.
I understand the logic behind Trump movements, I do, and I also understand his methods (he is moving the public dialog towards the "reasonable" option, aka moving the Overton Window). But there is a lot of economic resentment in the world right now, including inside US mainland, not sure if following Bannon/Musk ideas as gospel is the optimal strategy given the timing.
I suspect that someone probably gets killed by Americans even before a concerted EU response arrives. Like, I feel the odds of successfully marching into Nuuk, arresting the Parliament of Greenland, seizing the local police stations, arresting any danish soldiers present, etc. etc. without at least one person shooting back (or resisting and getting shot) are pretty low.
(The US military base in Greenland seems to have at least some Danish soldiers present, but I can't find out how many from Google.)
Like, even if you get total surprise, all the organized resistance surrenders immediately, and your manufactured excuse for invading didn't involve any dead bodies, there's going to be at least one random police officer who tries to be a hero, right?
> Article 5
> The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.
Presumably, Trump would not honor his NATO obligations to hit himself, and likely Europe will not want to play global thermonuclear war with the US, but we would likely render aid to Denmark way above the level we render aid to Ukraine.
Canada in particular would have a vested interest in keeping Trump occupied in Greenland for pretty much the same reason that Eastern Europe is interested in keeping Putin busy in Ukraine. (Here the similarities end: Greenland is virtually empty.)
At the very least, Trump would get his wish of the rest of NATO investing 2% of their GDP into defense -- for example, in ICBMs which can make it over the Atlantic.
By the way Trump wants 5% (if that happened, European NATO militaries would outspend USA and China COMBINED ... I don't really think Trump should want that ...) and the European NATO members are already mostly above 2% (with the exception of Spain, Italy, also Luxembourg but who cares). In some cases they are outspending the US already (Poland, Baltics) and most have announced going close to or above 3% soon.
Probably no deaths, but the invasion would backfire against the U.S. and Trump incredibly badly. In the end, the U.S. troops would leave and any American annexation claims over the island would be rescinded.
One more realisic scenario would be, that they enlarge their military presence, on the ground and with boats patroling. Maybe they start patroling in towns to "ensure the savety of the people". I could imagine some provoked incident, protests of the greenlanders, following some 'anti-terrorist' action by the US, step by step enlarging US influence, until they find the necessity to 'temporaryliy' take over the executive on the island to 'pacify' greenland.
You honestly think 60k people protesting is relevant enough for US to intervene? Denmark rules Greenland defense, so any "state of siege" would fall under Danish jurisdiction, so it is up to Denmark to activate emergency powers or deploy forces to Greenland if the situation warranted, not America lol. And given Trump stance over their territory, I don't think Denmark would welcome with any significant enlargement of US military presence there at this point.
"You honestly think 60k people protesting is relevant enough for US to intervene?"
Normally not, but as a pretext to escalate, absolutely.
And what Denmark legally could do is irrelevant, we talk about an invasion, just a more gradual one.
I think one important effect which would happen almost immediately is that every European country would break leases with American military bases overnight. It would become a huge liability to have American assets in your country, given that America will have demonstrated that it is willing to invade a nominal ally. (I understand Trump supporters have a theory on why Greenland is not Danish territory, but of course the people they need to convince are not other Trump supporters but rather NATO ally governments, who very much DO see Greenland as Danish territory).
This would substantially reduce American power projection across the Middle East and Africa, which - by the nature of these things - would substantially increase Chinese power projection over these regions.
Probably assertions by the orange man saying our troops are there to dissuade Russian aggression in the region. If asked to leave, they probably don't. Orange man says they are nessecary to protect Greenland from harmful foreign interests. Things are awkward. The dollar becomes weaker as a world reserve currency and countries turn towards (?)? The world becomes less stable. Previously friendly nations continue to make inroads into avoiding trade with the US where possible, to reduce US leverage.
> Do Scandinavian boats arrive
Yes
> would they arrive before the invasion is complete
Denmark has a squadron of patrol frigates assigned to Greenland which might be able to arrive in time, but anything else would take a day or two.
> and send warning shots
Extremely unlikely, precisely because of the escalation risk.
Civil war in america, probably a left wing assassination attempt, very angry judges; this all escalating quite quickly, blm like riots, and half of other nation states; roll the dice between eu finding itself or disolving to the old battle lines.
Every fake nation state in africa or middle east drop the pretense of the un,ambassadors get held hostage for a few extra months of "food aid"? mility coups?.
Social media starts to become region locked, gab finally gets banned in eu, twitter probably trys to work by regional blocks of content but these will escalate rapidly as people like me mock the left.
Global trade holds its breath delaying shipments for a day or two as people talk to lawyers but probably doesn't quite break, but its damaged insurance rates will never be the same.
In a week every cold-ish war turns hot; *except* Taiwan
I don't think a full-scale civil war is on the cards; possibly a coup, if enough senior officials and military officers decide that Trump (and possibly his senior advisers as well) has gone mad enough to threaten the well-being of the Republic, but I don't think anybody would want a drawn-out shooting war over Greenland.
If Trump does actually occupy the place, the main effect is probably that pretty much every European country cancels the leases of US bases and ceases military co-operation. Probably a lot of non-European countries do, as well. China is likely to be a net winner, because its biggest geopolitical rival has just torpedoed its international influence; if they can get their act together (which, granted, is far from a given), Europe also does well, insofar as they're now an independent bloc free from US control.
> if enough senior officials and military officers decide
"and then everyone lived happily ever after"
If trump dies without plausible deniability via cia hands Im quite sure that, not only will it lead to civil war, but that enough of the general public will defect and it will be a right-wing favored war.
Half the country preferred trump to harris and its the half with food and guns, I may not like when blm burns down a leftist city but thats the left attacking the left, it allows right-wing indifference.
This is a sidetrack, but what are the odds of leftwing vs. rightwing assassination or assassination attempt? Leaders are reasonably likely to be killed by someone extreme from their own side.
As it stands I believe trump would be more useful as a martyr now and he is of course a boring moderate in practice while the actual right may just play to win; its non-zero.
But The raw hysteria of the left is nothing to shake a stick at; 1000:1; it would honestly be shocking if there werent several attempts in the next 4 years.
Very angry generals?
Maybe but idk, I dont have a feel for who they are, I only ever hear about 1 or 2 being mocked.
In theory, soilders follow the plan when it seems reasonable and Im actually pro buying greenland.
invading Greenland would lead.to.europe responding by throwing out US toops, undoing decades of startegy. Would the generals take that lying down?
American world police support is dying down and the eu is a vassal
Id prefer a methodical dismantling of the american empire, cutting off is very different then picking a fight as you leave. Im not entirely sure what would happen, but one possibility is ..... nothing, france, uk and germany pick up on of their old wars.
Europe mattered for the cold war, economic bribery to slow the spread of reds when there was the soviets; realistically india and japan should probably be getting bribed to make a wall vs china (or handle the cartels). Maybe the gernals are still fighting the soviets, I know aspects of the cia are.
A weaker europe would probably just increase our brain drain of them
Why civil war in America? Who's fighting who and with what armies?
Violence is just in the air can you not feel it? Luigi was praised by left and right, "fiery but peaceful" protests are just a thing, war happens when young men dont have better things to do it lowers mate competition and access to resources in exchange for real vitality.
Trump is already a coup on fdr's order, If trump does something frankly retarded like risk a *western* power war the left will go mental, how are they suppose to swap sides with amnesty when the time is right if trump breaks every unspoken rules? a) he is having a drastic effect so you dont stay nuertal, you panic and try to stop the enemy b) he will be weaker at the moment, the neocons will jump ship c) there were just a few assassination attempts *that we know about* assassinations leading to war isnt exactly that much of a strech
> Who's fighting who and with what armies?
Cities vs rural, cia vs the "domestic terrorist" lists; everything important is about the mass at the center idolical support, purple states and centrists unfortunately king-make here even after violence starts cause of economics and information can come from even the worthless conformists, even if kinetic power is undervalued as political power; 99% of the population is 99% of the population.
The purple would be forced to have an opinion for some reason, maybe a federal judge chains themselves to a miltrey runway saying the congress declares wars(legally true but of course hasn't been enforced in decades) and gets run over because air tarrific control doesn't usually have to deal with idiots walking in front of planes and expecting to win.
