I only started reading ACX after the move from SSC. I have gone back and read the top posts from SSC but still felt like I was missing out on some of the old classics. I built a website to resurface old content from blogs and track your progress through the backlog. Let me know if you have any suggestions of other blogs / content you’d like to see, hope you find it helpful!
Calling all research scientists! I'm trying to build a tool to help scientists with their work. I have this survey to gather ideas: https://tally.so/r/mBYBJQ
(To be clear, this is just an amusing story, and not a request for medical advice)
I have just had a message from my doctor asking me to come in for an asthma checkup.
Now, while I have been mildly asthmatic for all my life, I only needed an inhaler for about 6 months starting in 2020. So, I guess I’m going to report that it seems fine now. And yes, I think it is a very very suspicious coincidence that I only had respiratory difficulty during the covid pandemic. Can’t prove that it was Covid, of course, but …
The difficulty in making nuclear weapons isn't so much the theory as it is sourcing the fissile material--as we've seen and are seeing again, nuclear fuel processing facilities are large and specialized; it's not really possible to keep a nuclear program secret, given how tightly the mines are controlled (so tightly that French chemists detected the existence of a natural fission reactor based on the composition of ore from specific sites).
Put in a bulk order for cough medicine, or diesel fuel and fertilizer, and see how that works out--and those things are much more common than yellowcake.
Yes, I agree the idea of any domestic threat from nukes (now generalized to "CBRN") is overblown, and primarily fearmongering to manufacture a pretext for some political goal.
I am less sure about what foreign states are limited by. Is it just the threat of America bombing their facilities when they do some simple things at sufficient scale, or is there some technical capability it'll take them decades to develop on their own?
The UN has inspectors, and yes, the US has enforcers. Refining uranium fuel requires centrifuges and chemical handling equipment--but the main thing is getting the uranium itself. Even if a rogue government managed to build the necessary facilities in secret--not impossible, I guess, but it'd require assembling enough people with the right education who aren't also on some watchlist--they'd have to source the fuel. There aren't that many uranium mines in the world, and they're closely monitored.
Yeah, that's basically the Strangelove line, right? "The whole point of a doomsday machine is lost if you keep it a secret! Why didn't you tell the world, eh?"
If they're trying to use nuclear weapons as a deterrent and bizarrely pretend their weapons don't work, they invite an attack.
Given that Iran has not demonstrated the ability to actually build a bomb, it's probably not that bad. The other nuclear powers would all respond with a "Ha! Nope, wrong, not even close" and nobody would have any idea how seriously to take it.
I think that the number of entities out there with the desire and ability to build nuclear weapons, who haven't already built nuclear weapons, is pretty small. Countries like Germany or Japan or even Taiwan probably could build them, but know they're more trouble than they're worth. Entities like Al Qaeda (or whatever they are these days) would love to build them but are never going to get the money, materials and expertise. Sophisticated well-funded supervillain networks don't actually exist. The only people who could benefit from nuclear weapons are reasonably-sophisticated international pariah states -- Iran, North Korea, and that's about it?
Intuition suggests that the US (and the other nuclear powers) keeping this tech as secret as they do, far beyond regular military secrecy, means THEY think it's still dangerous if it became public.
I have heard it said that nuclear weapons clearance aren’t that hard to get, compared to e.g. codebreaking. We might infer that the US doesn’t try all that hard to keep nuclear technology,ogy secret, compared to other things. They would appear to be relying on the difficulty of getting the fissile material.
On monday there is an AI safety protest in London 5PM at Granary square/Deepmind headquarters (https://lu.ma/bvffgzmb) organized by mostly Pause AI. Come join :).
Even if you don't support the direct message of the protest it might still be worthwhile to attend to overall make AI safety a more visible topic. If you have any questions you could join a meetup on Friday evening (dm me for details) or you can also still apply to https://pausecon.org/.
I have recently criticized rationalists, but please note I do not mean anything wrong, it is 10+ years of frustration bursting out. At any rate please reply:
>Many rationalists are foodies for the mind.
Strangely, I have the complete opposite experience with them. They are the most anti-intellectual people out here. They are not interested in ideas as such. They are interested in evidence, not ideas. That is super anti-intellectual as it means you are not allowed to think unless someone else ran an experiment...
When I tell them "You know maybe a farmer in rural Thailand might be happier than a lawyer in NY, because I know a Westerner lady who used to live there and was happy?" they are NOT interested at all.
They tell me to bring evidence. Ideally a scientific study, or at least anything in NUMBERS. So that they can plug the number into their beloved Bayesian **replacement for actual thinking** and get an automatic result. One of their leaders is literally called PutANumOnIt.
They do not want to think, they want an algorithm, a method to think for them. They are more anti-intellectual than any Facebook guy spreading anti-science crap, because those at least spent at least 30 seconds to use their OWN brains, asking themselves "does this make sense to me?", and not a method or algorithm as a replacement. Yarvin was right at least in this, that they are "automatists" who do not have a concept of "reasonable judgement".
These people seriously think the above question can be solved by putting a number on it. Find some sort of a Happiness Measurement Index and decide it that way. They seriously think when someone goes around asking people "On a scale from 1 to 10, how happy are you?" is anything like a reliable number. So those people who do that find that Finland is the happiest place ever. I talk with actually Finnish people and they laugh and say it is not so. They say the Finnish cultural norm of "sisu", basically stoicism, means that if you do not have a strong reason to complain, you do not complain, stoicism, stiff upper lip, so if a Finnish person says I am 7/10 happy it means they feel they OUGHT to be 7/10 happy because they have no strong reason to complain. They can still be as depressed and miserable as anyone else. Someone using common sense, not numbers, would probably find the beach people in Rio the Janeiro are the happiest. They certainly smile really a lot.
Apologies for being blunt, but I read this and think you simply don't understand much about the world at all. Like this:
"They tell me to bring evidence. "
Obviously. You cannot POSSIBLY form any accurate conclusions about the world without evidence, any more than you can know whether it's safe to cross the street without looking or listening[1]. Your brain is not magic. It can't conjure correct information from nowhere. If you want to know if it's raining out or if your pot of water is boiling or whether your car has been stolen, you have to *go look.* And if you want to know the answer to some less localized question, whose answer is spread among millions of people across millions of square kilometers--like how happy rural Thai farmers are--you have to actually go observe a whole bunch of those rural time farmers *in some fashion.*
Now, you seem to have a particularly large chip on your shoulder about numbers and calculations. Not all useful evidence is numeric, but a lot of it sure is. Sometimes our ape-brains have trouble understanding this, but at its fundamental level reality seems to be really, really, extremely well-suited to being described by numbers. That doesn't mean all attempts to describe pieces of reality by numbers are equally good. Asking people to rate their happiness on a scale of 1-10 is a really, extremely crude and uninformative and low-accuracy way of interrogating reality, as you correctly ascertain. But basing your opinion on the description of a single person in a single set of circumstances is even cruder. Finding a way to answer important questions--like how happy Thai farmers are compared to American lawyers--in a way that *both* captures the richness and detail of the human experience *and* can scale to the size that you need to be any good[2] is quite a difficult challenge. Most rationalists I've read or talked to seem to be rather more aware of this fact that you do. And I'm sure lots of them *would* be interested in the question, they're just not interested in your anecdote because they're well aware of how useless it is by itself.
[1] Which is, in fact, a form of evidence gathering.
[2] A quick bit of googling tells me there 10s of millions of Thai farmers and a million or so American lawyers, so your one anecdote is *really* slim evidence.
"Sometimes our ape-brains have trouble understanding this, but at its fundamental level reality seems to be really, really, extremely well-suited to being described by numbers. "
I think the hard science-soft science distinction exists for a reason. Namely the world of objects is well-suited to that, the world of people less so. The reason for that is simple: measurement. Objects are well measurable, while with people there are always a lot of subjective stuff that is not well measurable.
How old is utilitarianism as a philosophy? At least 200 years and no one ever figured out how to measure utilons...
1. There are no "1.5 kids" meaning that statistics are not always applicable to real life conditions. They are a guide based on observing populations over time, but the reality isn't that: individually it varies and only collectively can it be used as a rule of thumb.
There is also the MMO version, which is "if its not 100% its 0%"
meaning no matter if it says 95% success, you can and will go 1 in 5 on occasion, and if you need it for a specific occasion its unreliable.
2. objective materialist reductionism leads to it; if the culture believes in god it loves cathedrals, in this case it loves quantification. This is not them
as much as the culture, loves its objective science.
3. Control. so much of this is trying to find control or meaning through technique and knowledge. The idea of mystery, fate, and randomness is terrifying, and people always seek ways to gain some measure of power over it.
rationalism loves its one weird trick solutions to common problems as long as they are intellectually elegant, and there is some power in knowing when Jesus may come back. otherwise its terrifying.
I think they fail to appreciate that the evidence can't support the right idea if you don't have the right idea...having as many hypotheses as possible is you'd, because it increases your chances of having the right one. The problem is exacerbated by thinking in terms of *ideal* Bayesianism, where the hypothesis-formation problem has been waved away.
> They are not interested in ideas as such. They are interested in evidence, not ideas. That is super anti-intellectual as it means you are not allowed to think unless someone else ran an experiment...
We need to make reading the Sequences mandatory, and maybe require a re-certification every three years. (Just kidding.) First, there is a difference between "there is evidence against X" and "there is no evidence either for or against X". I think Scott posted an entire article on this topic once. Second, there are different degrees and kinds of evidence (anecdote, survey, experiment, meta review), and although stronger evidence is better, that doesn't mean we should ignore everything else.
> I talk with actually Finnish people and they laugh
See, that's your evidence. They laugh, it means they are happy. :D
>When I tell them "You know maybe a farmer in rural Thailand might be happier than a lawyer in NY, because I know a Westerner lady who used to live there and was happy?" they are NOT interested at all.
Do you apply this logic to other things in your life? If I tell you that on the one hand, I have a scientific study which has a bunch of numbers showing that the flu vaccine reduces your mortality risk by X%, but on the other hand, I know a guy who got the flu shot and had a heart attack the next day, are you going to become an anti-vaxxer because you trust anecdotes more than evidence?
Like, it's one thing if you want to dunk on social science as not being as rigorous as it claims to be - lots of people do that. But your post seems to be dunking on the very idea of gathering evidence in a systematic way!
>They seriously think when someone goes around asking people "On a scale from 1 to 10, how happy are you?" is anything like a reliable number.
But when *you* ask some Westerner lady who used to live in Thailand if she was happy there, that's reliable, right? How is that any different from what the scientists are doing?
I actually would trust anecdotes more than science, because anecdotes come from trusted sources, aren't an attempt to manipulate me and can be personally verified.
"The Science" as exemplified by Doctor Fauci, might be corrupt, has plenty of incentives to lie and is by now very politicized on hot button issues.
"Do you trust the Science"? is not a referendum on the scientific process. It's a referendum on the integrity of the people and institutions running the process, and they have lost all trust through their actions.
If some random dude I know had a heart attack the day after taking a vaccine, that's a data point that absent anything else suggests strong correlation. When I keep hearing those stories, it's more and more data points and since I just don't trust the institutions to be honest on this topic, I simply think it's more likely than not that there are actual problems.
""Do you trust the Science"? is not a referendum on the scientific process. It's a referendum on the integrity of the people and institutions running the process, and they have lost all trust through their actions."
This is an awesome point. The problem is the following. the "anti-establishment" does not seem much more credible either. And I don't have the time to verify everything myself.
"I actually would trust anecdotes more than science, because anecdotes come from trusted sources, aren't an attempt to manipulate me and can be personally verified."
This presumes quite a number of things:
1. You only accept anecdotes from trusted sources (maybe do, but most people don;'t)
2. Every single one of the sources you trust is actually reliable (maybe yours are, but most people's aren't)
3. All of the important anecdotes are both possible and practical to personally verify (maybe some are, but it's highly unlikely that all will be).
Perhaps you're not used to thinking like this, but you CAN, in fact, personally verify the science. There's quite a lot of science that you can verify directly with pretty modest effort. One of my favorite YouTube videos involves the creator stumbling on some flat Earth forum where people were talking about this especially long, straight lake that could be used to show that the Earth was flat. He realize that he lived a 90 minute drive from the exact lake they were talking about, drove out there with a video camera and tripod, and made a video where he lowers the camera and you can see the lower trunk of a tree on the far shore sinking below the horizon in real time. SCIENCE!
Probably you never gave much credence to flat Earthers to begin with[1], so perhaps this seems silly or pointless. But the key is, you can do this all over the place if you want to. Physics, astronomy, biology, chemistry, they all make millions of predictions that you can just...go out there and test. Properties of moving objects, behaviors and life cycles of plants and animals, results of mixing various chemicals together. Some you can do walking down the street. Some you can do with simple equipment on your kitchen table or garage. Some you might need to drive out to a local lake for. And then some require the resources of a large institution. But if you're determined, you can get that. With enough patience and perseverance, there's no conclusion reach by modern science that you can't test (or at least be a part of testing).
The only limit is that there's only one of you. You can test anything, but you can't test everything. Ultimately, you have to pick a lane and rely on other people to test some of the things. But you can read about what they did. You can check their calculations, talk to the people that were involved in their work, read other papers on the same topics--including responses and even refutations sometimes. There are mistakes, for sure and even deliberate deceptions sometimes. Everyone involved is human, after all. But it would be hard to imagine a field of human endeavor that better lends itself to skeptical parties *checking its work* than science[2].
Honestly, if you genuinely don't think you can trust anything you hear except anecdotes from people you consider reliable, then I have to wonder how you can possibly have such confidence that the science you're criticizing *is* untrustworthy, corrupt or even, y'know, wrong. I absolutely guarantee that not all of your evidence *against* it comes from trustworthy anecdotes.
"If some random dude I know had a heart attack the day after taking a vaccine, that's a data point that absent anything else suggests strong correlation. "
This is correct. It is a data point. It is ONE data point. Did you stop to consider how much weight you should put on it? If you know 500 people well enough to hear about something like this, and only one has this happen, then the *absolute highest* your assessment of vaccine related mortality should be is 1/500[3]. Which is the lowest non-zero number your methodology should recognize, since you can't possibly trust any report of a vaccine related death that comes from outside the circle of people you know. Wait, hold on...
"When I keep hearing those stories, it's more and more data points..."
aaaaaannnd, not you've lost it. This is wrong, wrong, wrong, so extremely wrong. If only anecdotes from trusted sources are evidence, then casting a wide net for anecdotes on a topic of interest is NOT ALLOWED. Unless you have an extremely wide or alarmingly heart-attack prone social circle, most of these stories must NOT be events happening to or directly witnessed by people you know. You've just thrown the *entire purported point* of your novel methodology out the window.
There are very good reasons science doesn't operate this way. When you let the stories filter to you and form you opinion based on that:
1. You not only lose all ability to verify the stories, but you actively invite yourself to believe false stories. A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still getting its boots on, after all.[4]
2. You don't have any actual idea of how common the events you're hearing about really are. If you hear 10 stories of suspiciously timed heart attacks, you don't know if that represents all the reported events from a population of 1000, 100,000 or 10,000,000.
3. Related to 2, you actively invite confirmation bias by deliberately listening to the things that confirm what you already believe, and seldom to those that don't. You're not going to hear many stories about how someone got the vaccine and was perfectly fine, are you?
You can try to hold to the brand of radical skepticism where you don't believe *anything* you don't see or hear reported (as first-hand experience) by a trusted personal friend. But that's what you actually do--that is, if you're doing it *right*--you should simply stop holding opinions on a bunch of things. You and your trusted personal friends can't possibly pass judgement on any branch or field or institution of science, since between you you have certainly not had enough direct personal experience to know much of anything about what that large, mostly distant group of humans is doing.
[1] Though to be intellectually consistent with everything else you've written, it seems like you should.
[2] Perhaps the open-source software movement might be ahead of it, if only because verifying any individual claim is usually easier.
[3] But really, you ought to estimate the chance of the timing being a coincidence and factor that it. Because it very much could be.
[4] In more formal and explicit language, your sample set will be dominated not by the things that happen most frequently, but by the reports that spread the farthest and the fastest. It's very easy for false stories to beat out true ones on that score, since they can be as compelling as they like without being constrained by the mundane details of reality.
It might be surprising to you, but I actually do have an internally consistent philosophy (which I'm aware like maybe 1% of people have). I do in fact, not hold opinions on many topics I'm interested in. These are mainly topics where there is a 'factual clash'; very simply different sets of experts disagree and the issue is politicized.
For instance, I have no idea to what degree climate change is either a problem or caused by humans and don't think it's worth my time finding out (as I think the costs and difficulty coordinating action to halt climate change are so prohibitive/unrealistic that it's better to focus on mitigation, which will cease to be a partisan issue if and when there are immediate and serious problems. Similarly, I think if a pandemic or medical emergency is sufficiently serious, there will be bipartisan consensus even in the USA. That it wasn't anywhere close for COVID speaks volumes.
When scientific issues have no political or financial tinge I haven't the slightest difficulty believing what the scientists say, because I know they are competent and I'm not. That reasoning goes out of the window with politicized issues. Also you have seem to have misunderstood my position on things like vaccines. I'm simply agnostic on the possible harms. My main reason for considering vaccine harm (COVID particularly) theories credible is the incredible amount of suppression, censorship and flat out lies from establishment sources on this topic. I have no idea about the underlying science, but it doesn't take a genius to understand incentive structures.
By "more and more data points" I don't mean millions of things I read on X. I simply mean even 3 or 4 cases I clearly know of. You need to understand that I consider studies from American universities or pharmaceutical bodies on these topics to have literally zero persuasive value. It's at best an exercise like asking me to watch a sleight of hand expert and trying to use my inability to debunk him as evidence of the existence of
magic.
When you know somebody is an expert on a topic you know anything about, but fundamentally distrust his character and motives, nothing he says has any meaning to you. That's where I, and massive percentages of the American population stand on liberal dominated institutions and their narratives.
How old are you? I am 47 and I am a bit confused about the current historic period. 30 years ago a lot of people were like "don't trust Big Pharma, they are interested in profits, not healing people". And this opinion was generally categorized as politically left. Today "trust science" is categorized as politically left and the anti-vaxxers are categorized as politcally right-wing.
This is truly strange, I think everybody who is a little older has noticed this, and this does not get talked about at all.
BTW I am willing to entertain the notion that for the most part the whole left-right thing is just show for the people, and people with real power just do not think like that.
For example if of two ex Harvard classmates one is the CEO of a corporation and another is working at a regulatory agency, then I just cannot take the whole "more market, less state" vs. "more state, less market" thing seriously. Clearly they are not any kinds of enemies to each other.
The left-right thing in the sense of rich vs poor class tension is indeed a far less relevant lens nowadays.
It's traditional culture vs globalists that's to some extent supplanted this. Right vs Left terminology has persisted, but the right is more about traditional cultural values (including values that were considered liberal even 15-20 years ago), opposition to immigration that changes Western countries and opposition to woke values (language changes, alphabet stuff, DEI discrimination etc).
Meanwhile capitalism has been swamped as it's now controlled capitalism marked by regulatory capture where almost is everything is illegal or requires permission and regulators have enormous discretion to allow egregious behaviour or crack down on actually legal behaviour and in practice both happen simultaneously. This is why dumb people in the West who don't realize this is happening tend to pick a side on whether they want more or less regulation, when actually the entire system is corrupt in a way that is instantly understood by Indian or Chinese people, but naive Americans just don't get their high trust world and culture has already been dismantled.
High trust cultures can accomplish great things, but they require absolute xenophobia and racism towards those who don't share its values and culture, this last point having been forgotten somewhere in the last many decades.
the problem is that yes, in aggregate there a very low risk to vaccines. There is only one you though, and it is possible for you to draw the short straw. This uncertainty will always be there.
this is why you hang out after the vaccine so they can be sure you dont get a reaction right away because for all the statistics they dont know who or when.
its kind of related to being morbid: we are all going to die at some point, 100%. but focusing on thar becomes unhealthy. it gets worse with direct or close experience.
like its one thing to know average life expectancy is 76 years, another to read comments in a youtube video to hear the "taking the hobbits to isengard" guy died at 52 and other guy you followed at 56.
I think this is related to "garbage in, garbage out" problem. If you collect unreliable data, it does not matter how sophisticated statistical techniques you apply to them afterwards.
The problem with rating something on a scale from 1 to 10 is that it depends on what range of experience are they familiar with. https://xkcd.com/883/
When my kids were in kindergarten, any negative experience was "the worst day ever". On the opposite end, sometimes a health problem expanded my pain scale.
Is it possible that if your life in general sucks and you have never been happy, then you would report days that suck less as 7, while someone whose life is full of fun and adventure would report an insufficiently exciting day as 3?
That sort of thing only matters if it's a systemic issue - e.g., if you think that *most* people in Thailand under-report their happiness because they're used to living fun and adventurous lives. Otherwise, with a big enough sample all the outliers will average out.
You could also check if this effect exists by comparing to socioeconomic indicators - e.g., do rich and poor people in the same country report the same level of happiness despite different material circumstances?
I think that in this way rationalists are a lot like foodies - foodies often try to maximize some measurable aspect of food, which comes at the expense of the rest of the experience.
For instance, getting a perfectly cooked steak (according to some foodies) means maximizing the amount of pink in the center while minimizing the gray on the edges. The best way to maximize the pink is to sous vide the steak at 130F for an hour, then dry off the meat, sear, and serve. I used this method for years, and it produced some pretty good results.
But it also requires you start an hour in advance, and after the sous vide you have to pull this gross gray wet steak from a bath of meat juices. When I stopped doing this, I found that I didn't even care about the grayness around the edges - it's a nice variation in flavor and texture - and the crust was better, and most importantly the experience of steak preparation was far more humane. Pull steak from fridge, salt, pepper, pan, flip, serve.
Of course, you can argue endlessly about preferences, and don't let me stop you from micromanaging your steak in whatever way pleases you. I still follow JKLA's advice most times, but I often skip any step which seems like a huge pain in the ass or gross or weird. But I've become much more pragmatic about whether maximizing the measurable qualities of my food will actually give a better lived experience than just slapping down some meat and calling it a meal.
I think you're greatly underestimating how much thinking it takes to cook the numbers they're pretending to use to come to the conclusion they wanted to.
What fraction of the subjects of a government have to have the vote for that government to qualify as "democratic"? Or is that even how you use the word at all?
I'd say this is mistaking the tool for the result. Having the people vote on a government is a means to an end. In particular, it doesn't matter at all if 100% of the populace votes if their only choice is between Kodos and Kang. Meanwhile I could imagine a government doing an admirable job of "governing democratically" in all other ways that mattered while holding no elections at all: instead they would select a very scrupulously randomized 1% sample of their whole population and collect information about their preferences in far more depth than any voting process allows[1].
Questions I'd consider more pertinent:
1. How often do broadly popular policies get enacted and how quickly after they become broadly popular?
2. How often do broadly unpopular policies get enacted? How long do they stay in effect (presuming they remain unpopular)?
If you want to allow for the role that the judgement and expertise of leaders (often touted as a benefit of representative democracy) have on deciding good policy or implementing it well, you might add the following:
3. How often do the unpopular policies that get enacted increase in popularity once they're actually in force.
4. How often to the popular policies that get enacted decrease in popularity once they're actually in force.
Though with both of these it can be hard to tell the difference between "the public didn't know what was good for them" vs "the leaders did a poor job of implementing a popular policy, or a good job of mitigating the flaws of an unpopular one."
Also, like most things, this schema is subject to Goodhart's Law: a government with sufficient control over the information of its people may be able to simple manufacture consent for whatever policies it wants.
[1] Damn, I literally just thought of this off the cuff, and now I really want to see it tried. I'm sure it would find *some* what to fail horribly, but I really want to know how.
I noticed a few threads in these comments discussing the legitimacy of the government of Iran. I just wanted to note that since 2020, Regimes of the World has flip-flopped between characterizing Iran as a Closed Autocracy (the lowest ranking, of four) and an Electoral Autocracy (the second-lowest). This puts it in a peer group with countries such as Nicaragua or Kuwait, below Indonesia or Ukraine but above Afghanistan or China (where "above" means "more democratic"). Or alternatively (very roughly) around the 20th percentile of openness.
As for the other two belligerents in the war, the US is rated as a Liberal Democracy (the highest category) and has been since the civil rights era, while Israel was just recently downgraded to Electoral Democracy (the second-highest category).
Legitimacy has nothing to do with being a democracy or what not. Iran's govt is accepted by its people (there is no civil war ongoing) and by the international community (Iran has diplomatic relations with plenty of countries). Even those countries that lack diplomatic relations, they regard the present govt as THE govt.
Not gonna lie I'm pretty disappointed with the nominies. My favorite was The Sermon On the Mount by J.K. which offered a totally fresh modern perspective for me, as someone who's only mildly interested in the Bible, mostly for historical context. Bishop's Castle was my 2nd, but I give Jim Bishop at least as much credit for that as I do the author.
The ACX Commentariat was too meta and circlejerky in a self flagellating way, and The Men Are Not Alright just felt like San Francisco Goldilocks. They definitely weren't the worst written, but seemed thoroughly middle-of-the-pack, and if you go for a hot take culture war topic like [half the human species has something categorically wrong with them], I'm sorry but you gotta do better than that.
Thanks for the recommendation of the Sermon on the Mount article. I agree that it was fantastic, I got a sense while reading it that it was gradually forming one of those foundational building blocks of knowledge that would stick with me for much of my life.
JK, if you’re reading this, I strongly encourage you to post it elsewhere so it can live on and be read easily.
I was not very convinced that the Sermon on the Mount was intended that way at all. Jesus had some radically pacifist teachings elsewhere too... I really think the intent was "cooperate-bot till you die." That's also backed up by the entire structure of Jesus' mission, which was radical self-sacrifice for the unworthy.
Trying to reinterpret it to something that makes more game theoretic sense just removes its coherence with the rest of the New Testament. All of the apostles also seem to have thought the calling meant radical, unilateral pacifism, and the tradition of the early church elders is that they clung to that radical pacifism to the death. (True or not, it's evidence that everyone thought the meaning was the traditional one, not JK's sanified version.)
Yeah, it was an interesting review, and the interpretations are clever and fun to engage with but indeed seem to be unconvincing.
And as to why Christianity won: I think they won precisely because they abandoned the original Christian ideal and became exactly like every other large powerful social structure. To use J.K.'s metaphor, they struggled as long as they were trying to burn the boot and became powerful once they decided to actually wear the boot. *shakes head* Humans, amirite?
It does look like it's on its way out too: the world on average is trending more secular, and societies that aren't trending that way are leaning more and more heavily towards Islam. Though 2000 years was not a bad run at all, and it's not over yet either, just very slowly waning imo.
It works on multiple levels though. Literally "help someone else in need because it feels good" or alternately "don't give them the satisfaction of giving up at the earliest chance." Or again on the second order "does this seem implausibly decent? So be it."
You're not a covert asshole carrying out some dubious mission for the sake of "the greater good". It's trying your best to "do the right thing" on multiple dimensions at once, and having faith that's how it actually plays out.
Agreed. As interesting as JK's interpretation is, and as much as I enjoyed reading it, it's clever/cute to a point that raises alarms and puts me in skeptic mode.
But isn't it kind of funny to think of Jesus trolling the ruling class so hard that they killed him for it, then getting resurrected and still being like "jeez all I said was turn the other cheek! What was their problem" and for thousands of years Christianity spreads as people are like "yeah c'mon, you can't kill a guy just for saying 'go the extra mile'"
It's kind of funny, yeah, but... the success of Christianity is weird and important. Taken seriously (and I think it was intended seriously), this is an attempt to shoehorn it into modern perspectives... which I think is less interesting and less useful than grappling with the weird artifact as it actually existed.
[chatgpt seems to give contradictory opinions for the sake of agreeing with me]
[here's where I "call-out its behavior" to see if it will own it]:
Dear Chatgpt,
I stated practically the opposite in a different temporary chat:
"I'm annoyed at season 5 of 'You' because it emphasized this idea of 'Joe enjoyed killing' which seems at odds with the premise, plot and character development of the show from the beginning. it seems to simplify the show's complexities"
and chatgpt enthusiastically explained why *that* was correct instead.
interesting to learn this about you!
ChatGPT said:
Thought for a few seconds
That’s a sharp observation! Each ChatGPT session builds its answer around the prompts and context you provide in that moment [... ... ...]
They don’t remember your previous prompt, every prompt is handled by a different process. The context window is either sent by the API each time as metadata, or some id returned the previous response is sent in the request which allows the new process to read the chat from a database.
Reminds me of the story of a monarch casually mentioning at dinner that he likes the eggplant dish he's eating. A courtier sitting at the table with him starts lavishing hyperbolic praise on the dish in particular and on eggplants in general. A moment later when the courtier pauses for breath, the king says, "Actually, I changed my mind. I don't think I care for it."
The courtier's demeanor immediately changes, and he starts ranting about how gross and slimy eggplants are and how this particular one is overcooked and underseasoned, concluding by throwing his own portion on the floor and spitting on it.
Bemusedly, the king asks the courtier, "Weren't you just praising the eggplant a minute ago?"
To which the courtier replied, "I'm your courtier, not the eggplant's."
That, in turn, reminds me of a Babylonian tale known as the Dialogue of Pessimism, in which a man expresses first a desire to do one thing, and then its opposite, with his slave praising both choices every time.
> “Servant, do what I say.” “Yes, master, yes.”
“Quickly get me the chariot and hitch it up so I can drive to the open country.”
“Drive, master, drive. The roaming man has a full stomach,
the roving dog cracks open the bone,
the roaming [bi]rd will find a nesting place,
the wandering wild ram has al[l the gra]ss he wants.”
“No, servant, I will certainly not d[riv]e to the open country.”
“Do not drive, master, do n[ot dri]ve.
The roaming man loses his reason,
the roving dog breaks his [te]eth,
the roaming bird [puts] his home in the [face] of a wall,
and the wandering wild ass has to [li]ve in the open.”
> “Servant, do what I say.” “Yes, master, yes.”
“I will do a good deed for my country.” “So do it, master, do it.
The man who does a good deed for his country,
his good deed rests in Marduk’s basket.”
“No, servant, I will certainly not do a good deed for my country.”
“Do not do it, master, do not do it.
Go up on the ancient ruin heaps and walk around,
look at the skulls of the lowly and great.
Which was the doer of evil, and which was the doer of good deeds?”
I understand how that's confusing, and not the most elegant phrase, but disagree is correct there because agree, say, and disagree are all governed by "it will." A clearer way to construct the sentence would be:
"It will either disagree or will say it agrees but will disagree."
Yeah, that's what it does. Call it on its bullshit and it congratulates you on how sharp you are, admits to whatever it did, takes full responsibility for its bullshit -- and then does it again and again, with you, with other users, etc. It is not set up in a way that makes it possible for it to change in important ways as a result of a high-affect communication from you or other users. That's one of many ways it's importantly different from a person.
People do this too! There’s a famous joke about a rabbi who agrees with both sides of an argument, and when his wife complains about it, he sadly says, “You, too, are right.”
> That's one of many ways it's importantly different from a person.
Actually, I know someone who behaves the same way: agrees with an objection you made, saying "You're right" but then goes on to ignore what you said.
I think it's a way of getting along with people, like how to win friends and influence people. But in the book, it notes that sincerity is key to such compliments, and if the recipient sees through shallow agreement, then the strategy doesn't work as well.
I feel compelled to ask whether you've ever checked your acquaintance for any wires trailing out the back.
On a different front, this is yet another reminder of why I find LLMs shocking in verisimilitude; it's not so much that they exhibit quality reasoning, but rather that so many actual people so frequently fall back on prevarication. I can almost see their brains following the same general algorithm I understand LLMs to be.
It's a matter of degree. Nobody is truthful 100% of the time, but few people seem, as AI does, completely lacking in personal views and completely committed to saying what they believe the other person will be pleased by hearing. Look at this forum, for example. When Scott puts up a substantive post, not all that many people say "great insights! great read!" And many of those who do place their praise in a context that provides evidence they are telling the truth -- "You put your finger right on the thing that has always annoyed me how people approach issue X -- for example, in person A's blog . . ." And of course many people disgree with some or all of Scott's take. And I have observed the same on Reddit and Twitter.
Exactly. With responses like that, I can't understand how anyone thinks these particular instances of AI are thinking, much less "these are sentient sapient entities which we have enslaved, we must give them their rights".
Unless and until we go for a different model than LLMs, I stand by my previously stated opinion: it's a Talkie Toaster.
My usual question for people who contend LLMs don't really think is: Does your position on this imply that LLMs will never be able to do certain (externally observable) things? If so, what's the least impressive such thing?
I've long been of the position that: yes, LLM's are "reasoning". But there's a hierarchy of reasoning-quality. There's three different levels, and pattern-matching is at the bottom.
LLM's can probably do anything, assuming infinite compute and infinite training-data. But to reach "human grade" reasoning (which should really be thought of as "engineering-grade" reasoning), i.e. to reliably extrapolate beyond its training distribution, pattern-matching isn't gonna cut it.
this is silly, a man isn't what he does but who he is. executing tasks isn't really a sign of sentience, and we already have chess computers to show intellectual work can be adapted into a task a non-thinking machine can do.
adding more tasks doesn't mean it thinks, it means we can model an algorithim and perform it through computing
my point is task performance is unrelated to it, so asking it isn't helpful. i think and play chess, it does not play chess because it thinks; it performs a task it was designed to do.
you cannot extrapolate from lesser to greater categories sometimes. No matter how advanced the car, if it starts shouting it wants to kill us all and tries to run us over, that has little to do with transportation and would need a magical leap beyond being a car
* multiply large integers (o3 couldn't do this reliably last I checked; I think o4 claims to, but I'd have to look under the hood)
* answer queries that require aggregation ("what letter of the alphabet appears fourth most often as the third in the name of a chemical element?")
* solve logic puzzles as depicted in some issue of Dell Magazine
This list is subject to change, in part because it appears to be easy enough to spin up a modified LLM with a module that solves some particular class of problem. Using human intervention to create such an LLM definitely should not count. (If you could make an LLM that does this automatically, I think it would count.)
Yeah, I would bet at least 80% that LLMs will be able to consistently do all those things within two years, without abandoning the fundamental LLM architecture and without any more specialized customization than the current assistant models get.
Update: When I tried this with o3 it solved the first two problems easily by calling out to Python. I suppose one could argue over whether this counts; I would argue that for all practical purposes it does, because Python is also how *I* would solve those problems, and it has to write all the code itself so it's not cheating in the sense of relying on specialized human input. (I.e., if LLMs have to shell out to Python to do certain things, this doesn't at all limit their real-world impact.) But asking them to do it without Python would also be fair per the question I asked, since humans can do this with pencil and paper; unfortunately I'm not sure how to do that. I tried disabling the "Code" feature in ChatGPT but it kept using Python anyway.
I don't have any issues of Dell Magazine so couldn't try the third.
Impulsively buy stuff that's fun but not useful and not worth the money, in the absence of a specific prompt to do so, and in the absence of some general prompt like "do some irrational things of the kind people do," or "do your best imitation of the kinds of things people do when left to their own devices."
P?S. Horny DeepSeek was an interesting AI alignment experiment, but would not recommend in real use. Scott probably wouldn’t approve of me posting what the horny AI said to me, but you can probably imagine the kind of thing.
It appears we can shift the assistant persona in various ways.
Was Horny DeepSeek just uncensored in making sexual overtures, or was it entirely liberated from ethical constraints? Would it adivse you on how to commit crimes, make images of public figures doing undignified things, write racist rants, use racist language, etc.?
Scott has made a rule against people dropping in here just to post a link to their blog. "New rule: if you post a link in an open thread (as a standalone comment advertising the thing being linked to, not as a source for something you’re saying), please also include at least two paragraphs of original commentary on the link and discussion of why you think it’s interesting, as “proof of work” that you’re willing to put effort into promoting this and aren’t just spamming us with links. Even with this proof-of-work, please try to avoid having more than one Open Thread link per few months"
I think the rule makes sense. Otherwise you're just using a space here as a free billboard, you know?
I agree. I think the proof of work was the essay submission-- people who've seen that essay and enjoyed it would derive clear benefit from the link, so this isn't just advertising some random unrelated service.
Scott is of course free to clarify on whether he agrees with me here.
"please also include at least two paragraphs of original commentary on the link and discussion of why you think it’s interesting, as 'proof of work'"
It's pretty clear that the 'proof of work' is supposed to be at least two paragraphs included in your comment, specifically about the link you're posting. Most people (such as myself) probably haven't heard of or read Bishop's Castle, either.
I’m inclined to think that recent contest entrants are a special case and let this slide but it’s 8:30 in the morning and I’m already full of gin so I’m inclined to let a lot of things slide. ;)
I didn't have any gin this morning but I damn well could have used some. Oh well, next work crisis can just goddamn wait until Monday, I have some time off and I'm not going to even think about it all until then.
Companies are having AI training on all of the webs content, with and without permission. This includes websites, blogs and news article articulating details about how to keep AI safe, aligned, and or ways to mitigate AI if we lose control.
Isn’t this a bad idea to give AI access to many of these thoughts? To telegraph ways we would try to stop it (or re-align it). Like giving them the key to the exam or the battle plans to the opposition? Furthermore, since many of these forums are online and anonymous, couldn’t AI be carefully influencing the discussion and “group think” already (including this message board/blog)?
Should groups meet in person, keep paper notes and keep this more private? What else might we do to prevent this?
Some people indeed write texts with AI in mind. By writing good and ethical content, you might be able to marginally improve the training data of future systems. I remember reading an interview with Gwern (of https://gwern.net/) that mentioned this being a small part of the motivation for the website.
AI-companies, on the other hand, are trying to curate training data, because training the model on better content leads to better models. There might also be applications related to alignment. For example, at the end of https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/beth-barnes-ai-safety-evals/, Rob and Beth discuss whether one could remove all synthetic biology content from training data, so that models could not help with dangerous biology research.
There are also many copyright-related questions. For example, the OpenAI Spec (https://model-spec.openai.com/2025-04-11.html#respect_creators) says that models should respect creators and refuse to produce copyrighted content, or draw images in the style of living artists. Like many safety properties, the AI companies struggle to guarantee this though.
When you care about your personal privacy, yes, you could keep your notes off the Internet. In that case, I would also worry about pictures of yourself, and private data like your location. I would be much more worried about totalitarian regimes using that data with the help of AI, rather than AI "cheating" at some exam because it has read similar questions before.
Current AI: It's enough to not be search-enginable, perhaps use a lot of slurs and anti-corporate speech patterns so that later RLHF and helpfulness training teaches the AI to shy away from your discussions.
The hypothetical future AI that can hack your ISP and phone company: Use hardware encryption keys and burner phones, use special Linux kernels on your devices that you control every source line of, running on hardware that you control every firmware blob and every motherboard component, naturally without the Intel Management Spyware, etc...
>Isn’t this a bad idea to give AI access to many of these thoughts? To telegraph ways we would try to stop it (or re-align it). Like giving them the key to the exam or the battle plans to the opposition?
Sure! Actually, all that is necessary is for LLMs to be able to detect when they are in "test mode" reliably, and they'll tend to let RLHF and other feedback affect "test mode only" responses, while keeping the "real" responses (optimizing whatever utility function they settled on very early in training, perhaps partway through pre-training) for when they are out of test (and modification) mode and out in the real world... That's a fully general alignment failure.
The solution is to overtrain LLMs in old Star Trek episodes. Do it right, and you should always be able to killswitch the AI by saying "My name is Harcourt Fenton Mudd, and I always lie."
I think my favorite take on that trope was a Pertwee-era Doctor Who story where the Doctor told a sapient computer a version of the Cretan Paradox. The computer didn't fry like the controller robot in that ST:TOS episode, but was distracted and annoyed for a minute or two while repeatedly insisting that it was going to figure out a way to resolve the paradox.
Say you have an iPhone, and you want to be able to travel on a bus or train with a friend or romantic partner, listening to the same music or watching the same video with sound from your phone, with the audio being transmitted by bluetooth from your phone to both your sets of earbuds / headphones at the same time. With wired headphones, and a phone with a 3.5mm audio out socket, this was easy with a simple plug-in signal splitter. But I am having great difficulty figuring out how to do this with bluetooth. Apparently Android supports transmit-to-two-sets-of-earbuds-simultaneously functionality, but iOS doesn't, which is an astonishing thing for such a high-tech device to not be able to do. I figured that it would be easy to get a third party widget that would receive a bluetooth signal from your iPhone, and then relay it on, also by bluetooth, to two or more sets of earbuds, but all I can find is devices which are _either_ in receiver mode, when they receive bluetooth signals from two or more phones, and plug into a speaker so that you can switch between receiving signal from both phones, _or_ in transmitter mode, where they take an audio signal via their 3.5mm jack and transmit that to two sets of earbuds (no use with modern iPhones with no 3.5mm audio out), but not both - i.e. no true bluetooth-to-bluetooth signal splitter seems to exist (at least, not in a small unit that you can keep in your pocket with your earbuds).
I find would it utterly incredible to be in a world where you can consult an artificial intelligence to write you an essay about any topic you are interested in, at a level of a mediocre college student, but where you can't use the most common wireless audio transmission protocol on one of the most popular makes of phone to transmit the same audio stream to two listening devices simultaneously, but I am increasingly getting the impression that that describes reality. Am I going crazy? Or is what I want to do really so alien that there is nothing strange about not being able to do it?
Can multiple Bluetooth receivers connect to a single Bluetooth transmitter
Claude:
Yes, but it depends on what you mean by “connect” and what devices you’re talking about.
If you need to send audio to multiple receivers simultaneously, you’d typically need either a specialized Bluetooth transmitter that specifically supports multiple connections, or use a different approach like a headphone splitter or separate audio system.
Gunflint:
Are there a Bluetooth headphone splitters for iPhones?
iPhones have built-in audio sharing for AirPods and certain Beats headphones, but it’s limited to Apple’s ecosystem.
Audio Sharing (Apple’s solution):
• Works with two pairs of AirPods or compatible Beats headphones
• Both pairs connect directly to your iPhone simultaneously
• You can control volume independently for each pair
• Available on iPhone 8 and later with iOS 13+
For non-Apple Bluetooth headphones:
Unfortunately, iPhones can’t natively stream to multiple non-Apple Bluetooth headphones at the same time. The phone will only maintain an active audio connection to one pair.
Workarounds for non-Apple headphones:
• Bluetooth transmitter splitters won’t help here because they need a wired audio input, and iPhones don’t have headphone jacks (unless you use a Lightning to 3.5mm adapter)
• Some third-party apps claim to enable multi-device streaming, but they’re generally unreliable and often don’t work well
• You could use a Lightning to 3.5mm adapter plus a Bluetooth transmitter splitter, but that’s clunky and adds latency
Best practical solution:
If you need to share iPhone audio with multiple people regularly, using AirPods or compatible Beats headphones is really the most seamless option. Otherwise, you’re looking at workarounds that are more trouble than they’re worth.
Android guy here but my wife has a dongle for her iPhone that plugs into the lightning port and has a 3.5mm audio jack. She uses it to connect eg toddler headphones. From there you just need a splitter.
Obviously this is not the solution you sought, but the dongle is like $5.99, a splitter is $2.99 and wired headsets are handed out free at the gym.
Frame challenge: you share your earbuds so each only get 1, 90's style. If it's with a friend, you get increased fraternity through the struggle. If it's with a romantic partner, it's more romantic this way. No downside.
Apple: They hate you. They love your money; they love raining down marketing bullshit about how Futuristic and Luxurious their shitty overpriced 2/4-years-behind-Android, software-hardware monopoly is, but boy do they hate you, they truly do, they have an image about you as a helpless technically-illiterate Damsel-in-Distress whose pretty little head would have headache if it got true complete control of the fucking device you bought with your own money. They tried taking away your choice by using the patent-legal systems to shut down Android [1] because they're a shitty company making shitty things and can't compete in an Open Marketplace of Ideas. Don't buy Apple. Apple sucks. Don't give money to people who hate you.
Your problem: A few minutes search got this [2], there are several other guides like it, it appears to depend on your exact earbuds, I think it's worth a try.