> a federal judge chains themselves to a military runway
This would be hilarious! Maybe they also throw soup on the portraits in the Supreme Court?
that would undermine *their* respectability, surely they wouldnt ever mock someone else with a powdered wig
This seems way too pessimistic. Trump has a core base of ideological supporters that also happen to be the most vocal about gun ownership, he’s currently president so has the mandate of the army and the opposition hasn’t actually made Greenland a major talking point other than thinking it’s outrageous.
A military invasion of Greenland almost certainly wouldn’t trigger a civil war. The left simply doesn’t care, and how it would play out in practice is:
The US invaded without telling anyone they were going to do so
Denmark protests, the US claims it’s just protecting the Greenlanders, it’s sent to an endless circle of mediation/courts to decide
In the meantime the US “facilitates” a vote for independence, which already has majority support, so rigging might not even be necessary
The left in the US isn’t going to go die for Greenland, since it’s not an important issue to them. The EU isn’t going to declare war since the whole operation will be wrapped in a layer of formality and they have bigger problems on their border to the east.
>In the meantime the US “facilitates” a vote for independence, which already has majority support, so rigging might not even be necessary
But everybody would know that "independence" wouldn't mean proper independence, but becoming a US puppet, for which there is absolutely no desire in Greeland whatsoever.
It really depends on what the terms are.
Outright annexation and imposition of foreign order is definitely undesirable. Independence from Denmark, some time frame of guaranteed aid by the United States (probably some multiple of their current aid + mining investment) on the road to associated state status in a decade or two is a lot more palatable.
Few people on the left or the middle give a shit about Greenland because of Greenland.
They do give a shit about the US invading an ally and member of NATO.
I used to be that an example of a thing that causes a President to be impeached or 25th Amendmented would be "lol they call for an invasion of Canada." It was taken for granted that this was obviously stupid and obviously impeachable and illegal order and the President would get carted out of office and into a rubber room.
Now? Who the fuck knows.
The error bars around what happens if Trump orders an invasion of Greenland are huge. There are so many variables at play. I don't trust anyone who says confidently that the military will or won't comply with that order. We're jumping through a dark door with no idea of what's on the other side.
Now Germany and Japan are considered close allies, and Russia and China are considered adversaries. Things change fairly quickly.
Philip Roth’s satire “Our Gang,” he actually has the fictional Nixon invade Denmark:
“For we are all familiar with the belligerent and expansionist policies of the state of Denmark, in particular the territorial designs that country has had upon the continental United States ever since the eleventh century. As you remember, at that time landings were made upon the North American continent by forces under the command of Eric the Red, and later under the command of his son, Leif Erikson. These landings by the Red family and their Viking hordes were of course made without warning and in direct violation of the Monroe Doctrine.... So when you ask me if our national security is threatened by these Danes, with their long-standing history of open contempt for our territorial integrity, I think I have to answer in all candor, yes it is.”
That was supposed to be parody. Now it is unrealistic only because this quote is too coherent and reveals too much knowledge of history to be a plausible Trump quote.
How do you go from "Greenland votes for independence" to "Greenland becomes part of the USA"?
That's an open question, but you don't plausibly get Greenland to become part of the USA until it's broken away from Denmark. How you get from point B to C doesn't matter if you can't get from point A to B.
This seems to be the current attitude of the administration:
"What we think is going to happen is that the Greenlanders are going to choose, through self-determination, to become independent of Denmark, and then we’re going to have conversations with the people of Greenland from there" - J.D. Vance
Trumps support is conditional
Im answering for the 1 week time table; and a basicly insane trump; real trump and actaully trying would take at least a year and do things like putin pushing for an election before invading.
I think peace comes from when others will punish the aggressor who didnt follow the ritual, and trump couldnt get congress to pass a motion of "if green land wants to join we let them" running a "survey" in greenland that promotes the idea and gets biased results etc.
> The left in the US isn’t going to go die for Greenland,
*congress* and the courts, will have opinions about changing the numbers(see the slave state compromises before the civil war) or starting a war(and funding it)
I dont see how it could happen in a mere week.
The EU isn't going to.do nothing. If the US switches from.being an ally in Ukraine to no help,.and then from no help to a potential invader, Europe will want them out.
Is Claude Code / aider significantly better than Cursor agent mode?
Anybody want to meet up in Tokyo or Singapore next month?
I'm a Bay Area ML researcher traveling to AI safety conferences in Tokyo and Singapore in April. I have a couple weeks between the two conferences, and it'll be my first time in Asia, so it'd be cool to meet up with local ACX/SSC readers while I'm there.
Sure, am based in Singapore, happy to grab a coffee.
Why isn’t Jaak Panksepp’s work more widely known? I’ve always wondered what was up with emotions, and he gave the best answer I’ve found in terms of tying together emotions as commonly understood with neuroscience and evolutionary needs. Yet I don’t find he’s as widely read or as influential as I would expect. I also don’t see any competing explanations or critiques of his work; it just seems like people aren’t very curious about emotions.
I’m curious if others are familiar with his research, and whether there are issues with it or better alternative explanations?
In particular I’m thinking of the Seven Primary Emotional Systems — the book The Archaeology of Mind identifies core emotional systems based on neurobiological research (e.g direct stimulation of certain neural circuits). He writes them in all caps to distinguish the neural circuits / primary emotions from ordinary uses of the same words:
SEEKING: Drives motivation and goal-directed behavior.
RAGE: Relates to aggression and anger.
FEAR: Associated with anxiety and avoidance behaviors.
LUST: Linked to sexual motivation and behavior.
CARE: Underlies nurturing and social bonding.
PANIC/GRIEF: Related to sadness and separation distress.
PLAY: Involved in social interactions and joy
There was a very popular narrative documentary based on this idea. I think it made around a billion dollars at the box office.
A quick web search shows Panksepp's TED talk from 2014 and discussion of his 9 minutes a day that matter for kids advice but not a narrative documentary.
Could you please provide a name or link?
I thought it was a joke about "inside out"
Oh! Thanks for deciphering this for me. Now I’m imagining the Panksepp version…
You’d have to remove Disgust. Joy seems to combine SEEKING and PLAY, but SEEKING is involved in many of the emotions and seems difficult to portray.
Sadness seems more like depression (ie lack of SEEKING) than PANIC/GRIEF, which is more centered around separation distress and loss. So you’d have to remix this character too.
Anger and Fear can probably stay as they are, but then you’d also need to add LUST and CARE.
My latest monthly Long Forum wrap up of the best long form content is fresh off the press.
Highlights include an economic analysis of how the USA created the EU, a new deep genomic "split and merge" model of human evolution, a stunning theory for the role of music in human evolution, and an elaboration of Cosmic Natural Selection that shows the theory has legs.
https://open.substack.com/pub/zeroinputagriculture/p/long-forum-april-2025?r=f45kp&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
Interesting collection, thanks for sharing!
What are the odds that Trump would try to pack the SCOTUS with loyalists if some big rulings don't go his way? What are the odds he would succeed?
Low. There's already a conservative majority so why would the right want to muck with it? I think it's much more likely that the next Democratic administration does it as a repudiation of MAGA. They have much more to gain. AOC has tweeted to this effect.
Even a few conservative justices won’t give Trump a rubber stamp. Eventually he’ll probably clash with them since he himself doesn’t seem to have any internal limits about use of executive orders.
Trump also doesn’t care what happens after he’s out of office so the prospect of retaliatory packing by a future democratic president won’t influence him. Maybe congressional republicans or JD Vance, who hope to be around in more than 4 years, would pull him pack. But inasmuch as he can destroy most of their careers by turning the base against them, if he insists, they have to go along with it.
Yeah this is actually a real upside to political parties that I never see mentioned. They last longer than administrations and therefore embody more long-term thinking. As a conservative I'm currently torn between enjoying the spectacle and dreading the backlash.
Probably higher odds he will just ignore and sideline the SCOTUS. No need to stuff it if the court is irrelevant.
"Succeed" as in "adds judges", or "succeed" as in "the judges rule in his favor"? Even if he manages to add a bunch of judges, he's getting blocked by judges he added last time, there's no reason to think he's gotten any better at picking them.
Trump has gotten much better at picking obedient sycophants. His first administration - and judicial appointments - were mostly ordinary republicans, many of whom pushed back against him and constrained him. He’s since learned his lesson it seemed. I don’t think he’d appoint just old fashioned federalist society judges, but would pick only individuals who’ve already publicly embraced him.