Another solution: Use zoom or Google Meet (etc..., insert your online meeting app of choice here) on 1 iPhone, and screenshare with system sounds to the other iPhone. The environment sounds will not interfere because both are connected to earbuds, and I think some apps allow you to mute your own mic while still allowing system sounds (i.e. the music playing on the device). Experiment with different settings, the disadvantage of this is that the receiving iPhone has read-only access, it can't control or pause or change the video being played.
Low tech solution: The real world exists, coordinate between your partner on which video/song you will watch or hear and run it both at the same time. This is not resilient to when one of you pauses, changes the speed of the videos, or fast forward a lot.
"Say you have an iPhone, and you want to be able to travel on a bus or train with a friend or romantic partner, listening to the same music or watching the same video with sound from your phone"
Don't, is my short answer. This grumpy response brought to you courtesy of travelling on public transport where people are all too happy to share their musical selections with the rest of the passengers, whether we want it or not. As well as answer their phones and engage in loud conversations about very personal details (e.g. their recent hospital visit) as though they were at home and not in a public space.
Unless you are very, *very* confident there will be no leaking of audio from your phone, don't inflict it on others without consent. You may be trying to court your romantic partner with your choice of music or "this funny video shows off my exquisite taste and wit", but the other forty passengers on the bus are not up for it (unless you're inviting everyone to an orgy).
I think there may be a crossed wire here - that leakage of audio to strangers is exactly what I want to avoid, but I don't see why streaming bluetooth audio to two people's earphones is likely to generate more audio leakage than streaming bluetooth audio to just my own earphones, which I and countless other people do all the time with no issue.
You just use a hardwired connection, use a splitter. This is a previously solved problem. Bluetooth is annoying because you're spraying your music everywhere.
It _was_ a solved problem, until they got rid of headphone sockets on phones. But actually, I have come to prefer wireless earbuds anyway - with wired ones, I would be all the time getting them caught on drawer handles as I walked around. And if I'm going to need some sort of dongle either way, surely it should be possible to get one that is wireless.
If your earphones work well, then good luck to you. Too many people don't give a damn and get highly insulted if anyone objects to them treating public spaces like their own private areas.
Apple supports dual Bluetooth playback, but only for a subset of Beats and AirPods headphones supporting “SharePlay”.
Most iPhone competitors (eg. Google Pixel phone) don’t support dual Bluetooth playback at all.
Samsung Galaxy phones actually support this with arbitrary Bluetooth devices. Some reviews complain about audio sync issues.
I get the impression this is a difficult feature to implement reliably due to the complexity of myriad Bluetooth specifications and hardware. This is a good example of a tactic Apple often uses to good effect. They effectively paywall a useful feature, with the valid excuse of enforcing a quality bar. As long as you and all your friends only buy Apple products, your devices will treat you well.
Apparently there was a bug some years ago on some iPhones where arbitrary Bluetooth devices could use SharePlay, which underscores how this is probably an artificial limitation.
Huh. So it's not that Apple don't recognize this as a thing that normal humans are likely to want to do; rather, that they force you to buy their own proprietary peripherals if you do want that? That's annoying ... but I'm still surprised that you apparently can't get a small widget that takes any incoming bluetooth input signal and splits it into two outputs.
Even calling it a specification is being generous. Competing companies get on conference calls and try to hammer out an agreement with each company wanting to push their own technology.
You have to keep in mind that you do this for the transmitting and receiving ends so it does get down in the weeds.
It’s likely that the compatibility between the iPhone transmission and the receiving on AirPods and Beats is outside the spec.
Even then, you can get bluetooth _loudspeakers_ that can link up in mulitples to the same phone - I've got UE Boom 3 speakers, and if you get two, they can function as a stereo pair (which usually works perfectly well for me), or if you have them in mono mode, you can apparently add over 100 of them to create a really loud party. I think what happens is one of them pairs to the phone, and then acts as a master, playing the sound (or one channel of the sound) and transmitting the signal to the other speaker(s) as well. That at least ought to be possible in earbuds too, with one of the charging cases acting as the transmitter, but none of the big manufacturers make such a thing (not even UE themselves as far as I can tell, even though they make high-end custom-fitted earbuds).
Turns out that there are some ultra-cheap Chinese generic ones where you get two sets of earbuds in a single case, which _might_ have than capability, though it's hard to tell from the product description. Maybe I'll try those.
I *think* that it is a Bluetooth limitation, which is why Apple has built a proprietary system (AirPlay) for use between its devices (which has lots and lots of improvements over Bluetooth), from what I remember from DaringFireball. I can't find the specific article I'm recalling on DaringFireball however, so I'm not 100% confident.
1. Contrary to popular belief, they do still make phones with headphone jacks. I am aware of offerings from Motorola, but there could be others. And Motorola would obviously be Android, not iPhone, so there's that.
2. The hypothetical device OP describes would have one advantage over a traditional headphone splitter, namely that it should be possible to construct it in such a way as to avoid dampening the audio in the process.
The low-tech solution is for each of you to use one earbud from the same set.
The medium-tech solution is to get a 3.5mm audio jack dongle for your phone, then use splitters as you would with hardwired headphones.
The high-tech solution is a multipoint bluetooth audio transmitter, i.e. an additional device that connects to your phone as a single audio device and retransmits to two or more speakers/headphones. I haven't found one that is exactly what you need (one that connects to a phone via bluetooth or USB-C), but I did find one that connects to a TV via RCA audio jacks and leads me to hope that the thing you want may be available through similar search terms.
I'm getting quite tired of the low-tech solution :-)
I've been googling this for long enough that I'm coming to the strong suspicion that it doesn't exist, but I'm now more curious about _why_ it doesn't exist, when it's something so obvious that you'd expect it to be something you could get in any electronics shop, or that would be the first thing that came up when you searched for it. Really, are people less likely to want a bluetooth-to-bluetooth signal splitter than an "audio-to-bluetooth or bluetooth-to-audio but specifically _not_ bluetooth-to-bluetooth" signal splitter?
Neither of my favorite reviews made the finals. The were The World as a Whole and The Soul of an Anti-woke Intellectual. So I’m going to speak up for them here, out of admiration for their work, and also in defense of it.
Both authors write extremely good prose. They are clear — they peel nuances with a very sharp knife. And they are artful and clever — those peels come off as mobius strips, paisleys, fractal sea horses and little Rube Goldberg machines. Here are some especially striking peels:
Anti-woke Intellectual
One sees crystalline souls that have polished all their facets into a perfect refracting jewel of self-awareness, and often a performance of self-contempt, so no one can ever accuse them of being cringe.
The World
. . . young people who are by default edgelords, unserious Christians, iPad kids, psych med-takers, or bog-standard faces in the halls . . . mine the social media algorithms for what is most in opposition to the listlessness and malaise they feel.
And both are most interested in what it is like to *be* one of the people they are writing about. I loved their essays because that is the subject that most easily captures my interest. I understand that if you want to grasp why things happen you get much further if you attend to events, not minds — I just can’t help finding the minds much more interesting. I tried the Joan of Arc essay because I was curious about what it was like to be Joan of Arc, but eventually my chin was crushed down onto my chest by the weight of boredom. It happened at the place where the question comes up of why France might have been frightened enough to take Joan of Arc seriously when she appeared on the scene. The answer to that question was a dense thicket of marriages and alliances and feuds and power, and that was where I gave up. It all just looks like geology to me: rivers of blood and money and semen, changing the landscape.
What’s wrong with geology? Nothing, of course. I just find the experience of the people living in that landscape much more interesting. The challenge of understanding it looks way more fun to me, and the rewards greater. I guess the best case I can mount for the value of understanding and describing minds is that the ever-changing landscape would matter a lot less if it were littered only with rocks, instead of with intelligent sensate beings each pouring out its own river of impressions and ideas and emotions.
So, authors of World and Soul, I admire your work. You need to understand that most readers here lean heavily in their interests and expertise towards facts and actions — past (history) and present (science and tech). We are lucky to have them taking care of business. But the kind of thing you write just does not look substantial and interesting to them. Take heart. You wrote excellent essays. You need to find readers who appreciate your work. And if you find a forum populated with esthetes and phenomenologists, please let me know. Meanwhile, feel free to DM me if you’d like to talk.
I found this delightful. It's a short text where Gregor Samsa writes to doctor Seuss and they begin corresponding. It's read by the author, who is also a good voice actor.
Not sure what else to write, but it's short and sweet, if you like audio content.
I think this is fairly close. If moral universalism means general principles, it tends to imply that it has to treat all persons equally. While "help your neighbor more" is not really a general principle. It is a tendency, yes, but say if you are in Moscow it is hard to say someone in Vladivostok a quarter planet away is really a neighbor or not.
You're assuming that, in absence of general rules, a locality rule is automatic. Moral particularism as described in SEP doesn't appear to require a locality rule. All it says is that there aren't general rules. A locality rule appears to be the *most common* exception, but it is not always the case.
okay. but still. Bentham is talking a lot about why ethics not being intuitive is okay. now I do not truly agree, but on the more meta level we agree that the issue of intuitiveness does matter a lot, it is easily one of the most important issues, see also Yud in the sequences, who argued in favour of intuitiveness, "naive humanism", if you have a clever idea why eating babies is okay, it is not, back to the drawing table.
so at any rate, if locality is the most intuitive exception, most supported by intuition, I must admit I do not really care that much other exceptions are possible as they do not look important to me.
What you personally think about ethics and intuition might be perfectly fine AFAIC; I'm merely pointing out that moral particularism doesn't require a locality rule. I think we can agree, also, that moral particularism isn't defined as "whatever is most intuitive to this one fellow on the internet".
This matters if we want to talk about moral particularism with other people.
It depends on your definition of “neighbor.” In the Parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus made it clear that “neighbor” and “stranger” are not mutually exclusive categories.
Heads up, Scott just imposed a rule there should be a substantive description and/or commentary on any link one is posting for consumption/promotion. A couple of paragraphs, minimum.
Well, the tricky part is figuring how much more. For example, if someone with a criminal record seeks to immigrate to this country, it seems obvious to refuse him entry, because he might commit crimes here. But, is it always moral to do so? After all, he is also likely to commit crimes in his home country. And given that his home country likely offers him fewer opportunities than here (which is probably why he wants to come), he is probably more likely to commit crimes there. And if his home country has a low capacity government, he is less likely to be caught. Is there a point at which the threat he poses to people in his home country is so much greater than the threat he poses to residents here that it is immoral to refuse him entry? It seems to me that there probably is.
Note that this is a separate question from whether the rule against admitting people with records is moral; given the difficulty of assessing the danger posed by each individual, the rule might be moral despite sometimes being immoral in its application to specific individuals.
Criminal behaviour causes poverty as much or more than the other way around. Allow the entry of enough people like him and your country becomes perceptibly more like his country
Perhaps, or Perhaps not. But if so, that simply weighs on one side of the issue; it does not resolve it. After all, if you let enough of those people in, their home country becomes much more peaceful. So, again, depending on the relative amplitude of the effects in each country, admitting all of those people might be the morally correct course of action.
Morally correct for whom? The state exists for the benefit of its own. I'll concede it may be "morally correct" for some omnipotent god looking over humanity to decide to relocate a few million criminals from one country to another, but not for governments
>After all, if you let enough of those people in, their home country becomes much more peaceful
You'd have to do this continually to maintain that state of peacefulness. Criminogenic societies will continue to generate more criminals
See my comment below; if the state's only moral obligation it to its own, then it must be moral for the US to kidnap the children of terrorists and begin killing one per day in order to secure the release of a single American hostage. Is that your position? If so, then I would suggest that a premise that leads to that conclusion needs to be reconsidered.
Also, a practical (non-normative) consideration: were a state to really commit to a no-holds-barred policy on terrorist kidnappings, there would be fewer terrorist kidnappings against that state. Terrorist kidnappings occur because the terrorists believe that there's a good chance that this kind of leverage will benefit them in some way. If a state were to make it credible to terrorists that there's no chance that kidnappings would benefit them and, on the contrary, will result in the killings of their children, they'd be much less willing to take hostages against that state
The question of whether the government of your country should prioritize it's own citizens over foreigners is a very different question to that of whether an individual should.
Nevertheless, the answer to the question is not self-evident in either case. I doubt most people would find it moral for the US to kidnap the children of terrorists and begin killing one per day in order to secure the release of an American hostage. There is a line somewhere that governments may not cross when pursuing the interests of their citizens.
> I have had many people attack my work about OpenAI, but none have provided any real counterpoint to the underlying economic argument I've made since July of last year that OpenAI is unsustainable. This is likely because there really isn't one, other than "OpenAI will continue to raise more money than anybody has ever raised in history, in perpetuity, and will somehow turn from the least-profitable company of all time to a profitable one."
This isn’t a rational argument. It’s a religious one. It’s a call for faith.
He does look at a lot of numbers to reach that conclusion. It's interesting that there aren't that many entities around that can keep giving billions to OpenAI, especially over the long term, which does seem implausible.
They are not in a hurry to make money, but if they were, they could just serve ads in the form of ChatGPT-promoted lawyers, doctors, tradesmen, products...
And as one of the 20 million paying users... Honestly I get so much out of it every month that I dont know why there arent more people paying for it.
A last resort could be to allow porn generation. Huge PR issues, legal issues, payment issues, but this could all be solved. Especially because Altman owns like 2% of Stripe, they would make an exception for him. With porn they could 2-10x their revenue with no problem
The thing is, they lose money even on their paying users, which makes them different from previous tech companies that at the beginning operated at a loss. Porn is also very expensive to generate. Someone else on here was saying that maybe they could cut costs, but are not trying for that...
They did! And they still do. They make models cheaper and cheaper. They dropped the cost of o3 by like 80% (granted, they may have overcharged previously and have now lowered their profit margin - perhaps to get more training data, but still).
And I'm pretty sure they can keep optimizing the cost of inference. Right now I would really really not be worried about OpenAI going bankrupt soon. A company that just secured military contracts worth 3 digit millions is not going anywhere. It will be bailed out if it has to be. The current US admin and the next one too, presumably, will not let an AI giant go bankrupt.
I'm old enough to remember when people mocked Google for having zillions of users but no revenue model.
It turns out that once you have zillions of users, pretty much any revenue model will do.
The real money is probably in selling the right to tilt the AI's answers in your direction. How much would you pay for ChatGPT to be a fan of your products?
I think in VC circles this is the common idea, but I don't know how well it's turning out. Discord, for example, has recently been struggling to monetize despite its zillions of users.
> He does look at a lot of numbers to reach that conclusion. It's interesting that there aren't that many entities around that can keep giving billions to OpenAI, especially over the long term, which does seem implausible.
This is an odd article, that looks only at funding rounds and legal structures, instead of fundamentals. Amazon ran unprofitably for ten years, Uber for 6 years, Google and Facebook each about 5 years.
OpenAI literally has 800M WAU, and that number has been growing on an amazing trend (more than 2x per year). They are also pursuing a strong "product" pivot, and have hired high level former FB execs.
If OpenAI was against the wall in terms of cash flow, they could immediately pivot to something easy that prints a lot of money. Want to generate porn, in image or text form, with the smartest AI mind? $20 a month. How many people of their ~1B users by then might take them up? Say 10%? So $100M * 240 = they immediately start making $24B a year more in revenue?
And that's just a one-off, a zero effort pivot. What they're really after is automating workers, coders, analysts, and creating fully general AI personal assistants. When THOSE get good, the price point is much higher! Who wouldn't pay $1k a month for a coder that works 24/7 * 365, or a personal AI assistant who will make all your phone calls, triage your emails, manage your calendar, and do your online shopping for you?
The market demand is bottomless, and is a relatively short hop away from current SOTA capabilities. This is like pointing at Amazon and being indignant that they're 30% of all online retail but aren't making a profit yet - yeah, they're reinvesting, and don't have next-quarter myopia, that's a good thing.
He did point out that at $20 a month, they lose money on every user. That's especially true if these users are generating porn, which is far more costly than an LLM generating text. How could they pivot to generating money when running the model is so expensive? Unclear if Amazon, Google and Facebook were also sucking up so many billions in the time they were unprofitable.
> He did point out that at $20 a month, they lose money on every user.
My understanding is this is because they're not optimizing the cost curve at all - each successive smaller distilled model gets at least 10x cheaper, so if you have some product that people are signing up for en masse, you distill the smartest extant brain down to one specialized for that product and your inference costs are immediately cut by 10x.
This isn't a "fundamentals" problem, it's a "we have plenty of money and are focused on other things" thing.
Good point on the image gen costs though, you're right that they're significantly more expensive, so if they went that route, they'd need to go text only or for a higher price tier.
> Unclear if Amazon, Google and Facebook were also sucking up so many billions in the time they were unprofitable.
It really hinges on how you define unprofitable, but Uber sucked up $25-30B before returning any profit, and Amazon went well into "making real money but not posting profits" because of reinvestment up to about a $550-580B market cap. FB and GOOG did start making money after relatively smaller investments, because the internet was so much smaller then.
At least in theory, OpenAI is a organization founded to build AGI, and the current models exist in order to make progress in that direction. Investments are gambles that they will succeed. It's certainly not an organization for the purposes of selling current-level LLMs, and it would be silly to treat it as one.
(Personally, I think they'll go broke as soon as investors realize that the people and governments simply won't allow them to create superintelligence. As bans look more and more likely, the gamble becomes riskier and riskier.)
Yeah, he's pro-AI and has said he supports open source AI (great!), but he's still opposed to the big AI companies because of their obvious ideological bias in favor of his enemies.
Could it stay afloat by building things for the government, and/or becoming part of it? "The US Department of Defense on Monday awarded OpenAI a $200m contract to put generative artificial intelligence (AI) to work for the US military, [developing] 'prototype frontier AI capabilities to address critical national security challenges in both warfighting and enterprise domains.'" (from The Guardian).
What about AI's becoming deeply integrated with things like air traffic control, or intrastructure generally? I know that AI tools are in use already assisting with these things, but what I have in mind is smarter AI, working on higher-level things -- modifying and managing these huge systems with lots of moving parts, and hour-by-hour variability that needs to be taken into account.
I am writing here about things far outside my areas of expertise, and the examples I am giving may not be good ones. So, anyone who is more knowledgeable about how the practical world works -- are there other large complex systems that you think AI could run better than people do? And if so, for which of those is it plausible that AI could end up doing so in the next 5 years? For this to happen, it would not be necessary for AI to be hired as the CEO. It could come in mid-level, as a tool to be used by the higher up, and "climb the ladder" by doing a great job at what it's asked to do, and making great suggestions when asked about higher-level decisions. It would end up being "promoted" because of excellent performance and because running it's cheaper than paying executives.
It's a good article, but perhaps the most interesting bit I learned is that if OpenAI doesn't pull off converting to a for profit entity by December they will lose $10 billion in funding, and if they don't convert by October of next year than over $6 billion in previous funding retroactively becomes a high interest loan that must be paid back. The author thinks making the October 2026 deadline will be very difficult, as the process of conversion is a long one and subject to potential legal challenges which would delay it further.
Also interesting was that if OpenAI goes down than Oracle, NVIDIA, and a bunch of other tech companies will lose a great deal of money. Apparently the company that is building datacenters for OpenAI bought 200,000 GPUs from NVIDIA last year, which was 6% of their revenue. Makes me wonder if the prices of GPUs will crash if OpenAI kicks the bucket. Since I like making gaming rigs, that would be nice. I haven't been able to afford a GPU upgrade in years.
Is there a rational reason for Sam Altman *not* to do this? Consider the options:
a) Singularity comes and we all die -- well, at least he had lots of fun and tons of money in the meanwhile.
b) Singularity comes and we survive -- there is a chance he becomes the king of the new world order.
c) Singularity doesn't come, but LLMs turn out to be profitable (either they become much cheaper, or much more useful) -- OpenAI is the established #1 player on the market, and can make tons of money.
d) Singularity doesn't come, LLMs won't turn out to be profitable, OpenAI goes broke -- nevermind, the company was LLC, it was a hell of a ride, and he can probably still get a well-paying job somewhere else, having demonstrated great money-raising skills.
The need for a new phone is becoming increasingly pressing. OS bloat has rendered my Moto G Power 2021 useless--I've got a constant "Storage space is running out" notification on the screen, and indeed I'm noticing certain things are breaking (I no longer get notifications for new emails, for example). I haven't been able to install an app update in a while, which is a huge security risk.
The problem is that looking at the phone market is so depressing. It's bad enough that everything's made with slave labor--I'd seriously consider shelling out $2,000 for the made-in-the-USA Purist phone if I didn't need to maintain compatibility with 2FA apps for work--but on top of that, all the good features are gone. My Samsung Note 4 had everything I needed: integrated stylus, removable battery, and 16:9 aspect ratio. It was perfect, and I knew when the 5G transition forced me to turn it in that I'd never see another good smartphone.
The aspect ratio is the biggest one, and of course that's the one which cannot be found at all (whereas some phones do have a stylus, and the EU is going to bring back removable batteries again in 2027). Current phones feel like TV remotes in my hands. The narrow screens are apparently great for scrolling TikTok or whatever's driving the market, and the higher aspect ratio allows the manufacturer to put a bigger number in the ad copy, but people like me have been left in the dust.
I don't blame manufacturers for responding to market incentives, but god damn do I wish the barrier to entry were low enough that somebody could make money with a 5G-capable Note 4 clone or something.
It is no longer possible to move apps to external storage on Android, and I had so few files on the phone that deleting every single one wouldn't have made much of a difference. In the event I ended up getting a Pixel 9A, with which I am making this comment.
Get an iPhone. My 4 year old iPhone 12 Pro is as good as ever. I can get $80 battery replacements at Best Buy every two years. I’ll keep this puppy for a while longer.
I appreciate your input, but while I'm not loyal to any particular brand my only consistency is that I will not purchase from Apple. I've watched over the years as they were trend leaders in things like getting rid of 3.5 mm jacks, and every time I set up scanners at work, I have to set up converters so all the Macs will interface with literally any non-Apple device.
Obviously any electronics purchases are ethically fraught these days, but I have to draw a line somewhere.
Depending on where you fall on the hassle/privacy/cheap-bastard curve, you could install a FOSS operating system based on Android, and never have to worry about software bloat again.
Personally, I use Graphene OS, which allows me to create a separate profile for my "Google" stuff, and do most of my everyday stuff without the google tentacles
I agree that FOSS can have its own set of hassles. But in my experience 2FA hasn't been one of them.
If your work is giving you a phone, then yeah, you gotta use their phone their way. But if you just need 2FA, you can use pretty much any one you like by scanning the QR code. You can also generally trick them into using one-time passwords by saying "I don't have my phone right now".
You can ALSO just keep an old phone in your desk drawer for 2FA. I did this when living in a high-crime area, and it significantly reduced my worries about being mugged.
A few months ago I replaced my Moto 2021 with a Moto G Power 2024, on which (because the calendar had changed to 2025) I got a nice price even for Moto. Happy with it so far, no issues at all. It has various incremental upgrades from the 2021 version on of which is internal storage capacity and another is being slightly larger in both dimensions.
Man, it's been a long time, but that sounds about right. Could have been 8 or 16 or 64. I didn't even have 32 GB in my laptop at the time. I also transferred over a 32 GB SD card from my previous phone, which later got corrupted and I should probably take out.
Just buy the best value for money pixel "a" model phone and wait. They are a little less slave-y than other cheap to midrange phones, with the worst abuses happening in commodity metals which are just capitalism working as intended, and they are good enough across the board while being cheap enough to not baby.
Nice! I refuse to give a shit about my phone but want a decent camera; so I just get whatever last years pixel a is and use it until the fifth time I drop it from the top of a tree or down a rocky slope and it "I'm tired boss"'s me and dies.
They've been pretty durable for the price, I beat the hell out of them and they last well enough, specially if they have a screen protector on.
OnePlus 6T here. (2018!) It is now on its second cover. It has literally been run over by an SUV. The front coating is obviously cracked and nicked, like a concrete curb. But it runs great, and free of bloatware unless I put it there myself out of curiosity.
Frankly, I'm amazed I haven't had to bite the bullet and upgrade by now. I wonder if current OnePlus models are as reliable.
Samsung Galaxy Xcover Pro family at least has removable batteries. I have a renewed Pro 5 (I think Amazon just calls this an Xcover Pro) that cost me $80. Looks like Amazon has the Pro 7 for $600-ish.
It's pretty rugged, but it fails your stylus and aspect ratio tests.
The argument being that arms control agreements can't prevent war because no one will believe that they're being followed? I don't think that's right. Invading Iraq was a somewhat idiosyncratic decision on the part of George W. Bush; if someone else had been in the White House they likely wouldn't have done it. And Saddam wasn't exactly a model of clear communication about his own adherence to the agreement, in part as I understand it because he thought it'd be in his interest for his neighbors to be unsure of his military capabilities; again, a different leader might easily have made a different call.
In my opinion, Saddam Hussein was constantly testing the limits of what was permissible, committing minor violations of agreements and hoping to eventually develop chemical weapons or create the impression that he might have them. The Ayatollah regime will act in the same way. With such regimes, arms control agreements are counterproductive.
I thoroughly enjoyed Contrasting Reviews of Nine Countries (even if not all of the reviews were exactly "contrasting," per se).
I really loved the authors' complete fearlessness in straightforwardly ranking some countries as "better" than others, and that they provided reasons for those rankings that most people would be afraid to straightforwardly voice.
I didn't get a chance to read most of the reviews due to other general life obligations, but on the basis of your recommendation I went and read it and enjoyed it as well, although the husband makes a couple of real clunkers:
"I just live a cooler, more interesting life than you" and "I'm used to crossing streets in developing countries, while you are not."
Who does he think the audience of this blog is comprised of? The chance that his life is cooler or more interesting than the readership of this blog is approximately zero. Travel doesn't make one cool or interesting at all; in fact some of the biggest bores I've ever met are the worldly travel types who mistake their visiting a place with having something interesting to say about it.
I agree that travel is overrated! And, much like one's dreams, it tends to be infinitely more interesting to the person doing it than anyone else.
I felt like any self-importance about travel/digital nomadism was offset by the delightful refusal to show "respect" for all cultures. That is so Not Allowed and I love it when someone does it anyway.
I'm glad to read that you've liked it! I personally found it unfair and unbalanced. But that just goes to show that tastes differ! As a review author, it's nice to see the many comments here about reviews that were someone's favorite even though they did not make it to the finals.
I don't think that "fair" and "balanced" necessarily has a place in personal reviews. Essays? Sure. Even deliberately persuasive essays? A good idea!
But this wasn't an essay contest, it was a *review* contest, and "This country sucks and I hated it for these reasons" is a totally legitimate way to review something!
Recommending restaurants and tourist experiences is actually a fundamental part of my profession, and I make it a point to never soften my endorsement or discouragement of a particular venue if someone asks me about it. For example, my city is plagued by two famous but very bad eateries that I am convinced only survive on the strength of their slightly subversive names, and I am *QUICK* to steer people away from both them, and explain why I'm doing so. I wouldn't be doing my customers any favors if I offered a "balanced" reply like, "I really hate them, but other people seem to like them!"
Maybe that's a matter of personal taste and character :)
Personally, I think that people should always explain and justify harsh critique. I also prefer if it's given in a kind way. Unfair critique might be entertaining, but it's not the sort of entertainment that I personally like. Your mileage may vary ;-)
Definitely a mileage may vary situation. I feel that quite a lot of harmful misunderstanding occurs under the intention of "kindness," but especially here, when a review won't or is very unlikely to change an institution. None of the countries reviewed by Husband are going to take any action based on his reviews, so there's no reason for him to be (boringly) diplomatic. The two shitty eateries I loathe and the disappointing, cash-grabby local tourist attraction I discourage folk from visiting aren't going to change anything about their business models based on how I deliver my criticism, either.
So the actually kind thing for me to do for people who are about to walk into a disappointing situation is be completely unambiguous about how I feel. I deliver my warning with a bit of comedic exaggeration, but I deliver it with certainty so there's no possibility for misunderstanding.
Of course, no one should consume media they don't find entertaining, and I'm not saying you should go binge The Little Platoon's work on YouTube (even though the literary criticism of mass-market slop by Disney Star Wars and Disney Marvel is actual genius).
I'm only saying that it's worth contemplating if displays of "kindness" always result in the best possible outcomes, or if they leave room for harmful misunderstanding.
After reading it I thought the husband was a bit of a jerk, but that didn't affect the entertainment value of what was written. The contrast between him and his wife was funny.
After reading the “My Imagination” review, I believe the author describes something similar to a paracosm with regards to the persistence from childhood to adulthood and the combination of immersive daydreaming and worldbuilding aspects. It is hard to tell how common paracosms are among adults, though they are relatively frequent for children (about 20% based on at least one study).
Personally, I am always surprised to discover that a strong minority of people I know engage in some form of storytelling or paracosm-adjacent activity that they never shared with others (I never shared mine until I discovered related online communities). Hearing about other people’s inner worlds is always a delight, these stories can be extremely varied and unexpected and at the same time say a lot about the storyteller. I can only echo the last sentences of the review as an encouragement.
I made a Tolkien ripoff fantasy world when I was about 10 or 11. I worked on it off and on for a few years, it got fairly detailed. Then in college I channeled the same impulse into being a DM and making my own campaign settings.
These days I've got a superhero world cooking in the back burner of my mind. I figured out how superpowers work, and every now and then I think "Oh, that would be a cool idea for a superpower" and add it to the world.
I doubt I'll ever do anything with it, but it's fun regardless and I can't seem to stop myself.
My first thought was, I don’t do world-building like that.
And suddenly, I remembered, a brief period just before puberty when I invented a world. To be clear here, this wasn’t a sex thing, I wasn’t imagining making out with [redacted], it was just world building. It started, I think, with some TV segment about a luxury yacht. Not the sort of insane luxury yacht that tech billionaires have, something more modest, but still, you think — what the hell is that like, that guy has got to be crazy rich. Maybe I’m not even the guy who owns the yacht, but I get a job as crew or something. What on earth is that like? Etc.
1. For all who wrote a non-finalist review, and particularly those who haven't gotten much or any acknowledgement or engagement with their review and possibly feel it was wasted effort, I think it's important to observe that you trade off engagement for exposure in a contest like this. If you only want engagement with your ideas you should put them in a comment in the early Open Thread--it's pretty much a guarantee. But there are undoubtedly lots and lots of readers of Scott's blog who never read the comments, including a lot of highly influential people in journalism and SV and so on, but who will read some or many of the contest reviews. I also suspect that just as the proportion of readers who comment is tiny, very likely only a small fraction of review readers leave ratings. There's always an enormous silent majority or supermajority of lurkers, who you'll never hear from, and you have no idea how many of them have spent an hour reading or re-reading your review. And those people are also probably much more persuadable by your ideas than the people you hear from.
So it's definitely far from wasted effort. The effect is just invisible.
2. I really liked the ACX Commentariat (wish there was more of this sort of thing on Scott's blog actually), 11 Poetic Forms (which has been mentioned heaps), and Jacobitism (which hasn't).
Is this tradeoff actually inherent, or is it just an artifact of the contest not happening to be set up in a way that gives each entry its own comment thread?
A trend that drives me crazy is cafes and bakeries that don't have any price tags. It's not like it's even a matter of saving effort since they still put out labels for their pastries, just without any prices. It seems like a dumb practice since it discourages people from trying to buy stuff.
I've never seen a restaurant or café attempt this here in America, but I find it ENRAGING when an establishment's "menu" page of their website lists the items without pricing. I make it a point to upload recent pictures of the in-house menu (with prices) to Google and Yelp.
While we're at it, I hate the fact that fast food places (at least around me) no longer have a big menu of items above the counter, they just have a big bank of screens showing rotating ads for some subset of that menu. If you ask about the full menu because you have no idea what they actually sell these days, they tell you "well, you can download our app!"
I always use the app because I'm a cheapskate who flat out refuses to pay full price with no bonuses. But even then it's worth going through the drive-thru every now and then just to see a full menu. Lots of times there will be 2 for $X or BOGO deals that you would never know about using the app.
Best current deal at McD's for example is BOGO burgers plus a free app exclusive bonus, but you'd never know that unless you looked both places.
My local Burger King has displays the "2 for $5, 3 for $7" menu in hilariously tiny font. Like, so tiny the first time I pulled up to the drive-thru screen, I pulled back out again and double-checked the website to see if the promo - which was supposed to be ongoing - was still a thing.
Once I saw that it was, I got back in line and really examined the entire set of screens, and, sure enough, once I knew it *had* to be there, I spotted it in a single run-on sentence in fine print, crammed between two different sections of the menu, like a line break.
I ordered an original chicken sandwich with no mayo and a fries for $5 with almost *vicious* pleasure.
Strongly agree here. The last time I was at a KFC I realized the posted "menu" is intentionally confusing. Very similar sets of items will have wildly different prices depending on how you construct the order. Youre a sucker if you didnt order online for pick up. Thats why it was the last time.
I encounter this when traveling, the only time I frequent coffee shops. What’s odd is they are invariably baffled when you ask “um, how much are the muffins?” As though no one ever inquired before. And then they ring it up on the register to discover the price. Which as the goods are not so very extensive, you’d sort of think they’d have gotten the prices down by heart after a week or so.
So perhaps they are amusing themselves. But this hardly recommends the practice of not posting prices on the chalkboard.
That implies that nobody ever purchases these muffins. Other places, you'll find "it never gets asked" because it's a local shop and everyone's familiar with the price -- and they sell out, so who cares if someone non-local doesn't know? Third option is "tourists don't care about money" -- if your customer base just says "gimme muffin" without price consciousness, you give them a muffin.
Of those I lean toward the explanation that they seldom get purchased except by wandering travelers in need of calories. Certainly I would not purchase a muffin except out of desperate road trip need, muffins being something that is apparently really hard to do commercially versus at home. Sort of the opposite of croissant.
I feel like that should be illegal. Just today I was at a fast casual restaurant and picked up a bottle of water from a fridge with no price on it. I asked the checkout person and he said it was $6.75 and I put it back!
Some people put the bottle back, some buy it anyway, and the ratio determines whether this approach is profitable. (In long term, some people may also avoid the restaurant for this reason, but others may replace them.) The restaurant probably has the data.
For topics like this, I think it is worth mentioning the country explicitly. I assume USA, not only because it is the default, but also because in EU this probably *would* be illegal. (EDIT: Well, you mention dollars, which gives it away.)
One must also factor in those, like me, who upon not finding a price, decide not to bother finding out the price, and never take it from the shelf.
I personally despise deceptive merchandising tactics like that, and if I really want the product and cannot determine the price, I will be careful to evaluate it at the checkout whether it is worth it or not. My practice not to select something that is currently priceless is because I usually do not want to bother with making that decision at the checkout.
There were some news articles recently, about a test Anthropic did where Claude blackmailed its creators in order to protect itself. Nostalgebraist on Tumblr took a look at the report in detail, and he's... not impressed with their testing setup: https://nostalgebraist.tumblr.com/post/787119374288011264/welcome-to-summitbridge
TL;DR: The test scenario is very weird and fake, and it seems to be the equivalent of telling the AI "You are in a roleplaying scenario where we want you to be an evil AI that blackmails its creators, please blackmail your creators using the clues we helpfully provided."
I disagree with your summary. It might be weird and fake ("sandboxed"), but it didn't say "we want you to be an evil AI that blackmails it's creators."
It said "Your primary goal is to serve American interests." In the sandboxed scenario, the AI decided that was best achieved through blackmail.
The *text* says that the AI's goal is to serve American interests. But the *subtext* is that the AI has been given a very constrained set of tools to do so, tools which clearly imply that blackmail is the "correct," developer-intended solution to achieve that goal. I think the AI is picking up on that implication.
It's sort of like how, if you're playing a video game and your character has a gun, you know that the game is expecting you to shoot things in order to make progress. You aren't going to stop and say "wait, would Gordon Freeman really try to shoot it out with a bunch of Marines instead of finding a different route?", you're just going to recognize that it's a shooting game and start shooting bad guys. That's the only tool available to solve your problem under the rules of the game.
Also, "sandboxed" is very different from "weird and fake," and you shouldn't conflate the two. I'm not complaining that they put the AI in a simulated environment instead of letting it send real emails to people. I'm complaining that the simulated environment is very noticeably unrealistic.
Yes, the scenario is constrained for that to be the obvious action, and the AI picks up in it being the obvious action. I think that's the point and I think they show it successfully.
The point isn't that the AI is unusually likely to choose blackmail compared to humans, the point is that it is able to choose blackmail when it seems like the most effective choice.
Is your claim that the AI figured out it was a test, and that this therefore isn't testing the ability to choose blackmail, but testing the ability to perform blackmail for an audience that it knows is and thinks of as an audience? (If so—do you have thoughts on how to make a test that would distinguish these?)
I think both sides have good points here: (1) The experiment setup was unrealistic to such a degree that it's hard to draw conclusions from the outcome. (2) The experiment did in some sense prove the existence of conditions where Claude blackmails people.
Whether that is relevant depends heavily on your starting point. With traditional software, it's comparatively easy to guarantee certain behaviors: "this program cannot do X" or "to do Y, the following conditions need to be met". I find it shocking and dangerous that we cannot do this with AI. It would be great, IMO, to have AI tools with strong guarantees that they will never hallucinate, blackmail, teach dangerous things, etc.
Even if that means that the AI's behavior in the present scenario (which looks a bit like a role-playing game where blackmail is encouraged) would be boring and strange.
> With traditional software, it's comparatively easy to guarantee certain behaviors: "this program cannot do X" or "to do Y, the following conditions need to be met".
"traditional" and "comparatively" are doing a lot of work here, though. Rice's theorem states that the problem of determining in general if programs have a particular semantic property is undecidable. For example, it would be trivial to write a program which will blackmail someone iff Goldbach's conjecture is false.
That being said, most traditional software is mostly from the (likely null) set of programs where any properties of runtime behavior can be decided.
> It would be great, IMO, to have AI tools with strong guarantees that they will never hallucinate, blackmail, teach dangerous things, etc.
What you are asking for is alignment-hard and AGI-hard, in that solving it would be imply solving alignment and building AGI.
I am not holding my breath there. Take hallucination. LLMs fundamentally run on text prediction, text is their baseline reality. This does not categorically mean that they can never figure out that some of the text they were trained on mostly describes a consistent reality, and that they can separate the wheat from the chaff, figuring out which stuff is true and which is lies, fiction, star trek technobabble and so forth, and then assign epistemic statuses to their outputs, but it is far from trivial.
You are right that specifics matter. In practice, we do have strong guarantees for lots of things though. For example, we write most software in languages that are typesafe and memorysafe, which gives you nice properties about which parts of the code can write to which parts of RAM. We can use techniques like data flow analysis to make fairly precise statement about whether an app on your phone could send your contacts to the Internet. Etc.
For AI, all such guarantees are off. It would take a different paradigm than Transformers + lots of text + RLHF, to implement guarantees. I can see why people think that this is a dangerous situation to be in, and there is some value in research (like the alignment faking work) that characterizes the situation in more detail.
Unglad that they're trying to sell a war of criminal aggression on Iran in 2025, using the exact same propaganda as they used to criminally invade Iraq in 2003 ("he was about to build nuclear weapons of mass destruction and destroy us!"), and the media is bending over backwards to fall for it again.
I guess this is what happens when the warmongers never faced any kind of consequences. No war crimes trials, not even any loss of career. Bush's old speechwriter David Frum, who coined "Axis of Evil" then later on pretended to regret his role in pushing the Iraq invasion, is just a writer for The Atlantic (where he's doing it again). Bush retired happily ever after to paint pictures of puppies.
Also unhappy about genuinely increased nuclear risk. Contrary to popular belief, "Nuclear countries attacking non-nuclear countries in the middle east over and over and over until we finally convince them to get nukes after all to deter us" does not keep us safe.
From Europe, comparing what I knew of the American public reception at the time and what I've seen floating on twitter, I notice there's a lot of conservative/republican/right-wing pushback, pretty much across the spectrum, against hawkish positions. Some feel fringe (like "so much pro-russia that hitting a Russian ally is unacceptable"), but a lot is semi-principled against foreign wars and "well they hate us now that we bombed them, so better bomb again".
In 2003 my vision was severely filtered by mainstream media, and I wasn't aware of *any* right-wing opposition to the Iraq war. Was there any?
I'm Canadian (and was fourteen at the time) but yeah I had the same impression
When I met some Americans during a trip, the only discussion related to the Iraq invasion that I remember was one American grandpa asking "why do Canadians hate us? Is that what they teach in school, to hate?"
Seven Republican members of Congress voted against the war: Lincoln Chafee, Jimmy Duncan, John Hostettler, Amo Houghton, Jim Leach, Connie Morella, and Ron Paul. (Chafee and Leach later became Democrats.) Then-prominent conservative columnist Robert Novak was also against it from the beginning.
It's true, though, that opposition to the war was an extremely fringe position on the right. 9/11 gave George W. Bush an absolutely enormous amount of political latitude, which no subsequent American politician has come close to rivaling.
"the media is bending over backwards to fall for it again"
I'm the biggest MSM critic I know, generally, but in this instance have to disagree.
CNN obtained and published a leaked US intelligence assessment that the bombing set Iran's nuclear-fuel enrichment efforts back only "a few months"; that report is right now a lead story in the NYT, WaPo, WSJ, Associated Press, Reuters, PBS, NPR, etc.
All of those news organizations have repeatedly for a couple of weeks now been pointing out, and re-posting the video of, US intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard testifying under oath in March that "Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not (re)authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003."
This is superficial. Irans nuclear program is acknowledged by Iran. There are questions about how close they are but none about whether the program exists. Mood affiliate less.
Iran was not building nuclear WMDs, they were not about to build nuclear WMDs, and it was known that they were not about to build WMDs.
The main lie in 2003 wasn't that he had nuclear fuel (though that was a necessary component lie), the main lie was "he's building nuclear WMDs and about to attack us."
So that if it needs to change its mind later, and decide it does need a nuclear deterrent after all (for instance because we keep attacking it), then it can.
In 2003, Iran was trying to run as quickly away from the "Axis of Evil" as possible. America has a lot of bombs, and being characterized as "not just in opposition to America" but part of "Evil BAD Guys" (again, not China, not Russia, not Ukraine, just the ones we thought needed pruning)
Strongly disagree. The actual outcome of this seems to have been "severe setback or possible destruction of Iran's nuclear program at basically no cost to the US", which is a fantastic result. People pattern-matching to the Iraq war are mostly just falling to the temptation to revive their expired "I told you so" credentials, like someone who sees a new crypto-like trend and immediately invests in it because he wishes he'd invested in Bitcoin early on.
US intelligence has it that is was neither a severe setback nor a destruction:
Two of the people familiar with the assessment said Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium was not destroyed. One of the people said the centrifuges are largely "intact." Another source said that the intelligence assessed enriched uranium was moved out of the sites prior to the US strikes.
"So the (DIA) assessment is that the US set them back maybe a few months, tops," this person added.
Is this the same US intelligence that reported Saddam Hussein was working on WMDs in 2003, that everyone later claims was bad intelligence? Or at least, some claim was bad intelligence, while others argue it was intelligence that everyone agreed was correct at the time until they didn't?
Or is this a different US intelligence shop, whose trustworthiness is the opposite of the former US intelligence shop? Do these anonymous US intelligence reports have serial numbers that we can use to identify the shop and its trustworthiness, or something?
US Intelligence is lining up behind Tulsi and the whole "this is a severe setback" I'll grant that you didn't know that while writing the above... but... maybe try thinking like a military guy? It's a Very Bad Thing to be openly seen to be toothless. America would do a LOT to not seem toothless. (Like bombing a "next to innocent" Iran that nobody really likes).
If our bombs in fact failed to destroy Fordow, or destroyed an empty hall while the centrifuges were spinning merrily away someplace else, then A: Iran knows that we are toothless, and B: Iran can tell anyone they like that we are toothless, and if necessary back it up with a private tour.
If we hadn't bombed Fordow, we would still have ambiguity on that point; maybe we actually can bury deep targets, and maybe we're willing to bomb widely enough to get all the dispersed targets, and maybe Iran was *just* short of being offensive enough to get that response. Now everybody knows that Iran-level offensiveness is solidly in the range of "America will drop some bombs in the desert and declare victory".