I'll take the odds of success if attempted first: pretty low. Court-packing requires and act of Congress, and Republicans have a razor-thin majority in the House (218 to 213), and their Senate majority is only a little larger (53+Vance to 47). Three or four Republicans in either house would kill a court-packing bill. Moreover, a court packing bill could and would be filibustered, so they would need 50 Republican Senators to not only vote for court packing but also vote to nuke the filibuster to pass it.
Trump has a lot of leverage with Congressional Republicans, and by this point a lot of them are fully on board with Trump, but not an infinite amount for the former and far from all of them for the latter. In January 2021, 64 Republicans in the House and 44 in the Senate voted to count the officially certified electoral votes from Pennsylvania, and 83 and 45 respectively did so for Arizona. Trump's objections to the electors from Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Georgia died without a full vote because zero Senators were willing to sign on to the effort.
I think it very likely he will want to try packing the court, but the very low likelihood of succeeding would probably kill the idea in the trial balloon stage.
Other possible responses to a big SCOTUS loss would be just taking the loss, telling the courts to go fly a kite, or trying to circumvent the ruling through foot-dragging and bad-faith interpretations. I think the last is the most likely, especially since he already seems to be doing it over small losses in court. Accepting a legitimate loss doesn't seem to the Trump's style, although he might turn to it if all other options are exhausted. And brazenly open defiance of SCOTUS would be one of the few things Trump could do that might actually get enough Senate Republicans to turn against him and vote to remove him from office.
For someone interested in improving bone density and adding lean mass trying to get into strength training, who is worried about getting injured (past experiences), what might be better :
1. Pilates on the machine they have or
2. a small group barbell strength training with a personal trainer who starts you real easy?
What are the pros and cons?
How does one protect oneself from injury?
I'm always told "Listen to your body", but the body doesn't speak until it is too late :).
I had a few minor injuries when getting back into weight training. My solution was to start very light, progress slowly, and hyper-focus on proper technique for many months before challenging myself with any substantial weight increases. I recorded every set and reviewed my form before the next set. If something looked off I would watch a video to remind myself how to do it correctly. Whenever I injured myself I would put my workout in Chatgpt, tell it my symptoms, and ask it for possible causes.
Stronglifts 5x5 has thorough explanations of how to do the major compound lifts on their website.
If you have any permanent injuries to work around, or want to avoid the hassle of teaching yourself, then maybe seek help from a professional.
What about a physical therapist? I believe they have to have more training than personal trainers and there are some who work mostly with athletes recovering from injuries. Those PT’s understand wanting to build strength safely, and what ways it’s safe to train a body with a fragile part.
Can you say more about your previous injuries? Do you have specific issues that put you at risk of injury, or in the past were you just lifting too heavy too fast / with poor technique?
Assuming you don't have specific issues:
There's a case for something like pilates or yoga *alongside weight training* to increase your range of motion. For example, my understanding is that tight hamstrings can make it hard to do a full squat or deadlift, and trying to force it will cause your form to degrade and risk causing injury.
I would recommend you talk to a few of the weights instructors you've been looking at and explain that you've suffered injury in the past and want to progress slowly and cautiously with a heavy focus on correct form. Judge from their reaction who would be best for you. If you have the option of doing pilates or yoga separately as well then it can't hurt - although it should be possible to do just weights if you go slow and steady and have someone making sure your technique is sound.
Is Pilates even claimed to be good for this? I thought it was for flexibility and balance.
Yeah what Performative Bafflement said.
In general, Pilates is not going to load your bones enough to improve bone density at all. So if that's an explicit goal, barbell strength training with a coach or trainer is the way I'd go.
Be sure to bring up your history of injury, so they can closely monitor the parts of movements that may stress those parts of the body. They can typically offer alternative lifts or movement patterns that don't stress a given part as much.
Protection from injury is achieved by working out under a skilled eye, and by slowly progressively overloading - when your muscles and tendons are stronger and more capable over time, you are safer from injury as well.
The trainers I am considering all have similar certifications and experience. I guess I just have to trust one. Are they really trained in reducing injury risk?
Look for the CSCS certification and ignore all others (https://www.nsca.com/certification/cscs/). Every coach I trained under who had this certification (and one gym only hired coaches with this certification) was good.
You can get personal trainer certifications via taking online courses and then a multiple choice exam. Try googling “online personal trainer certification courses.” I would not trust one unless a knowledgeable friend recommended them.
A good one should know enough physiology and movement patterns to genuinely help reduce the risk of injury, yes.
That said, quality can vary - you can usually do a "tryout" session with one before committing. The things I would look for are IQ, former athletes, and an interpersonal mentoring style you're comfortable with.
People travelling internationally have for a long time had few rights at the borders of countries they're not citizens of, and we've heard horror stories of people being detained over misunderstandings, on flimsy evidence - or "correctly" over matters that many of us just wouldn't have expected to be a problem, before. Border crossings are a context where travellers are fairly at the mercy of border agents, who can have a lot of discretion. It feels like this has gotten worse, globally, in the last few decades.
I'm happy that recent stories we've heard in the context of the Trump administration are drawing more attention to the risks travellers face if they haven't crossed their i's and dotted their t's, or sometimes even if they have. I have no idea whether more people are actually getting caught up in these situations than previous or if it's just that we're hearing about more examples, but it's been a huge blind spot in recent years and good to shine some light one it. It's a context where by its nature there is little democratic pushback on excesses, so it seems like risks to travellers being detained, invasiveness of e.g. searching their devices and social media etc have just increased and there's been almost no force pushing the other way.
I'm curious if anyone knows of any hard numbers that might show how things have changed over time and whether they're actually worse under Trump or if it's just being reported on more. It seems to be a bit of an assumption that e.g. random border detention of travellers is new or at least more frequent in recent months, and I guess I'm not convinced it is, though I also wouldn't bet that it isn't.
The asymmetry between the rights given to citizens vs not seems frankly insane a lot of the time. I wonder if it's a space where there should be some reciprocal agreements negotiated between countries about the rights their citizens have at each others' borders or whilst travelling on visas. It seems bizarre to travel from one country where you have a tonne of rights to another country whose citizens have a tonne of rights, and for there to be this brief period in between where you might get detained and have your stuff searched or destroyed.
For Germans, I am pretty sure the numbers have increased, from zero to a small number. At least for the severe cases where German citizens are detained for at least 24 hours without being allowed to contact anyone, leaving their hosts and relatives deeply troubled. I think those cases would have made the news also before Trump, so I assume that they didn't exist back then, but there have been such cases in the last weeks.
Australian perspective. Full citizens in Australia (and of course non-citizens) must give up their phone/laptop along with passcode if requested at the border (I assume this is required in most countries apart from the US that has strong personal liberty norms).
On this, in years of doing business in China, you just assume the authorities are going to fully image whatever phones or laptops you bring in.
So you deliberately bring wiped or burner phones or laptops that basically work like edge devices connecting back to servers at home with any files you need, through built-in hardware VPN devices you take with you (because you also don't trust most endpoints).
Depends how you phone is locked. US citizens can be forced to unlock a phone with biometrics (touch id / face id). But are constitutionally protected from being forced to provide the passcode. But if you don't they can still detain your device for a few days even if they let you in.
Are the proponents of the untested Term Limits Theory of the Twenty-Second Amendment expected to have standing to sue if Trump were to run for a third term?
States have the right to exclude candidates from the ballot if they are clearly and objectively constitutionally ineligible. I think this was most recently upheld in a Ninth Circuit case,
Lindsay v. Bowen (2014), which ruled against a would-be third party Presidential candidate (Peta Lindsay), who had been kept off the ballot in California on the grounds that she was 27 years old, which is less than the constitutionally mandated age of 35.
There is other case law that neither states nor Congress can add their own substantive eligibility requirements for federal office beyond the qualifications listed in the Constitution, and that (as of the most recent election cycle) the insurrection clause of the 14th amendment requires an act of Congress to enforce. But states disqualifying would-be candidates based on age and residency requirements is routine.
If enough states were to decline to act, though, I'm not sure who would have standing to act. I think there is precedent for Congress disqualifying votes for ineligible Presidential candidates, namely the 1872 election, in which electoral votes for Horace Greeley weren't counted because he had died prior to the electoral college votes being case, although I have a relatively low level of confidence in my understanding of the details there. But that depends on Congress acting.
If an ineligible candidate were to be accepted by Congress as the electoral college winner, there is language in the 12th Amendment about ineligible winners: the VP-elect becomes President if the President-elect is ineligible (or dies before inauguration day), and the next person in the statutory line of succession becomes President if both are dead or ineligible. As for standing to enforce this, the person with the clearest standing would be the VP-elect (or the next person in the line of succession if both are ineligible, currently the Speaker of the House). So Trump's running mate would very probably have standing to challenge Trump's eligibility in court at the last minute. Legally at least; politically, it would be rather awkward.
Wouldn't eligible candidates who lost the election have standing?
Possibly. They're pretty likely to have standing for "My opponent shouldn't be on the ballot" lawsuits during the campaign, but less likely to have standing for an "I should be President, not him" lawsuits afterwards. For the former, the problem is that case law is generally against states having a judicially-enforcable duty to keep unqualified candidates off the ballot, although the cases I know of are more situations that would require active investigation if the claims of ineligibility are taken seriously (namely, the conspiracy theory that Obama was born in Kenya and his Hawaiian birth certificate was falsified), not situations where the relevant facts are uncontested public record. For the latter, the problem is that it's unclear what would have happened if the ineligible candidate is off the ballot, and it's black-letter law what should happen when the Electoral College winner is ineligible and it isn't "the runner up in the electoral college becomes President".
At a certain point the law isn't going to matter if Trump pushes this, any more than it did for Charles I doing similarly untraditional overreach.
What are non-term-limits theories of the 22nd amendment? Is there really debate over this?
Probably it comes down who excludes an ineligible candidate from the ballot. SOCTUS already said the states aren't able to do that. If he is on the ballot and wins, then maybe the electoral college. If not them, congress. But in a scenario where Trump runs again it is really hard to imagine any of them actually acting to stop Trump (provided he seems to have a resonable chance of winning).
People seem to miss the messy reality of authoritarianism. Its not that elections stop happening, its that they become harder and harder for the opposition to win. The media only gives airtime to one candidate, opposition voters are discouraged from turning out, opponents are arrested or discredited, and so on. The same with a third term - in the end, no one can stop that happening except the voters.
Trump v. Anderson is specific to the 14th Amendment. The ruling relies on arguments over whether or not the insurrection clause is self-executing. It doesn't reach the more general question of whether states can exclude candidates who are ineligible for Article II or 22nd Amendment reasons, which circuit courts have ruled in favor of as recently as 2014 (Lindsay v. Bowen).
Nothing notable at the time of writing, but if they could come up with alternative theories to the Unitary Executive and the Independent State Legislature, on which the Constitution is no less clear, I expect someone to be able to come up with at least one for this.
So the 22nd says no one can be elected to a third term but it doesn't say they can't serve. The 12th amendment doesn't say anything about election just service. So it's proposed to elect the termed out president as VP and have the president resign. This could also apply deeper in the line of succession.
What if he copies from Robot Richard Nixon in Futurama, who argues that "noBODY" shall be elected 3 times, but putting his brain in a robot body counts as a new body...
What if he got a sex change. Sure Donald Trump has been president for two full terms, but what about Donna Trump? What are progressives going to do, suppress his right to live his true identity as a woman? Checkmate, liberals.
I don't think that would work, legally speaking. Undergoing a sex change doesn't make you a new person in the eyes of the law; it's not as if any contracts you've entered into become void at the moment of transition, for example. So even if Trump has a new legal name and sex, he'd still be ineligible to run again.
(And yes, I realise your post was probably tongue-in-cheek, but what can I say, I'm a pedant.)
Just so he doesn't compete in sports against women.
The Twenty Second Amendment says that no one “shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice”. The Twelfth Amendment says that “constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.” So there’s an argument that being ineligible to be elected to an office isn’t the same as being ineligible “to” the office. Certainly if Trump (or Clinton or Obama or Bush) ended up lower down on the lien of succession I don’t see anything that would prevent them from assuming the presidency again.
My understanding is that the amendment specifically prohibits anyone who has held the office of president for two terms from holing the office of VP, for this exact reason.
The eligibility to hold office from the 12th is different from the 22nd. That requirement is only that the office holder must be a US citizen of age 35+ (or whatever it is). This is separate from the 22nd which only mentions election. Or so the theory goes.
Well as someone else said, that's batshit, but its hard to imagine anyone in his base will care that it makes no sense.
If SCOTUS allows him to run again, I'd love to see Obama run again against him.
I'm sure many of you saw OpenAI's new image generator release. I decided to run the prompts from Scott's bet with Vitor (https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/i-won-my-three-year-ai-progress-bet) to see how the new state-of-the-art model handles them. Spoilers: it performs amazingly.
https://x.com/thinkingshivers/status/1904765329806328130
The factory worker in #3 looks strikingly like one of the models in a John Patrick Downie painting of an Irish farmer. Even the style matches Downie. Gak! But he didn't paint cats AFAIK.
I agree that Scott declared victory far too early, but I think Flux (from ~six months ago) met the criteria for the bet. It never got the key in the raven's beak though.
ICE detaining a US citizen for "looking Mexican" is a constitutional violation, isn't it? https://www.techdirt.com/2025/03/28/ice-arrested-and-detained-a-us-citizen-for-hours-because-he-looked-mexican/
On what grounds? Iiuc law enforcement are allowed to detain people for a while without charges normally (I guess this could be a "lack of probable cause" fourth amendment issue, but there could also be a cause the article doesn't mention).
(I've sort of been arguing the ICE side here so I should clarify that I'm not generally pro their side, I'm just arguing the very narrow point that this may not have been a blatant constitutional violation).
What grounds could ICE (an immigration enforcement agency) possibly have to detain a US citizen, who is by definition not subject to immigration control?
They presumably didn't know he wasn't a US citizen on arrest. Probable cause doesn't mean "absolute certainty".
According to the article he was carrying his ID and Social Security card which would have let them look it up his citizenship - yet they took it away with his wallet and detained him for hours anyway.
Is ICE allowed to detain any citizen for hours just by saying "we didn't know you're a citizen", even if said citizen is literally carrying proof of citizenship?
> literally carrying proof of citizenship
Neither a drivers license nor a ss card is proof of citizenship. Both are regularly issued to non-citizens via both legal and less-than-legal channels. And yes, ICE (and and other law enforcement for that matter) is legally allowed to detain you for basically any reason provided they can invent even the flimsiest of pretexts.
I saw something about one woman scooped up as an illegal immigrant and she had a fake Social Security number so she could get work, so yeah - just producing "here's my social security number" is no evidence of being a citizen.
The Social Security Administration does track citizenship status, see:
https://www.ssa.gov/personal-record/update-citizenship-or-immigration-status
ICE certainly has access to that database.
Note that the article is quoting his lawyers; it's hardly a neutral source.
Re the specific documents, I don't actually think you can verify citizenship with those? There's no central citizen registry and noncitizens can also get driver's licenses and SS cards (that's why employers want a passport or something else for proof of citizenship).
The Social Security Administration does track citizenship status, see:
https://www.ssa.gov/personal-record/update-citizenship-or-immigration-status
ICE certainly has access to that database.
There are lesser protections from search and seizure in the 100 mile border zone - which is to say 100 mile radius from any external border. As you might imagine, this includes the majority of the US population, and for instance 100% of the state of Florida. And the standard for detention is "reasonable suspicion", which is a lesser standard than probable cause. However, court precedent has established that ethnicity/race on its own is not enough to establish reasonable suspicion.
International airports count as "borders" for purposes of the 100-mile criterion, so it's a lot more of the country than you'd expect.
Agreed that if there was no further cause than his ethnicity that's probably a violation of precedent (although I don't know enough about the practical standards to know if that's particularly blatant for LE - I'd guess that that's the level of violation that routinely happens by mistake). The article just quotes that as a claim by his lawyers though, the ICE officers may claim to have had more cause.
I haven't heard of any big-budget computer games using LLMs (for example, for character dialogue). Why not? Cost? Technical barriers? People being slow to move to a new paradigm?
I recently saw an advert for an indie game that's using LLMs for dialogue. The premise is kind of an anime escape room - you're stuck in a room with your yandere girlfriend, and you want to get out of there, but she's crazy and doesn't want you to leave her. So you need to talk to her to find out how to escape the room, without her getting suspicious and killing you.
I have no idea if it's any good, but I think it's thinking along the right lines. It's using free-text conversations to give a unique challenge that couldn't be done with just a dialogue tree, and since the girl is crazy it's okay if the dialogue is a little janky.