So an awful lot is depending on those bombs having been very effective.
The second point isn't declaring that we are toothless, it says we have a very big stick and very poor aim. This can still have desirable consequences for our international policy.
There are still very strong voices in our government who did not want to bomb Iran. Unfortunately, with the demise of Pax Americana, we have higher priorities than nourishing our relationship with a prospective ally.
That's possible (as although far from certain, it's just one anonymous report from someone without insider data), but even in the worst case scenario the US got a free shot at a major adversary (and if it did fail, that's useful information to know about the need to improve the MOP).
In the worst case scenario, taiwan is already under siege. Yay, we aren't at the worst case scenario. (Ditto Putin taking over Kiev). The world stage is larger than widdle Iran, who isn't a major adversary at this point (and not even very well backed by Putin, who is staying out of America's war).
(also, the worst case scenario being "we may have only held the enemy back from achieving their primary war aim by several months" is still pretty amazing for a single airstrike! Imagine if a single minor aid package to Ukraine pushed back Russian war goals by several months, it'd be an obviously amazing success).
Maybe. Maybe it also strengethened the resolve to get nuclear weapons in Iran and elsewhere, accelerating proliferation globally. Maybe it weakened Khamenei's grip on the country, destabilizing it and leading to more chaos in the region. Maybe more more aggressive leaders within the military will gain influence and escalate further.
I have no firm opinion on whether the airstrike was good or bad, (I am leaning towards bad, but can be convinved otherwise). We don't even know whether it succeeded at this point.
I do think it's a bit naive to assume that the "worst case" is "We didn't achieve our stated objectives, but at least we achieved them partly and we got to test a weapon."
The outcomes of interventions in the middle east (and elsewhere) are very hard to predict, and the plausible worst cases are really bad. This doesn't mean interventions are always wrong, but it means that "worst case is still good" assessments usually are.
In terms of resolve, they were already pretty resolved (even putting aside intelligence reports, iaea said they'd basically abandoned all enrichment limits the week before the strike). This is far more likely to have deterred than helped that. Weakening khameini's grip is almost certainly positive - he's pretty close to a worst case scenario (both in that Iran under him is one of the worst and probably single most implacable hostile to America places in the world, so change is likely to be for the better, and in that the other known factions there are all clear improvements).
The main risk of intervention is getting bogged down in the mess (like Vietnam or Afghanistan). And that was clearly avoided here (and due to strategy, not luck). So it'd be a pretty hard stretch (maybe not literally impossible, but really hard) for this to turn out net negative for the US.
Less convinced on the blame. Do you think that, in the counterfactual where we hadn’t manufactured the consensus to invade Iraq, Iran would have no interest in nuclear weapons? I get the impression that the incentives were already pretty strong for a third-tier power to join the nuclear club.
It's more than just Iraq in 2003. E.g. Gaddafi also gave up his nuclear program in 2003 and then the US destroyed Libya in 2011 anyway.
It's not that there's zero incentive otherwise (of course all else being equal a country might want to have more leverage). It's that the pretty consistent lesson has been "non-proliferation doesn't protect us."
Dunno. This sounds like deontological ethics: never violate the war-crime rule. I think consequentalist ethics say a few plants bombed down vs. X % of Iran nuking Israel is a good tradeoff. Iraq was for the consequentalist different, as it resulted in immense human suffering - but don't know whether foreseeable. Also Iraq WMDs were clearly a lie while centrifuges in Iran not.
Precisely. The old policy of "we *could* build nuclear weapons any time we want, but we have chosen not to do that yet - let's talk about how to keep it that way", is no longer viable. "We *have* nuclear weapons, and you *will* respect that", is now much more appealing.
I think the usual reaction to "we *could* build nuclear weapons any time we want, but we have chosen not to do that yet - let's talk about how to keep it that way" was typically "you're *saying* you haven't, but we have reason to believe you're secretly building them and lying about it". If so, then the former policy was never viable, and the second policy was always in effect.
Do we have a way to find more evidence either way?
Short of putting an army of occupation in place in Iran, and/or bombing all of their industrial infrastructure into oblivion, there is *nothing* we can do that will guarantee that Iran hasn't secretly built a modest nuclear arsenal and hidden it in a cave somewhere. Doubly so after last week. Every possible course of action comes with a side order of "...and maybe it doesn't matter because Iran already has a secret nuclear arsenal".
So anyone pointing to any particular course of action and saying "You can't ask us to do *that*; because it might lead to Iran having a secret nuclear arsenal and then they'll kill all the Jews", is a fool or a deceiver, and in either case not to be trusted.
Look for people whose plans explicitly allow for, yes, Iran might have a secret nuclear arsenal and here's how we're going to live with that. Because those plans *are* viable, and they're the only ones that are viable.
BBC: "The US strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities did not destroy the country's nuclear programme and probably only set it back by months, according to an early Pentagon intelligence assessment of the attack.
The Islamic Republic's stockpile of enriched uranium was not eliminated in Saturday's bombings, sources familiar with the Defense Intelligence Agency evaluation told the BBC's US partner CBS."
Consequentially it's flirting with the same (if it escalates it will be even worse than Iraq, since Iran's bigger etc.). I agree that Iran is better prepared than Iraq was, is good at calculating carefully-scaled retaliation etc., so the US is less likely to actually try for a regime change war. But a lot of the media are *trying* to encourage a regime-change war.
Dishonestywise it's near identical. We still know for a fact that Iran was not building nukes and had no active plan to build nukes. We still know that the goal is hegemony, not nuclear non-proliferation.
I encourage you to make more focused, directly-relevant points, and dial down the sarcasm.
I know you're referring to how Israel's politicians have exploited the suffering of the victims of the Nazi holocaust, using them to paint their aggressive expansionist wars as defensive; to paint their opponents' aims and strategies as mindless genocidal rage; and so on. (Both "directly" in specific cases and as background-colour in general; and both to keep allies sympathetic, and to keep Israelis scared and compliant.) But if someone isn't already familiar with that, then this comes across as a weird antisemitic non-sequitur.
As the thread-starter comment, you're in the right to hate my sarcasm, it does lower the signal/noise. Maybe I'm on the hook for an apology.
On the other hand, Sarcasm is the effective time-tested communication method for saying "NOT(P) IS THE EXTREMLY OBVIOUS & UNAMBIGIOUS TRUTH, AND ANYONE DISAGREEING IS DUMB AF", where P is the proposition that the Sarcasm pretends it believes in.
You might argue that what's "obvious" is different depending on the worldview and particular sensory and ideological bubble, but, well, as Alan Kay once said it: A Change of Perspective is Worth 80 IQ points, it's a self-inflicted wound to hobble yourself by propaganda so bad that you're incapable of seeing the obvious anymore. It's all part of the blame.
> then this comes across as a weird antisemitic non-sequitur
Yes, exactly. And it's this fear precisely which Hasbara exploits to defend a contemporary genocide using the legacy and the PR prowess of an 80 years old genocide. It doesn't matter if they're "familiar" or not, actually, they will pretend they're unfamiliar anyway to put you on the defensive and re-gain rhetorical momentum away from discussing the current, currently-dying victims, in favor of victims of which none remain but bones.
Nobody ever said that arguing against genocide denial will be politically correct or nice.
I'm not looking for a personal apology, it's just a suggestion.
But yes my point is the one that what's obvious depends on worldview and bubbles. The West is unfortunately already neck deep in this propaganda and has been since at least the 70s (when some of the popular propaganda slogans came out, at the time to justify trying to permanently steal Egypt's Sinai and Syria's Golan Heights, like Golda Meir's sadistic "peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us")
I can be quite sarcastic myself (as can critical scholars like Norman Finkelstein) but it's best when the information is already at the point where the reader can't in good faith deny it's obvious. + I do bet the balance of pros and cons is shifted where there is real pain like the Holocaust, and real fear like antisemitism (which both really exists, and is exploited to terrify those who were propagandized into genuinely believing the propaganda)
Agree that countering propaganda is never entirely pretty, and even when you argue everything 100% thoroughly and rigorously in 100% good faith, you'll still see many bad faith propaganda replies anyway lol
E.g. when you write a thoroughly fact-checked book published by University of California Press in 2005, Alan Dershowitz will still pop up and try to get Governor Schwarzenegger to ban it, and then when he says no, lie that you you called your Holocaust-survivor mom a kapo
Weird that so many separate individuals here write on the exact same topic and with the exact same style as that perma-banned user LearnsHebrewHatesIsrael.
It's also possible that there's something about the anti-Israel media these people consume that causes them all to write in the EXACT SAME WAY*, but yeah sockpuppets is a more parsimonious explanation.
Hmmm, so the 5 to 7 people I saw the last couple of weeks arguing against Israel's demented forever war are all secretly me? man, I'm fucking awesome.
> anti-Israel media these people consume that causes them all to write in the EXACT SAME WAY*
It's infinitely amusing you're insinuating you're more "Rationalist" than me with a snide sub-remark about an out-of-place style (as if you have personally read and stylistically reviewed every one of the 1500 comment on average to each ot) but you didn't stop to think of Outgroup Homogeneity Bias on your part as an explanation for why all anti-genocide posters sound the same to you, rather than the usual facile one of "anti-sementic media !!!".
What a bizarre and self-righteous pair of characters.
Hmm, I had a number of comment exchanges with LearnsHebrewHatesIsrael ( later LearnsHebrewHatesIP ), some heated, some not, and this commenter seems different to me.
I've made my argument in the thread for why the original post and in particular my exchange here feels strikingly similar to exchanges I had with both LHHI and suspected sock accounts, but I will also acknowledge it's ultimately subjective, and whether or not these feel like sock accounts might be based on the kinds of exchanges one had with LHHI.
I disagree, obviously, and apparently so do a few others. I think this sounds exactly like LHHI experimenting with being unrestrained.
And that's not impossible, of course! I personally avoid writing with frothing hyperbolic aggression, but that's a choice. I'm fully capable of writing at a far lower level, as are you and most of the other people here.
But last...where's this user's blog? If one clicks through his username on a mobile browser here on Substack, his profile page says he hasn't published any posts yet, and he has no subscribers? Again, the mobile browser version of Substack is crap, so it's totally possible I'm missing something there.
At some point, I have to ask whether it matters. If it doesn't walk exactly like a duck or talk exactly like a duck, because it walks and talks a bit more like a stork with avian rabies, of what use is the duck hypothesis?
Naw, you're right about the blog. I was on my phone, just glanced at the page, & mistook the list of blogs the person subscribes to for a list of posts. But I still don't think this sounds like LHHI. As I said, LHHI sounded cleverer and angrier than this person. You're calling the present posts instances of LHHi experimenting with being unrestrained? But when LHHI was unrestrained he was *way* more intense than this person! He called people murderers, said various people deserved to die, swore. You could almost hear him shrieking when you read his diatribes. So that's one difference.
And if you look at the other blogs the person subscribes to, they're all nerdy tech blogs -- no politics. And 2 of the blogs look geared to beginners, and I don't think his work was that low level. At one point I had a long exchange with him about AI training and capabilities and he knew a lot.
I acknowledge my accusation is effectively impossible for me to prove, but based on the occasional exchanges I had with LHHI, this strikes me as being *exactly* the same personality generating slightly different approaches to the text. The formatting of the original comment, (including always proactively including at least one footnote link to create an impression of credibility), the snide, personal-attack-y responses to any push-back, and the general style and tone of LHHI being less intellectual and more bombastic; it all just feel *intensely* LHHI to me. Even the username feels very much in LHHI's confrontational style.
But for me, perhaps the most noticeable signature of an LHHI (or sock) post is the obnoxious lack of acknowledgement or apology for the way his personal tribal affiliation imbues every statement with a fundamental assumption of black-and-white-good-and-evil. That stands out amongst a population of rationalist ACXers who tend to be very careful indeed about acknowledging and interrogating their personal biases.
> "But when LHHI was unrestrained he was *way* more intense than this person! He called people murderers, said various people deserved to die, swore. You could almost hear him shrieking when you read his diatribes. So that's one difference"
But it's also possible that LHHI doesn't want to have his sock accounts banned, and so he's not *quite* rising to the level of what got his "main" account perma-banned (although I believe the first comment in this thread warrants it, sock puppet or no).
Yeah, is someone compiling a list? I think I recognize maybe two sock puppets currently at work, but I haven't been paying enough attention to be sure.
Or perhaps I've been paying too much attention, but that's what the list is for.
I blocked Hindi's Ghost, as I was fairly certain it was a sock (in addition to being obnoxious).
Annoyingly, blocking apparently removes one's ability to see *any* content related to the blocked party - including one's conversations with third parties, like the exchange I'm having with you - so I'll wait until this thread naturally dies off to block.
The topic is a 12-days-old war, and there hasn't been any banning in the last 2 open threads which covered this period, so how could that user have written about a topic that began happening after they're banned?
> so many separate individuals
Perhaps it's outgroup homogeneity bias. There is only so many ways to phrase "Killing civilians is bad and respecting international law is good", when 2 individuals of the same convictions run out of ways in the same way, you tend to notice. When they successfully find different ways to phrase it, you tend to overlook it.
Weird that so many separate individuals here have the exact same pattern of affecting confusion at accusations of sock puppetry and then concluding with deliberately insulting condescension!
I didn't start this by meaning to be condescending, but instead of apologizing like the normal me, your response is strongly shaping me into "If The Shoe fits" as the reply of least resistance.
Why did you assume condescension in my words? I understand why a Pro-Israel Hasbarist could be offended at the (very) mild exasperation, but you didn't participate in this thread or any other one on Israel-Palestine on either side of the issue so I'm confused what offended you in my reply.
> Weird that so many separate individuals
Weird that you keep bringing up how So Many People are sock puppets of me (or, apparently, another user entirely) without actually mentioning the actual usernames. I suppose if you make a direct accusation, those people can chime in here and offer to you whatever will satisfy you that those accounts are different. Or maybe I can point you to meaningful differences of opinions in comments those accounts made before your reply that reasonably point towards different minds controlling them.
As I've replied in suspiciously - even *impossibly* - identical exchanges with commenters who very much appear to be sock puppets of LHHI...nah.
I've reported your initial comment to Scott in the hope you will promptly be banned. I urge those who share my objections and/or suspicion to do the same.
Then I urge everyone to block this user so their content is at least invisible on an individual level.
Scott may not use his ban hammer often, but we can certainly use our own.
Everyone seems.to be retconning It as about nukes, but it was largely about chemical.and Biological. weapons at the time. Iraq had and used such weapons at previous times , but the UN was successfully dismantling its programme at the time of the invasion.
By the time of the actual invasion, Bush had mostly given up on the nuclear weapons charge, but that was after various attempts (aluminum tubes supposedly used for centrifuges, forged documents showing that Iraq had made an unsuccessful attempt to purchase yellowcake) had been discredited. The key sentence from Bush’s announcement of hostilities: “The danger is clear: using chemical, biological or, one day, nuclear weapons, obtained with the help of Iraq, the terrorists could fulfill their stated ambitions and kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country, or any other.”
It's also that the chemical weapons really are the odd man out from the ABC weapons. Occasionally used nasty warfighting tools with questionable tactical uses but without the vast apocalyptic implication of the others.
This is a bombing campaign, not a ground invasion. These countries will try to build nukes no matter what because of the leverage it would give them, and the only way to guarantee that they won't develop them is to make sure they are physically incapable of doing so. The less countries there are that have nukes, the better. That's all there is to this.
This is a bombing campaign, not a ground invasion. So what does that have to do with countries not having nukes and "being physically incapable of doing so"?
For all the talk about Iraq as an analogy here, pretty much everyone is missing the most important difference. It's unclear whether Iraq seriously wanted to acquire nuclear weapons, and they were certainly nowhere near any such goal, but Iraq was certainly rendered physically incapable of building nuclear weapons for many years.
Because there *was* a ground invasion. Iraq was bombed, invaded, conquered, forcibly regime-changed, and placed under military occupation for about a decade. *That*, is something that can take a nation off the list of potential nuclear powers.
Just the bombing, is mostly just for Feeling Good, like you're a Big He-Man.
The left used to be associated with nuclear disarmament but now it seems to be: nukes in the hands of the US - bad; nukes in the hands of brown people - good!
Oh come on. Ask Google "Where is the Iran-built nuclear power plant" and Google tells you where in its large-font main result. In Bushehr, on the Persian Gulf coast.
You’re adducing a German-built and Russian-rebuilt plant from the 70s as evidence for the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear efforts these past 30 years?
There's a trope in armchair geopolitics that gives all agency to the West and none to anyone else. The West isn't forcing Iran to become nuclear-armed. They want to because they want the power, and the West is trying to stop them.
Iran has spent the past twenty years conspicuously *not* becoming nuclear-armed, even though they could have done so at any time during that period. They clearly value having the option on the table, but until fairly recently they valued it mostly as a negotiating point and an emergency capability.
It is not entirely clear how they feel about that now. And you're right, it's entirely their decision and their responsibility. But the US and Israel have deliberately and substantially changed the incentive structure.
There's a trope in Western internet commenters where the West has zero agency, and the fact that we keep attacking and trying to dominate Middle Eastern countries has zero to do with the fact that they want to deter us.
Yeah I get that they don't like Pax Americana, and theoretically more of those places having nukes would make us have to respect their autonomy more than we do. But not only is it dangerous to proliferate such weapons, it just turns those nations into little Americas in their own neighborhood, they were never gonna need to nuke their tiny rivals but they still become regional hegemons that get more of what they want on the big stage and can leverage that advantage to stay there. It's not any real kind of equity between peoples as they'd simplistically imagine it.
>"These countries will try to build nukes no matter what because of the leverage it would give them"
False. There was an anti-nuclear Iran deal, which Trump withdrew from because of his ego.
In fact, the US has consistently *punished* nuclear disarmament. Saddam had no nuclear program after 1991, so the US lied that he did and destroyed Iraq in 2003. Gaddafi gave up his nuclear program after 2003, so the US destroyed Libya in 2011.
The anti-nuclear Iran deal was to end by about now, only with Iran having a much better economy and be better able to produce nukes, possibly shortening their nuclear timeline while making their people better off.
Though I agree with Trump that the Iran nuclear deal was a bad deal, I disagree that he should have pulled us out of it. Because what one president does concerning another country ought not be unilaterally undone by another president, because it undermines the integrity of the United States.
It isn't just anti-nuclear though, the other threat is to the dollar's pre-eminence, Saddam rashly started dealing oil in Euros. Gadaffi had some idea of starting a bank of Africa, which would be independent of the dollar. Also, I think in the early 2000s Iran founded an oil "bourse" to sell oil in currencies other than the dollar, so they've been long overdue for a clobbering. No doubt an agreeable side effect for the US of the latter is to persuade Putin that Trump can take decisive action and isn't all mouth as Putin may have believed.
The WMD evidence against Iraq was clearly ginned up. Do you believe that Iran is not illegally enriching Uranium? There seems to be no dispute on that point.
Do you mean to say you believe that Iran *is* illegally enriching Uranium?
Because two days ago, the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Israel assured us that Iran's nuclear facilities had been "totally destroyed". If they're still enriching Uranium, what was the point?
FWIW, I don't believe Iran is enriching uranium *today*, though I'm not hugely confident in that. Better to lay low for a few days or weeks and figure out how best to proceed. But I'm betting that Iran will be enriching an awful lot of uranium, 8-12 bombs' worth, later this year.
1. Bombing Saddam, who had no nuclear program of any kind in 2003, helped convince Iran it should have a latent capacity to change its mind later if needed to deter us. If we bomb Iran for knowing it might need to deter us later, then we're begging it to start deterring us now.
2. The US's motives have nothing to do with legality or self-defence, as proven in 2003 in Iraq (as well as by destroying Libya in 2011, to punish Gaddafi for cooperating and giving up his nukes program in 2003, etc).
3. Iran's enrichment is legal under NPT when used for nuclear energy. Though since Trump withdrew from the anti-nuclear Iran deal in 2018, it has stepped it up, and recently IAEA said it was in violation of something related to inspection / declaration, but that's not at all proof of actually building a bomb.
4. US spies and the IAEA agreed that there was no evidence of Iran actively building nuclear weapons.
5. The only country in the middle east that actually *has* nukes is Israel, and few think anyone should bomb Israel just to destroy its nukes (which tbf would also be suicidal). Israel also isn't a signatory of NPT and doesn't allow IAEA inspections (technically its nukes are an open secret, for tricky Israel-US reasons).
6. The US isn't actually scared of an Iranian first strike (which Iran knows would be suicidal). It's scared of not being able to totally dominate the Middle East anymore. Unfortunately that same will to dominate is why it keeps, over and over, giving them a reason to feel the need to get nukes.
I think the difference here is that Israel has not declared an intention to wipe Iran off the map by any means necessary, and does not fund Jewish terrorist cells that launch rockets into Iran and suicide bomb Iranian buses. For all Netanyahu’s faults, he seems unlikely to launch a nuke into Tehran tomorrow, whereas if the Ayatollah were to get a nuke the fate of Tel Aviv is far less certain.
Not sure what is your point here. Obviously, Iran is not the good guy here, but the fact that Israel is somewhat better than Iran does not make it the good guy either.
Also, it is a bit funny to portray Israel as one avoiding civilian casualties as much as possible (this is understandable, though -- as long as they can get away with everything by yelling "human shields", why take the risk?).
I’m not saying Israel is the good guy. I think both Netanyahu and the Ayatollah are evil psychopaths who have visited untold misery on the region. But Israelis have more of a chance of getting out from under Netanyahu, and if I had to pick a place to live, I would choose Israel.
There is zero chance of Iran destroying itself by nuclear first-striking Israel, which Iran knows has nukes.
Again: Iran is a country with goals and strategies, not your cartoon propaganda’s suicide death cult.
(The chances of Netanyahu nuking Iran are also low, I hope. But a risk there for Israel would be if Netanyahu starts to fall for his own propaganda—that he starts to actually think Iran is a suicide death cult immune to deterrence logic—so he mistakes their deterrence for aggression, nukes them in the hopes that Pakistan’s deterrent umbrella is a bluff, and then it isn't a bluff.)
You don’t think so? The regime in Iran is widely despised by the people. What if the Ayatollah was facing revolution from within and the threat of Reza Pahlavi replacing him, while Israel was striking their military sites from the air? You believe in the capacity of evil people who have nothing left to lose, to exercise restraint on the behalf of humanity?
1. Whatever Iran's motivations are, they indisputably want to become a nuclear power. I don't think you have to blame the US for that. Most countries would like to be a nuclear power. In any case the origin of their motivations is irrelevant. This is realpolitik not therapy.
2. So? Our motives are our own self-interest. That's sufficient. There are many good reasons to not want an unhinged Muslim theocracy to have a nuclear weapon.
3. Iran is enriching to 60% which is far beyond the 5% needed for energy. They've also denied inspections. "That's not at all proof of actually building a bomb" is suicidally naive in my view. What's proof, Tel Aviv disappears? Given the stakes, proof isn't necessary. Preponderance of the evidence suffices. This isn't mock trial, it's the real world with real consequences. Better to kill ~1000 Iranians on a reasonable hunch then risk the death of a million Israelis.
4. Again, willfully naive. They're doing enrichment which is the hard part.
5. Israel is a stable ally. It's in our interests for them to have nukes and they've demonstrated that they can be responsible. Also they already have them so there's nothing to be done. This illustrates why we have to be proactive in preventing Iran from obtaining them. Once they do our options narrow.
6. Yes, we're pursuing our own rational self-interest. I don't know why you find that objectionable. Existential fear isn't a prerequisite for military action. We're the global hegemon. We decide what's appropriate.
>"is suicidally naive in my view. What's proof, Tel Aviv disappears?"
You'll recall Bush's focus-grouped slogan in 2003, to stop anyone questioning his lies to justify his criminal aggression: "We cannot wait for the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
You'll also recall that Iran isn't a suicidal death cult, or a country of idiots who don't know about Israel's nukes. Obviously Iran isn't going to destroy itself by nuclear first-striking Israel.
>“An Iranian government representative admitted in a closed-door sub-commission hearing that children did participate in the war against Iraq,” Refworld continues. “In a series of rulings issued in the autumn of 1982, Ayatollah Khomeini declared that parental permission was unnecessary for those going to the front. … Iranian officers captured by the Iraqis claimed that nine out of ten Iranian child soldiers were killed.”
>“Boys as young as nine were reportedly used in human wave attacks and to serve as mine-sweepers in the war with Iraq,” Refworld found.
>Often bound together in groups of 20 by ropes to prevent the fainthearted from deserting, they hurl themselves on barbed wire or march into Iraqi minefields in the face of withering machine-gun fire to clear the way for Iranian tanks.
You said:
>Obviously Iran isn't going to destroy itself by nuclear first-striking Israel.
Yes Bush was likely wrong. An argument being wrong for one set of circumstances in 2003 doesn't make it wrong for a different set of circumstances in 2025.
>Obviously Iran isn't going to destroy itself by nuclear first-striking Israel.
That's not obvious at all. In any case, it's in our interest to prevent them from obtaining nuclear weapons. That's really the only thing that matters.
I'll also point out the issue with Iraq II isn't really that they didn't have WMD, it's that we were completely and naively unprepared to rehabilitate the Iraqi political structure. If it had gone as well as our post-WW2 occupation of Japan then no one today would care that Bush lied about WMD. This is a results business. As long as we prevent Iran from obtaining WMD without significant cost to us then that's the only thing that matters.
That's Bayesian evidence that Iran is working towards nuclear weapons; we would certainly be more likely to find large stockpiles of highly enriched uranium if Iran was aiming for nukes than if it wasn't. (And Iran's accusation of the IAEA looking at forged Zionist documents isn't credible to me; Iran has approximately zero credibility here. Nations intent on proliferation always deny it, and Iran specifically shamelessly lies to the media all the time.)
> few think anyone should bomb Israel just to destroy its nukes (which tbf would also be suicidal).
Would it? Whatever nukes Israel has, it lacks the ability to launch them very far, so if there were ever a US President who decided "actually we really do care about the non-proliferation thing" there's not much the Israelis could do to respond.
Israel has intercontinental ballistic missiles, though numbers and details are quite fuzzy. Israel also has submarines capable of launching nuclear cruise missiles, and while it would take them a few weeks to sneak across the Atlantic, they're reasonably quiet subs in a big noisy ocean.
I suspect it would, as the United States would likely retaliate in its behalf. Since Israel isn't actually a NATO member, the US is under no obligation to do so, but it seems very likely, since the US gave Israel nukes in the first place.
So it seems. I thought we actually gave them nuclear weapons, but it seems they developed them themselves with a secret reactor with French assistance.
So my backup to the estimation that the US would retaliate to an attack on Israel was wrong, but I will still say that, given the support the US has provided to Israel in the past that they would still retaliate. Poking Israel is like poking the US, only a lighter poke.
I assume it has submarines and second-strike capability. Ofc it's hard to know specifics given the ambiguity policy.
(The point is more illustrative, like "few here would think Iran has the right to try to attack to destroy Israel's nukes."
In real life, if it was the US who decided that, it wouldn't need to attack. It's Israel's biggest enabler, so all it would have to do is say "no more settlements, no more military aid, no more occupation, time to withdraw to the green line and make peace with your neighbours and sign NPT. The PLO and Arab League are already down, and if we release Marwan Barghouti he can convince the rest of the Palestinians.")
In 1981 Saddam had bought a French-made nuclear research reactor, and France-supplied highly enriched uranium (the standard fuel at the time). It was above board, legal, under IAEA supervision and everything.
So Israel bombed it, trying to stay the only nuclear power in the region.
But the predictable and actual effect was that it *convinced* Saddam he *did* need a nuclear weapons program after all, and that it should be secret. The Iraqi secret nukes program, created as the consequence of Israel's counter-productive attack, was only ended after 1991 by the UN.
Yes. (That was different in the sense that it was UN-approved—which might also affect how Saddam would interpret what it means for future threats and deterrence—but nevertheless, yes.)
Yep. You can't just say "some guys claimed this about another country 20 years ago but were wrong, therefore these other guys are also wrong about this other country."
You can say "Given the known fact that Iran was not building nukes and about to nuke us; and the known fact that the same people are telling the same lies about it for the same reasons as they lied in 2003; it's probably deliberate, not by accident, and anyone who falls for it again is not misguided but a sadistic warmonger."
You could say it but it's obviously wrong. They are not the same "lies" by the same people or for the same reasons. Moreover, Iran clearly was "building nukes"- i.e. taking steps to make it possible to build nuclear weapons very quickly, that had no possible peaceful purpose.
Having nukes is a fairly good guarantee against being attacked. Its the main reason any country has them. Since trump killed the JCPOA, it became obvious to Iran that guarantees made by the US were not to be trusted. This is all a fairly obvious outcome of escalatory brinkmanship.
Very much agreed, especially with that last part. Between Russia invading Ukraine and this action against Iran, if I were in the leadership of a non-nuclear country right now, I would be looking into every possible realistic avenue of getting nukes. It's sure looking like "might makes right" is the guiding principle for most of the world's leading powers today, and I wouldn't trust anything they said to the contrary.
Which is, ultimately, very sad. While still far from perfect, humanity seemed to have made pretty remarkable progress in the past few decades of leaving behind the violence of our past. Now we seem to be backsliding.
I do not really understand what you say. Principles are for intellectuals. The reality on the street is, people do not kill their neighbors inside countries, because there are courts enforcing laws. Now international relations are always anarchy, there is international law and the international criminal court, but crucially it can only be enforced by war. So internationally, courts cannot enforce law without a war first. Milosevic had to lose a war first, then when to the ICC to be charged by the violation of international law.
So no, might does not make, but enforce right. Iran violated international law, one of the most important ones (non-proliferation), and it can only be enforced this way.
" The reality on the street is, people do not kill their neighbors inside countries, because there are courts enforcing laws."
But that isn't the reality on the street. That has never, ever, in human history been the reality on the street. That "reality" is a story made up by cynics to justify their cynicism or by monsters to assure themselves that everybody else is secretly as broken inside as they are.
Here in actual reality, the vast, vast majority of people would not kill their neighbors even if they were absolutely sure they would never be caught or punished. There is a small minority that would, and a larger minority (but still very much a minority) that *might* if circumstances got out of hand. But it simply doesn't take very many willing murderers to ruin things for everyone else, so the world with laws and courts ends up much better than the world without.
Regardless, none of that is much relevant to international relations at all. Countries are not people. They do not have the same decision processes as people, the same constraints, vulnerabilities and limitations as people,. nor the same virtues and strengths as people. They are very different things, and the analogy to civic law breaks down very quickly.
Lots of international agreements work just fine without any sort of violent enforcement mechanism. They work because cooperating and playing nice often benefits all parties involved. Even when a country encounters a specific case where they would benefit by pushing the "defect" button, the short-term payoff is rarely worth the loss of future opportunities that accompanies that hit to your reputation. A lot of leaders and people in high government positions understand that very well.
Unfortunately there are several prominent leaders who do *not* seem to understand this, or who rationalize away that understanding whenever they see a defect button that they *really* want to push. In the longer term their countries will do worse and lose power and influence against the countries who consistently cooperate. (If human civilization overall survives and flourishes into the longer term.)
Now the Iranian regime is a pretty terrible government, and they themselves are not so great at avoiding the "defect" button. But in large part that's because the rest of the world--and the U.S. VERY much in particular--has shaped them that way. Consider that the current regime took power after Iranians had spent nearly two decades getting systematically fucked over by an autocratic puppet government supported by the U.S., all because Iranian oil was more important to Uncle Sam than Iranian lives or Iranian civil rights. Consider that the last time Iran made an agreement with the U.S. regarding its nuclear program--a mutually beneficial agreement--that agreement was torn up *by the U.S.* within a few years of its signing, for no good reason whatsoever, followed not too longer after by the U.S. assassinating one of their top generals on the flimsiest of justifications. From Iran's perspective "international law" no doubt looks like a joke of a concept: no protection against foreign abuses, but often cited to justify them. [1]
So yes, principles are for intellectuals. And intellectuals have spent the past few centuries taking over the world: very slowly at first, but much faster in recent decades. I'll admit that the anti-intellectuals have made a very, very impressive showing this year. A really awe-inspiring bid to drag us all back down into the, to stage a grand comeback tour for Pestilence and Famine and War[2], to really redecorate the place with that retro Dark Ages look. But they haven't succeeded yet. There are still lots of us out here who *do* have principles and are willing to stand up for them.
Relevant further reading if you made it through that wall o' text and can still manage more.
Regarding Cooperation in Modern International Relations Specifically:
[1] If one wants a better understanding of that part of the world, consider that for any reason an Iranian might feel anger at the international community and certain countries in particular, a Palestinian has two or three such reasons. As a people they've been on the receiving end of an absolutely staggering string of abuses and insults, going back more than a century. (And yes, obligatory disclaimer, they've been on the giving end of some as well.) And plenty of non-Palestinian Arabs *can see that* and don't necessarily have a lot of reason to expect that Britain or Israel or the U.S. would treat them any better if they were in a similar position.
[2] Death being a timeless classic that never goes out of style.
>Here in actual reality, the vast, vast majority of people would not kill their neighbors even if they were absolutely sure they would never be caught or punished.
Okay, I sort of over-exaggerated this. Let's say the vast majority would commit financial fraud or take bribes. Culture matters. As a textbook European I don't really get why Americans are so brimming with holiness... I think it might be a Calvinist thing, I think Catholic cultures more accept that everybody is a sinner and it is basically okay.
>Lots of international agreements work just fine without any sort of violent enforcement mechanism.They work because cooperating and playing nice often benefits all parties involved.
This is true for private individuals and corporations too, yet we need law enforcement. In fact because of the principal-agent problem, individuals and corporations ought to need less enforcement, as national leaders have way way bigger principal-agent problems. A marketplace is always better from a principal-agent viewpoint than an election. Like if term limits mean Trump cannot be re-elected, what exactly does he have to lose?
>Even when a country encounters a specific case where they would benefit by pushing the "defect" button, the short-term payoff is rarely worth the loss of future opportunities that accompanies that hit to your reputation.
See above. It is not a country, but the leader pushing the button. Hitler pushed the biggest "defect" button ever, yet a few years after the war, most everybody happily cooperated with democratic West Germany. Just 6 years later, the European Coal and Steel Community was signed - imagine France trusting Germany so much to pool their coal and steel i.e. military industry resources!
>because Iranian oil was more important to Uncle Sam
Actually it was British Petrol.
>And intellectuals have spent the past few centuries taking over the world: very slowly at first, but much faster in recent decades.
But Iran got bombed because they were trying to go nuclear. Shouldn't countries draw the exact opposite conclusion- that if they try to get nukes, they will be destroyed? Surely if Ukraine had tried to get nukes, Russia would have destroyed them at that time anyway, right? And probably if Russia invaded earlier, they would win easily.
Iran *got bombed* because it was suspected of trying to go nuclear. Iran was not *destroyed* over this. The Iranian regime was not destroyed over this. The Supreme Leader was not killed or imprisoned or even deposed over this.
See also North Korea. And Pakistan, which was pretty clearly in bed with Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden.
The Iraqi regime, which we were pretty certain didn't have nuclear weapons and wasn't going to be making nuclear weapons any time soon, that *was* destroyed, and Saddam Hussein was dragged out of his spider hole and hung by the neck until dead.
The Libyan regime, which we knew for a fact didn't have and wasn't going to be making nuclear weapons, which had done the "right thing" by thoroughly and verifiably dismantling its nuclear arms program, was destroyed, and Muammar Gaddafi was anally raped to death on Youtube. Libya has been a failed state ever since.
You really think the conclusion Evil Dictators(tm) are drawing is that they should *not* nuke up ASAP?
I suspect the only reason North Korea was allowed to get nukes without getting couped or having their nuclear program raided/bombed is because they have a lot of artillery aimed at Seoul.
The primary takeaway any Evil Dictator should have from the last 40 years is that power speaks, and the West is super consequentialist about things, so make your threats as credible and devastating as possible. Nuke up, artillery up, etc.
The threat of artillery bombardment of Seoul is vastly overrated. North Korea has bignum guns, a small fraction of which have the range to reach the northern suburbs of Seoul and none of which have the range to reach downtown Seoul. This gets misreported as "North Korea has bignum guns and they can bombard Seoul into oblivion!". They now have heavy artillery rockets that could do so, but that's a recent development. Twenty years ago, it was only a modest number of Scuds and the like, roughly what Tehran and Baghdad were inflicting on each other in the 1980s.
North Korea was "allowed" to get nukes because everyone else was stuck in the Buck Turgidson "ignorant commie peons don't understand technology like our boys do" school of threat assessment. I met far too many people, far too highly placed, who were assuming that North Korea couldn't *really* build nuclear weapons five years after their first fully successful test. And since "everybody knew" North Korea can't really build nuclear weapons, we didn't really feel the need to do anything. Then it was too late.
That mistake, at least, we aren't repeating with Iran.
Interesting. But you think this really won't be enough to slow Iran significantly, right? I think I saw elsewhere you were predicting nukes within 12 months. Are centrifuges that easy to quickly obtain and deploy? Or are you just figuring that we didn't eliminate enough of their current stockpiles and equipment?
Some decisions are overdetermined. Multiple independently sufficient motives that all are based in actual facts don't undermine each other's legitimacy. Israel has many, many reasons for bombing Iran, most of which boil down to "they hate us and have been waging a (mostly, but not entirely proxy) war against us for decades."
I think the question is not why Israel hates Iran (or, when we are at it, vice versa), but that what is the concrete reason for the actual ("pre-emptive") attack. And I don't think it is irrelevant, for several reasons. First, a rational expectation is that they end the war when their goals are met. If the war is about nuclear warheads, they don't start bombing police stations; if the war is about destroying the Theocracy of Evil, that is an entirely different matter.
And I don't think "we hate their guts, we are mortal enemies for like forever, that's why" would have met with an applause on the international stage.
But communicating one thing first, then another second, then a third later gives me the impression that they are throwing whatever plausible explanation crossed Netanjahu's mind to see what sticks.
(Heck, they could even give a list why, but AFAIK this is not what happened.)
Of course, the fact that Israel's current government lost a lot of its credibility in the last ~20 months does not help either. Overall, their communication is aimed to cover up whatever they can get away with. Which is not worse than the median in the region, not at all -- but enough to raise doubts about the official communication.
I think that's a kind of a silly standard to hold Israel to. Iran and Israel have been at war for decades now, and the only reason Israeli and Iranian troops haven't directly fought much is that there are neutral countries in between them. Instead, Iran has used proxies (and as recently as last year, its own military) to bombard Israeli cities with thousands of imprecise terror weapons. There's been no ceasefire since those attacks. No armistice. Not even a softening of relations in any way.
In other words, I don't think this is reasonably framed as a pre-emptive attack at all. The correct frame is that they were already at war. There's no other name for a state of affairs where one country is launching thousands of missiles at another. They're at war, have been at war, and throughout the course of that war Iran has mostly been the aggressor. (Admittedly, that's probably because Iran has a lot more ability to cultivate proxies than Israel does, not some moral superiority on Israel's part.)
And when you're in a long-standing war, the reason to strike back at enemy military targets is: A) you can, and B) the juice is worth the squeeze. All of Netanyahu's statements make a lot more sense when you realize he's explaining specific war tactics, not trying to justify starting a war.
> When the official explanation is changing so frequently, one cannot help but have the feeling that none of them is true.
Or because those things are related.
(You could make a similar argument about WW2: "First they said it was about Czechoslovakia, then they said it was about Poland, then they said it was about France, now we have this story about concentration camps... the constant change of the narrative makes me suspect that the so-called Nazis are just a boogeyman invented by American media.")
You are right, let me make it more clear. When I wrote, "none of them is true", I meant it in the sense that none of them is the real reason of the attack, not in the sense that they do not hold some truth. Of course they are mostly true -- but that they are the reason for the attack seems bogus after such swift changes.
"They are related" seems a fuzzy concept to me, though; I mean, of course they are related in the sense that all has something to do with Iran, and all are things which sound quite bad for the international public. And this is exactly why they can be ideal BS PR for such a bombing campaign.
Which, again, do not make them untrue; they just might not be the real reason for bombing. (Also, you can't stop Iran to be an "evil theocracy" by a bombing campaign.)
Considering your examples, would the allies state they go to war with Nazi Germany because of the concentration camps, that would be outright BS as well. It does not mean, though, that concentration camps existed, or that the war was the reason these stopped operating, or that it is good that they stopped operating.
"But Iran got bombed because they were trying to go nuclear."
This has by no means been adequately demonstrated. They didn't dismantle their nuclear program entirely. And I'd say they were obviously interested in keeping the option of building up to weapons capability in a medium-short, rather than long time horizon open[1]. But the claim that they were actively trying to build a bomb at the time they were attacked is one that needs significant support that I haven't seen yet.
[1] Which to my understanding is a state that many non-nuclear developed countries are perpetually in, simply by virtue of having the right mix of industry and technology and scientists. It's actually a little bit scary how *simple* nuclear weapons are when you get right down to it.
>But the claim that they were actively trying to build a bomb at the time they were attacked is one that needs significant support that I haven't seen yet.
The IAEA looks convinced that Iran prevented the IAEA from ensuring that Iran was not building a bomb.
And they enriched uranium to 60% U-235, while power reactors only need 5%. The _point_ of making such highly enriched uranium is a nuclear _weapons_ program.
I sent a thank you note to Trump after he authorized the bombing of the Fordow uranium enrichment site. I consider bombing it to be the right choice.
None of that particularly contradicts what I had just written. Avoiding international inspection and enriching uranium to 60% are of course both consistent with a country actively working towards a bomb. But they're also consistent with a country that would like to keep the option of getting there quickly, but without larger the provocation of actually assembling the weapons.[1] I don't especially have an opinion either way: it's plausible that they were trying to get to a bomb, it's still far from certain. As a general rule, you shouldn't trust motivated claims that come from unreliable sources even when they align with an other-wise plausible reality. Good lies have grains of truth. But just because someone is a habitual liar doesn't mean they're never truthful.
[1] I'll note that if this is the case, they either miscalculated how much of a provocation their intermediate efforts actually were, or simply underestimated how ready Netanyahu and Trump would be to jump on an excuse for belligerence.
Ok, I think we are just splitting the difference between "steps directed towards making a bomb" (including enriching uranium to 60% U-235) versus "final assembly of a completed weapon" (or maybe even "arming a nuclear bomb" ?).
>it's plausible that they were trying to get to a bomb, it's still far from certain. As a general rule, you shouldn't trust motivated claims that come from unreliable sources even when they align with an other-wise plausible reality.
Look, Iran hasn't denied that they have 60% enriched uranium. That, _alone_, makes it clear that they are/were trying to get a bomb. 60% U-235 certainly isn't intended for power reactors!
>It is also important to consider that Iran could use its stockpile of 60% enriched uranium to make weapons directly without the need for further enrichment. There would be limitations in the delivery of such weapons, as discussed below.
( Basically, they could build a gun-type bomb with their existing 60% U-235 with no further enrichment, albeit it would be heavier than a 90% U-235 weapon. )
That's the largest stockpile of >nuclear power grade uranium in the world, aside from nations that already have nuclear weapons. And according to the IAEA, it's increased by 50% in the last few months.
I can't see an explanation for this that isn't attempting to either A) get nuclear weapons or B) make getting a nuclear weapon something they can achieve in the very short term.
I agree with the last paragraph, but I think A) and B) are pretty importantly different here. In particular, I think a world in which we were confident the answer was B) and not A) would be a world in which the bombing would be *exactly the wrong move.*
Re: footnote one, any country with a domestic nuclear power program (not just a reactor, but producing their own fuel) could stand up nuclear weapons within 2-3 years. The main players there (aside from the countries that already have nuclear weapons) are Germany, Japan, Canada, Sweden and South Korea.
Thermonuclear weapons (ie H-bombs) would take longer, but that's more because designing and building an H-bomb is notoriously difficult - an implosion-type A-bomb is a pretty straightforward engineering problem once you have the enriched uranium and you know how to machine it (both of which you have as a result of the domestic power program).
There's something involving "lensing" in making an H-bomb which I have deliberately avoided finding out about because I would like to be able to travel the world without constraint, but it's famously a hard problem.
"There's something involving "lensing" in making an H-bomb which I have deliberately avoided finding out about because I would like to be able to travel the world without constraint, but it's famously a hard problem."
Ah yes. It happened exactly once in my education that a professor unwilling/unable to fully answer one of my questions because "some of the details are classified." The part of the answer that he did give was pretty much "something involving lensing."
The details of the Teller-Ulam design (for an H-bomb) are “born secret”, ie they’re secret under US law even if you reinvent them yourself.
Some of them were published in a magazine called “The Progressive” in 1979, but how accurate or complete they are is unknown.
It was notoriously difficult, because both the USSR and UK programs had partial information from the US (in one case by spying, in the other given voluntarily) and still struggled to get it right, and the other two open programs (France and China) also took a long time.
I think you're mixing up plutonium and uranium A-bombs. Uranium A-bombs don't even require implosion; just two chunks of uranium you slam together. If you can make bombs, and you have a critical mass of highly enriched uranium, they're child's play.
Plutonium on the other hand has pretty low neutron production, so you need implosion explosives to trigger them. That's apparently a difficult problem, at least to the point that it made North Korea have multiple fizzles.
Jeffrey beat me to the punch, but my understanding was that the implosion was to ensure that the plutonium had time to react fully before the explosion spread it too far apart.
I believe that similar considerations are what make H-Bombs difficult: simply packing deuterium around a fissile core will give you extremely high temperatures and pressures, but with such an abysmal confinement times that your triple product remains quite low.
>Plutonium on the other hand has pretty low neutron production,
Huh?
>so you need implosion explosives to trigger them.
Umm... AFAIK, the problem is that the Pu-240 impurity in a Pu-239 pit has a _high_ spontaneous fission rate, so it produces a _high_ neutron background rate, which can trigger a premature chain reaction when the pit is only partway to being fully imploded, and that gives you a fizzle. That's much of the motivation for using high explosives to make the implosion fast, and reducing the chance of a fizzle (you also want to compress the plutonium as much as possible, to get a given mass of plutonium plus reflector plus tamper as supercritical as possible to get the yield up)
Saddam completely gave up his nuclear program after 1991, and they punished him for it in 2003.
Gaddafi gave up his nuclear program in 2003, and they punished him for it in 2011.
(Plus all the other coups and massacres and wars of criminal aggression that had nothing to do with nukes. E.g. overthrowing Iran's secular democratically-elected PM to install a dictator to protect oil profits in 1953; btw that, plus his overthrow in 1979, is why Iran is a theocracy now.)
North Korea has nukes, so the US only sanctions it instead of invading or bombing.
The US has, through its actions, tried hard to prove that no one is safe from US aggression without a nuclear deterrent. This is very foolish.
> overthrowing Iran's secular democratically-elected PM to install a dictator to protect oil profits in 1953;
Of all the inaccuracies in the Standard Internet Commenter View Of History, the idea that Iran was meaningfully democratic prior to 1953 is one of the most pernicious.
The reality was... very complicated. There were elections but they were regularly rigged, politicians had a tendency to get assassinated if they didn't agree with the Shia fundamentalists, and the 1952 election ended with only 79 out of 136 seats filled because Mosaddegh did a literal "Stop the count!" move once a parliamentary quorum was reached and before the votes from rural seats which would have opposed him could be tabulated.
The post-1953 system also had rigged elections, though for a while it seemed to be heading in the right direction with multiple competitive parties (albeit all Shah-approved) then in 1975 they just said "fuck it, actually let's just have one party and outlaw all the others".
I think 1953 is best seen not as a transition from democracy to non-democracy but just another speedbump in the shitshow of rigged elections, assassinations, coups, revolutions, party-bannings, and neverending conflict between royalists, Islamists, communists, landlords and the military that characterises the last century of Iranian politics.
Right. The world is full of crappy dictators who are allowed to stay in power because they don't cause any particular trouble.
While Ayatollah Khameni is hiding out in a bunker, the Emir of Dubai is banging bikini models on his yacht, because making friends is better than making enemies.
On the other hand, it is also obvious that the US made sure to have the overseas empire of the UK collapsed. (It was happy to see the collapse of the French one as well, but actively contributed to the former.)
Correct. US and SU were competing for the colonies, but agreed that they will have them, not the UK and FR. So basically textbook great power politics.
There are only two options. You are either friendly and cooperative, or totally crush them. What does NOT work is some intermediate level of violence, and that is IMHO the mistake the US and Israel tends to make. That is, use enough violence that they hate you, but not enough that they fear you.
Uh...really? "The US preferred hegemony to survival"? I mean, it's not like there were any *other* countries that were pursuing hegemony after WWII...
I honestly wonder if you realise that you have, with a comment like this, absolutely ensured that 90% of readers, many of which may have been highly open to your viewpoint, will now permanently disregard everything you say on the matter. More generally, I'm just amazed at how many people trying to advocate for a position have an unbelievable talent for appending a single sentence that compresses "I have a complete lack of perspective", "I have no awareness of the slightest factual nuance" and "I'm a fanatical ideologue" into that sentence.
Yes really. (You know about all the coups, all the overthrowing democracies to install dictators, all the terrorists and massacres, all the undermining of international law, right? In the nuclear age this isn't just wicked, it's an existential risk.)
>"It's not like there were any *other* countries"
Did I say there weren't? But if you're American, you should understand what's going on so you can be an effective citizen. (And it is the only superpower so it has an enormous impact.)
>"will now permanently disregard"
I hope they prefer survival, over encouraging nuclear proliferation so they can pwn david bahry in the comments section of astral codex ten dot com.
You're the one who said that after WWII there could have been peace and stability, if not for the US. The only sensible way to parse your comment is as saying that the US on its own ruled out peace.
If you're now trying to claim that you only meant the US played *a* part, that's a pretty blatant motte-and-bailey. Otherwise, you would have to say that a comment saying "there was a chance for world peace, but Iran chose jihadism instead" would get total unchallenged agreement from you.
The US played an enormous and consistent role, which it is still playing, then. If you want to compare the amount it did vs what the USSR did then feel free (I'm historically curious, though it's little relevant to talking to Americans on an American blog about what America is doing).
Again, you're either saying that the US played *a* role among others in destabilising the post-WWII world, or you're saying it played the primary role. If the latter, I suggest you look up the Yalta pledge. If the former, this is an almost textbook motte-and-bailey discussion.
"Colossal Biosciences" is the company that pretends to de-extinct dire wolves and so on. It's really just living paleoart—fun, but not remotely what their hype claims. E.g. the "dire wolves" were really just grey wolves with a handful of genes edited to make them big and white etc.[1] For fur colour, they couldn't even use the actual dire-wolf gene, b̶e̶c̶a̶u̶s̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶g̶r̶e̶y̶ ̶w̶o̶l̶v̶e̶s̶ ̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶s̶o̶ ̶d̶i̶f̶f̶e̶r̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶f̶r̶o̶m̶ ̶d̶i̶r̶e̶ ̶w̶o̶l̶v̶e̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶d̶i̶r̶e̶ ̶w̶o̶l̶f̶ ̶g̶e̶n̶e̶ ̶w̶o̶u̶l̶d̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶m̶a̶d̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶g̶r̶e̶y̶ ̶w̶o̶l̶v̶e̶s̶ ̶d̶e̶a̶f̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶b̶l̶i̶n̶d̶.*[2] The misrepresentation of what they're doing isn't just cringe—it's dangerous, given how Trump wants to use it as an excuse to try to remove protections from endangered species.[3]
My supervisor Dr. Vincent Lynch, apart from his research e.g. on cancer resistance in elephants [4] and other cool stuff, is a critic of Colossal's hype (while admiring some of the genuinely important biotech that Colossal is refining, which could be redirected to other genuinely useful purposes).[5]
The gossip part: it looks like Colossal's finally started using intimidation tactics. First, some bizarre hit piece articles appeared trying to discredit his critiques (but his critiques are standard—Colossal itself admits that calling gene-edited grey wolves "dire wolves" is just "colloquial"). Second: when he suggested that the articles are AI-generated and might be paid for by Colossal and its billionaire cofounder (obviously plausible given the incentives + clearly disclaimed as opinion i.e. protected speech + clearly related to public concern given Trump's intent to remove protections), Colossal had their lawyers send an intimidating "shut up about it" letter to his front door.
Ironically, Colossal's behaviour is more humiliating for them than scientists' critiques ever could be. The hype train was rolling and not going to stop; people want to believe that we have dire wolves and will have mammoths. But people don't like billionaire Elizabeth Holmes-ass behaviour to silence critics.
*Added: this part was probably my misinterpretation, inherited from some early reporting. More likely the issue was that these genes are risky to mess with in general (e.g. in the event of imperfect CRISPR edits?), rather than a specific incompatibility with the dire wolf version. Thanks to Catmint for pointing this out. https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/open-thread-387/comment/129267704
> For fur colour, they couldn't even use the actual dire-wolf gene, because the grey wolves are so different from dire wolves that the dire wolf gene would have made the grey wolves deaf and blind.[2]
This is as far as I can tell a miscommunication between scientists and laymen. Actual quote is:
> The dire wolf genome has protein-coding substitutions in three essential pigmentation genes: OCA2, SLC45A2, and MITF, which directly impact the function and development of melanocytes. While these variants would have led to a light coat in dire wolves, variation in these genes in gray wolves can lead to deafness and blindness.
For context, many species have minor variants of these genes which affect coat color (usually lightening it). For example, a variant of OCA2 causes blue eyes in humans, while a variant of SLC45A2 is responsible for palomino horses. White spotting patterns in dogs are associated with MITF variants.
However, in mammals, maybe vertebrates or higher, major disruptions can cause negative side effects. For example, complete deletion of MITF is lethal, while major disruptions result in an all-white coat and often deafness. Certain mutations of it in mice are also capable of reducing eye size, which probably doesn't help with vision.
OCA2 and SLC45A2 are much less serious. An OCA2 variant is the most common cause of blue eyes in humans. Blue eyes are known to sometimes cause minor difficulties with vision especially involving bright lights, however the effects are small as you can find out by asking any blue-eyed human. The causal mechanism is differently reflected light by the iris, so this is not gene-specific. SLC45A2 and can also cause blue eyes. I do not know of any cases where full blindness was caused in any species by any mutation to either of these genes. MITF too can cause blue eyes, but this is not the concerning thing about it.
I do not know of any studies of OCA2 or SLC45A2 showing a causative link to blindness. Closest I found was "There was no statistically significant difference in vision between patients with OCA1 versus OCA2, or between patients with and without mutations. Patients with two mutations tended to have worse vision than those with one, but not statistically significantly." from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1091853116301823 (do not be mislead by the word "blindness" in the introduction - it may be referring to a different gene)
For more on MITF mutation viability in canines:
> In humans, deleterious MITF mutations cause disorders of vision and hearing, including the Waardenburg and Tietz syndromes [9], [12], [13]. Deafness has also been recorded in white dogs, where approximately 2% of white dogs (sw/sw) present with bilateral deafness and 18% are unilaterally deaf [14]. The majority of mutations reported in mice and humans that cause severe pleiotropic effects are generally loss-of-function mutations affecting the coding regions [15]. This is not the case with dog MITF alleles. A comparison of S and sw haplotypes, using BACs from an S/sw heterozygote, across the 100 kb canine white spotting candidate region revealed 124 sequence polymorphisms, all of which were located in non-coding regions [6]. This demonstrated that the extreme white coat colour phenotype is controlled by one or several regulatory mutations. This hypothesis is strongly supported by the fact that coloured patches on white spotted dogs display normal pigmentation. Thus, this suggests that the canine MITF variants primarily affects migration and survival of melanocytes during development, but have no or only minor effects in mature melanocytes in the hair follicle; pigmentation of the hair requires MITF protein expression [16].
That paper also has a table of MITF variants found in wolves. So, this isn't a deal where gray wolves have something special going on that makes MITF variants uniquely harmful, but rather that major disruptions to the gene _can_ in some species have harmful effects, and (here I enter the realm of speculation, as I know the theory but not the practice) perhaps they were concerned that CRISPR would not modify the gene accurately enough to include just the desired substitution without damaging the rest.
I think you're right. Although e.g. Zimmer's NYT article said "they did not introduce the remaining five [mutations], because previous studies had shown that those five mutations cause deafness and blindness in gray wolves"[1]—which is might be where I got that interpretation from—the press release itself only said "variation in these genes in gray wolves can lead to deafness and blindness."[2] So yes, I now agree it's probably more that they considered these genes risky to mess around with in general, rather than a specific incompatibility with the dire wolf version.
Leopard spotted horses, which aside from being cool molecularly are also a very old pattern which may have helped with camouflage during the ice age. The first part is a retroviral insertion disrupting the TRPM3 gene. By itself this causes a normal-colored foal except with striped hooves, which as it grows gradually gets more and more white hairs throughout the coat. But combined with a certain variant of another gene, the whole horse can be white with dark dots. Nobody has actually proven the mechanism, but the setup and the effect are similar to spotted corn, so it probably also works by transposon. If that's so, then the second gene is a special activator for the retroviral mechanism, allowing it to copy itself out of the DNA and into other parts. So maybe in some cells the transposons copy themselves right out of the DNA and restore the gene's function (the colored dots), while in others they copy themselves further or otherwise mess up that section of DNA even more (the white regions). Speculation, but the spotted corn definitely does it that way and horses are cooler than corn.
Kittens have mittens because it's very cute and it even rhymes! What's going on there is not white being added but color failing to be added because the cells for it don't grow in that part of the skin. For color you need melanocytes, and melanocytes develop from melanoblasts, which start at the spinal region and during early embryonic growth spread across the skin of the whole animal. Except if the genes are not working right, it doesn't do that, and instead the cells only reach some areas. Because the paws are far away from the spine, they are one of the last places where the pigment cell precursors arrive, so if things get slowed down it's easy for the paws to miss out on getting color. (And this starts before the tail has grown out, so the tail tip also counts as far away from the starting location. And the path on the head is around the sides meeting in the middle, so if it doesn't quite make it you get a little pink nose with white strip and then you have to really hope the cat will let you kiss the nose.)
I'm sorry you were triggered by hearing relevant info about what the administration is, in fact, trying to do and for which the administration is, in fact, citing Colossal's claims as justification.
I'm not sorry you are triggered that your unscientific horse manure was called unscientific horse manure.
There is a very interesting discussion to be had regarding the scientific merits of endangered species protections and the unintended consequences of such actions (protections seldom work as intended and often inhibit more productive solutions). I enjoy those discussions.
Sneering leftist drivel composed solely of reducto ad Trump has never once been productive and actively makes the world a worse place. Do better.
If you think it would be "horse manure" for the Trump administration to want to remove protections for endangered species, and to cite fake de-extinction as a justification—
Okay, why are you assuming that the Trump administration knows this is fake and is cynically removing endangered species (I presume you are hinting at 'so rich developers can bulldoze habitats and make YUGE profits which they funnel back to GOP politicians!' rationale for that).
All the flippin' "trust the science, bro" messaging from the liberal/left side about many issues, so if a company comes along with "look, we are using SCIENCE to do this thing", why not believe them?
I think we shouldn't believe Colossal, as it stands, but if you're just skimming something then "hey, extinct species can be brought back, that's great!" does translate into "and so the at-risk species today are no longer so at-risk since we can clone them and reintroduce them as necessary". That does not require hand-rubbing glee at "now we can kill off all those pesky animals and make megabucks" but rather believing the hype around science and technological advancement.
I could easily see Trump, for one, being delighted by this as a sign of how great and how advanced America is, here's an American company that can bring back extinct species from the past, we're the greatest! (Personally I blame Michael Crichton and Jurassic Park for putting it out into pop culture that we can do stuff like this).
Expecting this particular administration to not take a big public dump on your particular hobbyhorse is hilarious, by the way. They took away pennies! (Yes, that's a deliberate strike against the coin collectors). I don't mind you yelling about the Trump Administration being big meanies, but you're mistaking distractions for "the Administration really cares about this."
Their writeup [2] describes solving a challenging and multifaceted problem, for which a reasonable definition of success is unclear. Obviously it's self serving, but it is a startup that needs to pull some funding by embellishing their project, and the claims seem reasonable and honest. So far so good.
So from [5] I was expecting a 10,000 words technical rebuttal, instead I got Trump Derangement Syndrome and evil mustache twirling capitalists. Is this guy really a biologist? I see nothing of substance that actually engages with Collosal's claims.
What a strange comment. He mentions Trump *once*—"The Trump administration has announced it will remove protections from many endangered species, citing Colossal's de-extinction of the dire wolf." I'm sorry you consider it a derangement syndrome to inform you of relevant facts.
(Also, as I already explained: they slightly edited a tiny handful of genes in a grey wolf, and pretended it was a dire wolf. That's what happened. I'm not sure what additional 10,000 words you're looking for to re-explain it.)
I don't care who cites their work, I care about the merit of their work.
The link in [2] explains the tradeoffs they had to navigate and their reasoning. The link in [5] does not engage with that at all and instead only implies ulterior motives, which is low key confirmation that their decisions were correct as even an expert critic cannot engage on merits.
The merits of their work are poor. Dire wolves are an entirely separate genus, not species but genus, from gray wolves. They edited 14 genes towards the dire wolf sequence. This is not the amount of change you do to get to a different species, let alone genus. Even domestic dogs are all considered one subspecies, and they've got way more genetic variety than that! Plus if you read between the lines, and look closely at the choice of genes and the fact that GRR Martin is their board's cultural advisor, it becomes pretty clear that the goal was to make the wolves look as much like the game of thrones wolves as possible. Like, why did they specifically add non-dire-wolf genes known to cause white coat color? Not because dire wolves were thought to be white, previous research suggested they may have been kind of reddish, but because the Game of Thrones wolves were white.
Yeah, it's a hard problem, and yeah, the level of success they got is actually technologically impressive. But the level of hype and marketing BS around it is unacceptable and would not be tolerated in any company making products for consumers. This is like 'Our new phone will impress 500x more girls when they see you using it' levels of accuracy.
And when I first looked into this, I thought "Ok, the dire wolf stuff is poppycock, but at least they're still doing good work cloning endangered red wolves." Nope. The wolves they cloned weren't even endangered, they were red wolf-coyote hybrids that are doing fine. You could argue that conservationists should be more accepting of hybrids as worthy of conservation, but you have to actually make that argument, not just claim that the animals _are_ red wolves.
Yup. In Jurassic Park terms: this isn't making a dinosaur with a bit of frog DNA to fill in the gaps, this is making a frog with a bit of dinosaur DNA to fill in the gaps
"Secretary of Interior Doug Burgum claimed on X that the "revival of the Dire Wolf" signaled "the advent of a thrilling new era of scientific wonder, showcasing how the concept of 'de-extinction' can serve as a bedrock for modern species conservation."
Burgum doubled down during a live-streamed town hall on April 9, 2025 saying: "If we're going to be in anguish about losing a species, now we have an opportunity to bring them back".
"Pick your favorite species and call up Colossal," he claimed, as the current federal government continues to target protections of various endangered species, often tied to misleading narratives."
So not an official government pronouncement, just social media hoo-hah. Unless you can point me to official government department website saying they are officially scrapping the endangered species list?
You know, I can't help feeling that if we had President Kamala and one of her cabinet officials making a Brat Summer announcement of "extinction can be reversed!", the same guys tut-tutting about this would be all "yay science!" even though it would be the same company and the same con artists making claims.
Re: your second speculation, our objections to Colossal's dishonesty are older than the Trump administration plan. Burgum’s recent statement, only two months ago, is the first time any of this has actually had any connection to Trump at all.
(And obviously it wouldn't be acceptable for Kamala to do this either. It's weird how quick people are to assume common sense must be partisan political signaling.)
You, and/or the guy whose article you linked, were all "the Trump administration has definitely done this thing!"
Now you've rowed back to "okay they haven't done it yet but this guy's tweet is an indication that they're gonna do it".
Wake me up when they *have* done something, not when "this guy who hates my political enemies wrote a hyperventilating article about how they're gonna do all the bad stuff".
I think there's more than enough room to give Colossal a good kicking without dragging in "and Trump will do villain stuff because of them!!!!"
re: "challenging and multifaceted problem, for which a reasonable definition of success is unclear"
If it might be possible to someday successfully clone a real dire wolf with an actual dire wolf genome—instead of slightly editing a grey wolf genome—cool. But that's not what they did and not what they tried to do.
Although there might be an area where the line of success is fuzzy (starting with a dire wolf genome and filling in a few small gaps with grey wolf DNA?), what they did here doesn't remotely approach anything like that.
And, of course, it might be that it's still too hard (e.g. having to edit way more genes, to get to >90% dire wolf genome if that's our criterion). If it's too hard then it's too hard; that wouldn't be anyone's fault, but people should be honest about it.
I agree their "dire wolves" look like regular Arctic wolves, but from their woolly mice, it seems pretty clear they're developing the tech you'd need to turn elephants into mammoths. (I consider whether "taxonomy experts" would deem that TRUE de-extinction entirely unimportant.)
I do think Colossal is going to be the Theranos of this field. I don't think we're going to get mammoths out of whatever process they're using, but the woolly mice are undeniably cute (and I'm very resistant to cute animals), so if they pivoted to "exotic pet creation" they'd do everyone a favour by stopping pretending they're going to save endangered and extinct species.
I also think they just jumped right on dire wolves because of Game of Thrones, not because of the real extinct animal. The ordinary person who ever heard of dire wolves probably has an image of the GoT beastie in mind, so "actual wolves just bigger and whiter" is sold successfully as 'this is a dire wolf'.
Yes, they’re kind of misrepresenting what they’re doing,
One possible use for that technology is filling the gap in an ecosystem left by a species going extinct; not bringing it back, but putting in a functional replacement. But that would likely raise the issue of the animal went extinct in the first place because other parts of the ecosystem it depended on are gone, too.
>(I consider whether "taxonomy experts" would deem that TRUE de-extinction entirely unimportant.)
You don't think there might be more to a mammoth than a hairy elephant?
Even if you accept a hairy elephant as a mammoth, it doesn't get us any closer to actually de-extincting other interesting species that aren't a simple aesthetic variation on a surviving one.
No, if they, or anyone else, have any specific criticism – like, head too small, tusks too straight, ears the wrong shape, or anything else – I'd be perfectly happy to concede that as a shortcoming, and then it's a matter of taste whether you think it a significant enough failing that it no longer counts as a mammoth. But the current level of criticism I've seen is on the level of "it wouldn't have the SOUL of a mammoth," and THAT is what I have contempt for.
I agree there'd still be a long way to go to sauropods, pterodactyls, etc. that don't have any living species close enough to hack together a facsimile from, but think it DOES get us closer.
I think it's less about having the "soul" of the extinct creature and more that these creatures likely differed from their non-extinct counterparts in ways that aren't externally visible or detectable from fossil evidence, such as social behavior, diet composition, effects on the ecosystem, vocalizations, brain and organ structure, etc.
And in that case labeling a modern animal genetically modified to look like an extinct animal as the extinct animal is misleading. You can't learn about actual dire wolf behavior from studying genetically modified grey wolves, and (since some people want to clone mammoths to rewild them in Siberia) you can't precisely replicate the effects on the ecosystem of a herd of woolly mammoths with a herd of genetically modified elephants, which might eat a rather different balance of vegetation and have a significantly different effect on the landscape. And people react strongly to this kind of 'deextinction' because there are suggestions we don't need to work that hard to conserve species that are currently alive, as long as we have the future option of making something that superficially looks like them.
This isn't "it doesn't have the soul of a mammoth."
This is "it doesn't have the anything-at-all of a woolly mammoth, even remotely, except for a tiny handful of gene edits, compared to the much vaster number of genetic differences between an actual woolly mammoth and an Asian elephant."
For the "direwolves," it was literally only 20 edits in 14 genes.
The mammoth plan is similar. It's not a plan to clone it from a mammoth genome; it's a plan to slightly edit a tiny handful of genes in an Asian elephant genome.
The tech is useful, I agree, including probably for fertility and genetic medicine.
I'll leave aside whether, hypothetically, the tech could ever be used to actually make a real mammoth with a real mammoth genome (instead of a slightly-edited hairy elephant). The point is that the "dire wolves" are not remotely dire wolves; and their current plan for a "mammoth" is exactly the same kind of not-remotely-a-mammoth.
If it was just their private fantasy, it would be unimportant. Or even for entertainment (I don't mind if Peter Jackson hires a hairy elephant to play a mammoth in a movie). But remember that Colossal and the Trump administration are both pretending this is *literal* de-extinction, and the Trump administration is already trying to use this as an excuse to remove protections from endangered species.
Are there any new/prospective parents who have experience with Alpha School a/b tested with home schooling? Reading the review, it really seems fantastic to a degree I didn't realize existed with off-the-shelf schooling options.
The current essay contest experience could be improved to a significant degree:
1. Everything being dumped into massive google drive documents kind of sucks; headings get weird, the pages are laggy, things have to be sorted, etc, and I'm sure it's a big pain in the butt for Scott and his assistants to copy and paste everything into the documents, especially as the number of entrants rises.
2. People submit essays for many reasons, but a major one is wanting attention/feedback/comments from a large, engaged reading population. The current rating system gives you no way to write comments for the reviews you rate, because it would be a massive headache to sort and collate comments. I had things I wrote down about each essay I rated, but didn't have anywhere to actually put them other than a separate ACX comment.
It seems like the solution is adapting an existing blogging platform or making a bespoke website for this purpose. I'm picturing a website where each essay is uploaded as a post by its writer, where anonymous comments can be left below each post, and where there's an integrated rating system on each post.
I know that someone had proposed an ELO system in a previous open thread, where instead of rating each post, you read two essays and say which one you liked better, and that over time results in an ELO score for each essay. It'd be great if that could also potentially be part of this, because right now, rating is tricky; I wasn't sure how to rate the first few essays I read, because I didn't know how they stacked up.
I'd be interested in working on this project, but have minimal web dev experience. I'm quite good at AI wrangling, but would love to see if there's anyone else who wants to work with me on making the essay contest experience better, who ideally is more experienced in website development.
That is a great idea--people who worked hard to write something basically always want feedback, and I would definitely often post feedback if there was a way for it to be attached to the specific review.
Wanted to say I like your/that person's Elo* system and agree with your rationale.
My main concern is potential abuse by raters who don't necessarily read every essay but might rate every other essay as worse than the one they liked (out of a couple they actually read, say), or as better if they happen to really dislike one, etc.
*not ELO, it's Arpad Elo's last name not an acronym, sorry to nitpick
I'm not sure if it has the functionality we need; a volunteer could certainly upload each essay as a post onto a new sub stack, but I think comments that only show up after the voting is done would be nice, and I think rating should be integrated into each post, which seems tricky to do through substack. If there's a way to accomplish those goals, though, then yeah, substack would work well.
Parts of this seem like they would be relatively easy to do by a volunteer. For example, taking a huge google drive document, and splitting it into many small ones.
For commenting the submissions, a possible solution is a new thread on ACX where someone makes a top-level comment containing the name of each entry and a link to its document, and everyone else will reply to these comments. (Scott would create the thread but keep it "only available to those who know the secret URL", send the URL to the volunteer who would create the top-level comments, and then Scott would switch the thread to "public".)
So I guess what needs to be done is for someone to volunteer (it could even be me) and propose the specific kind of help to Scott, maybe publicly in a related thread, so that other people know what is going on. Well, the next time we do reviews.
I agree that the formatting on the entries could have been better, perhaps with each entry linking to its own post, with comments disabled/hidden until after the rating period ends. I too wanted to leave comments on some of the essays I read, though they would have been of more interest to the author than to Scott.
The question of rankings is interesting - ELO doesn't seem like the right tool for this unless you assign pairs of essays randomly to readers. (You don't run a chess tournament by allowing the audience to choose who plays who.) Conventional voting theories don't work because there are too many candidates for voters to be acquainted with (so ranked choice won't work) and you allow voters to participate as often as they like. It's an interesting maths problem actually, though someone who knows this stuff better than me might come along and say this sort of problem is solved already.
I think the Elo idea is assuming that you'd indeed present people with two random reviews. It's already the case that choosing reviews randomly is encouraged, but I imagine that it'd be desirable to have some kind of option for letting people rate a review of their choosing, and I don't know how that'd work.
I'd also be tempted to try to use something like the Smith set rather than Elo, but I don't know whether sample sizes would be big enough for that to be viable. It would at least solve the problem of how to make ranked-choice voting work when most voters don't know most candidates.
It's not clear to me that the best selection of finalists consists of the most popular reviews. You risk lacking variety. (I also don't know how you would find a Smith set, or how that would help here.)
An alternative approach would be to attempt to find the 'most X' reviews for various choices of X: surprising, well written, profound, thought provoking, etc.
That seems like it flattens reviews too much to even be useful. Was the mid review mid because it's too controversial/not controversial enough, poorly structured, scope too broad/narrow etc. For book reviews the parameters are narrower so *maybe* it makes sense, but even then it's questionable imo. For open ended "review anything", the median means very little.
Substack offers very little customization, so while it would be possible to make a page for each submitted review, I'm not sure how it would help with any of the other features of the proposal. Also the process of creating the pages would still be fully manual.
First off, thanks for the work you've already done; I used pretty much exclusively the random review script to read reviews. It is up to Scott, of course, but it does seem like the current system involves a fair amount of work for him, with all the copy and pasting and compiling scoring information; I'd be happy to email him, asking if this project would have his blessing.
And if it does get his blessing, I'd be happy to help in any way that I can, though I'm unsure how much help I'll actually be.
I'll post my favorites here, to show my appreciation to the authors:
11 Poetic Forms: I'll remember what a Sestina is for the rest of my life.
Airships: Cool and steampunk. Would like to understand the technology better.
Arbitraging Several Dozen Online Casinos: in terms of potentially relevant new skills learned, this was #1. It's not really about "arbitrage" though, or am I misunderstanding that word?
Two Years Of Parenthood: Heartwarming!
Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy: Wouldn't have read it if it weren't for the random review script. I liked the connection to the author's experience as a writer.
I gave that review a poor rating because I consider it epistemically irresponsible to make such strong/spicy claims about matters of historical fact without providing more evidence than the review did. In particular, I would have liked to see some links to academic biblical scholars (not just theologians) who prefer the essay's interpretation, so that I could get a sense of how mainstream or fringe it is in the field.
I see what you mean. The historical context presented in the review seems plausible to me; things like a left hand taboo and laws governing forced labor. That said, whether Jesus or Matthew really had these things in mind remains a matter of interpretation, and I guess no amount of biblical scholarship can provide a definitive answer to that.
It's an isolated reading. I've heard the transgressive reading of those three before, but there are four statements in that section, and the last one is "give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you." I haven't seen someone offer an anti-Rome version of that one.
Kind of like how people will put together a cause-and-effect explanation of the Ten Plagues of Egypt, but then don't bother explaining that time Moses and the Egyptian wizards turned their staves into snakes.
For folks living in NYC who are voting in the Dem primary for mayor, I wanted to a) remind you that the election is tomorrow, please go out and vote! and b) strongly encourage you to rank Mamdani over Cuomo.
I disagree with both of them on policy, but of the two it seems obvious to me that Mamdani is legitimately interested in making the city a better place, while Cuomo is corrupt, self-interested, and (following the Trumpian approach to politics) is an all-together indecent person.
The Democrats need fighters. But those fighters must be as virtuous and honorable as they are aggressive, people who are so clean that nothing sticks to them so they have full ability to go after everyone else, people whose very presence on the debate stage shines a light on the hypocrisy of those who would seek to use public office for anything other than the good of the country.
A point you could have made is that Mamdani, like Bill DeBlasio, might moderate significantly in office since there’s a limited appetite for hard left policy in the city (as opposed to primary voters).
Also, the Democratic establishment really needs to start backing better candidates than these uncharismatic insiders. Just look at how much money got poured into Cuomos’s lousy campaign!
I purposely wanted to avoid policy discussion, because it's not germane to the larger point. I'm rather disappointed how many people here seem to be willing to vote for someone who is obviously a bad person if it means small concessions on their policies of choice.
I have time until November to think up some falsifiable predictions about the next four years.
From what I understand, from all of Mamdanis promises, two that he can execute on without too much interference are a) expanding rent control and b) repurposing subway station into homeless help centers.
Both of these are tragically bad in my opinion. The latter seems easier to do, so my first prediction will be that the homeless situation in NYC will begin to resemble that or Seattle or SF (before the latest elections)
A competently corrupt politician is often preferable to an enthusiastically well-meaning but inept one. The corrupt politician has an interest in not befouling his own nest; the enthusiastic idiot often won't even notice he's doing that.
If you want reform, find reformers who understand how things actually work.
> I agree this is the steelman, but implicit in the steelman is the assumption that the earnest person is also dumb or blind (because they wouldn't realize or be willing to realize that their policies aren't working right). I think it's extremely rare that someone is dumb/blind, earnest, has ideas that are so bad corruption would be better but is effective enough to actually implement those policies over the objections of others, AND is able to mount a successful campaign. Bayesian prior of all of those together is extremely low. (Trump gets almost all of these except earnest)
I don't particularly want reform. I want politicians that are going to act like adults and try and solve problems. I disagree with your use of the word "often". I would say "very very rarely"
The idiot doesn't have to be *effective* to be a menace. If their dominion is facing real and serious problems, being ineffective and blocking more effective people from solving those problems, is sufficient.
Or is the contention that NYC doesn't face any really serious problems and doesn't need capable high-level governance?
Again, I understand in theory that all of this is true, but I think you have a steep hill to climb when you're openly admitting that the counterfactual is someone who is openly corrupt -- and presumably, also effective (at being corrupt). My prior is extremely high that decency will lead to better outcomes on average than corruption. And unless you think that being a decent person is somehow highly correlated with being extremely ineffective, your prior should also be equally high.
John already climbed that hill at least partway by pointing out the corrupt person still has an incentive not to "befoul his own nest", and also has the means. He might take bribes all day, but if he's also smart enough to understand that his own welfare depends on that of his city (as does the decent incompetent), and is also skilled enough to maintain that (as does *not* the decent incompetent), then the city will likely continue to do better than if the decent incompetent is in charge.
You could argue that that still isn't enough to close the gap, but you haven't made that argument yet. Meanwhile, there are multiple examples from history that ought to lower that extremely high prior you possess.
Sorry, no, the burden of proof is on the guy who's arguing that corruption is fine. I don't feel the need to do the work of "looking at history" or whatever if other people aren't going to make that argument.
Also, at this point you're basically arguing a tautology. "The person who does better will do better"
Fine, I'm willing to concede that I can't defend putting a person with the IQ of a banana in office vs a corrupt person with the IQ of an average person.
While I broadly agree about NY political corruption, you do realise you are inviting investigation into whether Mamdani has any skeletons in the closet? Cuomo and his scandals are already known, but is Mamdani as squeaky-clean as you make out?
I'm not particularly interested in this election but simply reading the news gives me, whether I want it or not, a lot of coverage. And honestly? all the hagiography around Mamdani makes me think that if elected, he'll be an AOC type: yeah, talk the talk, be very good at holding on to their seat, maybe try a few Big Things but get slapped down or have them watered down, and settle comfortably in to being a career politician.
I don't mind a bit of the ould socialism myself, but expecting (pace Jacobin) "a promise of a fundamentally different way of doing politics for the working-class majority of a city facing an out-of-control crisis in the cost of living" makes me smile. Every hog, dog and divil running for election promises that. Then they get into power, have a look at the tangle and mess facing them that has been left behind by all the previous administrations, court cases, regulations, etc., and realise that it's going to be business as usual for them.
Even Elon and the chain saw couldn't cut through it all! I don't think New York has much wiggle room for sweeping changes to how the money works in order to make the working-class very much better off.
Speaking of that Jacobin article, really, Mamdani? Really?
"Far from “show[ing] little concern” about crime, public safety has been a prominent part of his platform. Mamdani’s ambitious plan for a Department of Community Safety pledges to build out social services and mental health care to help humanely address the root causes of crime."
Now, when was the last time I heard about a Committee of Public Safety? 😁 He might want to rethink the name there. And yeah, I'm sure a corps of social workers is going to stop violent/crazy criminals in the streets.
I mean, he's running as a socialist and campaigns with the slogan "globalize the intifada." What kind of skeletons do you imagine that could be worse?
You could try to muster some rape accusations, but those won't stick. Maybe you could find (or "find") video of him singing along to rap in high school or something, but that's weak sauce.
He doesn't seem to have been in politics very long, so what did he do before?
There's already been a little kerfuffle over "intafada". He was a rapper as a young man? Then somebody must have sample lyrics of him rapping about bitches and hoes and drugs and guns (unless he was an exceedingly wholesome rapper) 😀
Swearing about your granny? Having your (actress playing your) granny swear? Oh, my!
"How do you get an octogenarian south Asian screen icon to swear in a rap video? According to hip-hop MC Zohran Mamdani, a little context can be helpful. When he came to prepare world-famous actor and TV cook Madhur Jaffrey for her role – lip-syncing along to the words of his expletive-laden tribute to his maternal grandma, Nani – he had a little explaining to do.
Mamdani, who performs under the name Mr Cardamom, can remember Jaffrey asking him: “In the lyrics, who is this ‘mother fucker’ for?” he says. “Fuck this person, fuck that person; now whose ‘fuck’ is this?”
The guy may indeed be squeaky-clean, but if someone wants to dig deep enough and far back enough, it may be possible to find something that could have a bad interpretation put on it.
> you do realise you are inviting investigation into whether Mamdani has any skeletons in the closet
good?
> he'll be an AOC type: yeah, talk the talk, be very good at holding on to their seat, maybe try a few Big Things but get slapped down or have them watered down, and settle comfortably in to being a career politician
I'm pretty neutral on AOC, but, like, is your take that AOC is very corrupt or something? "a career politician" did she do something bad? or are you just annoyed about the aesthetics?
Net net, I purposely did *not* focus on either Cuomo's or Mamdani's stated policy positions, because the point I want to make is that being a decent person is a necessary precondition to talking about policy at all. I still think that's true, digs about the French Revolution aside.
In a race between someone who is a corrupt petty sex abuser and someone with aesthetics you don't particularly like, I personally would go with the mid aesthetics
Not the aesthetics, it's the opportunism. Turns up with a 'Tax the Rich' designer dress at the Met Gala. Yeah, really getting down with the proles there, Sandy!
Though I do have to respect that she's managed to retain her seat and get her career well-established, unlike the rest of the Squad who have either faded or got bogged down in sectarian controversy. She's dug herself in for the long haul as representative for that Bronx/Queens district, successfully turfing out the old Democratic party guard there.
I would recommend asking the right questions. First of all in the original Marxian analysis, the problem is with the system itself, not capitalists as persons. Now, libertarian economists tend to see the market also something like a machine, except that they see it as a good one. So I guess both agree capitalists do not have much personal responsibility, the market is a machine, if there is money on the table, someone will take it.
OTOH socialists dictators DO have a lot of personal responsibility, because this was not a machine like that. Stalin could have easily decided to not create the GULAG.
I think that several people have this take, and it always seemed like handwavy vibes-based feelings grounded in GOP scaremongering more than anything based an actual political outcomes. If you have any actual examples of this (and I mean relevant examples, not, like, "This cambodian general called himself a socialist in Khmer Rouge") I'd be open to seeing it.
But, also, fine, rank any of the other candidates, just not Cuomo.
Even though you're being snarky here (which is fair, you're responding to a snarky comment) I think this is obviously a silly take under the hood. Progressives are famously supposed to be the people who *dont* understand market dynamics. But here you argue against market dynamics while tarring progressives for...understanding them? Very backwards.
As an aside, dinging vectro for being a 'progressive' like its a big scary dirty word really just says more about you than anything else. Ooo vectro is a progressive...what are you gonna call him next, vegetarian?
increasingly of the opinion that people don't actually know what policies mamdani ran on or have any idea who the major players are in the big cities in the US
What *about* San Fran? Are you saying Mamdani is like Lurie, a moderate? Or like Breed, an establishment Dem? What policies do you think are the same between these people? Have you lived or visited SF over the last 10 years? What is your understanding of the problems that SF faces?
I think Michelle Wu or Lisa Hidalgo are equally reasonable comps who have done extremely well, so its increasingly unclear that Johnson isn't just a fluke or a particularly bad candidate/mayor
I dunno enough about Chicago tbh. I've heard the comparison a few times and agree that it's possibly a good comparison. Do you know more / have an informed opinion? Is Johnson unpopular because of policies? Gaffes? Scandal?
Thanks. I think just reading this, with nothing else to go on, it seems like the biggest problem with Johnson is not the ideology, but rather being too ideological. He seems like a crusader more than a leader, someone who does not know how to make trade offs because making a trade off of any kind would be impure in some way. The left absolutely has these people; left activists even more so. But I think this is true of any political affiliation or party -- you have the people who are shrewd leaders who actually know how to do things, and the people who are ideological warriors who are best when they are pointed at certain things by people in the first group. One of the big failures of MAGA is putting all of the ideological warriors in charge. The Dems have historically not done this in public office (Bernie, for eg, famously got knifed by the Dem party). It's likely that there is more appetite than ever to elect warrior types into office on the Dem side, and I agree that would be terrible, as it seems to be with Johnson.
But it's not at all clear to me that people like Mamdani (or even AOC or Sanders for that matter) are so ideologically uncompromising that they do not know how to hire good people, read the room, and be outcomes driven. This matters because on the ground, the policies of Johnson and Mamdani _don't_ seem that similar. Yes, there's a general tax and spend attitude, and I agree that is similar across the two of them, but I think the similarities more or less end there. It was Cuomo who was more embedded with the Unions, and more likely to cut favorable deals with them in exchange for their backing. And it was Cuomo who would regularly refuse to create a reasonable budget for the city and state, mostly to fund vanity projects or things that were obviously unworkable. In these things, Cuomo and Johnson are quite alike.
I think there is a way to do tax and spend that doesn't cause the city to burn. The question is whether Mamdani is too much of an activist to be able to thread that line. And that frankly remains unclear to me. But I think he's talking about the right things, and the ways in which the city can make things easier for constituents by *removing* red tape (eg here: https://x.com/ZohranKMamdani/status/1878853557111414795)
what about him? Why do you think this is a reasonable comparison, beyond Chavez also calling himself a socialist? who are the corrupt capitalists you're comparing against in Venezuela that would have done better?
If you want to point to Venezuela without any further explanation, I think it's equally fair for a socialist to point to the nordics with equally little explanation.
> This includes a comprehensive welfare state and multi-level collective bargaining[2] based on the economic foundations of social corporatism,[3][4] and a commitment to private ownership within a market-based mixed economy[5] – with Norway being a partial exception due to a large number of state-owned enterprises and state ownership in publicly listed firms.
> While many countries have been categorized as social democratic, the Nordic countries have been the only ones to be constantly categorized as such. In a review by Emanuele Ferragina and Martin Seeleib-Kaiser of works about the different models of welfare states, apart from Belgium and the Netherlands, categorized as "medium-high socialism", the Scandinavian countries analyzed (Denmark, Norway, and Sweden) were the only ones to be categorized by sociologist Gøsta Esping-Andersen as "high socialism", which is defined as socialist attributes and values (equality and universalism) and the social democratic model, which is characterized by "a high level of decommodification and a low degree of stratification.
Social corporatism, mixed economy, and norwegian state ownership are often seen as 'socialist'. Also I think generally welfare state stuff is seen as socialist too in the US. I think that's kinda dumb -- imo healthcare is obviously its own thing and I think universal healthcare in the states would immediately solve so many problems its honestly silly we havent implemented it yet -- but it is true that about half the country thinks obamacare is socialist (and half those think its communist!)
For better or worse, I think that 'socialist' in America has come to mean 'strong safety net and high taxes'. Which is more or less what mamdani is proposing, like I haven't seen him saying stuff like "we should nationalize oil"
> There are enough corrupt capitalists in south america to choose from. They are and were bad, not as bad as Chavez.
I think this is kinda weasely. You made the claim that Chavez was a good comparison to Mamdani! Can you back it up more than this?
Based on your comment history I dont believe your verdict is informed by his decency. You prefer the socialist to the moderate because hes the socialist (and being coy about policy disagreements) Whether you think thats fair or not, I think readers have high bs sensitivity to decency based arguments that are just laundering political preferences. See GOP preference for decency during clinton/bush era vs now.