I think it will come eventually. I've seen a few casual games recently where the art style is very clearly AI generated, and I can only imagine that graphics will increasingly be created using AI either as assistant or even alone.
Once that gets smoothed out enough, I think big budget games companies will seize on any opportunity to reduce costs and improve productivity. Character dialogue is trickier but yeah, eventually the AI will handle that too.
Since the outcome of dialogue in videogames are constrained by the game's actual content, the alpha of automatically generating dialogue instead of pre-writing it is low in the best case, and large and negative in the worst case. In addition, an LLM by itself is not enough to enable freeform text or speech as an input; you have to change the entire interface of the game to enable this. In most games dialogue options are multiple choice. One thing you could do is use an LLM to generate the multiple choice options. But then how much are you getting out of doing that over just pre-writing the dialogue? The other option is you enable freeform text input using either the keyboard or text-to-speech, in which case you've completely changed how the game can be played. E.g. it's no longer possible to play it on your steam deck while you ride the train or whatever. And even if people bite on this, the outcome of the dialogue tree still is quite constrained: in the end what happens has to be one of the things that is actually programmed to happen in the game. You can't convince the big evil dragon to go off and marry you if there isn't actual content for the dragon wedding in the game (at least not yet!).
Just for writing character dialogue ? Probably because they don't want to burst a PR bubble/their players wouldn't like it. I doubt most RPG players would be happy to learn that a game was actually the window guided output of an inhuman machine.
A game that uses it live ? Well big budget games take a long time to make. GPT 4 came out just about a year ago. Wait five years and you might see a couple.
Also competition for resources on the users machine. Need 8 to 16gb of vram to run a decent model on your machine, so say goodbye to... having any high res textures or high poly models in your Video game ?
Running it online means long running servers or long running contract with OpenAI or similar, also puts it in the purview of new project built with it in mind, so, also a factor for wait another five years and see
FWIW, I interviewed with a big-budget company doing exactly that. The game was quite ambitious, so it will probably take a while before it's released. So maybe the games are on the way, it's just that there's a bit of a development delay.
Anyone who seriously looks into this realises that it just creates procedural oatmeal. Character dialogue is a great way to elevate a game, insert some humour, world-building, pathos etc. Filling it with generated generica is usually a missed opportinity.
My brother told me that Flight Simulator is using it for ATC chatter.
Hard to make reliable without making the content meaningless filler. Greatly increases hardware costs and reduces user base.
InZOI is a recent Sims competitor that just came out and "Smart Zoi" uses a LLM to understand player text and generate NPC thoughts based on in game state and actions. https://www.nvidia.com/en-gb/geforce/news/nvidia-ace-naraka-bladepoint-inzoi-launch-this-month/
There's already a ton of AMD users complaining they can't use the feature or makes their computer slow. It's a super mini LLM, about as small as you could hope for. But the graphics load of the game itself is quite high.
Big-budget games need it the least (on account of having a battalion of writers on the payroll) and are the most risk-averse (on account of having a big budget). They are also the most likely to do stuff like full voice acting, which means the player typing in a response would feel out of place.
The adoption trend is currently mods > tech demos > indies > AAA, so roughly in decreasing order of investment. I have already seen libraries for LLM integration in some game engines.
As others already mentioned, LLMs are also too heavy on the GPU to be worth running on the consumer hardware, and going over the network requires consistent network access, probably cost, and you're building in a dependency on a third party which can mess you up at any minute.
The niche for freeform dialogue is also pretty small. Most game writing is a highly curated experience - if you are writing an RPG, you want the character's persuasiveness to determine the outcome, not the player's, for example, and in other cases what the NPC says is carefully designed to reveal details about the setting or mechanics.
What others haven't noted yet is the legal risks in an evolving regulatory environment. A big studio can ill afford to have their game pulled from the EU or the US over copyright issues, which are still being decided on, so calling LLMs "a new paradigm" is premature in any case.
Also, the "writing" part of a large game involves a lot more than just dialogue. A writer builds the entire world, of which dialogue is but a small part. The entire setting, its characters, history, geography etc. are all relevant to the plot and have to be consistent across the project. I'm not sure today's LLMs can even do that at such scale and such consistency.
Gamers absolutely hate genAI in games. They're smart enough to understand that companies are going to use genAI to create low-cost low-quality content, but not smart enough to realize they shouldn't have been supporting those kinds of game companies to begin with.
Like a lot of tech companies, game companies stopped caring about customer satisfaction when they realized customers won't leave them even after treating the customers poorly.
Didn't AI Dungeon do this and everyone just used it for erotic stories?
https://aidungeon.com/
Realizing from the other responses I'm not sure if you mean "for live, interactive dialogue" or "for prewritten dialogue".
Live dialogue I'd say no, but creating canned responses for "the player character wants to buy material from your shopkeeper" style dialogue? Let the AI create that rather than having a human work on it, shave off some development time where the human can work on the main plot instead.
Then a player figures out how to befuddle the LLM shopkeeper into hallucinating that the price of a full suit of plate armor is three copper pieces. Now what? If the transaction is processed at the price the LLM agreed to, then the game is broken as soon as the player posts the "infinite stuff" hack to the right forums. If the transaction is processed at the prior hard-coded price, then there's a disconnect between what the "shopkeeper" says and what he *does* that is going to piss off the player and undo everything you hoped to accomplish with the LLM cleverness.
And hard-coded mathematical constraints like "whatever the player says, never accept a price less than X gp", are I think not the sort of things LLMs can be trusted with yet.
Gamers are always figuring out hacks and cheats and get-arounds anyway, so even legitimate non-AI games have exploits for "infinite gold/no weight limits" and so on.
(I, ahem, may or may not have made use of one or two for a particular game myself).
I doubt this will happen much outside of small indie games. Writing dialogue can already be farmed out to relatively cheap human labor, probably with some better expectations around consistency.
And, on the flip side, large game budgets are absolutely dominated by a combination of programming and content creation, the latter more in terms of 3d graphics. AAA games cost $200m or more to make - saving a bit of money on writing generic NPC dialogue probably isn't relevant compared to even the slightest chance of accidentally having one NPC say "As a large language model..."
Quality and cost.
Consistency and coherency is hard. You want the LLM to make up small details but not contradict the story or lore or world state. You also don’t want to frustrate players when it gives out bad advice (“yes, it’s possible to open this door with the right key”).
And some games have people who expect to pay $30 and play for hundreds of hours. GPT-4 level intelligence is just not feasible. You essentially need subscriptions to cover ongoing costs, and subscriptions are hard (though not impossible).
Using them for major characters or story events would seem to introduce the risk of inconsistency or getting off track with the overall story being presented, not to mention that's probably where you want human writing that can maximise emotional impact and memorable-ness instead of the kinda bland, generic output of LLMs.
If you use them for minor characters and quests, how do you enable the player character to explore conversation branches of their choice without making it possible for them to jailbreak the LLM? If you're only going to let them ask predetermined questions, may as well have the whole conversation planned and pre-written (though I guess you could use an LLM for that). If you let the LLM generate options, how do you prevent a very long conversation from coming up with something that contradicts the setting or story, or isn't actually possible in the gameplay? (e.g. suggesting going to an area that exists in the lore but isn't actually accessible)
Also, this is probably a big one, how do you plan and execute QA tests to make sure every situation the player could get themselves into works properly? (Including everything from scenarios that accidentally stop the quest from proceeding, to 'all lines of dialogue are displayed correctly', to 'this all works and makes sense in every language the game supports'*).
I'd expect this stuff to first be done in smaller, experimental games where the player base is understanding that the system might not work perfectly before it appears in AAA games.
*I saw a translation error recently where a character had to interact with a sofa, but the dialogue referred to it as a 'chair', presumably because the translator had only received text and didn't know what the actual object on screen would be. Even simple sentences and object names can cause issues when all you have to go on is a text description.
Would require that the games be online, otherwise the feature wouldn’t work, or else would require running the model locally, which would be far beyond the capacity of consoles and all but the most-kitted out PCs.
It would also be a fairly big ongoing cost for the developer, unless they made the consumer pay for it, which almost none would accept.
Combine that with the fact that the games with lots of characters and lots of dialogue tend to be single player, and enthusiasts of these games expect to be able to run them offline. These also tend to be games with a strong story direction, and the creative staff may not be happy about compromising narrative direction with an LLM. On top of that, a lot of devs might worry about it going off the rails and spitting out undesired dialogue, especially if the players can find a way to interact and possibly jailbreak it.