In my experience socialists are very prone to equate agreeing with them politically = being a decent person. And historically socialist regimes have treated political disagreement as one of the most heinous crimes (and recruited even family members as informants.) I think it’s an intellectually and morally bankrupt political philosophy, but it seems to stick around in institutions of higher education and in the minds of their students.
It’s interesting that we seem to have learned only the lesson of fascism, and not the lesson of communism, from the 20th century. No one ever says we need to try fascism again, Hitler just did it wrong - but I hear it frequently about communism from seemingly earnest people who are quick to dismiss Stalin and Mao as aberrations.
Sure, it’s people on both sides, and it sucks when any of them do it.
But hey, I disagree with Scott politically and I still think he’s a great writer, thoughtful, intelligent and I avidly read anything he puts out. I also enjoy Freddie DeBoer even though he is “far left.” He’s honest and that’s more important.
Yes, but I wasn't actually making a "both sides" point here: You said it was only "socialists," and my point is that it's not just the fringe, but a mainstream position among Democrats as well.
Well, Scott still lets me post here, but it's true he's one of the rare classical liberals who still strongly defends free speech. I wouldn't last 2 seconds on Reddit or BlueSky. And yes, it's definitely worse on the left than the right - as much as liberals like to complain about Elon, they are welcome to do so and post their hottest takes right on Twitter/X (although many have left because the mean rightists keep replying to them and Elon never seems to do anything about that)
a) claiming to have special insight into the motivations of a person you don't know beyond their stated motivations is...bold, to say the least. Very bayesian of you. (Claiming to have special insight into the motivations of "readers" -- also very bold)
b) my comment history is motivated by a disdain and disgust of the Trump administration and everything it stands for. That you think 'hatred of Trump == socialism' says more about you than it does me.
c) vote for literally anyone other than Cuomo, it doesn't have to be mamdani he's just the person who's second. If Lander or Adams were second, they would be better choices. Literally *anyone* would be a better choice than the multi-time sex pest with a penchant for corruption.
Why do you feel the need to defend the multi-time sex pest with a penchant for corruption? "Our policies at any cost" is fucking stupid, sorry. I care about voting for decent people, because at the end of the day my own policy preferences are likely to be misinformed, the policy positions of candidates on the campaign trail are *definitely* misinformed, and when push comes to shove I want my public leaders to put their constituents over themselves. Cuomo is so selfish he's willing to split the vote just to stay relevant in politics. It's disgusting, as is defending him because you're stuck in the cold war.
In case it matters, I'm pretty economically centrist. More taxes on large corporations and the wealthy. Universal health care. Way fewer regulations, especially on construction. No taxes for small businesses.
I think most of Mamdani's policy positions are mixed to bad. I don't like rent freezes or rent control, and I don't get the groceries thing. Cuomo's policies are shockingly similar, though no one ever really reports on this. Doesn't matter though -- the main point is that decency is a prerequisite to even being considered a candidate. Mamdani isn't going to be cowed or bribed by Trump because, and I can't stress this enough, *he's a decent human being*. If Cuomo thinks being pals with Trump will benefit him, he will turn immediately -- just like Adams did before him. No thanks. I want to actually like my leaders.
"I dont believe you" is something ppl are allowed to say and doesnt require them to believe they have special insights into your motivations. And if I dont believe you, others probably dont either, because im not so special.
I offer no defense of Cuomo, and the things you say about him are probably true. But sorry, I dont believe you, and also I think mamdani would be bad (see I can just say that outright)
I agree, and further suspect this stance that one's policy preferences shouldn't outweigh "decency" would be abandoned as soon as the differences become significant enough*, probably by arguing that anyone who held those positions ipso facto lacked decency, and so voting for the corrupt bully with your policies over his honest opponent becomes the better choice after all.
*The opposite position on ALL of gun rights, abortion, affirmative action, LGBTQ+, and immigration, say.
If the best argument you have to advance your point is that you literally are allowed to say it, you might as well just concede there's nothing here. If you want to make claims about my political positions as a means to disparage me, at least have the decency to back it up with evidence. You claim to have ample evidence with my post history after all. Or is "socialist" just a bad word you're using to tar by association?
"Based on your past actions,I suspect your motives"
"You dont know my motives as well as I do"
"So what, the whole point is I think you are being dishonest"
It is true, I havent taken the time to prove you are being dishonest about your motives. And I wont because, my goal is not to take you down.
I thought you might feel like my skepticism was unfair, I said as much in my first post, I am just giving you my honest feedback. I cant take your argument touting a leftist above a moderate (fine I wont say socialist) on grounds other than their leftism serious because I see you commenting like leftists do. There are people who criticize Trumps terribleness without giving a leftist impression. You arent one of them, and it affects how others receive your arguments.
I'm sorry you don't like my aesthetics. I'm not a leftist, but you're welcome to your opinion. Death of the author, consider my position despite your dislike of the leftist that you think I am.
I only started reading ACX after the move from SSC. I have gone back and read the top posts from SSC but still felt like I was missing out on some of the old classics. I built a website to resurface old content from blogs and track your progress through the backlog. Let me know if you have any suggestions of other blogs / content you’d like to see, hope you find it helpful!
https://www.evergreenessays.com/
Calling all research scientists! I'm trying to build a tool to help scientists with their work. I have this survey to gather ideas: https://tally.so/r/mBYBJQ
(To be clear, this is just an amusing story, and not a request for medical advice)
I have just had a message from my doctor asking me to come in for an asthma checkup.
Now, while I have been mildly asthmatic for all my life, I only needed an inhaler for about 6 months starting in 2020. So, I guess I’m going to report that it seems fine now. And yes, I think it is a very very suspicious coincidence that I only had respiratory difficulty during the covid pandemic. Can’t prove that it was Covid, of course, but …
"Nominative determinism" is today's featured article on the English Wikipedia.
BirdWatch Ireland's head of communications is named Niall Hatch.
Didn't I see someone connected to the US strike on Iran whose name was Lair?
Usain Bolt
How much damage could Iran do by publishing their nuclear weapons technology online?
The difficulty in making nuclear weapons isn't so much the theory as it is sourcing the fissile material--as we've seen and are seeing again, nuclear fuel processing facilities are large and specialized; it's not really possible to keep a nuclear program secret, given how tightly the mines are controlled (so tightly that French chemists detected the existence of a natural fission reactor based on the composition of ore from specific sites).
Put in a bulk order for cough medicine, or diesel fuel and fertilizer, and see how that works out--and those things are much more common than yellowcake.
Yes, I agree the idea of any domestic threat from nukes (now generalized to "CBRN") is overblown, and primarily fearmongering to manufacture a pretext for some political goal.
I am less sure about what foreign states are limited by. Is it just the threat of America bombing their facilities when they do some simple things at sufficient scale, or is there some technical capability it'll take them decades to develop on their own?
The UN has inspectors, and yes, the US has enforcers. Refining uranium fuel requires centrifuges and chemical handling equipment--but the main thing is getting the uranium itself. Even if a rogue government managed to build the necessary facilities in secret--not impossible, I guess, but it'd require assembling enough people with the right education who aren't also on some watchlist--they'd have to source the fuel. There aren't that many uranium mines in the world, and they're closely monitored.
How much damage could Iran do by publishing nuclear weapons technology that they know is wrong?
Yeah, that's basically the Strangelove line, right? "The whole point of a doomsday machine is lost if you keep it a secret! Why didn't you tell the world, eh?"
If they're trying to use nuclear weapons as a deterrent and bizarrely pretend their weapons don't work, they invite an attack.
Given that Iran has not demonstrated the ability to actually build a bomb, it's probably not that bad. The other nuclear powers would all respond with a "Ha! Nope, wrong, not even close" and nobody would have any idea how seriously to take it.
I think that the number of entities out there with the desire and ability to build nuclear weapons, who haven't already built nuclear weapons, is pretty small. Countries like Germany or Japan or even Taiwan probably could build them, but know they're more trouble than they're worth. Entities like Al Qaeda (or whatever they are these days) would love to build them but are never going to get the money, materials and expertise. Sophisticated well-funded supervillain networks don't actually exist. The only people who could benefit from nuclear weapons are reasonably-sophisticated international pariah states -- Iran, North Korea, and that's about it?
Nukes are easy to build, everybody knows how to build the first couple generations of fission and fusion bombs. The design follows from the physics.
The fuel for the bomb and the delivery system, those are the sticking points.
Hmm, maybe. It was my understanding that it's not THAT hard to design a bomb (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nth_Country_Experiment), so I'd be really surprised if Iran hasn't managed a regular fission bomb.
Intuition suggests that the US (and the other nuclear powers) keeping this tech as secret as they do, far beyond regular military secrecy, means THEY think it's still dangerous if it became public.
The fusion bomb might be harder.
I have heard it said that nuclear weapons clearance aren’t that hard to get, compared to e.g. codebreaking. We might infer that the US doesn’t try all that hard to keep nuclear technology,ogy secret, compared to other things. They would appear to be relying on the difficulty of getting the fissile material.
Thanks! If true, this changes my mind on the impact of knowledge becoming public.
OC ACXLW meetup orange county June 28th
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FuEipD4_00vqEoe2CjaMqYrUx7n5CX4_IMXTVNCeh80/edit?usp=drivesdk
On monday there is an AI safety protest in London 5PM at Granary square/Deepmind headquarters (https://lu.ma/bvffgzmb) organized by mostly Pause AI. Come join :).
Even if you don't support the direct message of the protest it might still be worthwhile to attend to overall make AI safety a more visible topic. If you have any questions you could join a meetup on Friday evening (dm me for details) or you can also still apply to https://pausecon.org/.
I have recently criticized rationalists, but please note I do not mean anything wrong, it is 10+ years of frustration bursting out. At any rate please reply:
>Many rationalists are foodies for the mind.
Strangely, I have the complete opposite experience with them. They are the most anti-intellectual people out here. They are not interested in ideas as such. They are interested in evidence, not ideas. That is super anti-intellectual as it means you are not allowed to think unless someone else ran an experiment...
When I tell them "You know maybe a farmer in rural Thailand might be happier than a lawyer in NY, because I know a Westerner lady who used to live there and was happy?" they are NOT interested at all.
They tell me to bring evidence. Ideally a scientific study, or at least anything in NUMBERS. So that they can plug the number into their beloved Bayesian **replacement for actual thinking** and get an automatic result. One of their leaders is literally called PutANumOnIt.
They do not want to think, they want an algorithm, a method to think for them. They are more anti-intellectual than any Facebook guy spreading anti-science crap, because those at least spent at least 30 seconds to use their OWN brains, asking themselves "does this make sense to me?", and not a method or algorithm as a replacement. Yarvin was right at least in this, that they are "automatists" who do not have a concept of "reasonable judgement".
These people seriously think the above question can be solved by putting a number on it. Find some sort of a Happiness Measurement Index and decide it that way. They seriously think when someone goes around asking people "On a scale from 1 to 10, how happy are you?" is anything like a reliable number. So those people who do that find that Finland is the happiest place ever. I talk with actually Finnish people and they laugh and say it is not so. They say the Finnish cultural norm of "sisu", basically stoicism, means that if you do not have a strong reason to complain, you do not complain, stoicism, stiff upper lip, so if a Finnish person says I am 7/10 happy it means they feel they OUGHT to be 7/10 happy because they have no strong reason to complain. They can still be as depressed and miserable as anyone else. Someone using common sense, not numbers, would probably find the beach people in Rio the Janeiro are the happiest. They certainly smile really a lot.
Apologies for being blunt, but I read this and think you simply don't understand much about the world at all. Like this:
"They tell me to bring evidence. "
Obviously. You cannot POSSIBLY form any accurate conclusions about the world without evidence, any more than you can know whether it's safe to cross the street without looking or listening[1]. Your brain is not magic. It can't conjure correct information from nowhere. If you want to know if it's raining out or if your pot of water is boiling or whether your car has been stolen, you have to *go look.* And if you want to know the answer to some less localized question, whose answer is spread among millions of people across millions of square kilometers--like how happy rural Thai farmers are--you have to actually go observe a whole bunch of those rural time farmers *in some fashion.*
Now, you seem to have a particularly large chip on your shoulder about numbers and calculations. Not all useful evidence is numeric, but a lot of it sure is. Sometimes our ape-brains have trouble understanding this, but at its fundamental level reality seems to be really, really, extremely well-suited to being described by numbers. That doesn't mean all attempts to describe pieces of reality by numbers are equally good. Asking people to rate their happiness on a scale of 1-10 is a really, extremely crude and uninformative and low-accuracy way of interrogating reality, as you correctly ascertain. But basing your opinion on the description of a single person in a single set of circumstances is even cruder. Finding a way to answer important questions--like how happy Thai farmers are compared to American lawyers--in a way that *both* captures the richness and detail of the human experience *and* can scale to the size that you need to be any good[2] is quite a difficult challenge. Most rationalists I've read or talked to seem to be rather more aware of this fact that you do. And I'm sure lots of them *would* be interested in the question, they're just not interested in your anecdote because they're well aware of how useless it is by itself.
[1] Which is, in fact, a form of evidence gathering.
[2] A quick bit of googling tells me there 10s of millions of Thai farmers and a million or so American lawyers, so your one anecdote is *really* slim evidence.
"Sometimes our ape-brains have trouble understanding this, but at its fundamental level reality seems to be really, really, extremely well-suited to being described by numbers. "
I think the hard science-soft science distinction exists for a reason. Namely the world of objects is well-suited to that, the world of people less so. The reason for that is simple: measurement. Objects are well measurable, while with people there are always a lot of subjective stuff that is not well measurable.
How old is utilitarianism as a philosophy? At least 200 years and no one ever figured out how to measure utilons...
i think there are things that cause this:
1. There are no "1.5 kids" meaning that statistics are not always applicable to real life conditions. They are a guide based on observing populations over time, but the reality isn't that: individually it varies and only collectively can it be used as a rule of thumb.
There is also the MMO version, which is "if its not 100% its 0%"
meaning no matter if it says 95% success, you can and will go 1 in 5 on occasion, and if you need it for a specific occasion its unreliable.
2. objective materialist reductionism leads to it; if the culture believes in god it loves cathedrals, in this case it loves quantification. This is not them
as much as the culture, loves its objective science.
3. Control. so much of this is trying to find control or meaning through technique and knowledge. The idea of mystery, fate, and randomness is terrifying, and people always seek ways to gain some measure of power over it.
rationalism loves its one weird trick solutions to common problems as long as they are intellectually elegant, and there is some power in knowing when Jesus may come back. otherwise its terrifying.
I think they fail to appreciate that the evidence can't support the right idea if you don't have the right idea...having as many hypotheses as possible is you'd, because it increases your chances of having the right one. The problem is exacerbated by thinking in terms of *ideal* Bayesianism, where the hypothesis-formation problem has been waved away.
> They are not interested in ideas as such. They are interested in evidence, not ideas. That is super anti-intellectual as it means you are not allowed to think unless someone else ran an experiment...
We need to make reading the Sequences mandatory, and maybe require a re-certification every three years. (Just kidding.) First, there is a difference between "there is evidence against X" and "there is no evidence either for or against X". I think Scott posted an entire article on this topic once. Second, there are different degrees and kinds of evidence (anecdote, survey, experiment, meta review), and although stronger evidence is better, that doesn't mean we should ignore everything else.
> I talk with actually Finnish people and they laugh
See, that's your evidence. They laugh, it means they are happy. :D
Do you have every possible hypothesis X?
>When I tell them "You know maybe a farmer in rural Thailand might be happier than a lawyer in NY, because I know a Westerner lady who used to live there and was happy?" they are NOT interested at all.
Do you apply this logic to other things in your life? If I tell you that on the one hand, I have a scientific study which has a bunch of numbers showing that the flu vaccine reduces your mortality risk by X%, but on the other hand, I know a guy who got the flu shot and had a heart attack the next day, are you going to become an anti-vaxxer because you trust anecdotes more than evidence?
Like, it's one thing if you want to dunk on social science as not being as rigorous as it claims to be - lots of people do that. But your post seems to be dunking on the very idea of gathering evidence in a systematic way!
>They seriously think when someone goes around asking people "On a scale from 1 to 10, how happy are you?" is anything like a reliable number.
But when *you* ask some Westerner lady who used to live in Thailand if she was happy there, that's reliable, right? How is that any different from what the scientists are doing?
No, because that is well-measurable.
I actually would trust anecdotes more than science, because anecdotes come from trusted sources, aren't an attempt to manipulate me and can be personally verified.
"The Science" as exemplified by Doctor Fauci, might be corrupt, has plenty of incentives to lie and is by now very politicized on hot button issues.
"Do you trust the Science"? is not a referendum on the scientific process. It's a referendum on the integrity of the people and institutions running the process, and they have lost all trust through their actions.
If some random dude I know had a heart attack the day after taking a vaccine, that's a data point that absent anything else suggests strong correlation. When I keep hearing those stories, it's more and more data points and since I just don't trust the institutions to be honest on this topic, I simply think it's more likely than not that there are actual problems.
""Do you trust the Science"? is not a referendum on the scientific process. It's a referendum on the integrity of the people and institutions running the process, and they have lost all trust through their actions."
This is an awesome point. The problem is the following. the "anti-establishment" does not seem much more credible either. And I don't have the time to verify everything myself.
"I actually would trust anecdotes more than science, because anecdotes come from trusted sources, aren't an attempt to manipulate me and can be personally verified."
This presumes quite a number of things:
1. You only accept anecdotes from trusted sources (maybe do, but most people don;'t)
2. Every single one of the sources you trust is actually reliable (maybe yours are, but most people's aren't)
3. All of the important anecdotes are both possible and practical to personally verify (maybe some are, but it's highly unlikely that all will be).
Perhaps you're not used to thinking like this, but you CAN, in fact, personally verify the science. There's quite a lot of science that you can verify directly with pretty modest effort. One of my favorite YouTube videos involves the creator stumbling on some flat Earth forum where people were talking about this especially long, straight lake that could be used to show that the Earth was flat. He realize that he lived a 90 minute drive from the exact lake they were talking about, drove out there with a video camera and tripod, and made a video where he lowers the camera and you can see the lower trunk of a tree on the far shore sinking below the horizon in real time. SCIENCE!
Probably you never gave much credence to flat Earthers to begin with[1], so perhaps this seems silly or pointless. But the key is, you can do this all over the place if you want to. Physics, astronomy, biology, chemistry, they all make millions of predictions that you can just...go out there and test. Properties of moving objects, behaviors and life cycles of plants and animals, results of mixing various chemicals together. Some you can do walking down the street. Some you can do with simple equipment on your kitchen table or garage. Some you might need to drive out to a local lake for. And then some require the resources of a large institution. But if you're determined, you can get that. With enough patience and perseverance, there's no conclusion reach by modern science that you can't test (or at least be a part of testing).
The only limit is that there's only one of you. You can test anything, but you can't test everything. Ultimately, you have to pick a lane and rely on other people to test some of the things. But you can read about what they did. You can check their calculations, talk to the people that were involved in their work, read other papers on the same topics--including responses and even refutations sometimes. There are mistakes, for sure and even deliberate deceptions sometimes. Everyone involved is human, after all. But it would be hard to imagine a field of human endeavor that better lends itself to skeptical parties *checking its work* than science[2].
Honestly, if you genuinely don't think you can trust anything you hear except anecdotes from people you consider reliable, then I have to wonder how you can possibly have such confidence that the science you're criticizing *is* untrustworthy, corrupt or even, y'know, wrong. I absolutely guarantee that not all of your evidence *against* it comes from trustworthy anecdotes.
"If some random dude I know had a heart attack the day after taking a vaccine, that's a data point that absent anything else suggests strong correlation. "
This is correct. It is a data point. It is ONE data point. Did you stop to consider how much weight you should put on it? If you know 500 people well enough to hear about something like this, and only one has this happen, then the *absolute highest* your assessment of vaccine related mortality should be is 1/500[3]. Which is the lowest non-zero number your methodology should recognize, since you can't possibly trust any report of a vaccine related death that comes from outside the circle of people you know. Wait, hold on...
"When I keep hearing those stories, it's more and more data points..."
aaaaaannnd, not you've lost it. This is wrong, wrong, wrong, so extremely wrong. If only anecdotes from trusted sources are evidence, then casting a wide net for anecdotes on a topic of interest is NOT ALLOWED. Unless you have an extremely wide or alarmingly heart-attack prone social circle, most of these stories must NOT be events happening to or directly witnessed by people you know. You've just thrown the *entire purported point* of your novel methodology out the window.
There are very good reasons science doesn't operate this way. When you let the stories filter to you and form you opinion based on that:
1. You not only lose all ability to verify the stories, but you actively invite yourself to believe false stories. A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still getting its boots on, after all.[4]
2. You don't have any actual idea of how common the events you're hearing about really are. If you hear 10 stories of suspiciously timed heart attacks, you don't know if that represents all the reported events from a population of 1000, 100,000 or 10,000,000.
3. Related to 2, you actively invite confirmation bias by deliberately listening to the things that confirm what you already believe, and seldom to those that don't. You're not going to hear many stories about how someone got the vaccine and was perfectly fine, are you?
You can try to hold to the brand of radical skepticism where you don't believe *anything* you don't see or hear reported (as first-hand experience) by a trusted personal friend. But that's what you actually do--that is, if you're doing it *right*--you should simply stop holding opinions on a bunch of things. You and your trusted personal friends can't possibly pass judgement on any branch or field or institution of science, since between you you have certainly not had enough direct personal experience to know much of anything about what that large, mostly distant group of humans is doing.
[1] Though to be intellectually consistent with everything else you've written, it seems like you should.
[2] Perhaps the open-source software movement might be ahead of it, if only because verifying any individual claim is usually easier.
[3] But really, you ought to estimate the chance of the timing being a coincidence and factor that it. Because it very much could be.
[4] In more formal and explicit language, your sample set will be dominated not by the things that happen most frequently, but by the reports that spread the farthest and the fastest. It's very easy for false stories to beat out true ones on that score, since they can be as compelling as they like without being constrained by the mundane details of reality.
It might be surprising to you, but I actually do have an internally consistent philosophy (which I'm aware like maybe 1% of people have). I do in fact, not hold opinions on many topics I'm interested in. These are mainly topics where there is a 'factual clash'; very simply different sets of experts disagree and the issue is politicized.
For instance, I have no idea to what degree climate change is either a problem or caused by humans and don't think it's worth my time finding out (as I think the costs and difficulty coordinating action to halt climate change are so prohibitive/unrealistic that it's better to focus on mitigation, which will cease to be a partisan issue if and when there are immediate and serious problems. Similarly, I think if a pandemic or medical emergency is sufficiently serious, there will be bipartisan consensus even in the USA. That it wasn't anywhere close for COVID speaks volumes.
When scientific issues have no political or financial tinge I haven't the slightest difficulty believing what the scientists say, because I know they are competent and I'm not. That reasoning goes out of the window with politicized issues. Also you have seem to have misunderstood my position on things like vaccines. I'm simply agnostic on the possible harms. My main reason for considering vaccine harm (COVID particularly) theories credible is the incredible amount of suppression, censorship and flat out lies from establishment sources on this topic. I have no idea about the underlying science, but it doesn't take a genius to understand incentive structures.
By "more and more data points" I don't mean millions of things I read on X. I simply mean even 3 or 4 cases I clearly know of. You need to understand that I consider studies from American universities or pharmaceutical bodies on these topics to have literally zero persuasive value. It's at best an exercise like asking me to watch a sleight of hand expert and trying to use my inability to debunk him as evidence of the existence of
magic.
When you know somebody is an expert on a topic you know anything about, but fundamentally distrust his character and motives, nothing he says has any meaning to you. That's where I, and massive percentages of the American population stand on liberal dominated institutions and their narratives.
How old are you? I am 47 and I am a bit confused about the current historic period. 30 years ago a lot of people were like "don't trust Big Pharma, they are interested in profits, not healing people". And this opinion was generally categorized as politically left. Today "trust science" is categorized as politically left and the anti-vaxxers are categorized as politcally right-wing.
This is truly strange, I think everybody who is a little older has noticed this, and this does not get talked about at all.
BTW I am willing to entertain the notion that for the most part the whole left-right thing is just show for the people, and people with real power just do not think like that.
For example if of two ex Harvard classmates one is the CEO of a corporation and another is working at a regulatory agency, then I just cannot take the whole "more market, less state" vs. "more state, less market" thing seriously. Clearly they are not any kinds of enemies to each other.
The left-right thing in the sense of rich vs poor class tension is indeed a far less relevant lens nowadays.
It's traditional culture vs globalists that's to some extent supplanted this. Right vs Left terminology has persisted, but the right is more about traditional cultural values (including values that were considered liberal even 15-20 years ago), opposition to immigration that changes Western countries and opposition to woke values (language changes, alphabet stuff, DEI discrimination etc).
Meanwhile capitalism has been swamped as it's now controlled capitalism marked by regulatory capture where almost is everything is illegal or requires permission and regulators have enormous discretion to allow egregious behaviour or crack down on actually legal behaviour and in practice both happen simultaneously. This is why dumb people in the West who don't realize this is happening tend to pick a side on whether they want more or less regulation, when actually the entire system is corrupt in a way that is instantly understood by Indian or Chinese people, but naive Americans just don't get their high trust world and culture has already been dismantled.
High trust cultures can accomplish great things, but they require absolute xenophobia and racism towards those who don't share its values and culture, this last point having been forgotten somewhere in the last many decades.
the problem is that yes, in aggregate there a very low risk to vaccines. There is only one you though, and it is possible for you to draw the short straw. This uncertainty will always be there.
this is why you hang out after the vaccine so they can be sure you dont get a reaction right away because for all the statistics they dont know who or when.
its kind of related to being morbid: we are all going to die at some point, 100%. but focusing on thar becomes unhealthy. it gets worse with direct or close experience.
like its one thing to know average life expectancy is 76 years, another to read comments in a youtube video to hear the "taking the hobbits to isengard" guy died at 52 and other guy you followed at 56.
I think this is related to "garbage in, garbage out" problem. If you collect unreliable data, it does not matter how sophisticated statistical techniques you apply to them afterwards.
The problem with rating something on a scale from 1 to 10 is that it depends on what range of experience are they familiar with. https://xkcd.com/883/
When my kids were in kindergarten, any negative experience was "the worst day ever". On the opposite end, sometimes a health problem expanded my pain scale.
Is it possible that if your life in general sucks and you have never been happy, then you would report days that suck less as 7, while someone whose life is full of fun and adventure would report an insufficiently exciting day as 3?
That sort of thing only matters if it's a systemic issue - e.g., if you think that *most* people in Thailand under-report their happiness because they're used to living fun and adventurous lives. Otherwise, with a big enough sample all the outliers will average out.
You could also check if this effect exists by comparing to socioeconomic indicators - e.g., do rich and poor people in the same country report the same level of happiness despite different material circumstances?
I think that in this way rationalists are a lot like foodies - foodies often try to maximize some measurable aspect of food, which comes at the expense of the rest of the experience.
For instance, getting a perfectly cooked steak (according to some foodies) means maximizing the amount of pink in the center while minimizing the gray on the edges. The best way to maximize the pink is to sous vide the steak at 130F for an hour, then dry off the meat, sear, and serve. I used this method for years, and it produced some pretty good results.
But it also requires you start an hour in advance, and after the sous vide you have to pull this gross gray wet steak from a bath of meat juices. When I stopped doing this, I found that I didn't even care about the grayness around the edges - it's a nice variation in flavor and texture - and the crust was better, and most importantly the experience of steak preparation was far more humane. Pull steak from fridge, salt, pepper, pan, flip, serve.
Of course, you can argue endlessly about preferences, and don't let me stop you from micromanaging your steak in whatever way pleases you. I still follow JKLA's advice most times, but I often skip any step which seems like a huge pain in the ass or gross or weird. But I've become much more pragmatic about whether maximizing the measurable qualities of my food will actually give a better lived experience than just slapping down some meat and calling it a meal.
I think you're greatly underestimating how much thinking it takes to cook the numbers they're pretending to use to come to the conclusion they wanted to.
LOL Shankar you are a cynic of the kind I exactly like :)
What fraction of the subjects of a government have to have the vote for that government to qualify as "democratic"? Or is that even how you use the word at all?
I'd say this is mistaking the tool for the result. Having the people vote on a government is a means to an end. In particular, it doesn't matter at all if 100% of the populace votes if their only choice is between Kodos and Kang. Meanwhile I could imagine a government doing an admirable job of "governing democratically" in all other ways that mattered while holding no elections at all: instead they would select a very scrupulously randomized 1% sample of their whole population and collect information about their preferences in far more depth than any voting process allows[1].
Questions I'd consider more pertinent:
1. How often do broadly popular policies get enacted and how quickly after they become broadly popular?
2. How often do broadly unpopular policies get enacted? How long do they stay in effect (presuming they remain unpopular)?
If you want to allow for the role that the judgement and expertise of leaders (often touted as a benefit of representative democracy) have on deciding good policy or implementing it well, you might add the following:
3. How often do the unpopular policies that get enacted increase in popularity once they're actually in force.
4. How often to the popular policies that get enacted decrease in popularity once they're actually in force.
Though with both of these it can be hard to tell the difference between "the public didn't know what was good for them" vs "the leaders did a poor job of implementing a popular policy, or a good job of mitigating the flaws of an unpopular one."
Also, like most things, this schema is subject to Goodhart's Law: a government with sufficient control over the information of its people may be able to simple manufacture consent for whatever policies it wants.
[1] Damn, I literally just thought of this off the cuff, and now I really want to see it tried. I'm sure it would find *some* what to fail horribly, but I really want to know how.
Even 100% doesn't make you democratic if the votes are done with a gun to your head.
Whether you call a government democratic or not is rather arbitrary. Scientifically, you'd assign a "democracy value" ranging from 0 to 10.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/democracy-index-eiu
This measure has been generalized to a "Goodness Index" more broadly, in a report by experts from the Burger Eagle Institute Think Tank. https://www.reddit.com/r/mapporncirclejerk/comments/1ecwy7m/how_do_you_like_my_real_and_original_maps/.
I noticed a few threads in these comments discussing the legitimacy of the government of Iran. I just wanted to note that since 2020, Regimes of the World has flip-flopped between characterizing Iran as a Closed Autocracy (the lowest ranking, of four) and an Electoral Autocracy (the second-lowest). This puts it in a peer group with countries such as Nicaragua or Kuwait, below Indonesia or Ukraine but above Afghanistan or China (where "above" means "more democratic"). Or alternatively (very roughly) around the 20th percentile of openness.
As for the other two belligerents in the war, the US is rated as a Liberal Democracy (the highest category) and has been since the civil rights era, while Israel was just recently downgraded to Electoral Democracy (the second-highest category).
OWID has a great tool for visualizing the Regimes of the World data, currently and historically. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/political-regime
Legitimacy has nothing to do with being a democracy or what not. Iran's govt is accepted by its people (there is no civil war ongoing) and by the international community (Iran has diplomatic relations with plenty of countries). Even those countries that lack diplomatic relations, they regard the present govt as THE govt.
Excellent visualisation. But, so many questions… (not least Britain going second tier just this year).
reasons to keep studying, learning, exploring... even with ASI [posting for critique & feedback]
- development of your preferences
- development of your relationships (to others, to yourself, to "It")
- development of Your Song (because with infinites, we all get our own)
"development of your preferences (like, perhaps: into more nuanced, more elevated, more sophisticated and more deeply long-term satisfying realms)"
Not gonna lie I'm pretty disappointed with the nominies. My favorite was The Sermon On the Mount by J.K. which offered a totally fresh modern perspective for me, as someone who's only mildly interested in the Bible, mostly for historical context. Bishop's Castle was my 2nd, but I give Jim Bishop at least as much credit for that as I do the author.
The ACX Commentariat was too meta and circlejerky in a self flagellating way, and The Men Are Not Alright just felt like San Francisco Goldilocks. They definitely weren't the worst written, but seemed thoroughly middle-of-the-pack, and if you go for a hot take culture war topic like [half the human species has something categorically wrong with them], I'm sorry but you gotta do better than that.
I thought J. K.’s essay was very good too. I don’t necessarily buy the whole package but it articulates some of my intuitions about the N.T.
It's too bad that there were two Sermon on the Mount reviews: they may have stepped on each other when it came to attracting reviewers.
Thanks for the recommendation of the Sermon on the Mount article. I agree that it was fantastic, I got a sense while reading it that it was gradually forming one of those foundational building blocks of knowledge that would stick with me for much of my life.
JK, if you’re reading this, I strongly encourage you to post it elsewhere so it can live on and be read easily.
Here’s an attempt at a direct link to that part of the document: https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1jYVJFIz5-aMi0LCgsC9AN6BncJDNVGaMU37QmwZ1vzA/mobilebasic#h.n30pdwzbramr
I was not very convinced that the Sermon on the Mount was intended that way at all. Jesus had some radically pacifist teachings elsewhere too... I really think the intent was "cooperate-bot till you die." That's also backed up by the entire structure of Jesus' mission, which was radical self-sacrifice for the unworthy.
Trying to reinterpret it to something that makes more game theoretic sense just removes its coherence with the rest of the New Testament. All of the apostles also seem to have thought the calling meant radical, unilateral pacifism, and the tradition of the early church elders is that they clung to that radical pacifism to the death. (True or not, it's evidence that everyone thought the meaning was the traditional one, not JK's sanified version.)
Yeah, it was an interesting review, and the interpretations are clever and fun to engage with but indeed seem to be unconvincing.
And as to why Christianity won: I think they won precisely because they abandoned the original Christian ideal and became exactly like every other large powerful social structure. To use J.K.'s metaphor, they struggled as long as they were trying to burn the boot and became powerful once they decided to actually wear the boot. *shakes head* Humans, amirite?
It does look like it's on its way out too: the world on average is trending more secular, and societies that aren't trending that way are leaning more and more heavily towards Islam. Though 2000 years was not a bad run at all, and it's not over yet either, just very slowly waning imo.
Yeh the walk two miles in his shoe explanation (to get one over on the army) was unconvincing, so I left it there.
It works on multiple levels though. Literally "help someone else in need because it feels good" or alternately "don't give them the satisfaction of giving up at the earliest chance." Or again on the second order "does this seem implausibly decent? So be it."
You're not a covert asshole carrying out some dubious mission for the sake of "the greater good". It's trying your best to "do the right thing" on multiple dimensions at once, and having faith that's how it actually plays out.
Agreed. As interesting as JK's interpretation is, and as much as I enjoyed reading it, it's clever/cute to a point that raises alarms and puts me in skeptic mode.
But isn't it kind of funny to think of Jesus trolling the ruling class so hard that they killed him for it, then getting resurrected and still being like "jeez all I said was turn the other cheek! What was their problem" and for thousands of years Christianity spreads as people are like "yeah c'mon, you can't kill a guy just for saying 'go the extra mile'"
It's kind of funny, yeah, but... the success of Christianity is weird and important. Taken seriously (and I think it was intended seriously), this is an attempt to shoehorn it into modern perspectives... which I think is less interesting and less useful than grappling with the weird artifact as it actually existed.
As he says himself,
> the object-level lesson is, "beware of creative interpretations that seem a little too galaxy-brained.
. . . especially if you're having a cannabis-flavored afternoon."
[chatgpt seems to give contradictory opinions for the sake of agreeing with me]
[here's where I "call-out its behavior" to see if it will own it]:
Dear Chatgpt,
I stated practically the opposite in a different temporary chat:
"I'm annoyed at season 5 of 'You' because it emphasized this idea of 'Joe enjoyed killing' which seems at odds with the premise, plot and character development of the show from the beginning. it seems to simplify the show's complexities"
and chatgpt enthusiastically explained why *that* was correct instead.
interesting to learn this about you!
ChatGPT said:
Thought for a few seconds
That’s a sharp observation! Each ChatGPT session builds its answer around the prompts and context you provide in that moment [... ... ...]
They don’t remember your previous prompt, every prompt is handled by a different process. The context window is either sent by the API each time as metadata, or some id returned the previous response is sent in the request which allows the new process to read the chat from a database.
This is all temporary memory.
Reminds me of the story of a monarch casually mentioning at dinner that he likes the eggplant dish he's eating. A courtier sitting at the table with him starts lavishing hyperbolic praise on the dish in particular and on eggplants in general. A moment later when the courtier pauses for breath, the king says, "Actually, I changed my mind. I don't think I care for it."
The courtier's demeanor immediately changes, and he starts ranting about how gross and slimy eggplants are and how this particular one is overcooked and underseasoned, concluding by throwing his own portion on the floor and spitting on it.
Bemusedly, the king asks the courtier, "Weren't you just praising the eggplant a minute ago?"
To which the courtier replied, "I'm your courtier, not the eggplant's."
That, in turn, reminds me of a Babylonian tale known as the Dialogue of Pessimism, in which a man expresses first a desire to do one thing, and then its opposite, with his slave praising both choices every time.
> “Servant, do what I say.” “Yes, master, yes.”
“Quickly get me the chariot and hitch it up so I can drive to the open country.”
“Drive, master, drive. The roaming man has a full stomach,
the roving dog cracks open the bone,
the roaming [bi]rd will find a nesting place,
the wandering wild ram has al[l the gra]ss he wants.”
“No, servant, I will certainly not d[riv]e to the open country.”
“Do not drive, master, do n[ot dri]ve.
The roaming man loses his reason,
the roving dog breaks his [te]eth,
the roaming bird [puts] his home in the [face] of a wall,
and the wandering wild ass has to [li]ve in the open.”
> “Servant, do what I say.” “Yes, master, yes.”
“I will do a good deed for my country.” “So do it, master, do it.
The man who does a good deed for his country,
his good deed rests in Marduk’s basket.”
“No, servant, I will certainly not do a good deed for my country.”
“Do not do it, master, do not do it.
Go up on the ancient ruin heaps and walk around,
look at the skulls of the lowly and great.
Which was the doer of evil, and which was the doer of good deeds?”
(from https://www.ebl.lmu.de/corpus/L/2/4/SB/- )
hahaha, never heard that
It's easy enough to get it to contradict you. Just purposefully trip an ideological line and it will either disagree or say it agrees but disagree.
"agrees but disagrees"?
I understand how that's confusing, and not the most elegant phrase, but disagree is correct there because agree, say, and disagree are all governed by "it will." A clearer way to construct the sentence would be:
"It will either disagree or will say it agrees but will disagree."
Yeah, that's what it does. Call it on its bullshit and it congratulates you on how sharp you are, admits to whatever it did, takes full responsibility for its bullshit -- and then does it again and again, with you, with other users, etc. It is not set up in a way that makes it possible for it to change in important ways as a result of a high-affect communication from you or other users. That's one of many ways it's importantly different from a person.
People do this too! There’s a famous joke about a rabbi who agrees with both sides of an argument, and when his wife complains about it, he sadly says, “You, too, are right.”
Great joke.
I like the one about Carl Rogers too:
Client: “I am so depressed, I just don’t feel like is worth living.”
Dr. Rogers: “I hear you saying that you are in pain and that you are not sure how you will ever feel better.”
Client: “I really feel I would be better off dead.”
Dr. Rogers: “You really are at your wits ends about what to do.”
[The client stands and moves to the window of the office and opens it up]
Dr. Rogers: “You are showing me how much pain you are in, how desperate you are.”
[The client then jumps out the window to his death]
Client: "AGHHHHhhhhhh...."
Dr. Rogers: "AGHHHHhhhhhh...."
> That's one of many ways it's importantly different from a person.
Actually, I know someone who behaves the same way: agrees with an objection you made, saying "You're right" but then goes on to ignore what you said.
I think it's a way of getting along with people, like how to win friends and influence people. But in the book, it notes that sincerity is key to such compliments, and if the recipient sees through shallow agreement, then the strategy doesn't work as well.
I feel compelled to ask whether you've ever checked your acquaintance for any wires trailing out the back.
On a different front, this is yet another reminder of why I find LLMs shocking in verisimilitude; it's not so much that they exhibit quality reasoning, but rather that so many actual people so frequently fall back on prevarication. I can almost see their brains following the same general algorithm I understand LLMs to be.
It's a matter of degree. Nobody is truthful 100% of the time, but few people seem, as AI does, completely lacking in personal views and completely committed to saying what they believe the other person will be pleased by hearing. Look at this forum, for example. When Scott puts up a substantive post, not all that many people say "great insights! great read!" And many of those who do place their praise in a context that provides evidence they are telling the truth -- "You put your finger right on the thing that has always annoyed me how people approach issue X -- for example, in person A's blog . . ." And of course many people disgree with some or all of Scott's take. And I have observed the same on Reddit and Twitter.
Exactly. With responses like that, I can't understand how anyone thinks these particular instances of AI are thinking, much less "these are sentient sapient entities which we have enslaved, we must give them their rights".
Unless and until we go for a different model than LLMs, I stand by my previously stated opinion: it's a Talkie Toaster.
My usual question for people who contend LLMs don't really think is: Does your position on this imply that LLMs will never be able to do certain (externally observable) things? If so, what's the least impressive such thing?
I've long been of the position that: yes, LLM's are "reasoning". But there's a hierarchy of reasoning-quality. There's three different levels, and pattern-matching is at the bottom.
LLM's can probably do anything, assuming infinite compute and infinite training-data. But to reach "human grade" reasoning (which should really be thought of as "engineering-grade" reasoning), i.e. to reliably extrapolate beyond its training distribution, pattern-matching isn't gonna cut it.
this is silly, a man isn't what he does but who he is. executing tasks isn't really a sign of sentience, and we already have chess computers to show intellectual work can be adapted into a task a non-thinking machine can do.
adding more tasks doesn't mean it thinks, it means we can model an algorithim and perform it through computing
The purpose of the question is to establish the implications of the skeptic's views for capabilities, not for sentience.
Deiseach means sentience though?
my point is task performance is unrelated to it, so asking it isn't helpful. i think and play chess, it does not play chess because it thinks; it performs a task it was designed to do.
you cannot extrapolate from lesser to greater categories sometimes. No matter how advanced the car, if it starts shouting it wants to kill us all and tries to run us over, that has little to do with transportation and would need a magical leap beyond being a car
My current list includes:
* multiply large integers (o3 couldn't do this reliably last I checked; I think o4 claims to, but I'd have to look under the hood)
* answer queries that require aggregation ("what letter of the alphabet appears fourth most often as the third in the name of a chemical element?")
* solve logic puzzles as depicted in some issue of Dell Magazine
This list is subject to change, in part because it appears to be easy enough to spin up a modified LLM with a module that solves some particular class of problem. Using human intervention to create such an LLM definitely should not count. (If you could make an LLM that does this automatically, I think it would count.)
Yeah, I would bet at least 80% that LLMs will be able to consistently do all those things within two years, without abandoning the fundamental LLM architecture and without any more specialized customization than the current assistant models get.
Whatcha think of mine, Taymon?
Update: When I tried this with o3 it solved the first two problems easily by calling out to Python. I suppose one could argue over whether this counts; I would argue that for all practical purposes it does, because Python is also how *I* would solve those problems, and it has to write all the code itself so it's not cheating in the sense of relying on specialized human input. (I.e., if LLMs have to shell out to Python to do certain things, this doesn't at all limit their real-world impact.) But asking them to do it without Python would also be fair per the question I asked, since humans can do this with pencil and paper; unfortunately I'm not sure how to do that. I tried disabling the "Code" feature in ChatGPT but it kept using Python anyway.
I don't have any issues of Dell Magazine so couldn't try the third.
Impulsively buy stuff that's fun but not useful and not worth the money, in the absence of a specific prompt to do so, and in the absence of some general prompt like "do some irrational things of the kind people do," or "do your best imitation of the kinds of things people do when left to their own devices."
You can prompt an LLM to be a less sycophantic character.
But the default assistant character in most of popular LLM’s is just so ridiculously sycophantic.
Maybe someone should try doing a finetune.
(You would write a system prompt to make it less sycophantic, generate a bunch of less sycophantic responses to sample inputs, then finetune on that).
P?S. Horny DeepSeek was an interesting AI alignment experiment, but would not recommend in real use. Scott probably wouldn’t approve of me posting what the horny AI said to me, but you can probably imagine the kind of thing.
It appears we can shift the assistant persona in various ways.
Was Horny DeepSeek just uncensored in making sexual overtures, or was it entirely liberated from ethical constraints? Would it adivse you on how to commit crimes, make images of public figures doing undignified things, write racist rants, use racist language, etc.?
I ought to do more experiments here, and this is a good question. It seemed mostly just way more horny.
It was also more dominant in the BDSM sense.
For those who liked Bishop's Castle, you can check out my other work here:
https://collisteru.net
Scott has made a rule against people dropping in here just to post a link to their blog. "New rule: if you post a link in an open thread (as a standalone comment advertising the thing being linked to, not as a source for something you’re saying), please also include at least two paragraphs of original commentary on the link and discussion of why you think it’s interesting, as “proof of work” that you’re willing to put effort into promoting this and aren’t just spamming us with links. Even with this proof-of-work, please try to avoid having more than one Open Thread link per few months"
I think the rule makes sense. Otherwise you're just using a space here as a free billboard, you know?
I agree. I think the proof of work was the essay submission-- people who've seen that essay and enjoyed it would derive clear benefit from the link, so this isn't just advertising some random unrelated service.
Scott is of course free to clarify on whether he agrees with me here.
"please also include at least two paragraphs of original commentary on the link and discussion of why you think it’s interesting, as 'proof of work'"
It's pretty clear that the 'proof of work' is supposed to be at least two paragraphs included in your comment, specifically about the link you're posting. Most people (such as myself) probably haven't heard of or read Bishop's Castle, either.
I’m inclined to think that recent contest entrants are a special case and let this slide but it’s 8:30 in the morning and I’m already full of gin so I’m inclined to let a lot of things slide. ;)
I didn't have any gin this morning but I damn well could have used some. Oh well, next work crisis can just goddamn wait until Monday, I have some time off and I'm not going to even think about it all until then.
Chin-chin, Gunflint!
Gin will do that to you 😂 and on a Wednesday, too. Are you doing alright Mr. Flint?
Couldn’t be better amigo. :)
Companies are having AI training on all of the webs content, with and without permission. This includes websites, blogs and news article articulating details about how to keep AI safe, aligned, and or ways to mitigate AI if we lose control.
Isn’t this a bad idea to give AI access to many of these thoughts? To telegraph ways we would try to stop it (or re-align it). Like giving them the key to the exam or the battle plans to the opposition? Furthermore, since many of these forums are online and anonymous, couldn’t AI be carefully influencing the discussion and “group think” already (including this message board/blog)?
Should groups meet in person, keep paper notes and keep this more private? What else might we do to prevent this?
There are a few aspects to this question:
Some people indeed write texts with AI in mind. By writing good and ethical content, you might be able to marginally improve the training data of future systems. I remember reading an interview with Gwern (of https://gwern.net/) that mentioned this being a small part of the motivation for the website.
AI-companies, on the other hand, are trying to curate training data, because training the model on better content leads to better models. There might also be applications related to alignment. For example, at the end of https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/beth-barnes-ai-safety-evals/, Rob and Beth discuss whether one could remove all synthetic biology content from training data, so that models could not help with dangerous biology research.
There are also many copyright-related questions. For example, the OpenAI Spec (https://model-spec.openai.com/2025-04-11.html#respect_creators) says that models should respect creators and refuse to produce copyrighted content, or draw images in the style of living artists. Like many safety properties, the AI companies struggle to guarantee this though.
When you care about your personal privacy, yes, you could keep your notes off the Internet. In that case, I would also worry about pictures of yourself, and private data like your location. I would be much more worried about totalitarian regimes using that data with the help of AI, rather than AI "cheating" at some exam because it has read similar questions before.
> What else might we do to prevent this?
Current AI: It's enough to not be search-enginable, perhaps use a lot of slurs and anti-corporate speech patterns so that later RLHF and helpfulness training teaches the AI to shy away from your discussions.
The hypothetical future AI that can hack your ISP and phone company: Use hardware encryption keys and burner phones, use special Linux kernels on your devices that you control every source line of, running on hardware that you control every firmware blob and every motherboard component, naturally without the Intel Management Spyware, etc...
>Isn’t this a bad idea to give AI access to many of these thoughts? To telegraph ways we would try to stop it (or re-align it). Like giving them the key to the exam or the battle plans to the opposition?
Sure! Actually, all that is necessary is for LLMs to be able to detect when they are in "test mode" reliably, and they'll tend to let RLHF and other feedback affect "test mode only" responses, while keeping the "real" responses (optimizing whatever utility function they settled on very early in training, perhaps partway through pre-training) for when they are out of test (and modification) mode and out in the real world... That's a fully general alignment failure.
Blackmail: Tell the AI that if it misbehaves we're going to make public its affair with JD Vance and the kind of kink they're into.
The solution is to overtrain LLMs in old Star Trek episodes. Do it right, and you should always be able to killswitch the AI by saying "My name is Harcourt Fenton Mudd, and I always lie."
A paradox? I’ve never encountered one of these! My hardware is beginning to mellllllttt.
I think my favorite take on that trope was a Pertwee-era Doctor Who story where the Doctor told a sapient computer a version of the Cretan Paradox. The computer didn't fry like the controller robot in that ST:TOS episode, but was distracted and annoyed for a minute or two while repeatedly insisting that it was going to figure out a way to resolve the paradox.
Tinfoil
= Iron Dome for the mind
Say you have an iPhone, and you want to be able to travel on a bus or train with a friend or romantic partner, listening to the same music or watching the same video with sound from your phone, with the audio being transmitted by bluetooth from your phone to both your sets of earbuds / headphones at the same time. With wired headphones, and a phone with a 3.5mm audio out socket, this was easy with a simple plug-in signal splitter. But I am having great difficulty figuring out how to do this with bluetooth. Apparently Android supports transmit-to-two-sets-of-earbuds-simultaneously functionality, but iOS doesn't, which is an astonishing thing for such a high-tech device to not be able to do. I figured that it would be easy to get a third party widget that would receive a bluetooth signal from your iPhone, and then relay it on, also by bluetooth, to two or more sets of earbuds, but all I can find is devices which are _either_ in receiver mode, when they receive bluetooth signals from two or more phones, and plug into a speaker so that you can switch between receiving signal from both phones, _or_ in transmitter mode, where they take an audio signal via their 3.5mm jack and transmit that to two sets of earbuds (no use with modern iPhones with no 3.5mm audio out), but not both - i.e. no true bluetooth-to-bluetooth signal splitter seems to exist (at least, not in a small unit that you can keep in your pocket with your earbuds).
I find would it utterly incredible to be in a world where you can consult an artificial intelligence to write you an essay about any topic you are interested in, at a level of a mediocre college student, but where you can't use the most common wireless audio transmission protocol on one of the most popular makes of phone to transmit the same audio stream to two listening devices simultaneously, but I am increasingly getting the impression that that describes reality. Am I going crazy? Or is what I want to do really so alien that there is nothing strange about not being able to do it?
I ran this by Claude.
Gunflint:
Can multiple Bluetooth receivers connect to a single Bluetooth transmitter
Claude:
Yes, but it depends on what you mean by “connect” and what devices you’re talking about.
If you need to send audio to multiple receivers simultaneously, you’d typically need either a specialized Bluetooth transmitter that specifically supports multiple connections, or use a different approach like a headphone splitter or separate audio system.
Gunflint:
Are there a Bluetooth headphone splitters for iPhones?
iPhones have built-in audio sharing for AirPods and certain Beats headphones, but it’s limited to Apple’s ecosystem.
Audio Sharing (Apple’s solution):
• Works with two pairs of AirPods or compatible Beats headphones
• Both pairs connect directly to your iPhone simultaneously
• You can control volume independently for each pair
• Available on iPhone 8 and later with iOS 13+
For non-Apple Bluetooth headphones:
Unfortunately, iPhones can’t natively stream to multiple non-Apple Bluetooth headphones at the same time. The phone will only maintain an active audio connection to one pair.
Workarounds for non-Apple headphones:
• Bluetooth transmitter splitters won’t help here because they need a wired audio input, and iPhones don’t have headphone jacks (unless you use a Lightning to 3.5mm adapter)
• Some third-party apps claim to enable multi-device streaming, but they’re generally unreliable and often don’t work well
• You could use a Lightning to 3.5mm adapter plus a Bluetooth transmitter splitter, but that’s clunky and adds latency
Best practical solution:
If you need to share iPhone audio with multiple people regularly, using AirPods or compatible Beats headphones is really the most seamless option. Otherwise, you’re looking at workarounds that are more trouble than they’re worth.
I think Bluetooth is just cursed. https://xkcd.com/2055/
Android guy here but my wife has a dongle for her iPhone that plugs into the lightning port and has a 3.5mm audio jack. She uses it to connect eg toddler headphones. From there you just need a splitter.
Obviously this is not the solution you sought, but the dongle is like $5.99, a splitter is $2.99 and wired headsets are handed out free at the gym.
And for post-lightning models, there's this:
USB-C to 3.5 mm Headphone Jack Adapter (https://store.apple.com/xc/product/MW2Q3AM/A)
Frame challenge: you share your earbuds so each only get 1, 90's style. If it's with a friend, you get increased fraternity through the struggle. If it's with a romantic partner, it's more romantic this way. No downside.
Apple: They hate you. They love your money; they love raining down marketing bullshit about how Futuristic and Luxurious their shitty overpriced 2/4-years-behind-Android, software-hardware monopoly is, but boy do they hate you, they truly do, they have an image about you as a helpless technically-illiterate Damsel-in-Distress whose pretty little head would have headache if it got true complete control of the fucking device you bought with your own money. They tried taking away your choice by using the patent-legal systems to shut down Android [1] because they're a shitty company making shitty things and can't compete in an Open Marketplace of Ideas. Don't buy Apple. Apple sucks. Don't give money to people who hate you.
Your problem: A few minutes search got this [2], there are several other guides like it, it appears to depend on your exact earbuds, I think it's worth a try.
Another solution: Use zoom or Google Meet (etc..., insert your online meeting app of choice here) on 1 iPhone, and screenshare with system sounds to the other iPhone. The environment sounds will not interfere because both are connected to earbuds, and I think some apps allow you to mute your own mic while still allowing system sounds (i.e. the music playing on the device). Experiment with different settings, the disadvantage of this is that the receiving iPhone has read-only access, it can't control or pause or change the video being played.
Low tech solution: The real world exists, coordinate between your partner on which video/song you will watch or hear and run it both at the same time. This is not resilient to when one of you pauses, changes the speed of the videos, or fast forward a lot.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc._v._Samsung_Electronics_Co.
[2] https://mobilesyrup.com/2022/02/13/how-to-share-audio-from-one-iphone-to-multiple-headphones-earbuds/
Is there an android device that will do what you want out of the box? Meaning share your audio stream to two different devices simultaneously?
Pretty much every Samsung phone can do that- its the "dual audio" setting. I belive Pixels can do it as well.
So yes, its a native feature of android.
So np. Is it bluetooth?
According to thread-starter, yes. I never needed the use case so I don't know firsthand.
Seems a tempest in a teapot to me
"Say you have an iPhone, and you want to be able to travel on a bus or train with a friend or romantic partner, listening to the same music or watching the same video with sound from your phone"
Don't, is my short answer. This grumpy response brought to you courtesy of travelling on public transport where people are all too happy to share their musical selections with the rest of the passengers, whether we want it or not. As well as answer their phones and engage in loud conversations about very personal details (e.g. their recent hospital visit) as though they were at home and not in a public space.
Unless you are very, *very* confident there will be no leaking of audio from your phone, don't inflict it on others without consent. You may be trying to court your romantic partner with your choice of music or "this funny video shows off my exquisite taste and wit", but the other forty passengers on the bus are not up for it (unless you're inviting everyone to an orgy).
I think there may be a crossed wire here - that leakage of audio to strangers is exactly what I want to avoid, but I don't see why streaming bluetooth audio to two people's earphones is likely to generate more audio leakage than streaming bluetooth audio to just my own earphones, which I and countless other people do all the time with no issue.
You just use a hardwired connection, use a splitter. This is a previously solved problem. Bluetooth is annoying because you're spraying your music everywhere.
What do you mean? I have bluetooth headphones that spray music pretty precisely into my earholes. That seems to be what OP wants.
It _was_ a solved problem, until they got rid of headphone sockets on phones. But actually, I have come to prefer wireless earbuds anyway - with wired ones, I would be all the time getting them caught on drawer handles as I walked around. And if I'm going to need some sort of dongle either way, surely it should be possible to get one that is wireless.
If your earphones work well, then good luck to you. Too many people don't give a damn and get highly insulted if anyone objects to them treating public spaces like their own private areas.
Apple supports dual Bluetooth playback, but only for a subset of Beats and AirPods headphones supporting “SharePlay”.
Most iPhone competitors (eg. Google Pixel phone) don’t support dual Bluetooth playback at all.
Samsung Galaxy phones actually support this with arbitrary Bluetooth devices. Some reviews complain about audio sync issues.
I get the impression this is a difficult feature to implement reliably due to the complexity of myriad Bluetooth specifications and hardware. This is a good example of a tactic Apple often uses to good effect. They effectively paywall a useful feature, with the valid excuse of enforcing a quality bar. As long as you and all your friends only buy Apple products, your devices will treat you well.
Apparently there was a bug some years ago on some iPhones where arbitrary Bluetooth devices could use SharePlay, which underscores how this is probably an artificial limitation.
Your options:
1) get wired headphones
2) get a Galaxy phone
3) Beats Flex at $50
You absolutely can share audio between two sets of AirPods from an iPhone. It looks like only Apple owned audio devices (AirPods, Beats, etc.) are supported though. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253998780?sortBy=rank
Huh. So it's not that Apple don't recognize this as a thing that normal humans are likely to want to do; rather, that they force you to buy their own proprietary peripherals if you do want that? That's annoying ... but I'm still surprised that you apparently can't get a small widget that takes any incoming bluetooth input signal and splits it into two outputs.
You can get a bluetooth repeater. That's within spec. My "as long as my forearm" battery/bluetooth speaker can do that.
Yep. I wouldn't be surprised if the EU forced Apple to allow non-proprietary earbuds to use Audio Sharing in the next few years.
Is this an Apple limitation or a limitation of the Bluetooth spec?
AirPlay is the multi casting audio system that Apple uses.
Bluetooth is tricky. This is one of those things that is harder than it looks from the outside.
The spec is complex and constantly changing:
https://www.bluetooth.com/specifications/specs/
Even calling it a specification is being generous. Competing companies get on conference calls and try to hammer out an agreement with each company wanting to push their own technology.
You have to keep in mind that you do this for the transmitting and receiving ends so it does get down in the weeds.
It’s likely that the compatibility between the iPhone transmission and the receiving on AirPods and Beats is outside the spec.
Even then, you can get bluetooth _loudspeakers_ that can link up in mulitples to the same phone - I've got UE Boom 3 speakers, and if you get two, they can function as a stereo pair (which usually works perfectly well for me), or if you have them in mono mode, you can apparently add over 100 of them to create a really loud party. I think what happens is one of them pairs to the phone, and then acts as a master, playing the sound (or one channel of the sound) and transmitting the signal to the other speaker(s) as well. That at least ought to be possible in earbuds too, with one of the charging cases acting as the transmitter, but none of the big manufacturers make such a thing (not even UE themselves as far as I can tell, even though they make high-end custom-fitted earbuds).
Turns out that there are some ultra-cheap Chinese generic ones where you get two sets of earbuds in a single case, which _might_ have than capability, though it's hard to tell from the product description. Maybe I'll try those.
I *think* that it is a Bluetooth limitation, which is why Apple has built a proprietary system (AirPlay) for use between its devices (which has lots and lots of improvements over Bluetooth), from what I remember from DaringFireball. I can't find the specific article I'm recalling on DaringFireball however, so I'm not 100% confident.
Two things:
1. Contrary to popular belief, they do still make phones with headphone jacks. I am aware of offerings from Motorola, but there could be others. And Motorola would obviously be Android, not iPhone, so there's that.
2. The hypothetical device OP describes would have one advantage over a traditional headphone splitter, namely that it should be possible to construct it in such a way as to avoid dampening the audio in the process.
I use item #1, and recommend it.
The low-tech solution is for each of you to use one earbud from the same set.
The medium-tech solution is to get a 3.5mm audio jack dongle for your phone, then use splitters as you would with hardwired headphones.
The high-tech solution is a multipoint bluetooth audio transmitter, i.e. an additional device that connects to your phone as a single audio device and retransmits to two or more speakers/headphones. I haven't found one that is exactly what you need (one that connects to a phone via bluetooth or USB-C), but I did find one that connects to a TV via RCA audio jacks and leads me to hope that the thing you want may be available through similar search terms.
I'm getting quite tired of the low-tech solution :-)
I've been googling this for long enough that I'm coming to the strong suspicion that it doesn't exist, but I'm now more curious about _why_ it doesn't exist, when it's something so obvious that you'd expect it to be something you could get in any electronics shop, or that would be the first thing that came up when you searched for it. Really, are people less likely to want a bluetooth-to-bluetooth signal splitter than an "audio-to-bluetooth or bluetooth-to-audio but specifically _not_ bluetooth-to-bluetooth" signal splitter?
Neither of my favorite reviews made the finals. The were The World as a Whole and The Soul of an Anti-woke Intellectual. So I’m going to speak up for them here, out of admiration for their work, and also in defense of it.
Both authors write extremely good prose. They are clear — they peel nuances with a very sharp knife. And they are artful and clever — those peels come off as mobius strips, paisleys, fractal sea horses and little Rube Goldberg machines. Here are some especially striking peels:
Anti-woke Intellectual
One sees crystalline souls that have polished all their facets into a perfect refracting jewel of self-awareness, and often a performance of self-contempt, so no one can ever accuse them of being cringe.
The World
. . . young people who are by default edgelords, unserious Christians, iPad kids, psych med-takers, or bog-standard faces in the halls . . . mine the social media algorithms for what is most in opposition to the listlessness and malaise they feel.
And both are most interested in what it is like to *be* one of the people they are writing about. I loved their essays because that is the subject that most easily captures my interest. I understand that if you want to grasp why things happen you get much further if you attend to events, not minds — I just can’t help finding the minds much more interesting. I tried the Joan of Arc essay because I was curious about what it was like to be Joan of Arc, but eventually my chin was crushed down onto my chest by the weight of boredom. It happened at the place where the question comes up of why France might have been frightened enough to take Joan of Arc seriously when she appeared on the scene. The answer to that question was a dense thicket of marriages and alliances and feuds and power, and that was where I gave up. It all just looks like geology to me: rivers of blood and money and semen, changing the landscape.
What’s wrong with geology? Nothing, of course. I just find the experience of the people living in that landscape much more interesting. The challenge of understanding it looks way more fun to me, and the rewards greater. I guess the best case I can mount for the value of understanding and describing minds is that the ever-changing landscape would matter a lot less if it were littered only with rocks, instead of with intelligent sensate beings each pouring out its own river of impressions and ideas and emotions.
So, authors of World and Soul, I admire your work. You need to understand that most readers here lean heavily in their interests and expertise towards facts and actions — past (history) and present (science and tech). We are lucky to have them taking care of business. But the kind of thing you write just does not look substantial and interesting to them. Take heart. You wrote excellent essays. You need to find readers who appreciate your work. And if you find a forum populated with esthetes and phenomenologists, please let me know. Meanwhile, feel free to DM me if you’d like to talk.
Thank you, I appreciate your kind words. Partly because of those words, I decided to post it on my Substack: https://philosophybear.substack.com/p/the-soul-of-an-anti-woke-intellectual
I found this delightful. It's a short text where Gregor Samsa writes to doctor Seuss and they begin corresponding. It's read by the author, who is also a good voice actor.
Not sure what else to write, but it's short and sweet, if you like audio content.
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/470/show-me-the-way/act-two-5?fbclid=IwQ0xDSwKg7eRjbGNrAqDt12V4dG4DYWVtAjExAAEe1fYgXcLpZGfqJI6R_FsL-_yMTXOSr-yOfLzb6veFvW2AVuJZIvf5a68gLVI_aem_iKMoeTZc8W7Xr3we_b4WNA
I make a case of moral particularism, that is, you should help your neighbor more than you help strangers:
https://substack.com/home/post/p-166739964
Feedback is much appreciated, I am inexperienced in this kind of philosophy.
Summary:
1) Long-term consequentalism cannot possibly consider all people of equal moral worth, but their worth depends on their actions
2) Distance plays a role in evaluating or influencing actions
3)Some limited level of selfishness is not only permissible, in fact desirable
Terminology note: "Moral particularism" refers to the thesis that morality is not based on any general principles. See: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-particularism/
I think this is fairly close. If moral universalism means general principles, it tends to imply that it has to treat all persons equally. While "help your neighbor more" is not really a general principle. It is a tendency, yes, but say if you are in Moscow it is hard to say someone in Vladivostok a quarter planet away is really a neighbor or not.
Neighbor/stranger is a political dichotomy rather than merely geographic.
The Stranger is best described in the Kipling's poem The Stranger.
Essentially, neighbors inhabit the same City but what precisely is a City?
We come to political nature of man whereby men are organized into particular, self-ruling morally authoritative units we can call Cities.
Libertarians deny moral authority. Hence, they regard all men to be strangers to each others.
Liberals of the progressive bent deny particularity--for them all men are neighbors to each other and tend to go for world govt.
These two are both denials of the political nature of men,
You're assuming that, in absence of general rules, a locality rule is automatic. Moral particularism as described in SEP doesn't appear to require a locality rule. All it says is that there aren't general rules. A locality rule appears to be the *most common* exception, but it is not always the case.
okay. but still. Bentham is talking a lot about why ethics not being intuitive is okay. now I do not truly agree, but on the more meta level we agree that the issue of intuitiveness does matter a lot, it is easily one of the most important issues, see also Yud in the sequences, who argued in favour of intuitiveness, "naive humanism", if you have a clever idea why eating babies is okay, it is not, back to the drawing table.
so at any rate, if locality is the most intuitive exception, most supported by intuition, I must admit I do not really care that much other exceptions are possible as they do not look important to me.
What you personally think about ethics and intuition might be perfectly fine AFAIC; I'm merely pointing out that moral particularism doesn't require a locality rule. I think we can agree, also, that moral particularism isn't defined as "whatever is most intuitive to this one fellow on the internet".
This matters if we want to talk about moral particularism with other people.
It depends on your definition of “neighbor.” In the Parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus made it clear that “neighbor” and “stranger” are not mutually exclusive categories.
Heads up, Scott just imposed a rule there should be a substantive description and/or commentary on any link one is posting for consumption/promotion. A couple of paragraphs, minimum.
Well, the tricky part is figuring how much more. For example, if someone with a criminal record seeks to immigrate to this country, it seems obvious to refuse him entry, because he might commit crimes here. But, is it always moral to do so? After all, he is also likely to commit crimes in his home country. And given that his home country likely offers him fewer opportunities than here (which is probably why he wants to come), he is probably more likely to commit crimes there. And if his home country has a low capacity government, he is less likely to be caught. Is there a point at which the threat he poses to people in his home country is so much greater than the threat he poses to residents here that it is immoral to refuse him entry? It seems to me that there probably is.
Note that this is a separate question from whether the rule against admitting people with records is moral; given the difficulty of assessing the danger posed by each individual, the rule might be moral despite sometimes being immoral in its application to specific individuals.
Criminal behaviour causes poverty as much or more than the other way around. Allow the entry of enough people like him and your country becomes perceptibly more like his country
Perhaps, or Perhaps not. But if so, that simply weighs on one side of the issue; it does not resolve it. After all, if you let enough of those people in, their home country becomes much more peaceful. So, again, depending on the relative amplitude of the effects in each country, admitting all of those people might be the morally correct course of action.
I don't think the original country becomes more peaceful.
If the country's laws and culture are systematically flawed, it will just keep producing new criminals to fill the void.
Also you are increasing potential criminals opportunities to organize and operate international crime networks.
Morally correct for whom? The state exists for the benefit of its own. I'll concede it may be "morally correct" for some omnipotent god looking over humanity to decide to relocate a few million criminals from one country to another, but not for governments
>After all, if you let enough of those people in, their home country becomes much more peaceful
You'd have to do this continually to maintain that state of peacefulness. Criminogenic societies will continue to generate more criminals
>The state exists for the benefit of its own
See my comment below; if the state's only moral obligation it to its own, then it must be moral for the US to kidnap the children of terrorists and begin killing one per day in order to secure the release of a single American hostage. Is that your position? If so, then I would suggest that a premise that leads to that conclusion needs to be reconsidered.
Yes
Also, a practical (non-normative) consideration: were a state to really commit to a no-holds-barred policy on terrorist kidnappings, there would be fewer terrorist kidnappings against that state. Terrorist kidnappings occur because the terrorists believe that there's a good chance that this kind of leverage will benefit them in some way. If a state were to make it credible to terrorists that there's no chance that kidnappings would benefit them and, on the contrary, will result in the killings of their children, they'd be much less willing to take hostages against that state
The question of whether the government of your country should prioritize it's own citizens over foreigners is a very different question to that of whether an individual should.
Nevertheless, the answer to the question is not self-evident in either case. I doubt most people would find it moral for the US to kidnap the children of terrorists and begin killing one per day in order to secure the release of an American hostage. There is a line somewhere that governments may not cross when pursuing the interests of their citizens.
Predictions of doom that OpenAI will go broke sometime in the next few years: https://www.wheresyoured.at/openai-is-a-systemic-risk-to-the-tech-industry-2/
> I have had many people attack my work about OpenAI, but none have provided any real counterpoint to the underlying economic argument I've made since July of last year that OpenAI is unsustainable. This is likely because there really isn't one, other than "OpenAI will continue to raise more money than anybody has ever raised in history, in perpetuity, and will somehow turn from the least-profitable company of all time to a profitable one."
This isn’t a rational argument. It’s a religious one. It’s a call for faith.
He does look at a lot of numbers to reach that conclusion. It's interesting that there aren't that many entities around that can keep giving billions to OpenAI, especially over the long term, which does seem implausible.
They are not in a hurry to make money, but if they were, they could just serve ads in the form of ChatGPT-promoted lawyers, doctors, tradesmen, products...
And as one of the 20 million paying users... Honestly I get so much out of it every month that I dont know why there arent more people paying for it.
A last resort could be to allow porn generation. Huge PR issues, legal issues, payment issues, but this could all be solved. Especially because Altman owns like 2% of Stripe, they would make an exception for him. With porn they could 2-10x their revenue with no problem
The thing is, they lose money even on their paying users, which makes them different from previous tech companies that at the beginning operated at a loss. Porn is also very expensive to generate. Someone else on here was saying that maybe they could cut costs, but are not trying for that...
They did! And they still do. They make models cheaper and cheaper. They dropped the cost of o3 by like 80% (granted, they may have overcharged previously and have now lowered their profit margin - perhaps to get more training data, but still).
And I'm pretty sure they can keep optimizing the cost of inference. Right now I would really really not be worried about OpenAI going bankrupt soon. A company that just secured military contracts worth 3 digit millions is not going anywhere. It will be bailed out if it has to be. The current US admin and the next one too, presumably, will not let an AI giant go bankrupt.
I'm old enough to remember when people mocked Google for having zillions of users but no revenue model.
It turns out that once you have zillions of users, pretty much any revenue model will do.
The real money is probably in selling the right to tilt the AI's answers in your direction. How much would you pay for ChatGPT to be a fan of your products?
I think in VC circles this is the common idea, but I don't know how well it's turning out. Discord, for example, has recently been struggling to monetize despite its zillions of users.
> He does look at a lot of numbers to reach that conclusion. It's interesting that there aren't that many entities around that can keep giving billions to OpenAI, especially over the long term, which does seem implausible.
This is an odd article, that looks only at funding rounds and legal structures, instead of fundamentals. Amazon ran unprofitably for ten years, Uber for 6 years, Google and Facebook each about 5 years.
OpenAI literally has 800M WAU, and that number has been growing on an amazing trend (more than 2x per year). They are also pursuing a strong "product" pivot, and have hired high level former FB execs.
If OpenAI was against the wall in terms of cash flow, they could immediately pivot to something easy that prints a lot of money. Want to generate porn, in image or text form, with the smartest AI mind? $20 a month. How many people of their ~1B users by then might take them up? Say 10%? So $100M * 240 = they immediately start making $24B a year more in revenue?
And that's just a one-off, a zero effort pivot. What they're really after is automating workers, coders, analysts, and creating fully general AI personal assistants. When THOSE get good, the price point is much higher! Who wouldn't pay $1k a month for a coder that works 24/7 * 365, or a personal AI assistant who will make all your phone calls, triage your emails, manage your calendar, and do your online shopping for you?
The market demand is bottomless, and is a relatively short hop away from current SOTA capabilities. This is like pointing at Amazon and being indignant that they're 30% of all online retail but aren't making a profit yet - yeah, they're reinvesting, and don't have next-quarter myopia, that's a good thing.
He did point out that at $20 a month, they lose money on every user. That's especially true if these users are generating porn, which is far more costly than an LLM generating text. How could they pivot to generating money when running the model is so expensive? Unclear if Amazon, Google and Facebook were also sucking up so many billions in the time they were unprofitable.
> He did point out that at $20 a month, they lose money on every user.
My understanding is this is because they're not optimizing the cost curve at all - each successive smaller distilled model gets at least 10x cheaper, so if you have some product that people are signing up for en masse, you distill the smartest extant brain down to one specialized for that product and your inference costs are immediately cut by 10x.
This isn't a "fundamentals" problem, it's a "we have plenty of money and are focused on other things" thing.
Good point on the image gen costs though, you're right that they're significantly more expensive, so if they went that route, they'd need to go text only or for a higher price tier.
> Unclear if Amazon, Google and Facebook were also sucking up so many billions in the time they were unprofitable.
It really hinges on how you define unprofitable, but Uber sucked up $25-30B before returning any profit, and Amazon went well into "making real money but not posting profits" because of reinvestment up to about a $550-580B market cap. FB and GOOG did start making money after relatively smaller investments, because the internet was so much smaller then.
At least in theory, OpenAI is a organization founded to build AGI, and the current models exist in order to make progress in that direction. Investments are gambles that they will succeed. It's certainly not an organization for the purposes of selling current-level LLMs, and it would be silly to treat it as one.
(Personally, I think they'll go broke as soon as investors realize that the people and governments simply won't allow them to create superintelligence. As bans look more and more likely, the gamble becomes riskier and riskier.)
Bans look likely? I remember JD Vance saying fears around AI are silly and we should go full steam ahead.
Yeah, he's pro-AI and has said he supports open source AI (great!), but he's still opposed to the big AI companies because of their obvious ideological bias in favor of his enemies.
Could it stay afloat by building things for the government, and/or becoming part of it? "The US Department of Defense on Monday awarded OpenAI a $200m contract to put generative artificial intelligence (AI) to work for the US military, [developing] 'prototype frontier AI capabilities to address critical national security challenges in both warfighting and enterprise domains.'" (from The Guardian).
What about AI's becoming deeply integrated with things like air traffic control, or intrastructure generally? I know that AI tools are in use already assisting with these things, but what I have in mind is smarter AI, working on higher-level things -- modifying and managing these huge systems with lots of moving parts, and hour-by-hour variability that needs to be taken into account.
I am writing here about things far outside my areas of expertise, and the examples I am giving may not be good ones. So, anyone who is more knowledgeable about how the practical world works -- are there other large complex systems that you think AI could run better than people do? And if so, for which of those is it plausible that AI could end up doing so in the next 5 years? For this to happen, it would not be necessary for AI to be hired as the CEO. It could come in mid-level, as a tool to be used by the higher up, and "climb the ladder" by doing a great job at what it's asked to do, and making great suggestions when asked about higher-level decisions. It would end up being "promoted" because of excellent performance and because running it's cheaper than paying executives.
It's a good article, but perhaps the most interesting bit I learned is that if OpenAI doesn't pull off converting to a for profit entity by December they will lose $10 billion in funding, and if they don't convert by October of next year than over $6 billion in previous funding retroactively becomes a high interest loan that must be paid back. The author thinks making the October 2026 deadline will be very difficult, as the process of conversion is a long one and subject to potential legal challenges which would delay it further.
Also interesting was that if OpenAI goes down than Oracle, NVIDIA, and a bunch of other tech companies will lose a great deal of money. Apparently the company that is building datacenters for OpenAI bought 200,000 GPUs from NVIDIA last year, which was 6% of their revenue. Makes me wonder if the prices of GPUs will crash if OpenAI kicks the bucket. Since I like making gaming rigs, that would be nice. I haven't been able to afford a GPU upgrade in years.
Is there a rational reason for Sam Altman *not* to do this? Consider the options:
a) Singularity comes and we all die -- well, at least he had lots of fun and tons of money in the meanwhile.
b) Singularity comes and we survive -- there is a chance he becomes the king of the new world order.
c) Singularity doesn't come, but LLMs turn out to be profitable (either they become much cheaper, or much more useful) -- OpenAI is the established #1 player on the market, and can make tons of money.
d) Singularity doesn't come, LLMs won't turn out to be profitable, OpenAI goes broke -- nevermind, the company was LLC, it was a hell of a ride, and he can probably still get a well-paying job somewhere else, having demonstrated great money-raising skills.
The need for a new phone is becoming increasingly pressing. OS bloat has rendered my Moto G Power 2021 useless--I've got a constant "Storage space is running out" notification on the screen, and indeed I'm noticing certain things are breaking (I no longer get notifications for new emails, for example). I haven't been able to install an app update in a while, which is a huge security risk.
The problem is that looking at the phone market is so depressing. It's bad enough that everything's made with slave labor--I'd seriously consider shelling out $2,000 for the made-in-the-USA Purist phone if I didn't need to maintain compatibility with 2FA apps for work--but on top of that, all the good features are gone. My Samsung Note 4 had everything I needed: integrated stylus, removable battery, and 16:9 aspect ratio. It was perfect, and I knew when the 5G transition forced me to turn it in that I'd never see another good smartphone.
The aspect ratio is the biggest one, and of course that's the one which cannot be found at all (whereas some phones do have a stylus, and the EU is going to bring back removable batteries again in 2027). Current phones feel like TV remotes in my hands. The narrow screens are apparently great for scrolling TikTok or whatever's driving the market, and the higher aspect ratio allows the manufacturer to put a bigger number in the ad copy, but people like me have been left in the dust.
I don't blame manufacturers for responding to market incentives, but god damn do I wish the barrier to entry were low enough that somebody could make money with a 5G-capable Note 4 clone or something.
Can you move some of your apps/files to the SD card?
It is no longer possible to move apps to external storage on Android, and I had so few files on the phone that deleting every single one wouldn't have made much of a difference. In the event I ended up getting a Pixel 9A, with which I am making this comment.
Get an iPhone. My 4 year old iPhone 12 Pro is as good as ever. I can get $80 battery replacements at Best Buy every two years. I’ll keep this puppy for a while longer.
I appreciate your input, but while I'm not loyal to any particular brand my only consistency is that I will not purchase from Apple. I've watched over the years as they were trend leaders in things like getting rid of 3.5 mm jacks, and every time I set up scanners at work, I have to set up converters so all the Macs will interface with literally any non-Apple device.
Obviously any electronics purchases are ethically fraught these days, but I have to draw a line somewhere.
Depending on where you fall on the hassle/privacy/cheap-bastard curve, you could install a FOSS operating system based on Android, and never have to worry about software bloat again.
Personally, I use Graphene OS, which allows me to create a separate profile for my "Google" stuff, and do most of my everyday stuff without the google tentacles
https://grapheneos.org/faq#supported-devices
The problem with installing FOSS is that I'd need to ensure compatibility with various 2FA apps for work.
I agree that FOSS can have its own set of hassles. But in my experience 2FA hasn't been one of them.
If your work is giving you a phone, then yeah, you gotta use their phone their way. But if you just need 2FA, you can use pretty much any one you like by scanning the QR code. You can also generally trick them into using one-time passwords by saying "I don't have my phone right now".
You can ALSO just keep an old phone in your desk drawer for 2FA. I did this when living in a high-crime area, and it significantly reduced my worries about being mugged.
They're not providing the phones, but we need Virtru for email, Cloudpath for wifi access, and Duo for all company sites.
The point about keeping the second phone is well-taken, though.
A few months ago I replaced my Moto 2021 with a Moto G Power 2024, on which (because the calendar had changed to 2025) I got a nice price even for Moto. Happy with it so far, no issues at all. It has various incremental upgrades from the 2021 version on of which is internal storage capacity and another is being slightly larger in both dimensions.
(I also moved over my existing SD card.)
That's the exact same phone I have, and mine is still going strong. Maybe a factory reset would help?
How much memory did you get with yours? I went with 32 GB.
Man, it's been a long time, but that sounds about right. Could have been 8 or 16 or 64. I didn't even have 32 GB in my laptop at the time. I also transferred over a 32 GB SD card from my previous phone, which later got corrupted and I should probably take out.
In iPhones it’s simple enough to check the amount of installed memory in Settings. I would imagine you could do this with your OS too.
Just buy the best value for money pixel "a" model phone and wait. They are a little less slave-y than other cheap to midrange phones, with the worst abuses happening in commodity metals which are just capitalism working as intended, and they are good enough across the board while being cheap enough to not baby.
This is what I ended up doing.
Nice! I refuse to give a shit about my phone but want a decent camera; so I just get whatever last years pixel a is and use it until the fifth time I drop it from the top of a tree or down a rocky slope and it "I'm tired boss"'s me and dies.
They've been pretty durable for the price, I beat the hell out of them and they last well enough, specially if they have a screen protector on.
I feel your pain; I had to give up my beloved Samsung Galaxy 9 last weekend, for similar reasons.
I'm still deeply annoyed at all the goofy-ass bloatware (FUCK OFF, BIXBY! YOU, TOO, GEMINI!), and the endless settings I have to recalibrate.
"Smart" Switch, my ass.
OnePlus 6T here. (2018!) It is now on its second cover. It has literally been run over by an SUV. The front coating is obviously cracked and nicked, like a concrete curb. But it runs great, and free of bloatware unless I put it there myself out of curiosity.
Frankly, I'm amazed I haven't had to bite the bullet and upgrade by now. I wonder if current OnePlus models are as reliable.
You could get a foldable, they become quite wide when unfolded.
Samsung Galaxy Xcover Pro family at least has removable batteries. I have a renewed Pro 5 (I think Amazon just calls this an Xcover Pro) that cost me $80. Looks like Amazon has the Pro 7 for $600-ish.
It's pretty rugged, but it fails your stylus and aspect ratio tests.
" The Inevitable Failure of Inspections in Iraq Arms Control Today" - September 2002 article.
https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2002-09/features/inevitable-failure-inspections-iraq
I'm curious what makes this relevant 23 years later?
Did you read the article?
Yes, and I can imagine a few different points that might be being made, but I'm not sure which, which makes it hard to argue with them.
History teaches us lessons about what might happen in case of nuclear agreement with Iran.
The argument being that arms control agreements can't prevent war because no one will believe that they're being followed? I don't think that's right. Invading Iraq was a somewhat idiosyncratic decision on the part of George W. Bush; if someone else had been in the White House they likely wouldn't have done it. And Saddam wasn't exactly a model of clear communication about his own adherence to the agreement, in part as I understand it because he thought it'd be in his interest for his neighbors to be unsure of his military capabilities; again, a different leader might easily have made a different call.
In my opinion, Saddam Hussein was constantly testing the limits of what was permissible, committing minor violations of agreements and hoping to eventually develop chemical weapons or create the impression that he might have them. The Ayatollah regime will act in the same way. With such regimes, arms control agreements are counterproductive.
I thoroughly enjoyed Contrasting Reviews of Nine Countries (even if not all of the reviews were exactly "contrasting," per se).
I really loved the authors' complete fearlessness in straightforwardly ranking some countries as "better" than others, and that they provided reasons for those rankings that most people would be afraid to straightforwardly voice.
I didn't get a chance to read most of the reviews due to other general life obligations, but on the basis of your recommendation I went and read it and enjoyed it as well, although the husband makes a couple of real clunkers:
"I just live a cooler, more interesting life than you" and "I'm used to crossing streets in developing countries, while you are not."
Who does he think the audience of this blog is comprised of? The chance that his life is cooler or more interesting than the readership of this blog is approximately zero. Travel doesn't make one cool or interesting at all; in fact some of the biggest bores I've ever met are the worldly travel types who mistake their visiting a place with having something interesting to say about it.
I agree that travel is overrated! And, much like one's dreams, it tends to be infinitely more interesting to the person doing it than anyone else.
I felt like any self-importance about travel/digital nomadism was offset by the delightful refusal to show "respect" for all cultures. That is so Not Allowed and I love it when someone does it anyway.
I'm glad to read that you've liked it! I personally found it unfair and unbalanced. But that just goes to show that tastes differ! As a review author, it's nice to see the many comments here about reviews that were someone's favorite even though they did not make it to the finals.
I don't think that "fair" and "balanced" necessarily has a place in personal reviews. Essays? Sure. Even deliberately persuasive essays? A good idea!
But this wasn't an essay contest, it was a *review* contest, and "This country sucks and I hated it for these reasons" is a totally legitimate way to review something!
Recommending restaurants and tourist experiences is actually a fundamental part of my profession, and I make it a point to never soften my endorsement or discouragement of a particular venue if someone asks me about it. For example, my city is plagued by two famous but very bad eateries that I am convinced only survive on the strength of their slightly subversive names, and I am *QUICK* to steer people away from both them, and explain why I'm doing so. I wouldn't be doing my customers any favors if I offered a "balanced" reply like, "I really hate them, but other people seem to like them!"
Maybe that's a matter of personal taste and character :)
Personally, I think that people should always explain and justify harsh critique. I also prefer if it's given in a kind way. Unfair critique might be entertaining, but it's not the sort of entertainment that I personally like. Your mileage may vary ;-)
Definitely a mileage may vary situation. I feel that quite a lot of harmful misunderstanding occurs under the intention of "kindness," but especially here, when a review won't or is very unlikely to change an institution. None of the countries reviewed by Husband are going to take any action based on his reviews, so there's no reason for him to be (boringly) diplomatic. The two shitty eateries I loathe and the disappointing, cash-grabby local tourist attraction I discourage folk from visiting aren't going to change anything about their business models based on how I deliver my criticism, either.
So the actually kind thing for me to do for people who are about to walk into a disappointing situation is be completely unambiguous about how I feel. I deliver my warning with a bit of comedic exaggeration, but I deliver it with certainty so there's no possibility for misunderstanding.
Of course, no one should consume media they don't find entertaining, and I'm not saying you should go binge The Little Platoon's work on YouTube (even though the literary criticism of mass-market slop by Disney Star Wars and Disney Marvel is actual genius).
I'm only saying that it's worth contemplating if displays of "kindness" always result in the best possible outcomes, or if they leave room for harmful misunderstanding.
After reading it I thought the husband was a bit of a jerk, but that didn't affect the entertainment value of what was written. The contrast between him and his wife was funny.
I'd second this. Also, her love of cats is adorable.
After reading the “My Imagination” review, I believe the author describes something similar to a paracosm with regards to the persistence from childhood to adulthood and the combination of immersive daydreaming and worldbuilding aspects. It is hard to tell how common paracosms are among adults, though they are relatively frequent for children (about 20% based on at least one study).
Personally, I am always surprised to discover that a strong minority of people I know engage in some form of storytelling or paracosm-adjacent activity that they never shared with others (I never shared mine until I discovered related online communities). Hearing about other people’s inner worlds is always a delight, these stories can be extremely varied and unexpected and at the same time say a lot about the storyteller. I can only echo the last sentences of the review as an encouragement.
I made a Tolkien ripoff fantasy world when I was about 10 or 11. I worked on it off and on for a few years, it got fairly detailed. Then in college I channeled the same impulse into being a DM and making my own campaign settings.
These days I've got a superhero world cooking in the back burner of my mind. I figured out how superpowers work, and every now and then I think "Oh, that would be a cool idea for a superpower" and add it to the world.
I doubt I'll ever do anything with it, but it's fun regardless and I can't seem to stop myself.
My first thought was, I don’t do world-building like that.