I could see it being used for non-critical dialogue, something like idle dialogue between NPCs in an elder scrolls game, but for AAA production you’d also have to spring for text to voice, which would increase the cost and probably lead to issues with voice actors.
All in all, the actual use case for LLM dialogue generation as part of a core game (vs just being a mod) is quite narrow and likely to get a lot of bad press up front even if it works.
“Would require that the games be online, otherwise the feature wouldn’t work.”
Don’t you have to be online to play a lot of games these days anyway? I thought that ship had already sailed…
A lot, yes, but I can't think of any that do that while banking on story, character, or dialogue (Destiny might be an exception, but their narrative elements generally weren't very good). The games that do focus on having lots of characters you can interact with at length are generally single-player, and single-player games can generally be played offline. There are exceptions, but these tend to result in a lot of fan backlash, since online-only singleplayer is a prelude to a lot of despised practices and you will likely lose access to the game if the company stops maintaining servers.
Now, you could add LLMs to some other kinds of online-only games, but for the life of me I really don't see the advantage unless having lots of characters with lots of dialogue is an important goal for you. Games have gotten by with repetitive barks for ages, and will continue to do so.
I think there could be a great deal of gamer interest in something that has at its core an AI dungeon master. And trying to jail break various characters you encounter would be a feature not a bug. Charisma changes from stat to skill.
I could see that, but that would be a lot less straightforward than just using it for character dialogue. Sites like AI dungeon (https://play.aidungeon.com/) are a thing (and I had to interact with it for a class once, for some reason), but never grabbed me. Recent news indicates that Hasbro, owners of D&D, were intent on adding an AI DM to their new virtual table-top, but that seems to have floundered. Whether that's a fault of the technology or just par, since everything else the brand does these days seems to flounder, is left to the reader.
That being said, a game which is explicitly about navigating a world controlled by an AI (even in a more limited sense of control such as via characters) where jailbreaking the AI behind it is the main challenge, could make for a very strong skill challenge game, maybe with the same kind of audience as Arctic Eggs.
Agreed, that goes beyond just using the AI for a little extra npc depth.
Here is perhaps a simple enough use case. Many rpgs at the begining have an interaction where choices made go into determining your starting stats. Sometimes this is annoying actually, just let me choose rogue instead of answering all these dumb questions! But you see why its supposed to be there An AI driving that could be more interesting and open ended. The concept could be reused in determining rewards at various points.
I see many articles about Tesla sales cratering in Europe, but who is buying them in the United States, or anywhere else? Conservatives willing to get electric cars to own the libs? Apolitical normies living in caves?
In Europe, while politics may indeed play a part in declining Tesla sales, what is also at work is (1) domestic manufacturers producing better and wider range of EVs and (2) China is pushing ahead with a marketing blitz; I keep hearing "BYD - the best car brand you never heard of" ads on my local radio station:
https://www.euronews.com/business/2025/03/25/european-car-sales-dip-in-february-evs-pick-up-but-tesla-sales-tumble
"In Europe, Tesla’s sales are certainly freefalling and have been beaten by Chinese auto giant SAIC Motor, which increased its sales significantly by 39.2% in the EU in the same period, selling 30,176 cars.
Meanwhile, both companies have a quickly growing rival: Chinese electric vehicle maker BYD. The company reported its 2024 revenue at over $107bn (€99bn), topping Tesla's nearly $97.7bn (€90.4) for the same period.
BYD said its battery electric and hybrid vehicle sales jumped 40% worldwide. The company has just launched its Qin L EV sedan, a mid-sized model similar to Tesla's Model 3 but at just over half the price.
BYD is also rolling out a super-fast EV charging system that is nearly as quick as a fill-up at the pumps."
So if you're a first-time buyer of an EV and one model is half the price of the other, which are you more likely to buy?
I agree on both points
Recently I saw the newest line of Volkswagen id electric cars and I just love the ID Buzz. It looks like VW beetle except like it came from Futurama. I don't really need a minivan now and my (petrol-drinking) Opel is still fine for at least the next 5-10 years. But if I needed car and a minivan I'd totally buy that ... and I am not even a big fan of VW.
And I also realised recently how the Chinese have improved their auto game. Ironically, this was in Cuba where you mostly either have US cars from the 50s or Russian cars from the 60s-70s. But now also they have a lot of Chinese cars (mostly electric) and the MG brand looks pretty good from the inside as well as the outside.
I am not a car person by the way (which reminds me that I haven't changed motor oil in almost 2 years and I should get to it already ... ) so if it looks good and seems to drive well, I think it is good. I have no idea how reliable any of these brands are.
But there is clearly a lot more choice today in the EV market, Teslas are quite expensive and they perhaps don't have a very good reputation for quality in Europe either (source - random people I know told me ... not recently, so nothing to do with politics). Personally, I don't like the way they look either, they give me a 2000s sportscar vibe (and the cybertruck has 80s sci-fi vibes), but that's subjective.
On Fox news it's Tesla Informercials All The Time:
Sean Hannity: https://x.com/SawyerMerritt/status/1899276466447401197 (Many "I never considered an electric car but now I'm buying a Tesla!" in the replies.)
Even Tesla Stock - US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick: https://x.com/Acyn/status/1902518050353770527
I am kind of surprised at all this. The valuation of TSLA is extraordinary for a car company… to have the commerce secretary touting it made my jaw drop.
I think there’s some shrewdness going on that might or might not be kosher. SpaceX is the company I would really like to invest in, but it’s privately held. I don’t see how Tesla ever justifies the kind of valuation it has- although ever is a big word. Suffice to say I think there’s a little back-and-forth going on there under the table. The valuation of Tesla has let him do a lot of things with money.
Mind that there is another effect super-imposing on the sales number: the top-seller model Y is quite old, and Tesla has announced that they will launch an upgrade of this model soon. This situation natural makes sales plummet because people wait for the upgrade.
That said, I do believe that the effect from political boycotts is real and significant, it just makes it harder to measure.
Meanwhile I've been boycotting (the ones available in my country) Teslas for years because they're made in China. If they start importing the US-made or German-made ones again (or start up the Indonesian factory they've been talking about) then I might buy one.
The moral orientation of someone who is more angry about Elon Musk than the Chinese Communist Party is bizarre to me but I guess it's just the outgroup vs fargroup thing again.
> but I guess it's just the outgroup vs fargroup thing again
It might also be that people react to change rather than to absolutes, so "China keeps being China" gets way less attention than "the US goes crazy".
I guess it's because boycotting *everything* that is made in China would be too difficult, and singling out Tesla would be weird (before hating Musk became popular).
Realistically I know it's impossible to avoid buying anything made in China but I do try reasonably hard to avoid it for anything valued >$100 if there's another option available.
It's not always possible, but it's definitely possible for cars which are made in many places and worth much more than $100. But with electric cars it's surprisingly tricky since many non-Chinese brands are now pumping out their AU-market EVs in China, even Kia.
If I were to buy an EV in the short to medium term I'd probably wind up with the BMW i4 which is about 150% of the price of the Model 3 but made in Germany.
I dont think it would be weird. A car is a big enough purchase that you can definitely know where its made without an undue burden, and Tesla is one of the few, and when he started this propably the only, relevant car made in China.
And that's not going to happen to anyone who's considering buying a Tesla. You're framing this as people being clearly right to boycott Tesla when the reality is just that they're doing it because they don't like his politics.
If any progressives produced anything of economic value I'd probably do the same. Fortunately they don't so I don't have any tough choices to make.
I don't understand your argument. Why else would you boycott someone except because you don't like their politics?
Like, people didn't boycott the Montgomery bus system because they were afraid bad things would happen to them if they rode the bus, they did it because they didn't like the policies of the bus company.
The above commenter was arguing that it's more rational to boycott Trump than China because China doesn't impact their lives. My point is that Trump doesn't impact their lives either, at least not in a practical sense. Both types of boycott are equally performative.
Very bad time to make this point. Trump has just made very sure that he will have a practical impact of the lives of everyone in the U.S. and many people outside it. Whatever they may think of his other policies, not many people are going to fail to notice the sudden jump in the price of basically everything, nor the resulting economic reaction. I haven't lived in the U.S. in years and would love nothing better than to tune out its politics, but I've had to make quite a few decisions over the last three months based on things Trump has done or promised to do.