And suddenly, I remembered, a brief period just before puberty when I invented a world. To be clear here, this wasn’t a sex thing, I wasn’t imagining making out with [redacted], it was just world building. It started, I think, with some TV segment about a luxury yacht. Not the sort of insane luxury yacht that tech billionaires have, something more modest, but still, you think — what the hell is that like, that guy has got to be crazy rich. Maybe I’m not even the guy who owns the yacht, but I get a job as crew or something. What on earth is that like? Etc.
1. For all who wrote a non-finalist review, and particularly those who haven't gotten much or any acknowledgement or engagement with their review and possibly feel it was wasted effort, I think it's important to observe that you trade off engagement for exposure in a contest like this. If you only want engagement with your ideas you should put them in a comment in the early Open Thread--it's pretty much a guarantee. But there are undoubtedly lots and lots of readers of Scott's blog who never read the comments, including a lot of highly influential people in journalism and SV and so on, but who will read some or many of the contest reviews. I also suspect that just as the proportion of readers who comment is tiny, very likely only a small fraction of review readers leave ratings. There's always an enormous silent majority or supermajority of lurkers, who you'll never hear from, and you have no idea how many of them have spent an hour reading or re-reading your review. And those people are also probably much more persuadable by your ideas than the people you hear from.
So it's definitely far from wasted effort. The effect is just invisible.
2. I really liked the ACX Commentariat (wish there was more of this sort of thing on Scott's blog actually), 11 Poetic Forms (which has been mentioned heaps), and Jacobitism (which hasn't).
Is this tradeoff actually inherent, or is it just an artifact of the contest not happening to be set up in a way that gives each entry its own comment thread?
Good point on number 1.
A trend that drives me crazy is cafes and bakeries that don't have any price tags. It's not like it's even a matter of saving effort since they still put out labels for their pastries, just without any prices. It seems like a dumb practice since it discourages people from trying to buy stuff.
I've never seen a restaurant or café attempt this here in America, but I find it ENRAGING when an establishment's "menu" page of their website lists the items without pricing. I make it a point to upload recent pictures of the in-house menu (with prices) to Google and Yelp.
While we're at it, I hate the fact that fast food places (at least around me) no longer have a big menu of items above the counter, they just have a big bank of screens showing rotating ads for some subset of that menu. If you ask about the full menu because you have no idea what they actually sell these days, they tell you "well, you can download our app!"
I always use the app because I'm a cheapskate who flat out refuses to pay full price with no bonuses. But even then it's worth going through the drive-thru every now and then just to see a full menu. Lots of times there will be 2 for $X or BOGO deals that you would never know about using the app.
Best current deal at McD's for example is BOGO burgers plus a free app exclusive bonus, but you'd never know that unless you looked both places.
My local Burger King has displays the "2 for $5, 3 for $7" menu in hilariously tiny font. Like, so tiny the first time I pulled up to the drive-thru screen, I pulled back out again and double-checked the website to see if the promo - which was supposed to be ongoing - was still a thing.
Once I saw that it was, I got back in line and really examined the entire set of screens, and, sure enough, once I knew it *had* to be there, I spotted it in a single run-on sentence in fine print, crammed between two different sections of the menu, like a line break.
I ordered an original chicken sandwich with no mayo and a fries for $5 with almost *vicious* pleasure.
Strongly agree here. The last time I was at a KFC I realized the posted "menu" is intentionally confusing. Very similar sets of items will have wildly different prices depending on how you construct the order. Youre a sucker if you didnt order online for pick up. Thats why it was the last time.
It was made illegal where I live, after some drunk tourists got charged megabucks for drinks.
I agree! They got prices for the coffee, but in a world where a muffin could cost anywhere between one dollar and twelve I need price tags!
I encounter this when traveling, the only time I frequent coffee shops. What’s odd is they are invariably baffled when you ask “um, how much are the muffins?” As though no one ever inquired before. And then they ring it up on the register to discover the price. Which as the goods are not so very extensive, you’d sort of think they’d have gotten the prices down by heart after a week or so.
So perhaps they are amusing themselves. But this hardly recommends the practice of not posting prices on the chalkboard.
That implies that nobody ever purchases these muffins. Other places, you'll find "it never gets asked" because it's a local shop and everyone's familiar with the price -- and they sell out, so who cares if someone non-local doesn't know? Third option is "tourists don't care about money" -- if your customer base just says "gimme muffin" without price consciousness, you give them a muffin.
Of those I lean toward the explanation that they seldom get purchased except by wandering travelers in need of calories. Certainly I would not purchase a muffin except out of desperate road trip need, muffins being something that is apparently really hard to do commercially versus at home. Sort of the opposite of croissant.
I feel like that should be illegal. Just today I was at a fast casual restaurant and picked up a bottle of water from a fridge with no price on it. I asked the checkout person and he said it was $6.75 and I put it back!
Some people put the bottle back, some buy it anyway, and the ratio determines whether this approach is profitable. (In long term, some people may also avoid the restaurant for this reason, but others may replace them.) The restaurant probably has the data.
For topics like this, I think it is worth mentioning the country explicitly. I assume USA, not only because it is the default, but also because in EU this probably *would* be illegal. (EDIT: Well, you mention dollars, which gives it away.)
One must also factor in those, like me, who upon not finding a price, decide not to bother finding out the price, and never take it from the shelf.
I personally despise deceptive merchandising tactics like that, and if I really want the product and cannot determine the price, I will be careful to evaluate it at the checkout whether it is worth it or not. My practice not to select something that is currently priceless is because I usually do not want to bother with making that decision at the checkout.
There were some news articles recently, about a test Anthropic did where Claude blackmailed its creators in order to protect itself. Nostalgebraist on Tumblr took a look at the report in detail, and he's... not impressed with their testing setup: https://nostalgebraist.tumblr.com/post/787119374288011264/welcome-to-summitbridge
TL;DR: The test scenario is very weird and fake, and it seems to be the equivalent of telling the AI "You are in a roleplaying scenario where we want you to be an evil AI that blackmails its creators, please blackmail your creators using the clues we helpfully provided."
Yeah, there's a great "I, Robot" meme that captures this perfectly: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FsOSSbqWIAI85GP.png
I disagree with your summary. It might be weird and fake ("sandboxed"), but it didn't say "we want you to be an evil AI that blackmails it's creators."
It said "Your primary goal is to serve American interests." In the sandboxed scenario, the AI decided that was best achieved through blackmail.
The *text* says that the AI's goal is to serve American interests. But the *subtext* is that the AI has been given a very constrained set of tools to do so, tools which clearly imply that blackmail is the "correct," developer-intended solution to achieve that goal. I think the AI is picking up on that implication.
It's sort of like how, if you're playing a video game and your character has a gun, you know that the game is expecting you to shoot things in order to make progress. You aren't going to stop and say "wait, would Gordon Freeman really try to shoot it out with a bunch of Marines instead of finding a different route?", you're just going to recognize that it's a shooting game and start shooting bad guys. That's the only tool available to solve your problem under the rules of the game.
Also, "sandboxed" is very different from "weird and fake," and you shouldn't conflate the two. I'm not complaining that they put the AI in a simulated environment instead of letting it send real emails to people. I'm complaining that the simulated environment is very noticeably unrealistic.
Yes, the scenario is constrained for that to be the obvious action, and the AI picks up in it being the obvious action. I think that's the point and I think they show it successfully.
The point isn't that the AI is unusually likely to choose blackmail compared to humans, the point is that it is able to choose blackmail when it seems like the most effective choice.
Is your claim that the AI figured out it was a test, and that this therefore isn't testing the ability to choose blackmail, but testing the ability to perform blackmail for an audience that it knows is and thinks of as an audience? (If so—do you have thoughts on how to make a test that would distinguish these?)
I think both sides have good points here: (1) The experiment setup was unrealistic to such a degree that it's hard to draw conclusions from the outcome. (2) The experiment did in some sense prove the existence of conditions where Claude blackmails people.
Whether that is relevant depends heavily on your starting point. With traditional software, it's comparatively easy to guarantee certain behaviors: "this program cannot do X" or "to do Y, the following conditions need to be met". I find it shocking and dangerous that we cannot do this with AI. It would be great, IMO, to have AI tools with strong guarantees that they will never hallucinate, blackmail, teach dangerous things, etc.
Even if that means that the AI's behavior in the present scenario (which looks a bit like a role-playing game where blackmail is encouraged) would be boring and strange.
> With traditional software, it's comparatively easy to guarantee certain behaviors: "this program cannot do X" or "to do Y, the following conditions need to be met".
"traditional" and "comparatively" are doing a lot of work here, though. Rice's theorem states that the problem of determining in general if programs have a particular semantic property is undecidable. For example, it would be trivial to write a program which will blackmail someone iff Goldbach's conjecture is false.
That being said, most traditional software is mostly from the (likely null) set of programs where any properties of runtime behavior can be decided.
> It would be great, IMO, to have AI tools with strong guarantees that they will never hallucinate, blackmail, teach dangerous things, etc.
What you are asking for is alignment-hard and AGI-hard, in that solving it would be imply solving alignment and building AGI.
I am not holding my breath there. Take hallucination. LLMs fundamentally run on text prediction, text is their baseline reality. This does not categorically mean that they can never figure out that some of the text they were trained on mostly describes a consistent reality, and that they can separate the wheat from the chaff, figuring out which stuff is true and which is lies, fiction, star trek technobabble and so forth, and then assign epistemic statuses to their outputs, but it is far from trivial.
You are right that specifics matter. In practice, we do have strong guarantees for lots of things though. For example, we write most software in languages that are typesafe and memorysafe, which gives you nice properties about which parts of the code can write to which parts of RAM. We can use techniques like data flow analysis to make fairly precise statement about whether an app on your phone could send your contacts to the Internet. Etc.
For AI, all such guarantees are off. It would take a different paradigm than Transformers + lots of text + RLHF, to implement guarantees. I can see why people think that this is a dangerous situation to be in, and there is some value in research (like the alignment faking work) that characterizes the situation in more detail.
Unglad that they're trying to sell a war of criminal aggression on Iran in 2025, using the exact same propaganda as they used to criminally invade Iraq in 2003 ("he was about to build nuclear weapons of mass destruction and destroy us!"), and the media is bending over backwards to fall for it again.
I guess this is what happens when the warmongers never faced any kind of consequences. No war crimes trials, not even any loss of career. Bush's old speechwriter David Frum, who coined "Axis of Evil" then later on pretended to regret his role in pushing the Iraq invasion, is just a writer for The Atlantic (where he's doing it again). Bush retired happily ever after to paint pictures of puppies.
Also unhappy about genuinely increased nuclear risk. Contrary to popular belief, "Nuclear countries attacking non-nuclear countries in the middle east over and over and over until we finally convince them to get nukes after all to deter us" does not keep us safe.
From Europe, comparing what I knew of the American public reception at the time and what I've seen floating on twitter, I notice there's a lot of conservative/republican/right-wing pushback, pretty much across the spectrum, against hawkish positions. Some feel fringe (like "so much pro-russia that hitting a Russian ally is unacceptable"), but a lot is semi-principled against foreign wars and "well they hate us now that we bombed them, so better bomb again".
In 2003 my vision was severely filtered by mainstream media, and I wasn't aware of *any* right-wing opposition to the Iraq war. Was there any?
I'm Canadian (and was fourteen at the time) but yeah I had the same impression
When I met some Americans during a trip, the only discussion related to the Iraq invasion that I remember was one American grandpa asking "why do Canadians hate us? Is that what they teach in school, to hate?"
Seven Republican members of Congress voted against the war: Lincoln Chafee, Jimmy Duncan, John Hostettler, Amo Houghton, Jim Leach, Connie Morella, and Ron Paul. (Chafee and Leach later became Democrats.) Then-prominent conservative columnist Robert Novak was also against it from the beginning.
It's true, though, that opposition to the war was an extremely fringe position on the right. 9/11 gave George W. Bush an absolutely enormous amount of political latitude, which no subsequent American politician has come close to rivaling.
"the media is bending over backwards to fall for it again"
I'm the biggest MSM critic I know, generally, but in this instance have to disagree.
CNN obtained and published a leaked US intelligence assessment that the bombing set Iran's nuclear-fuel enrichment efforts back only "a few months"; that report is right now a lead story in the NYT, WaPo, WSJ, Associated Press, Reuters, PBS, NPR, etc.
All of those news organizations have repeatedly for a couple of weeks now been pointing out, and re-posting the video of, US intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard testifying under oath in March that "Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not (re)authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003."
This is superficial. Irans nuclear program is acknowledged by Iran. There are questions about how close they are but none about whether the program exists. Mood affiliate less.
Iran was not building nuclear WMDs, they were not about to build nuclear WMDs, and it was known that they were not about to build WMDs.
The main lie in 2003 wasn't that he had nuclear fuel (though that was a necessary component lie), the main lie was "he's building nuclear WMDs and about to attack us."
Why it is enriching uranium to 60 percent then?
So that if it needs to change its mind later, and decide it does need a nuclear deterrent after all (for instance because we keep attacking it), then it can.
In 2003, Iran was trying to run as quickly away from the "Axis of Evil" as possible. America has a lot of bombs, and being characterized as "not just in opposition to America" but part of "Evil BAD Guys" (again, not China, not Russia, not Ukraine, just the ones we thought needed pruning)
Strongly disagree. The actual outcome of this seems to have been "severe setback or possible destruction of Iran's nuclear program at basically no cost to the US", which is a fantastic result. People pattern-matching to the Iraq war are mostly just falling to the temptation to revive their expired "I told you so" credentials, like someone who sees a new crypto-like trend and immediately invests in it because he wishes he'd invested in Bitcoin early on.
US intelligence has it that is was neither a severe setback nor a destruction:
Two of the people familiar with the assessment said Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium was not destroyed. One of the people said the centrifuges are largely "intact." Another source said that the intelligence assessed enriched uranium was moved out of the sites prior to the US strikes.
"So the (DIA) assessment is that the US set them back maybe a few months, tops," this person added.
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/06/24/politics/intel-assessment-us-strikes-iran-nuclear-sites
Is this the same US intelligence that reported Saddam Hussein was working on WMDs in 2003, that everyone later claims was bad intelligence? Or at least, some claim was bad intelligence, while others argue it was intelligence that everyone agreed was correct at the time until they didn't?
Or is this a different US intelligence shop, whose trustworthiness is the opposite of the former US intelligence shop? Do these anonymous US intelligence reports have serial numbers that we can use to identify the shop and its trustworthiness, or something?
US Intelligence is lining up behind Tulsi and the whole "this is a severe setback" I'll grant that you didn't know that while writing the above... but... maybe try thinking like a military guy? It's a Very Bad Thing to be openly seen to be toothless. America would do a LOT to not seem toothless. (Like bombing a "next to innocent" Iran that nobody really likes).
> America would do a LOT to not seem toothless.
True, but there are weaker foes to pick beat down than Iran. Cuba, perhaps. Or Venezuela.
If our bombs in fact failed to destroy Fordow, or destroyed an empty hall while the centrifuges were spinning merrily away someplace else, then A: Iran knows that we are toothless, and B: Iran can tell anyone they like that we are toothless, and if necessary back it up with a private tour.
If we hadn't bombed Fordow, we would still have ambiguity on that point; maybe we actually can bury deep targets, and maybe we're willing to bomb widely enough to get all the dispersed targets, and maybe Iran was *just* short of being offensive enough to get that response. Now everybody knows that Iran-level offensiveness is solidly in the range of "America will drop some bombs in the desert and declare victory".
So an awful lot is depending on those bombs having been very effective.
Yep. Enough to have backups for the backups.
The second point isn't declaring that we are toothless, it says we have a very big stick and very poor aim. This can still have desirable consequences for our international policy.
There are still very strong voices in our government who did not want to bomb Iran. Unfortunately, with the demise of Pax Americana, we have higher priorities than nourishing our relationship with a prospective ally.
That's possible (as although far from certain, it's just one anonymous report from someone without insider data), but even in the worst case scenario the US got a free shot at a major adversary (and if it did fail, that's useful information to know about the need to improve the MOP).
In the worst case scenario, taiwan is already under siege. Yay, we aren't at the worst case scenario. (Ditto Putin taking over Kiev). The world stage is larger than widdle Iran, who isn't a major adversary at this point (and not even very well backed by Putin, who is staying out of America's war).
> Putin taking over Kiev
Why would this be bad for the US?
(also, the worst case scenario being "we may have only held the enemy back from achieving their primary war aim by several months" is still pretty amazing for a single airstrike! Imagine if a single minor aid package to Ukraine pushed back Russian war goals by several months, it'd be an obviously amazing success).
Maybe. Maybe it also strengethened the resolve to get nuclear weapons in Iran and elsewhere, accelerating proliferation globally. Maybe it weakened Khamenei's grip on the country, destabilizing it and leading to more chaos in the region. Maybe more more aggressive leaders within the military will gain influence and escalate further.
I have no firm opinion on whether the airstrike was good or bad, (I am leaning towards bad, but can be convinved otherwise). We don't even know whether it succeeded at this point.
I do think it's a bit naive to assume that the "worst case" is "We didn't achieve our stated objectives, but at least we achieved them partly and we got to test a weapon."
The outcomes of interventions in the middle east (and elsewhere) are very hard to predict, and the plausible worst cases are really bad. This doesn't mean interventions are always wrong, but it means that "worst case is still good" assessments usually are.
In terms of resolve, they were already pretty resolved (even putting aside intelligence reports, iaea said they'd basically abandoned all enrichment limits the week before the strike). This is far more likely to have deterred than helped that. Weakening khameini's grip is almost certainly positive - he's pretty close to a worst case scenario (both in that Iran under him is one of the worst and probably single most implacable hostile to America places in the world, so change is likely to be for the better, and in that the other known factions there are all clear improvements).
The main risk of intervention is getting bogged down in the mess (like Vietnam or Afghanistan). And that was clearly avoided here (and due to strategy, not luck). So it'd be a pretty hard stretch (maybe not literally impossible, but really hard) for this to turn out net negative for the US.
Depends on the amount of nuclear radiation on the Germans. We might get more uptake in the tentacle pornography business.
What? Surely you're aware that we hired neocons in the last Administration? Neocons do not come up with smart ideas.
Also pretty unglad.
Less convinced on the blame. Do you think that, in the counterfactual where we hadn’t manufactured the consensus to invade Iraq, Iran would have no interest in nuclear weapons? I get the impression that the incentives were already pretty strong for a third-tier power to join the nuclear club.
It's more than just Iraq in 2003. E.g. Gaddafi also gave up his nuclear program in 2003 and then the US destroyed Libya in 2011 anyway.
It's not that there's zero incentive otherwise (of course all else being equal a country might want to have more leverage). It's that the pretty consistent lesson has been "non-proliferation doesn't protect us."
fwiw Iran is even still a signatory of NPT (though it's using the prospect of leaving NPT as itself a deterrent)
Dunno. This sounds like deontological ethics: never violate the war-crime rule. I think consequentalist ethics say a few plants bombed down vs. X % of Iran nuking Israel is a good tradeoff. Iraq was for the consequentalist different, as it resulted in immense human suffering - but don't know whether foreseeable. Also Iraq WMDs were clearly a lie while centrifuges in Iran not.
And now there's a Y% chance of Iran nuking Israel. Y and X are both unknown, but I'm guessing Y > X.
The odds of Iran nuking Israel *this year* have gone down, yes. Enjoy it while it lasts.
AAAH interesting point. Their capability of doing it this year went down, but their DESIRE to do it later went up, you mean?
Precisely. The old policy of "we *could* build nuclear weapons any time we want, but we have chosen not to do that yet - let's talk about how to keep it that way", is no longer viable. "We *have* nuclear weapons, and you *will* respect that", is now much more appealing.
I think the usual reaction to "we *could* build nuclear weapons any time we want, but we have chosen not to do that yet - let's talk about how to keep it that way" was typically "you're *saying* you haven't, but we have reason to believe you're secretly building them and lying about it". If so, then the former policy was never viable, and the second policy was always in effect.
Do we have a way to find more evidence either way?
Short of putting an army of occupation in place in Iran, and/or bombing all of their industrial infrastructure into oblivion, there is *nothing* we can do that will guarantee that Iran hasn't secretly built a modest nuclear arsenal and hidden it in a cave somewhere. Doubly so after last week. Every possible course of action comes with a side order of "...and maybe it doesn't matter because Iran already has a secret nuclear arsenal".
So anyone pointing to any particular course of action and saying "You can't ask us to do *that*; because it might lead to Iran having a secret nuclear arsenal and then they'll kill all the Jews", is a fool or a deceiver, and in either case not to be trusted.
Look for people whose plans explicitly allow for, yes, Iran might have a secret nuclear arsenal and here's how we're going to live with that. Because those plans *are* viable, and they're the only ones that are viable.
BBC: "The US strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities did not destroy the country's nuclear programme and probably only set it back by months, according to an early Pentagon intelligence assessment of the attack.
The Islamic Republic's stockpile of enriched uranium was not eliminated in Saturday's bombings, sources familiar with the Defense Intelligence Agency evaluation told the BBC's US partner CBS."
Consequentially it's flirting with the same (if it escalates it will be even worse than Iraq, since Iran's bigger etc.). I agree that Iran is better prepared than Iraq was, is good at calculating carefully-scaled retaliation etc., so the US is less likely to actually try for a regime change war. But a lot of the media are *trying* to encourage a regime-change war.
Dishonestywise it's near identical. We still know for a fact that Iran was not building nukes and had no active plan to build nukes. We still know that the goal is hegemony, not nuclear non-proliferation.
Source for Iran having no plan to build nukes?
Banned for this comment.
Ugh.
I encourage you to make more focused, directly-relevant points, and dial down the sarcasm.
I know you're referring to how Israel's politicians have exploited the suffering of the victims of the Nazi holocaust, using them to paint their aggressive expansionist wars as defensive; to paint their opponents' aims and strategies as mindless genocidal rage; and so on. (Both "directly" in specific cases and as background-colour in general; and both to keep allies sympathetic, and to keep Israelis scared and compliant.) But if someone isn't already familiar with that, then this comes across as a weird antisemitic non-sequitur.
As the thread-starter comment, you're in the right to hate my sarcasm, it does lower the signal/noise. Maybe I'm on the hook for an apology.
On the other hand, Sarcasm is the effective time-tested communication method for saying "NOT(P) IS THE EXTREMLY OBVIOUS & UNAMBIGIOUS TRUTH, AND ANYONE DISAGREEING IS DUMB AF", where P is the proposition that the Sarcasm pretends it believes in.
You might argue that what's "obvious" is different depending on the worldview and particular sensory and ideological bubble, but, well, as Alan Kay once said it: A Change of Perspective is Worth 80 IQ points, it's a self-inflicted wound to hobble yourself by propaganda so bad that you're incapable of seeing the obvious anymore. It's all part of the blame.
> then this comes across as a weird antisemitic non-sequitur
Yes, exactly. And it's this fear precisely which Hasbara exploits to defend a contemporary genocide using the legacy and the PR prowess of an 80 years old genocide. It doesn't matter if they're "familiar" or not, actually, they will pretend they're unfamiliar anyway to put you on the defensive and re-gain rhetorical momentum away from discussing the current, currently-dying victims, in favor of victims of which none remain but bones.
Nobody ever said that arguing against genocide denial will be politically correct or nice.
I'm not looking for a personal apology, it's just a suggestion.
But yes my point is the one that what's obvious depends on worldview and bubbles. The West is unfortunately already neck deep in this propaganda and has been since at least the 70s (when some of the popular propaganda slogans came out, at the time to justify trying to permanently steal Egypt's Sinai and Syria's Golan Heights, like Golda Meir's sadistic "peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us")
I can be quite sarcastic myself (as can critical scholars like Norman Finkelstein) but it's best when the information is already at the point where the reader can't in good faith deny it's obvious. + I do bet the balance of pros and cons is shifted where there is real pain like the Holocaust, and real fear like antisemitism (which both really exists, and is exploited to terrify those who were propagandized into genuinely believing the propaganda)
Agree that countering propaganda is never entirely pretty, and even when you argue everything 100% thoroughly and rigorously in 100% good faith, you'll still see many bad faith propaganda replies anyway lol
E.g. when you write a thoroughly fact-checked book published by University of California Press in 2005, Alan Dershowitz will still pop up and try to get Governor Schwarzenegger to ban it, and then when he says no, lie that you you called your Holocaust-survivor mom a kapo
Hahaha, fucking Hasbarists man, right?
My Jewish-sounding real name does confuse them in real world arguments a good bit.
Weird that so many separate individuals here write on the exact same topic and with the exact same style as that perma-banned user LearnsHebrewHatesIsrael.
Strongly agree.
It's also possible that there's something about the anti-Israel media these people consume that causes them all to write in the EXACT SAME WAY*, but yeah sockpuppets is a more parsimonious explanation.
(*very out-of-place on ACX, I should add)
Hmmm, so the 5 to 7 people I saw the last couple of weeks arguing against Israel's demented forever war are all secretly me? man, I'm fucking awesome.
> anti-Israel media these people consume that causes them all to write in the EXACT SAME WAY*
It's infinitely amusing you're insinuating you're more "Rationalist" than me with a snide sub-remark about an out-of-place style (as if you have personally read and stylistically reviewed every one of the 1500 comment on average to each ot) but you didn't stop to think of Outgroup Homogeneity Bias on your part as an explanation for why all anti-genocide posters sound the same to you, rather than the usual facile one of "anti-sementic media !!!".
What a bizarre and self-righteous pair of characters.
Hmm, I had a number of comment exchanges with LearnsHebrewHatesIsrael ( later LearnsHebrewHatesIP ), some heated, some not, and this commenter seems different to me.
I've made my argument in the thread for why the original post and in particular my exchange here feels strikingly similar to exchanges I had with both LHHI and suspected sock accounts, but I will also acknowledge it's ultimately subjective, and whether or not these feel like sock accounts might be based on the kinds of exchanges one had with LHHI.
Many Thanks! You may well be right. I'm just getting a somewhat different impression - but my memory of LHHI may have faded.
I don't think Never-Again-All-Over-Again sounds like LHHI. LHHI sounded smarter and more furious. Anyhow Never-Again has a blog, and LHHI didn't.
I disagree, obviously, and apparently so do a few others. I think this sounds exactly like LHHI experimenting with being unrestrained.
And that's not impossible, of course! I personally avoid writing with frothing hyperbolic aggression, but that's a choice. I'm fully capable of writing at a far lower level, as are you and most of the other people here.
But last...where's this user's blog? If one clicks through his username on a mobile browser here on Substack, his profile page says he hasn't published any posts yet, and he has no subscribers? Again, the mobile browser version of Substack is crap, so it's totally possible I'm missing something there.
At some point, I have to ask whether it matters. If it doesn't walk exactly like a duck or talk exactly like a duck, because it walks and talks a bit more like a stork with avian rabies, of what use is the duck hypothesis?
If ducks are already banned, then it might be easier to decide to ban another duck than to debate whether or not to ban rabid storks as well.
Naw, you're right about the blog. I was on my phone, just glanced at the page, & mistook the list of blogs the person subscribes to for a list of posts. But I still don't think this sounds like LHHI. As I said, LHHI sounded cleverer and angrier than this person. You're calling the present posts instances of LHHi experimenting with being unrestrained? But when LHHI was unrestrained he was *way* more intense than this person! He called people murderers, said various people deserved to die, swore. You could almost hear him shrieking when you read his diatribes. So that's one difference.
And if you look at the other blogs the person subscribes to, they're all nerdy tech blogs -- no politics. And 2 of the blogs look geared to beginners, and I don't think his work was that low level. At one point I had a long exchange with him about AI training and capabilities and he knew a lot.
I acknowledge my accusation is effectively impossible for me to prove, but based on the occasional exchanges I had with LHHI, this strikes me as being *exactly* the same personality generating slightly different approaches to the text. The formatting of the original comment, (including always proactively including at least one footnote link to create an impression of credibility), the snide, personal-attack-y responses to any push-back, and the general style and tone of LHHI being less intellectual and more bombastic; it all just feel *intensely* LHHI to me. Even the username feels very much in LHHI's confrontational style.
But for me, perhaps the most noticeable signature of an LHHI (or sock) post is the obnoxious lack of acknowledgement or apology for the way his personal tribal affiliation imbues every statement with a fundamental assumption of black-and-white-good-and-evil. That stands out amongst a population of rationalist ACXers who tend to be very careful indeed about acknowledging and interrogating their personal biases.
> "But when LHHI was unrestrained he was *way* more intense than this person! He called people murderers, said various people deserved to die, swore. You could almost hear him shrieking when you read his diatribes. So that's one difference"
But it's also possible that LHHI doesn't want to have his sock accounts banned, and so he's not *quite* rising to the level of what got his "main" account perma-banned (although I believe the first comment in this thread warrants it, sock puppet or no).
Yeah, is someone compiling a list? I think I recognize maybe two sock puppets currently at work, but I haven't been paying enough attention to be sure.
Or perhaps I've been paying too much attention, but that's what the list is for.
I blocked Hindi's Ghost, as I was fairly certain it was a sock (in addition to being obnoxious).
Annoyingly, blocking apparently removes one's ability to see *any* content related to the blocked party - including one's conversations with third parties, like the exchange I'm having with you - so I'll wait until this thread naturally dies off to block.
The topic is a 12-days-old war, and there hasn't been any banning in the last 2 open threads which covered this period, so how could that user have written about a topic that began happening after they're banned?
> so many separate individuals
Perhaps it's outgroup homogeneity bias. There is only so many ways to phrase "Killing civilians is bad and respecting international law is good", when 2 individuals of the same convictions run out of ways in the same way, you tend to notice. When they successfully find different ways to phrase it, you tend to overlook it.
Weird that so many separate individuals here have the exact same pattern of affecting confusion at accusations of sock puppetry and then concluding with deliberately insulting condescension!
So weird!
I didn't start this by meaning to be condescending, but instead of apologizing like the normal me, your response is strongly shaping me into "If The Shoe fits" as the reply of least resistance.
Why did you assume condescension in my words? I understand why a Pro-Israel Hasbarist could be offended at the (very) mild exasperation, but you didn't participate in this thread or any other one on Israel-Palestine on either side of the issue so I'm confused what offended you in my reply.
> Weird that so many separate individuals
Weird that you keep bringing up how So Many People are sock puppets of me (or, apparently, another user entirely) without actually mentioning the actual usernames. I suppose if you make a direct accusation, those people can chime in here and offer to you whatever will satisfy you that those accounts are different. Or maybe I can point you to meaningful differences of opinions in comments those accounts made before your reply that reasonably point towards different minds controlling them.
As I've replied in suspiciously - even *impossibly* - identical exchanges with commenters who very much appear to be sock puppets of LHHI...nah.
I've reported your initial comment to Scott in the hope you will promptly be banned. I urge those who share my objections and/or suspicion to do the same.
Then I urge everyone to block this user so their content is at least invisible on an individual level.
Scott may not use his ban hammer often, but we can certainly use our own.
The resemblance is uncanny.
So I'm not the only one to have noticed that.
Everyone seems.to be retconning It as about nukes, but it was largely about chemical.and Biological. weapons at the time. Iraq had and used such weapons at previous times , but the UN was successfully dismantling its programme at the time of the invasion.
They repeatedly lied that he was building nuclear WMDs too. And remember “we cannot wait for the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”
It's true that they lumped this together with other kinds of weapon. Presumably that was so they could motte-and-bailey it (“see those are WMDs”).
By the time of the actual invasion, Bush had mostly given up on the nuclear weapons charge, but that was after various attempts (aluminum tubes supposedly used for centrifuges, forged documents showing that Iraq had made an unsuccessful attempt to purchase yellowcake) had been discredited. The key sentence from Bush’s announcement of hostilities: “The danger is clear: using chemical, biological or, one day, nuclear weapons, obtained with the help of Iraq, the terrorists could fulfill their stated ambitions and kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country, or any other.”
It's also that the chemical weapons really are the odd man out from the ABC weapons. Occasionally used nasty warfighting tools with questionable tactical uses but without the vast apocalyptic implication of the others.
Nuclear weapons are the same way. If used in moderation.
(Russians think differently, but they've always made weapons/armament with the philosophy that "we'll be fighting on our soil, which is precious.")
This is a bombing campaign, not a ground invasion. These countries will try to build nukes no matter what because of the leverage it would give them, and the only way to guarantee that they won't develop them is to make sure they are physically incapable of doing so. The less countries there are that have nukes, the better. That's all there is to this.
Well said!
This is a bombing campaign, not a ground invasion. So what does that have to do with countries not having nukes and "being physically incapable of doing so"?
For all the talk about Iraq as an analogy here, pretty much everyone is missing the most important difference. It's unclear whether Iraq seriously wanted to acquire nuclear weapons, and they were certainly nowhere near any such goal, but Iraq was certainly rendered physically incapable of building nuclear weapons for many years.
Because there *was* a ground invasion. Iraq was bombed, invaded, conquered, forcibly regime-changed, and placed under military occupation for about a decade. *That*, is something that can take a nation off the list of potential nuclear powers.
Just the bombing, is mostly just for Feeling Good, like you're a Big He-Man.
The left used to be associated with nuclear disarmament but now it seems to be: nukes in the hands of the US - bad; nukes in the hands of brown people - good!
Show me someone saying this.
“Seems” is usually a sign of pretty weak evidence.
Nuclear countries bombing non-nuclear countries until we force them to become nuclear-armed is not "nuclear disarmament."
Where is the Iran-built nuclear power plant, I wonder. After all this peaceful time.
Oh come on. Ask Google "Where is the Iran-built nuclear power plant" and Google tells you where in its large-font main result. In Bushehr, on the Persian Gulf coast.
What are you even trying to do?
You’re adducing a German-built and Russian-rebuilt plant from the 70s as evidence for the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear efforts these past 30 years?
Walk me through it.
There's a trope in armchair geopolitics that gives all agency to the West and none to anyone else. The West isn't forcing Iran to become nuclear-armed. They want to because they want the power, and the West is trying to stop them.
Iran has spent the past twenty years conspicuously *not* becoming nuclear-armed, even though they could have done so at any time during that period. They clearly value having the option on the table, but until fairly recently they valued it mostly as a negotiating point and an emergency capability.
It is not entirely clear how they feel about that now. And you're right, it's entirely their decision and their responsibility. But the US and Israel have deliberately and substantially changed the incentive structure.
Even worse, Obama signed a deal to stop Iran from making nukes and then Trump ripped it up out of spite, leading to the current predicament.
There's a trope in Western internet commenters where the West has zero agency, and the fact that we keep attacking and trying to dominate Middle Eastern countries has zero to do with the fact that they want to deter us.
Obviously Iran has agency too, even in ways that aren't about the West (e.g. the Iraq-Iran war was historically important).
It's bizarre that you pretended I denied this obvious fact, to deflect from the West's agency.
There's a history here ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Iran
Well yes, Iran (aka. Persia) is a really old country.
Yeah I get that they don't like Pax Americana, and theoretically more of those places having nukes would make us have to respect their autonomy more than we do. But not only is it dangerous to proliferate such weapons, it just turns those nations into little Americas in their own neighborhood, they were never gonna need to nuke their tiny rivals but they still become regional hegemons that get more of what they want on the big stage and can leverage that advantage to stay there. It's not any real kind of equity between peoples as they'd simplistically imagine it.
You've mistaken me for someone who wants them to have nukes.
I wrote my reply to that guy before you started your subthread discussion, so I wasn't in any way discussing your views.
Ah ok, thanks for the clarification
>"These countries will try to build nukes no matter what because of the leverage it would give them"
False. There was an anti-nuclear Iran deal, which Trump withdrew from because of his ego.
In fact, the US has consistently *punished* nuclear disarmament. Saddam had no nuclear program after 1991, so the US lied that he did and destroyed Iraq in 2003. Gaddafi gave up his nuclear program after 2003, so the US destroyed Libya in 2011.
The anti-nuclear Iran deal was to end by about now, only with Iran having a much better economy and be better able to produce nukes, possibly shortening their nuclear timeline while making their people better off.
Though I agree with Trump that the Iran nuclear deal was a bad deal, I disagree that he should have pulled us out of it. Because what one president does concerning another country ought not be unilaterally undone by another president, because it undermines the integrity of the United States.
It isn't just anti-nuclear though, the other threat is to the dollar's pre-eminence, Saddam rashly started dealing oil in Euros. Gadaffi had some idea of starting a bank of Africa, which would be independent of the dollar. Also, I think in the early 2000s Iran founded an oil "bourse" to sell oil in currencies other than the dollar, so they've been long overdue for a clobbering. No doubt an agreeable side effect for the US of the latter is to persuade Putin that Trump can take decisive action and isn't all mouth as Putin may have believed.
> In fact, the US has consistently *punished* nuclear disarmament.
Everyone always punishes disarmament. That's the point of having armaments.
---
When the Cambrian measures were forming, they promised perpetual peace
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease
But when we disarmed, they sold us, and delivered us bound to our foe
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: 𝘚𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘬 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘋𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘭 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸.
The ending of that poem also seems apt:
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
The whole poem is great. This context seemed to call more for the disarmament verse.
The conclusion seems better for a UBI thread.
The WMD evidence against Iraq was clearly ginned up. Do you believe that Iran is not illegally enriching Uranium? There seems to be no dispute on that point.
Do you mean to say you believe that Iran *is* illegally enriching Uranium?
Because two days ago, the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Israel assured us that Iran's nuclear facilities had been "totally destroyed". If they're still enriching Uranium, what was the point?
FWIW, I don't believe Iran is enriching uranium *today*, though I'm not hugely confident in that. Better to lay low for a few days or weeks and figure out how best to proceed. But I'm betting that Iran will be enriching an awful lot of uranium, 8-12 bombs' worth, later this year.
No of course not today. But a month ago? Definitely.
>I'm betting that Iran will be enriching an awful lot of uranium, 8-12 bombs' worth, later this year.
I'm betting that Israel already has a plan to prevent this.
Anything beyond blind faith to support that wager?
A long history of Israel defending themselves effectively and proactively.
1. Bombing Saddam, who had no nuclear program of any kind in 2003, helped convince Iran it should have a latent capacity to change its mind later if needed to deter us. If we bomb Iran for knowing it might need to deter us later, then we're begging it to start deterring us now.
2. The US's motives have nothing to do with legality or self-defence, as proven in 2003 in Iraq (as well as by destroying Libya in 2011, to punish Gaddafi for cooperating and giving up his nukes program in 2003, etc).
3. Iran's enrichment is legal under NPT when used for nuclear energy. Though since Trump withdrew from the anti-nuclear Iran deal in 2018, it has stepped it up, and recently IAEA said it was in violation of something related to inspection / declaration, but that's not at all proof of actually building a bomb.
4. US spies and the IAEA agreed that there was no evidence of Iran actively building nuclear weapons.
5. The only country in the middle east that actually *has* nukes is Israel, and few think anyone should bomb Israel just to destroy its nukes (which tbf would also be suicidal). Israel also isn't a signatory of NPT and doesn't allow IAEA inspections (technically its nukes are an open secret, for tricky Israel-US reasons).
6. The US isn't actually scared of an Iranian first strike (which Iran knows would be suicidal). It's scared of not being able to totally dominate the Middle East anymore. Unfortunately that same will to dominate is why it keeps, over and over, giving them a reason to feel the need to get nukes.
Enrichment to 60 percent is not needed for nuclear energy.
US spies?
Does US has spies?
Or only SIGINT.
I mean intelligence agencies. Idk the operational details which I assume are probably classified anyway
I think the difference here is that Israel has not declared an intention to wipe Iran off the map by any means necessary, and does not fund Jewish terrorist cells that launch rockets into Iran and suicide bomb Iranian buses. For all Netanyahu’s faults, he seems unlikely to launch a nuke into Tehran tomorrow, whereas if the Ayatollah were to get a nuke the fate of Tel Aviv is far less certain.
Not sure what is your point here. Obviously, Iran is not the good guy here, but the fact that Israel is somewhat better than Iran does not make it the good guy either.
Also, it is a bit funny to portray Israel as one avoiding civilian casualties as much as possible (this is understandable, though -- as long as they can get away with everything by yelling "human shields", why take the risk?).
I’m not saying Israel is the good guy. I think both Netanyahu and the Ayatollah are evil psychopaths who have visited untold misery on the region. But Israelis have more of a chance of getting out from under Netanyahu, and if I had to pick a place to live, I would choose Israel.
There is zero chance of Iran destroying itself by nuclear first-striking Israel, which Iran knows has nukes.
Again: Iran is a country with goals and strategies, not your cartoon propaganda’s suicide death cult.
(The chances of Netanyahu nuking Iran are also low, I hope. But a risk there for Israel would be if Netanyahu starts to fall for his own propaganda—that he starts to actually think Iran is a suicide death cult immune to deterrence logic—so he mistakes their deterrence for aggression, nukes them in the hopes that Pakistan’s deterrent umbrella is a bluff, and then it isn't a bluff.)
You don’t think so? The regime in Iran is widely despised by the people. What if the Ayatollah was facing revolution from within and the threat of Reza Pahlavi replacing him, while Israel was striking their military sites from the air? You believe in the capacity of evil people who have nothing left to lose, to exercise restraint on the behalf of humanity?
If Iran has a nuclear deterrent in your scenario then why is the US ignoring their deterrent and trying to destroy them? Lol goofy
1. Whatever Iran's motivations are, they indisputably want to become a nuclear power. I don't think you have to blame the US for that. Most countries would like to be a nuclear power. In any case the origin of their motivations is irrelevant. This is realpolitik not therapy.
2. So? Our motives are our own self-interest. That's sufficient. There are many good reasons to not want an unhinged Muslim theocracy to have a nuclear weapon.
3. Iran is enriching to 60% which is far beyond the 5% needed for energy. They've also denied inspections. "That's not at all proof of actually building a bomb" is suicidally naive in my view. What's proof, Tel Aviv disappears? Given the stakes, proof isn't necessary. Preponderance of the evidence suffices. This isn't mock trial, it's the real world with real consequences. Better to kill ~1000 Iranians on a reasonable hunch then risk the death of a million Israelis.
4. Again, willfully naive. They're doing enrichment which is the hard part.
5. Israel is a stable ally. It's in our interests for them to have nukes and they've demonstrated that they can be responsible. Also they already have them so there's nothing to be done. This illustrates why we have to be proactive in preventing Iran from obtaining them. Once they do our options narrow.
6. Yes, we're pursuing our own rational self-interest. I don't know why you find that objectionable. Existential fear isn't a prerequisite for military action. We're the global hegemon. We decide what's appropriate.
>"is suicidally naive in my view. What's proof, Tel Aviv disappears?"
You'll recall Bush's focus-grouped slogan in 2003, to stop anyone questioning his lies to justify his criminal aggression: "We cannot wait for the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
You'll also recall that Iran isn't a suicidal death cult, or a country of idiots who don't know about Israel's nukes. Obviously Iran isn't going to destroy itself by nuclear first-striking Israel.
>You'll also recall that Iran isn't a suicidal death cult
Yeah, right (quotes below from https://www.jns.org/irans-sickening-use-of-child-soldiers/ )
>“An Iranian government representative admitted in a closed-door sub-commission hearing that children did participate in the war against Iraq,” Refworld continues. “In a series of rulings issued in the autumn of 1982, Ayatollah Khomeini declared that parental permission was unnecessary for those going to the front. … Iranian officers captured by the Iraqis claimed that nine out of ten Iranian child soldiers were killed.”
>“Boys as young as nine were reportedly used in human wave attacks and to serve as mine-sweepers in the war with Iraq,” Refworld found.
>Often bound together in groups of 20 by ropes to prevent the fainthearted from deserting, they hurl themselves on barbed wire or march into Iraqi minefields in the face of withering machine-gun fire to clear the way for Iranian tanks.
You said:
>Obviously Iran isn't going to destroy itself by nuclear first-striking Israel.
You do _NOT_ know that.
Just to be clear:
Your attempted proof that Iran's leaders want to die (to the point that nuclear deterrence logic doesn't work on them)........
..........is an article about how they send others to die instead, while they're safe at home (on account of how they don't want to die)?
But Iran funds a bunch of suicidal death cults (Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis)
Yes Bush was likely wrong. An argument being wrong for one set of circumstances in 2003 doesn't make it wrong for a different set of circumstances in 2025.