This. Also, the CCP doesn't represent a major change to the status quo. (The current CCP is not good, but is an improvement over the CCP under Mao.) Trump and Musk are trying to destroy things that Americans have been able to take for granted since the end of WWII or earlier.
Apolitical normies living in caves are the ones who’ve got it figured out
I saw a quote recently that resonated - “there’s some poor phoneless soul sitting next to a waterfall right now, who has no idea how angry and scared he’s supposed to be”
Hah
Both, really.
1. Conservatives are far less likely to get hybrid/electrical vehicles for climate reasons alone, but aren't any more fond of spending money on gas than anyone else, especially if you brand it as a "cool" car and not as a "boring, but saves the planet" car, which is the stigma that got attached to the Prius.
2. I think less "apolitical" and more "not so political that they let their opinion of Elon
Musk drive their car-buying choices" is still a very large category, at least in America. Apparently less so in Europe, but also Teslas were already a smaller section of the market over there, which I think magnifies the social effects.
Tesla was the best-selling brand of EV in Europe in 2024, but the domestic manufacturers are getting better at making and selling their own ranges of EVs.
https://autovista24.autovistagroup.com/news/which-brand-sold-the-most-evs-in-europe-in-2024/
Europe has stronger competition in the EV markets.
I'm just waiting for Plaids to come down in price - so far they've only gone down ~10% or so. The profit margins on those things approach 30%+, so still some room to go. Used ones have also barely come down at all, so it's not like there's a ton of civic-minded former Tesla owners flooding the market.
Yes, surely boycotts are stronger in America than elsewhere. There are lots of other phenomena that could cause a sales crash, such as Chinese competition. EU rules apply to calendar years and December and January sales are sensitive to legal changes. In particular, fleet efficiency rules tighten every calendar year. A company that has achieved its quota for 2024 prefers to delay sales from December to January so that they contribute to the new year. If they're really worried about it, they'll slash prices on EV, but that's probably for later in the year. But these rules are irrelevant to a purely electric company.
I bet the boycotts are stronger in Canada and western Europe. I quite like Trump 1.0 but the version 2.0 (and by implication, Musk) is fast running out of time to reveal some kind of plan behind the madness.
I just visited DC and saw an absolute ton of Teslas there, far more than I see in Chicago. No idea if DC was always a Tesla hotspot or if this is a recent development.
DC's been a Tesla hotspot for at least a few years. I do feel like I've seen a bit more recently, but it might just be my looking out for them more.
Battery charging nominative determinism...?
Makes a lot of sense!
The implications of your question seem pretty damning for the set of Tesla buyers. Are there really almost no people who like the idea of owning an electric car but do not automatically start hating and boycotting everyone the right-thinking people insist they need to hate? It might be like this on the west coast, but one would hope it's not like this throughout the rest of the country.
I might have been in the market for a Tesla after my current car got too old. But the guy did multiple Nazi salutes and never apologized for them. That alone is enough to never give him another dollar of mine.
And that's not due to "modern" politics, that due to 20th century politics.
"But the guy did multiple Nazi salutes and never apologized for them."
What good would apologising do?
(a) I apologise for the Nazi-style salute - aha, he *admits* he is a fascist Nazi totalitarian! Up against the wall with him!
(b) I apologise for giving the impression it was a Nazi salute - see, he's still denying that he's a fascist Nazi totalitarian! Up against the wall with him!
Damned if you do, damned if you don't. People have already made up their minds as to "Nazi salute for sure/not at all" and so whatever he says won't budge that.
If anyone has any examples of "person accused online apologised for offence and all was well afterwards", I'd welcome them. Generally it's been "person accused apologises, the apology is considered insincere/not grovelling enough, even more piling on and condemnation happens".
I think the main point is that the fact that there exist people who want very badly for the rest of us to believe that (1) he did Nazi salutes and (2) this is the most important aspect of him.
I think the main point is that the fact that he did Nazi salutes at all.
See, this is the entire question. "Of course it's a Nazi salute! Of course it's a Nazi salute, he touched his heart before he did it and that's the official Nazi salute! No, an opposition party politician touching his heart before throwing out his right arm at the same angle to a cheering crowd is absolutely not the same thing at all! Why? Well because we know Musk is a Nazi so it must be a Nazi salute, but the other guy is not a Nazi so it can't be a Nazi salute, even if it looks the same!"
It's chicken and egg, except the egg is always rotten.
>No, an opposition party politician touching his heart before throwing out his right arm at the same angle to a cheering crowd is absolutely not the same thing at all!
It really, really isn't. You tried to argue that it was the same a couple of OTs ago by using still frames out of context, and when people called you on that, you just pulled out your "How dare you deny my lived experience!" stock parody of leftism instead of actually arguing.
So? In my view the obviously parsimonious interpretation is that he was trolling. We're teetering on becoming a nation of humorless moral scolds and I applaud his bravado there. The world would be better if more public figures performatively invited moral condemnation for the sole purpose of thumbing their noses at it. Break Overton's Window. De-legitimize the scolds.
A few things:
On "owning an electric car", Tesla's no longer the only (or the best) game in town. Theirs was an advantage of being a) first movers and b) a strong brand aimed at the environmentally conscious and status conscious. That first mover advantage is spent, and other car companies have been producing serious EVs for a while now across the various markets Tesla wanted to target. High end, high-performance EVs? Mercedes and Porsche. High-end but sporty? Rivian. Budget? BYD. Budget but don't want to be seen buying Chinese? Hyundai. Middle-market commuters? Toyota, Honda, pick your poison.
Tesla has put out some good vehicles in the past, but their newest and most hyped release is... the Cybertruck, which has entirely earned its controversy for a variety of reasons, but the most important here is the shoddiness of its construction, including most recently revelations that the metal paneling just... falls off after a while. It has severely damaged Tesla's brand image of quality, technical sophistication, and craftsmanship, and does so just as Musk has become a much, much more public figure, and has similarly damaged its brand as among the affluent, environmentally-conscious liberal-left crowd that once formed its core demographic. A Tesla is no longer avant-garde or sexy, even without the culture-war baggage.
If you've done a rhetorical and political face-heel turn away from your core demo, regardless of your industry, you're in for some hard times, and Tesla would need to make up for that by rebranding and pivoting to a new demographic. The Cybertruck could be seen in that light, but I can say with confidence it has failed in that regard. More likely, the company's rebrand is to go yet further away from being a car company to being an AI/robotics company. I am supremely unimpressed by these efforts, cf my own substack for details.
So if you're a person who wants an EV and has zero concern at all with politics, a Tesla likely wouldn't make the top of your list on merits. It's not the best car in any market, it's no longer a status symbol, and you run an elevated risk of being socially downgraded by any left-of-center peers or having your car vandalized by the same cohort relative to any other EV.
If anything, the new core of Tesla fans is among tech enthusiasts, who believe when Musk says that the next generation of Teslas will have level 5 self-driving in {time.current_year++}, or that they'll be able to rent their vehicles out as robotaxis for passive income, or that their next sports car will have rocket boosters attached. That's a small and shrinking group of people.
Also, I don't agree with the implication that the Musk-hate is a matter of top-down groupthink. I've been on the Musk-hate train going on a decade now, and only recently have I found my peers receptive to the viewpoint. Everyone has a story with how they came to it, and in my experience it's quite grassroots.
A few years ago, when I bought my Tesla, those competitors all existed, but none of them was really competitive on performance. And I did look at/test drive some of them. Has that changed? (Has there been a dramatic improvement in the quality of the non-Tesla EVs in recent years? Not `they now exist' because they also existed when I was comparing some years ago)
That's going to depend on which one you bought and what you prioritized. Via Performative Bafflement's comment below, the new Tesla models S and X are probably still top of the line in terms of speed and speed adjusted for price, though other EVs are taking top spot in domains like range and charging time. I'm seeing a lot more Ioniqs on the road in particular these days, and supposedly their charging infrastructure has grown and improved considerably. The lead has shrunk.
Depending on what you use your car for and what your priorities are, there's a good chance there's a newer EV that does what you want better.
That being said, the car market looks insane right now, so even if you do find another EV you prefer, this may not be the time for a switch. Who knows, Tesla could get a big Presidental tax credit sometime soon.
"If you've done a rhetorical and political face-heel turn away from your core demo, regardless of your industry, you're in for some hard times,"
This is a mirror image of what conservative culture warriors claim Hollywood and the comic book industry have done against them.
The difference is that Musk pissed off the entire world except for half of the US, rather than just pissing off half the US.
> or that their next sports car will have rocket boosters attached.
Plaid is still the fastest EV in the biz, even against the Porsches and Mercedes.
And the Plaid is already sig cheaper than the Taycan or the EQE53, and if it gets discounted still further because of political stuff and vibes, so much the better!
It's the absolute best "dollar per performance" you can spend right now, literally, and probably will be for the next couple of years (and still better if discounted because Tesla is struggling).
Still, if I could get a Yangwang U8 in the US, I'd probably go for the Yangwang, so I definitely buy your "there are better options" argument.
I am skeptical that there are many motorists who buy strictly on the basis of "dollar per performance", and also that "performance" in this context reduces to "speed". Why does someone who is never going to drive more than 140 mph care whether their car tops out at 200 or 180 or 160?
Long before you get to that point, you get to the point where style and comfort and reliability and brand image count for more than a very marginal increase in useful performance.
> I am skeptical that there are many motorists who buy strictly on the basis of "dollar per performance", and also that "performance" in this context reduces to "speed".
I mean, this is literally the Corvette and Hellcat crowd, for decades. And now they have a right-aligned electric option that's notably faster than any combustion option.
Sure, not many buy on that metric overall, but it's been a notable part of the sports car niche for decades.
And some people like a boring looking car that's actually fast instead of a flashy exotic - I have a heavily modified 8 second street legal GTR, and most people don't even recognize it, much less know that it's probably fast.
But sure, you're totally right overall - not many people care about this as a metric, and it's a niche among the niche of sports car enthusiasts.
Thank you very much for writing this. This was educational.
I get it that there are a lot of reasons to hate Musk, and there always were, but your Musk-hate is obviously not the same brand as most people's. Most people who hate him now came there in a completely different way than you, all through the same media coverage.
Musk purchased Twitter, one of the biggest social networks on the internet and one with hundreds of millions of users, and made a bunch of changes which significantly degraded user experience.
I don't mean temporarily easing up on censorship (or being hypocritical about it and then censoring new things) either, but all the other ones; these days it's overrun with spambots and it feels like you're shouting into the void unless you pay 8 bucks, and if something goes wrong good luck getting support to listen. Even got rid of the logo.
I don't need other media to tell me he sucks.
> Most people who hate him now came there in a completely different way than you, all through the same media coverage.
There are plenty of reasons to hate or despise Musk from what he posts on X alone – and you can hardly claim that his own account on his own social network is somehow biased against him, can you? No other "media coverage" required.
If you want to understand your outgroup, don't start by assuming they're mindless NPCs driven entirely by what mainstream media tells them to think.
Enough videos of otherwise-normal-seeming Boomers keying cars, not because of what the car owner did but because of what the company owner has done possibly *years* after someone decided to buy that car, form a decent NPC/mindvirus argument.
Not true of all people that hate Musk, but certainly it seems to generate a particular degree of violent stupidity in a noticeable number of people.
I'm almost completely surrounded by people from my outgroup. Most of them I either like or love, respect, admire, or at the very least sympathize with.
I know they are not NPCs. They are people who caught the mind virus. I can no more fault them for catching it than for catching a flu. They might have thought that Musk was an annoying ass before (a view that I share), but the visceral hate is definitely new, and I think we all know when that started.
"the visceral hate is definitely new"
Yeah, it's so weird that actively wielding a sledgehammer aimed at the foundations of U.S. peace and prosperity provoked a stronger reaction than *checks notes* being a tasteless edgelord on Twitter. Man, that "mind virus" sure is wacky.
1. "If you want to understand your outgroup, don't start by assuming they're mindless NPCs"
2. "They are people who caught the mind virus."
3. "Facepalm"
I absolutely agree with a part of this: just recently I saw an old hoax tweet claiming to show Musk was going to ban critics of the current administration from Twitter, making the rounds on Substack. He's the man to hate du jour (at least before last week), and people are willing to overlook a great many grainy, undated tweets in order to get their hate fix.
That being said, I wouldn't reduce that to the dynamics of online hate alone. This may be my own bias talking, but I would consider it much more important that, in stepping into the public arena, Musk has exposed a great many more people to how he actually thinks and operates, and (just like when you see him step into *your* field of expertise for the first time), this tends to boggle the mind and shock the conscience of people who aren't already enraptured by him. For that reason, I expect (or at the very least hope) this persists well after hating on him stops being politically fashionable or profitably performative.
I *also* hope that this leads to a cultural reckoning with the cult of the genius and a realignment (especially in business circles) with 'fake it 'til you make it' mentality, but I'm probably wishing up a tree on this one.
Many years ago there were no other real options.
Now I can get an EV from a traditional automaker.
> but do not automatically start hating and boycotting everyone the right-thinking people insist they need to hate?
The implications of your implied implication are pretty damning.
For most people, a car is a serious purchase. If you're not seriously affected by modern politics, I'd expect you to go for the best option you can afford, regardless of who owns the company. Scott's assertion is that almost all people who might buy an EV are thus affected. If true, that's not good.
EDIT: Didn't see your edit. Yes, I do think the current hyperventilating about Musk is largely driven by the kind of media coverage he gets. My bad, I should have realized it was a contentious statement and skipped it.
"If you're not seriously affected by modern politics"
Everybody you're likely to talk to is "seriously affected by modern politics." The Great Recession of 2008 started with fatally boring and supremely ignorable banking and lending regulations (i.e. politics) and ended up touching almost every corner of the globe. COVID may or may not have been a "natural" event, but the various responses (again, politics) to it had large and undeniable impacts on the countries, regions and towns that implemented them, both during the height of the pandemic and the subsequent recovery. The supply chain crisis and worldwide bout of inflation that followed it (more politics) again affected nearly everyone in every corner of the globe.
None of that means it's always necessary or rational to pay attention to or participate in every facet of politics: everything that happens is bigger than you, and effects are often the result of many attenuated causes, and which can't be accurately mapped. And lots of theoretically politically focused actions end up being useless or counterproductive[1].
Really this particular case--the case of Musk and people choosing whether or not to buy Teslas--noteworthy in that it is so much clearer and less-ambiguous than most. To pretty much any of us outside the U.S. it's really, really obvious that giving Musk more money is not in our best interests. Even to those inside the U.S., those with even passable understandings of history and economics should be able to how ridiculously high-risk, low-reward a lot of the actions being taken by this administration are. Meanwhile Tesla's market position and Musk's personal finances make this sort of boycott considerably more likely to be meaningful than many similar actions. If there was one time or place in recent history to remember that "oh yeah, politics DOES actually impact me in large ways," a person could do a lot worse than this one.
[1] I'd say most, but not all, street protests, for example. But of the fraction that end up mattering, some really, REALLY matter, and it's not always clear in advance which ones they'll be.
Given how complex a car purchase decision is, "best option" is a fuzzy thing though. It's probably becoming easier to convince yourself that e.g. the Ioniq 6 is good enough for $1500 less.
Many (most?) people see their cars as an identity symbol. This makes it as serious as it gets
That's something I'm not familiar with. Is it something that's true specifically for EVs, for people who can afford expensive things, or for what kind of set of people?
Good comments from others. To add to the trucks debate, even owners of standard trucks often have strong preferences, I've seen many a sticker of a mischievous lad peeing onto the Ford oval on the rear window of a Ram or a GMC. And all other combinations of these of course.
Specifically re. Tesla: it has carried one of the strongest identity signals from the start, and it puzzled yours truly and many others when Musk started to veer sharply to the right: doesn't he know that most people buying Teslas are, shall we say, left-of-center, and that your typical F150-drivin' Texan won't be caught dead in a Tesla even while he cheers your newfound politics?
I guess we'll find out how this one plays out in the next couple of years.
Most Americans who drive pick-up trucks, sports cars, electric cars, Volvos, Jeeps, luxury cars, and 1960s VW vans. Nobody who drives Japanese or Korean fossil or hybrid cars.
They are dropping in the US, albeit more slowly.
I do think a lot of US politics is defined by checked-out people. My parents were normie Republicans but they just stopped watching national news during the first Trump Presidency. He's just not a fun figure to keep up with if you're neither a true believer nor a motivated enemy.
Is he less fun than anyone else in politics?
I think he's sort of extra exhausting because he takes up all of the oxygen. You either get to hear about him all of the time or you've got to specifically avoid hearing every new controversy. My folks used to watch the nightly news religiously.