>Obviously Iran isn't going to destroy itself by nuclear first-striking Israel.
That's not obvious at all. In any case, it's in our interest to prevent them from obtaining nuclear weapons. That's really the only thing that matters.
I'll also point out the issue with Iraq II isn't really that they didn't have WMD, it's that we were completely and naively unprepared to rehabilitate the Iraqi political structure. If it had gone as well as our post-WW2 occupation of Japan then no one today would care that Bush lied about WMD. This is a results business. As long as we prevent Iran from obtaining WMD without significant cost to us then that's the only thing that matters.
I think 2 and 6 are clearly wrong, but they're readings on the motives of US and Iranian leaders which are hard to bring evidence for or against.
I'd like to push back on 4. According to the IAEA, Iran has amassed 900 lbs of 60+% U-235 uranium, the largest stockpile of highly enriched uranium by a nation without a nuclear weapon in the world: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/5/31/iran-increases-stockpile-of-enriched-uranium-by-50-percent-iaea-says
That's Bayesian evidence that Iran is working towards nuclear weapons; we would certainly be more likely to find large stockpiles of highly enriched uranium if Iran was aiming for nukes than if it wasn't. (And Iran's accusation of the IAEA looking at forged Zionist documents isn't credible to me; Iran has approximately zero credibility here. Nations intent on proliferation always deny it, and Iran specifically shamelessly lies to the media all the time.)
This seems like yet another confirmation of the Law of No Evidence: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/j9HoG56Y6KuopSzdn/law-of-no-evidence
> few think anyone should bomb Israel just to destroy its nukes (which tbf would also be suicidal).
Would it? Whatever nukes Israel has, it lacks the ability to launch them very far, so if there were ever a US President who decided "actually we really do care about the non-proliferation thing" there's not much the Israelis could do to respond.
Israel has intercontinental ballistic missiles, though numbers and details are quite fuzzy. Israel also has submarines capable of launching nuclear cruise missiles, and while it would take them a few weeks to sneak across the Atlantic, they're reasonably quiet subs in a big noisy ocean.
I suspect it would, as the United States would likely retaliate in its behalf. Since Israel isn't actually a NATO member, the US is under no obligation to do so, but it seems very likely, since the US gave Israel nukes in the first place.
> since the US gave Israel nukes in the first place
Wasn't it France?
So it seems. I thought we actually gave them nuclear weapons, but it seems they developed them themselves with a secret reactor with French assistance.
So my backup to the estimation that the US would retaliate to an attack on Israel was wrong, but I will still say that, given the support the US has provided to Israel in the past that they would still retaliate. Poking Israel is like poking the US, only a lighter poke.
I assume it has submarines and second-strike capability. Ofc it's hard to know specifics given the ambiguity policy.
(The point is more illustrative, like "few here would think Iran has the right to try to attack to destroy Israel's nukes."
In real life, if it was the US who decided that, it wouldn't need to attack. It's Israel's biggest enabler, so all it would have to do is say "no more settlements, no more military aid, no more occupation, time to withdraw to the green line and make peace with your neighbours and sign NPT. The PLO and Arab League are already down, and if we release Marwan Barghouti he can convince the rest of the Palestinians.")
Here's a precedent / parallel.
In 1981 Saddam had bought a French-made nuclear research reactor, and France-supplied highly enriched uranium (the standard fuel at the time). It was above board, legal, under IAEA supervision and everything.
So Israel bombed it, trying to stay the only nuclear power in the region.
But the predictable and actual effect was that it *convinced* Saddam he *did* need a nuclear weapons program after all, and that it should be secret. The Iraqi secret nukes program, created as the consequence of Israel's counter-productive attack, was only ended after 1991 by the UN.
After a successful US invasion, it should be noted.
(Not advocating a US invasion of Iran by any means, but I felt compelled to point out that that 1991 date didn't occur by accident)
Yes. (That was different in the sense that it was UN-approved—which might also affect how Saddam would interpret what it means for future threats and deterrence—but nevertheless, yes.)
If only they’d had UN approval in 2003, things would have worked out so much better.
Yep. You can't just say "some guys claimed this about another country 20 years ago but were wrong, therefore these other guys are also wrong about this other country."
You can say "Given the known fact that Iran was not building nukes and about to nuke us; and the known fact that the same people are telling the same lies about it for the same reasons as they lied in 2003; it's probably deliberate, not by accident, and anyone who falls for it again is not misguided but a sadistic warmonger."
You could say it but it's obviously wrong. They are not the same "lies" by the same people or for the same reasons. Moreover, Iran clearly was "building nukes"- i.e. taking steps to make it possible to build nuclear weapons very quickly, that had no possible peaceful purpose.
Having nukes is a fairly good guarantee against being attacked. Its the main reason any country has them. Since trump killed the JCPOA, it became obvious to Iran that guarantees made by the US were not to be trusted. This is all a fairly obvious outcome of escalatory brinkmanship.
Very much agreed, especially with that last part. Between Russia invading Ukraine and this action against Iran, if I were in the leadership of a non-nuclear country right now, I would be looking into every possible realistic avenue of getting nukes. It's sure looking like "might makes right" is the guiding principle for most of the world's leading powers today, and I wouldn't trust anything they said to the contrary.
Which is, ultimately, very sad. While still far from perfect, humanity seemed to have made pretty remarkable progress in the past few decades of leaving behind the violence of our past. Now we seem to be backsliding.
I do not really understand what you say. Principles are for intellectuals. The reality on the street is, people do not kill their neighbors inside countries, because there are courts enforcing laws. Now international relations are always anarchy, there is international law and the international criminal court, but crucially it can only be enforced by war. So internationally, courts cannot enforce law without a war first. Milosevic had to lose a war first, then when to the ICC to be charged by the violation of international law.
So no, might does not make, but enforce right. Iran violated international law, one of the most important ones (non-proliferation), and it can only be enforced this way.
" The reality on the street is, people do not kill their neighbors inside countries, because there are courts enforcing laws."
But that isn't the reality on the street. That has never, ever, in human history been the reality on the street. That "reality" is a story made up by cynics to justify their cynicism or by monsters to assure themselves that everybody else is secretly as broken inside as they are.
Here in actual reality, the vast, vast majority of people would not kill their neighbors even if they were absolutely sure they would never be caught or punished. There is a small minority that would, and a larger minority (but still very much a minority) that *might* if circumstances got out of hand. But it simply doesn't take very many willing murderers to ruin things for everyone else, so the world with laws and courts ends up much better than the world without.
Regardless, none of that is much relevant to international relations at all. Countries are not people. They do not have the same decision processes as people, the same constraints, vulnerabilities and limitations as people,. nor the same virtues and strengths as people. They are very different things, and the analogy to civic law breaks down very quickly.
Lots of international agreements work just fine without any sort of violent enforcement mechanism. They work because cooperating and playing nice often benefits all parties involved. Even when a country encounters a specific case where they would benefit by pushing the "defect" button, the short-term payoff is rarely worth the loss of future opportunities that accompanies that hit to your reputation. A lot of leaders and people in high government positions understand that very well.
Unfortunately there are several prominent leaders who do *not* seem to understand this, or who rationalize away that understanding whenever they see a defect button that they *really* want to push. In the longer term their countries will do worse and lose power and influence against the countries who consistently cooperate. (If human civilization overall survives and flourishes into the longer term.)
Now the Iranian regime is a pretty terrible government, and they themselves are not so great at avoiding the "defect" button. But in large part that's because the rest of the world--and the U.S. VERY much in particular--has shaped them that way. Consider that the current regime took power after Iranians had spent nearly two decades getting systematically fucked over by an autocratic puppet government supported by the U.S., all because Iranian oil was more important to Uncle Sam than Iranian lives or Iranian civil rights. Consider that the last time Iran made an agreement with the U.S. regarding its nuclear program--a mutually beneficial agreement--that agreement was torn up *by the U.S.* within a few years of its signing, for no good reason whatsoever, followed not too longer after by the U.S. assassinating one of their top generals on the flimsiest of justifications. From Iran's perspective "international law" no doubt looks like a joke of a concept: no protection against foreign abuses, but often cited to justify them. [1]
So yes, principles are for intellectuals. And intellectuals have spent the past few centuries taking over the world: very slowly at first, but much faster in recent decades. I'll admit that the anti-intellectuals have made a very, very impressive showing this year. A really awe-inspiring bid to drag us all back down into the, to stage a grand comeback tour for Pestilence and Famine and War[2], to really redecorate the place with that retro Dark Ages look. But they haven't succeeded yet. There are still lots of us out here who *do* have principles and are willing to stand up for them.
Relevant further reading if you made it through that wall o' text and can still manage more.
Regarding Cooperation in Modern International Relations Specifically:
https://acoup.blog/2023/07/07/collections-the-status-quo-coalition/
Regarding Cooperation in All Human Affairs More Generally :
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/02/23/in-favor-of-niceness-community-and-civilization/
[1] If one wants a better understanding of that part of the world, consider that for any reason an Iranian might feel anger at the international community and certain countries in particular, a Palestinian has two or three such reasons. As a people they've been on the receiving end of an absolutely staggering string of abuses and insults, going back more than a century. (And yes, obligatory disclaimer, they've been on the giving end of some as well.) And plenty of non-Palestinian Arabs *can see that* and don't necessarily have a lot of reason to expect that Britain or Israel or the U.S. would treat them any better if they were in a similar position.
[2] Death being a timeless classic that never goes out of style.
>Here in actual reality, the vast, vast majority of people would not kill their neighbors even if they were absolutely sure they would never be caught or punished.
Okay, I sort of over-exaggerated this. Let's say the vast majority would commit financial fraud or take bribes. Culture matters. As a textbook European I don't really get why Americans are so brimming with holiness... I think it might be a Calvinist thing, I think Catholic cultures more accept that everybody is a sinner and it is basically okay.
>Lots of international agreements work just fine without any sort of violent enforcement mechanism.They work because cooperating and playing nice often benefits all parties involved.
This is true for private individuals and corporations too, yet we need law enforcement. In fact because of the principal-agent problem, individuals and corporations ought to need less enforcement, as national leaders have way way bigger principal-agent problems. A marketplace is always better from a principal-agent viewpoint than an election. Like if term limits mean Trump cannot be re-elected, what exactly does he have to lose?
>Even when a country encounters a specific case where they would benefit by pushing the "defect" button, the short-term payoff is rarely worth the loss of future opportunities that accompanies that hit to your reputation.
See above. It is not a country, but the leader pushing the button. Hitler pushed the biggest "defect" button ever, yet a few years after the war, most everybody happily cooperated with democratic West Germany. Just 6 years later, the European Coal and Steel Community was signed - imagine France trusting Germany so much to pool their coal and steel i.e. military industry resources!
>because Iranian oil was more important to Uncle Sam
Actually it was British Petrol.
>And intellectuals have spent the past few centuries taking over the world: very slowly at first, but much faster in recent decades.
I wish it was true. The reality is, the bureaucrats did. I mean an intellectual is someone like Chomsky. While these bureaucrats are as unprincipled and aggerssive as ever. Look at what happened in Raqqa. A war of annihiliation, 2017 https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/06/syria-raqqa-in-ruins-and-civilians-devastated-after-us-led-war-of-annihilation/
And these are the intellectuals with principles?
Israel is supposedly nuclear and still got bombed, by Iran, on October 2024.
But Iran got bombed because they were trying to go nuclear. Shouldn't countries draw the exact opposite conclusion- that if they try to get nukes, they will be destroyed? Surely if Ukraine had tried to get nukes, Russia would have destroyed them at that time anyway, right? And probably if Russia invaded earlier, they would win easily.
Agreed! ( Particularly if, while enriching uranium to 60% U-235, they spend 40 years chanting "Death to America!" )
Iran *got bombed* because it was suspected of trying to go nuclear. Iran was not *destroyed* over this. The Iranian regime was not destroyed over this. The Supreme Leader was not killed or imprisoned or even deposed over this.
See also North Korea. And Pakistan, which was pretty clearly in bed with Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden.
The Iraqi regime, which we were pretty certain didn't have nuclear weapons and wasn't going to be making nuclear weapons any time soon, that *was* destroyed, and Saddam Hussein was dragged out of his spider hole and hung by the neck until dead.
The Libyan regime, which we knew for a fact didn't have and wasn't going to be making nuclear weapons, which had done the "right thing" by thoroughly and verifiably dismantling its nuclear arms program, was destroyed, and Muammar Gaddafi was anally raped to death on Youtube. Libya has been a failed state ever since.
You really think the conclusion Evil Dictators(tm) are drawing is that they should *not* nuke up ASAP?
I suspect the only reason North Korea was allowed to get nukes without getting couped or having their nuclear program raided/bombed is because they have a lot of artillery aimed at Seoul.
The primary takeaway any Evil Dictator should have from the last 40 years is that power speaks, and the West is super consequentialist about things, so make your threats as credible and devastating as possible. Nuke up, artillery up, etc.
The threat of artillery bombardment of Seoul is vastly overrated. North Korea has bignum guns, a small fraction of which have the range to reach the northern suburbs of Seoul and none of which have the range to reach downtown Seoul. This gets misreported as "North Korea has bignum guns and they can bombard Seoul into oblivion!". They now have heavy artillery rockets that could do so, but that's a recent development. Twenty years ago, it was only a modest number of Scuds and the like, roughly what Tehran and Baghdad were inflicting on each other in the 1980s.
North Korea was "allowed" to get nukes because everyone else was stuck in the Buck Turgidson "ignorant commie peons don't understand technology like our boys do" school of threat assessment. I met far too many people, far too highly placed, who were assuming that North Korea couldn't *really* build nuclear weapons five years after their first fully successful test. And since "everybody knew" North Korea can't really build nuclear weapons, we didn't really feel the need to do anything. Then it was too late.
That mistake, at least, we aren't repeating with Iran.
Interesting. But you think this really won't be enough to slow Iran significantly, right? I think I saw elsewhere you were predicting nukes within 12 months. Are centrifuges that easy to quickly obtain and deploy? Or are you just figuring that we didn't eliminate enough of their current stockpiles and equipment?
"But Iran got bombed because they were trying to go nuclear."
Or because they were behind Hamas, and, you know, Oct/7.
Or because they shoot at Israel last year (twice).
Or because they are an evil theocracy.
When the official explanation is changing so frequently, one cannot help but have the feeling that none of them is true.
Some decisions are overdetermined. Multiple independently sufficient motives that all are based in actual facts don't undermine each other's legitimacy. Israel has many, many reasons for bombing Iran, most of which boil down to "they hate us and have been waging a (mostly, but not entirely proxy) war against us for decades."
I think the question is not why Israel hates Iran (or, when we are at it, vice versa), but that what is the concrete reason for the actual ("pre-emptive") attack. And I don't think it is irrelevant, for several reasons. First, a rational expectation is that they end the war when their goals are met. If the war is about nuclear warheads, they don't start bombing police stations; if the war is about destroying the Theocracy of Evil, that is an entirely different matter.
And I don't think "we hate their guts, we are mortal enemies for like forever, that's why" would have met with an applause on the international stage.
But communicating one thing first, then another second, then a third later gives me the impression that they are throwing whatever plausible explanation crossed Netanjahu's mind to see what sticks.
(Heck, they could even give a list why, but AFAIK this is not what happened.)
Of course, the fact that Israel's current government lost a lot of its credibility in the last ~20 months does not help either. Overall, their communication is aimed to cover up whatever they can get away with. Which is not worse than the median in the region, not at all -- but enough to raise doubts about the official communication.
I think that's a kind of a silly standard to hold Israel to. Iran and Israel have been at war for decades now, and the only reason Israeli and Iranian troops haven't directly fought much is that there are neutral countries in between them. Instead, Iran has used proxies (and as recently as last year, its own military) to bombard Israeli cities with thousands of imprecise terror weapons. There's been no ceasefire since those attacks. No armistice. Not even a softening of relations in any way.
In other words, I don't think this is reasonably framed as a pre-emptive attack at all. The correct frame is that they were already at war. There's no other name for a state of affairs where one country is launching thousands of missiles at another. They're at war, have been at war, and throughout the course of that war Iran has mostly been the aggressor. (Admittedly, that's probably because Iran has a lot more ability to cultivate proxies than Israel does, not some moral superiority on Israel's part.)
And when you're in a long-standing war, the reason to strike back at enemy military targets is: A) you can, and B) the juice is worth the squeeze. All of Netanyahu's statements make a lot more sense when you realize he's explaining specific war tactics, not trying to justify starting a war.
> When the official explanation is changing so frequently, one cannot help but have the feeling that none of them is true.
Or because those things are related.
(You could make a similar argument about WW2: "First they said it was about Czechoslovakia, then they said it was about Poland, then they said it was about France, now we have this story about concentration camps... the constant change of the narrative makes me suspect that the so-called Nazis are just a boogeyman invented by American media.")
You are right, let me make it more clear. When I wrote, "none of them is true", I meant it in the sense that none of them is the real reason of the attack, not in the sense that they do not hold some truth. Of course they are mostly true -- but that they are the reason for the attack seems bogus after such swift changes.
"They are related" seems a fuzzy concept to me, though; I mean, of course they are related in the sense that all has something to do with Iran, and all are things which sound quite bad for the international public. And this is exactly why they can be ideal BS PR for such a bombing campaign.
Which, again, do not make them untrue; they just might not be the real reason for bombing. (Also, you can't stop Iran to be an "evil theocracy" by a bombing campaign.)
Considering your examples, would the allies state they go to war with Nazi Germany because of the concentration camps, that would be outright BS as well. It does not mean, though, that concentration camps existed, or that the war was the reason these stopped operating, or that it is good that they stopped operating.
"But Iran got bombed because they were trying to go nuclear."
This has by no means been adequately demonstrated. They didn't dismantle their nuclear program entirely. And I'd say they were obviously interested in keeping the option of building up to weapons capability in a medium-short, rather than long time horizon open[1]. But the claim that they were actively trying to build a bomb at the time they were attacked is one that needs significant support that I haven't seen yet.
[1] Which to my understanding is a state that many non-nuclear developed countries are perpetually in, simply by virtue of having the right mix of industry and technology and scientists. It's actually a little bit scary how *simple* nuclear weapons are when you get right down to it.
>But the claim that they were actively trying to build a bomb at the time they were attacked is one that needs significant support that I haven't seen yet.
The IAEA looks convinced that Iran prevented the IAEA from ensuring that Iran was not building a bomb.
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/iaea-board-declares-iran-breach-non-proliferation-duties-diplomats-say-2025-06-12/
And they enriched uranium to 60% U-235, while power reactors only need 5%. The _point_ of making such highly enriched uranium is a nuclear _weapons_ program.
I sent a thank you note to Trump after he authorized the bombing of the Fordow uranium enrichment site. I consider bombing it to be the right choice.
None of that particularly contradicts what I had just written. Avoiding international inspection and enriching uranium to 60% are of course both consistent with a country actively working towards a bomb. But they're also consistent with a country that would like to keep the option of getting there quickly, but without larger the provocation of actually assembling the weapons.[1] I don't especially have an opinion either way: it's plausible that they were trying to get to a bomb, it's still far from certain. As a general rule, you shouldn't trust motivated claims that come from unreliable sources even when they align with an other-wise plausible reality. Good lies have grains of truth. But just because someone is a habitual liar doesn't mean they're never truthful.
[1] I'll note that if this is the case, they either miscalculated how much of a provocation their intermediate efforts actually were, or simply underestimated how ready Netanyahu and Trump would be to jump on an excuse for belligerence.
Many Thanks!
Ok, I think we are just splitting the difference between "steps directed towards making a bomb" (including enriching uranium to 60% U-235) versus "final assembly of a completed weapon" (or maybe even "arming a nuclear bomb" ?).
>it's plausible that they were trying to get to a bomb, it's still far from certain. As a general rule, you shouldn't trust motivated claims that come from unreliable sources even when they align with an other-wise plausible reality.
Look, Iran hasn't denied that they have 60% enriched uranium. That, _alone_, makes it clear that they are/were trying to get a bomb. 60% U-235 certainly isn't intended for power reactors!
Regrettably, as https://www.iranwatch.org/our-publications/articles-reports/irans-nuclear-timetable-weapon-potential says
>It is also important to consider that Iran could use its stockpile of 60% enriched uranium to make weapons directly without the need for further enrichment. There would be limitations in the delivery of such weapons, as discussed below.
( Basically, they could build a gun-type bomb with their existing 60% U-235 with no further enrichment, albeit it would be heavier than a 90% U-235 weapon. )
Sure, but its worth noting that Iran was much farther down the path toward weapons capabilities than any other non-nuclear-weapons nation. See the IAEA report that Iran has 900 lbs of uranium enriched to 60+%: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/5/31/iran-increases-stockpile-of-enriched-uranium-by-50-percent-iaea-says
That's the largest stockpile of >nuclear power grade uranium in the world, aside from nations that already have nuclear weapons. And according to the IAEA, it's increased by 50% in the last few months.
I can't see an explanation for this that isn't attempting to either A) get nuclear weapons or B) make getting a nuclear weapon something they can achieve in the very short term.
I agree with the last paragraph, but I think A) and B) are pretty importantly different here. In particular, I think a world in which we were confident the answer was B) and not A) would be a world in which the bombing would be *exactly the wrong move.*
Re: footnote one, any country with a domestic nuclear power program (not just a reactor, but producing their own fuel) could stand up nuclear weapons within 2-3 years. The main players there (aside from the countries that already have nuclear weapons) are Germany, Japan, Canada, Sweden and South Korea.
Thermonuclear weapons (ie H-bombs) would take longer, but that's more because designing and building an H-bomb is notoriously difficult - an implosion-type A-bomb is a pretty straightforward engineering problem once you have the enriched uranium and you know how to machine it (both of which you have as a result of the domestic power program).
There's something involving "lensing" in making an H-bomb which I have deliberately avoided finding out about because I would like to be able to travel the world without constraint, but it's famously a hard problem.
"There's something involving "lensing" in making an H-bomb which I have deliberately avoided finding out about because I would like to be able to travel the world without constraint, but it's famously a hard problem."
Ah yes. It happened exactly once in my education that a professor unwilling/unable to fully answer one of my questions because "some of the details are classified." The part of the answer that he did give was pretty much "something involving lensing."
The details of the Teller-Ulam design (for an H-bomb) are “born secret”, ie they’re secret under US law even if you reinvent them yourself.
Some of them were published in a magazine called “The Progressive” in 1979, but how accurate or complete they are is unknown.
It was notoriously difficult, because both the USSR and UK programs had partial information from the US (in one case by spying, in the other given voluntarily) and still struggled to get it right, and the other two open programs (France and China) also took a long time.
I think you're mixing up plutonium and uranium A-bombs. Uranium A-bombs don't even require implosion; just two chunks of uranium you slam together. If you can make bombs, and you have a critical mass of highly enriched uranium, they're child's play.
Plutonium on the other hand has pretty low neutron production, so you need implosion explosives to trigger them. That's apparently a difficult problem, at least to the point that it made North Korea have multiple fizzles.
Jeffrey beat me to the punch, but my understanding was that the implosion was to ensure that the plutonium had time to react fully before the explosion spread it too far apart.
I believe that similar considerations are what make H-Bombs difficult: simply packing deuterium around a fissile core will give you extremely high temperatures and pressures, but with such an abysmal confinement times that your triple product remains quite low.
>Plutonium on the other hand has pretty low neutron production,
Huh?
>so you need implosion explosives to trigger them.
Umm... AFAIK, the problem is that the Pu-240 impurity in a Pu-239 pit has a _high_ spontaneous fission rate, so it produces a _high_ neutron background rate, which can trigger a premature chain reaction when the pit is only partway to being fully imploded, and that gives you a fizzle. That's much of the motivation for using high explosives to make the implosion fast, and reducing the chance of a fizzle (you also want to compress the plutonium as much as possible, to get a given mass of plutonium plus reflector plus tamper as supercritical as possible to get the yield up)
Saddam completely gave up his nuclear program after 1991, and they punished him for it in 2003.
Gaddafi gave up his nuclear program in 2003, and they punished him for it in 2011.
(Plus all the other coups and massacres and wars of criminal aggression that had nothing to do with nukes. E.g. overthrowing Iran's secular democratically-elected PM to install a dictator to protect oil profits in 1953; btw that, plus his overthrow in 1979, is why Iran is a theocracy now.)
North Korea has nukes, so the US only sanctions it instead of invading or bombing.
The US has, through its actions, tried hard to prove that no one is safe from US aggression without a nuclear deterrent. This is very foolish.
> overthrowing Iran's secular democratically-elected PM to install a dictator to protect oil profits in 1953;
Of all the inaccuracies in the Standard Internet Commenter View Of History, the idea that Iran was meaningfully democratic prior to 1953 is one of the most pernicious.
The reality was... very complicated. There were elections but they were regularly rigged, politicians had a tendency to get assassinated if they didn't agree with the Shia fundamentalists, and the 1952 election ended with only 79 out of 136 seats filled because Mosaddegh did a literal "Stop the count!" move once a parliamentary quorum was reached and before the votes from rural seats which would have opposed him could be tabulated.
The post-1953 system also had rigged elections, though for a while it seemed to be heading in the right direction with multiple competitive parties (albeit all Shah-approved) then in 1975 they just said "fuck it, actually let's just have one party and outlaw all the others".
I think 1953 is best seen not as a transition from democracy to non-democracy but just another speedbump in the shitshow of rigged elections, assassinations, coups, revolutions, party-bannings, and neverending conflict between royalists, Islamists, communists, landlords and the military that characterises the last century of Iranian politics.
Right. The world is full of crappy dictators who are allowed to stay in power because they don't cause any particular trouble.
While Ayatollah Khameni is hiding out in a bunker, the Emir of Dubai is banging bikini models on his yacht, because making friends is better than making enemies.
Yup. After WWII there was a chance for multilateralism and international law and non-proliferation—but the US preferred hegemony to survival.
sure the Soviets were all for that
I think you are right on this.
On the other hand, it is also obvious that the US made sure to have the overseas empire of the UK collapsed. (It was happy to see the collapse of the French one as well, but actively contributed to the former.)
Correct. US and SU were competing for the colonies, but agreed that they will have them, not the UK and FR. So basically textbook great power politics.
Hegemony is survival. The best way to guarantee survival is to remove the tools others have to hurt you.
Foolishness. No, spending decades trying to dominate and crush and dominate and crush is not a good way to survive.
There are only two options. You are either friendly and cooperative, or totally crush them. What does NOT work is some intermediate level of violence, and that is IMHO the mistake the US and Israel tends to make. That is, use enough violence that they hate you, but not enough that they fear you.
You seem to be skipping over the first 70 post-WWII years.
1953 - overthrew Iran's secular democratically-elected PM, to install a dictator to protect oil profits
(forcing on Iran a US puppet dictator, to be overthrown by a homegrown Islamic Revolution in 1979, is why Iran is now a theocracy. It was so dumb)
The quest for domination did start quite immediately, I'm afraid
> 1953 - overthrew Iran's secular democratically-elected PM, to install a dictator to protect oil profits
https://open.substack.com/pub/astralcodexten/p/open-thread-387?r=izqzp&utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=128821580
Uh...really? "The US preferred hegemony to survival"? I mean, it's not like there were any *other* countries that were pursuing hegemony after WWII...
I honestly wonder if you realise that you have, with a comment like this, absolutely ensured that 90% of readers, many of which may have been highly open to your viewpoint, will now permanently disregard everything you say on the matter. More generally, I'm just amazed at how many people trying to advocate for a position have an unbelievable talent for appending a single sentence that compresses "I have a complete lack of perspective", "I have no awareness of the slightest factual nuance" and "I'm a fanatical ideologue" into that sentence.
>"Uh...really?"
Yes really. (You know about all the coups, all the overthrowing democracies to install dictators, all the terrorists and massacres, all the undermining of international law, right? In the nuclear age this isn't just wicked, it's an existential risk.)
>"It's not like there were any *other* countries"
Did I say there weren't? But if you're American, you should understand what's going on so you can be an effective citizen. (And it is the only superpower so it has an enormous impact.)
>"will now permanently disregard"
I hope they prefer survival, over encouraging nuclear proliferation so they can pwn david bahry in the comments section of astral codex ten dot com.
You're the one who said that after WWII there could have been peace and stability, if not for the US. The only sensible way to parse your comment is as saying that the US on its own ruled out peace.
If you're now trying to claim that you only meant the US played *a* part, that's a pretty blatant motte-and-bailey. Otherwise, you would have to say that a comment saying "there was a chance for world peace, but Iran chose jihadism instead" would get total unchallenged agreement from you.
The US played an enormous and consistent role, which it is still playing, then. If you want to compare the amount it did vs what the USSR did then feel free (I'm historically curious, though it's little relevant to talking to Americans on an American blog about what America is doing).
Re: the first, if you didn't know, start with
- 1953 - Iran - overthrew the democratically elected PM, replacing him with a dictator to protect oil profits
- 1954 - Guatemala - overthrew the democratically elected President, replacing him with a dictator to protect fruit profits
- 1965/6 - Indonesia - helped the incoming dictator Suharto massacre a million peaceful leftists
Etc
The general pattern never stopped. For some books check out Vincent Bevins' "The Jakarta Method" (reviewed at: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-jakarta-method-how-the-u-s-used-mass-murder-to-beat-communism/) or Chomsky and Robinson's "The Myth of American Idealism" (reviewed at: https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/11/15/chomsky-foreign-policy-book-review-american-idealism/).
> - 1953 - Iran - overthrew the democratically elected PM, replacing him with a dictator to protect oil profits
According to Melvin's post upthread, this is an extremely misleading description of events.
Again, you're either saying that the US played *a* role among others in destabilising the post-WWII world, or you're saying it played the primary role. If the latter, I suggest you look up the Yalta pledge. If the former, this is an almost textbook motte-and-bailey discussion.
I strongly agree with this post
some science + money gossip:
"Colossal Biosciences" is the company that pretends to de-extinct dire wolves and so on. It's really just living paleoart—fun, but not remotely what their hype claims. E.g. the "dire wolves" were really just grey wolves with a handful of genes edited to make them big and white etc.[1] For fur colour, they couldn't even use the actual dire-wolf gene, b̶e̶c̶a̶u̶s̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶g̶r̶e̶y̶ ̶w̶o̶l̶v̶e̶s̶ ̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶s̶o̶ ̶d̶i̶f̶f̶e̶r̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶f̶r̶o̶m̶ ̶d̶i̶r̶e̶ ̶w̶o̶l̶v̶e̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶d̶i̶r̶e̶ ̶w̶o̶l̶f̶ ̶g̶e̶n̶e̶ ̶w̶o̶u̶l̶d̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶m̶a̶d̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶g̶r̶e̶y̶ ̶w̶o̶l̶v̶e̶s̶ ̶d̶e̶a̶f̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶b̶l̶i̶n̶d̶.*[2] The misrepresentation of what they're doing isn't just cringe—it's dangerous, given how Trump wants to use it as an excuse to try to remove protections from endangered species.[3]
My supervisor Dr. Vincent Lynch, apart from his research e.g. on cancer resistance in elephants [4] and other cool stuff, is a critic of Colossal's hype (while admiring some of the genuinely important biotech that Colossal is refining, which could be redirected to other genuinely useful purposes).[5]
The gossip part: it looks like Colossal's finally started using intimidation tactics. First, some bizarre hit piece articles appeared trying to discredit his critiques (but his critiques are standard—Colossal itself admits that calling gene-edited grey wolves "dire wolves" is just "colloquial"). Second: when he suggested that the articles are AI-generated and might be paid for by Colossal and its billionaire cofounder (obviously plausible given the incentives + clearly disclaimed as opinion i.e. protected speech + clearly related to public concern given Trump's intent to remove protections), Colossal had their lawyers send an intimidating "shut up about it" letter to his front door.
Ironically, Colossal's behaviour is more humiliating for them than scientists' critiques ever could be. The hype train was rolling and not going to stop; people want to believe that we have dire wolves and will have mammoths. But people don't like billionaire Elizabeth Holmes-ass behaviour to silence critics.
[1] https://www.newscientist.com/article/2481409-colossal-scientist-now-admits-they-havent-really-made-dire-wolves/
[2] https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250407444322/en/Colossal-Announces-Worlds-First-De-Extinction-Birth-of-Dire-Wolves
[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/04/10/trump-endangered-species-protections-dire-wolves/
[4] https://elifesciences.org/articles/11994
[5] https://www.livescience.com/animals/extinct-species/colossals-de-extinction-campaign-is-built-on-a-semantic-house-of-cards-with-shoddy-foundations-and-the-consequences-are-dire-opinion
*Added: this part was probably my misinterpretation, inherited from some early reporting. More likely the issue was that these genes are risky to mess with in general (e.g. in the event of imperfect CRISPR edits?), rather than a specific incompatibility with the dire wolf version. Thanks to Catmint for pointing this out. https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/open-thread-387/comment/129267704
This is just the very first thing they've done. Of course it's not reaching all goals.
Alexander Graham Bell's phone was *dogshit* compared to iPhone 16, but fortunately people kept improving the technology.
> For fur colour, they couldn't even use the actual dire-wolf gene, because the grey wolves are so different from dire wolves that the dire wolf gene would have made the grey wolves deaf and blind.[2]
This is as far as I can tell a miscommunication between scientists and laymen. Actual quote is:
> The dire wolf genome has protein-coding substitutions in three essential pigmentation genes: OCA2, SLC45A2, and MITF, which directly impact the function and development of melanocytes. While these variants would have led to a light coat in dire wolves, variation in these genes in gray wolves can lead to deafness and blindness.
For context, many species have minor variants of these genes which affect coat color (usually lightening it). For example, a variant of OCA2 causes blue eyes in humans, while a variant of SLC45A2 is responsible for palomino horses. White spotting patterns in dogs are associated with MITF variants.
However, in mammals, maybe vertebrates or higher, major disruptions can cause negative side effects. For example, complete deletion of MITF is lethal, while major disruptions result in an all-white coat and often deafness. Certain mutations of it in mice are also capable of reducing eye size, which probably doesn't help with vision.
OCA2 and SLC45A2 are much less serious. An OCA2 variant is the most common cause of blue eyes in humans. Blue eyes are known to sometimes cause minor difficulties with vision especially involving bright lights, however the effects are small as you can find out by asking any blue-eyed human. The causal mechanism is differently reflected light by the iris, so this is not gene-specific. SLC45A2 and can also cause blue eyes. I do not know of any cases where full blindness was caused in any species by any mutation to either of these genes. MITF too can cause blue eyes, but this is not the concerning thing about it.
I do not know of any studies of OCA2 or SLC45A2 showing a causative link to blindness. Closest I found was "There was no statistically significant difference in vision between patients with OCA1 versus OCA2, or between patients with and without mutations. Patients with two mutations tended to have worse vision than those with one, but not statistically significantly." from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1091853116301823 (do not be mislead by the word "blindness" in the introduction - it may be referring to a different gene)
For more on MITF mutation viability in canines:
> In humans, deleterious MITF mutations cause disorders of vision and hearing, including the Waardenburg and Tietz syndromes [9], [12], [13]. Deafness has also been recorded in white dogs, where approximately 2% of white dogs (sw/sw) present with bilateral deafness and 18% are unilaterally deaf [14]. The majority of mutations reported in mice and humans that cause severe pleiotropic effects are generally loss-of-function mutations affecting the coding regions [15]. This is not the case with dog MITF alleles. A comparison of S and sw haplotypes, using BACs from an S/sw heterozygote, across the 100 kb canine white spotting candidate region revealed 124 sequence polymorphisms, all of which were located in non-coding regions [6]. This demonstrated that the extreme white coat colour phenotype is controlled by one or several regulatory mutations. This hypothesis is strongly supported by the fact that coloured patches on white spotted dogs display normal pigmentation. Thus, this suggests that the canine MITF variants primarily affects migration and survival of melanocytes during development, but have no or only minor effects in mature melanocytes in the hair follicle; pigmentation of the hair requires MITF protein expression [16].
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0104363
That paper also has a table of MITF variants found in wolves. So, this isn't a deal where gray wolves have something special going on that makes MITF variants uniquely harmful, but rather that major disruptions to the gene _can_ in some species have harmful effects, and (here I enter the realm of speculation, as I know the theory but not the practice) perhaps they were concerned that CRISPR would not modify the gene accurately enough to include just the desired substitution without damaging the rest.
I think you're right. Although e.g. Zimmer's NYT article said "they did not introduce the remaining five [mutations], because previous studies had shown that those five mutations cause deafness and blindness in gray wolves"[1]—which is might be where I got that interpretation from—the press release itself only said "variation in these genes in gray wolves can lead to deafness and blindness."[2] So yes, I now agree it's probably more that they considered these genes risky to mess around with in general, rather than a specific incompatibility with the dire wolf version.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/07/science/colossal-dire-wolf-deextinction.html
[2] https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250407444322/en/Colossal-Announces-Worlds-First-De-Extinction-Birth-of-Dire-Wolves
[added: I've now edited the OP]
Hm, will look more into this later.
Sure, I love talking about animal color genetics so hit me up with any questions :)
Ooo, here are some! Pick your favourite:
- What's your favourite weird colour pattern mechanism?
- Are zebras white with black stripes or black with white stripes?
- Why do some kittens have mittens 🥺
Leopard spotted horses, which aside from being cool molecularly are also a very old pattern which may have helped with camouflage during the ice age. The first part is a retroviral insertion disrupting the TRPM3 gene. By itself this causes a normal-colored foal except with striped hooves, which as it grows gradually gets more and more white hairs throughout the coat. But combined with a certain variant of another gene, the whole horse can be white with dark dots. Nobody has actually proven the mechanism, but the setup and the effect are similar to spotted corn, so it probably also works by transposon. If that's so, then the second gene is a special activator for the retroviral mechanism, allowing it to copy itself out of the DNA and into other parts. So maybe in some cells the transposons copy themselves right out of the DNA and restore the gene's function (the colored dots), while in others they copy themselves further or otherwise mess up that section of DNA even more (the white regions). Speculation, but the spotted corn definitely does it that way and horses are cooler than corn.
Zebras are brown with black and white stripes: https://arthistoryanimalia.com/2023/01/31/animal-art-of-the-day-for-international-zebra-day-1-george-edwards-george-stubbs-and-the-first-british-zebras/ Like this horse: http://www.skhantoniow.pl/waldi.htm then you take the brown areas and you turn them dusty-tan like this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/Cheval_fjord_00003.jpg while you also take those stripes and extend them to cover the whole body. Legs too: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e5/Somali_Wild_Ass.JPG
Kittens have mittens because it's very cute and it even rhymes! What's going on there is not white being added but color failing to be added because the cells for it don't grow in that part of the skin. For color you need melanocytes, and melanocytes develop from melanoblasts, which start at the spinal region and during early embryonic growth spread across the skin of the whole animal. Except if the genes are not working right, it doesn't do that, and instead the cells only reach some areas. Because the paws are far away from the spine, they are one of the last places where the pigment cell precursors arrive, so if things get slowed down it's easy for the paws to miss out on getting color. (And this starts before the tail has grown out, so the tail tip also counts as far away from the starting location. And the path on the head is around the sides meeting in the middle, so if it doesn't quite make it you get a little pink nose with white strip and then you have to really hope the cat will let you kiss the nose.)
Quality reply! Thank you.
This would read much better without the TDS, and especially [5] which is just more TDS and boo outgroup.
If you are going to write about scientific topics, stick to scientific arguments. Science + politics = politics.
I'm sorry you were triggered by hearing relevant info about what the administration is, in fact, trying to do and for which the administration is, in fact, citing Colossal's claims as justification.
I'm not sorry you are triggered that your unscientific horse manure was called unscientific horse manure.
There is a very interesting discussion to be had regarding the scientific merits of endangered species protections and the unintended consequences of such actions (protections seldom work as intended and often inhibit more productive solutions). I enjoy those discussions.
Sneering leftist drivel composed solely of reducto ad Trump has never once been productive and actively makes the world a worse place. Do better.
If you think it would be "horse manure" for the Trump administration to want to remove protections for endangered species, and to cite fake de-extinction as a justification—
—tell the Trump administration. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/04/10/trump-endangered-species-protections-dire-wolves/
Okay, why are you assuming that the Trump administration knows this is fake and is cynically removing endangered species (I presume you are hinting at 'so rich developers can bulldoze habitats and make YUGE profits which they funnel back to GOP politicians!' rationale for that).
All the flippin' "trust the science, bro" messaging from the liberal/left side about many issues, so if a company comes along with "look, we are using SCIENCE to do this thing", why not believe them?
I think we shouldn't believe Colossal, as it stands, but if you're just skimming something then "hey, extinct species can be brought back, that's great!" does translate into "and so the at-risk species today are no longer so at-risk since we can clone them and reintroduce them as necessary". That does not require hand-rubbing glee at "now we can kill off all those pesky animals and make megabucks" but rather believing the hype around science and technological advancement.
I could easily see Trump, for one, being delighted by this as a sign of how great and how advanced America is, here's an American company that can bring back extinct species from the past, we're the greatest! (Personally I blame Michael Crichton and Jurassic Park for putting it out into pop culture that we can do stuff like this).
Expecting this particular administration to not take a big public dump on your particular hobbyhorse is hilarious, by the way. They took away pennies! (Yes, that's a deliberate strike against the coin collectors). I don't mind you yelling about the Trump Administration being big meanies, but you're mistaking distractions for "the Administration really cares about this."
Oh look, you are trying to pass off more political opinion as some sort of scientific discussion. Very much horse manure, I said do better, not worse.
Anyway, I've had enough of your lashing out at facts in order to protect your feelings about the administration. I will not respond after this. Bye.
Good, perhaps a productive discussion can now occur.
Their writeup [2] describes solving a challenging and multifaceted problem, for which a reasonable definition of success is unclear. Obviously it's self serving, but it is a startup that needs to pull some funding by embellishing their project, and the claims seem reasonable and honest. So far so good.
So from [5] I was expecting a 10,000 words technical rebuttal, instead I got Trump Derangement Syndrome and evil mustache twirling capitalists. Is this guy really a biologist? I see nothing of substance that actually engages with Collosal's claims.
What a strange comment. He mentions Trump *once*—"The Trump administration has announced it will remove protections from many endangered species, citing Colossal's de-extinction of the dire wolf." I'm sorry you consider it a derangement syndrome to inform you of relevant facts.
(Also, as I already explained: they slightly edited a tiny handful of genes in a grey wolf, and pretended it was a dire wolf. That's what happened. I'm not sure what additional 10,000 words you're looking for to re-explain it.)
I don't care who cites their work, I care about the merit of their work.
The link in [2] explains the tradeoffs they had to navigate and their reasoning. The link in [5] does not engage with that at all and instead only implies ulterior motives, which is low key confirmation that their decisions were correct as even an expert critic cannot engage on merits.
I didn't say anything about "who cites their work."
As I explained, the issue is the dishonesty. If they want to make living paleoart that's their business. They shouldn't pretend it's de-extinction.
The merits of their work are poor. Dire wolves are an entirely separate genus, not species but genus, from gray wolves. They edited 14 genes towards the dire wolf sequence. This is not the amount of change you do to get to a different species, let alone genus. Even domestic dogs are all considered one subspecies, and they've got way more genetic variety than that! Plus if you read between the lines, and look closely at the choice of genes and the fact that GRR Martin is their board's cultural advisor, it becomes pretty clear that the goal was to make the wolves look as much like the game of thrones wolves as possible. Like, why did they specifically add non-dire-wolf genes known to cause white coat color? Not because dire wolves were thought to be white, previous research suggested they may have been kind of reddish, but because the Game of Thrones wolves were white.
Yeah, it's a hard problem, and yeah, the level of success they got is actually technologically impressive. But the level of hype and marketing BS around it is unacceptable and would not be tolerated in any company making products for consumers. This is like 'Our new phone will impress 500x more girls when they see you using it' levels of accuracy.
And when I first looked into this, I thought "Ok, the dire wolf stuff is poppycock, but at least they're still doing good work cloning endangered red wolves." Nope. The wolves they cloned weren't even endangered, they were red wolf-coyote hybrids that are doing fine. You could argue that conservationists should be more accepting of hybrids as worthy of conservation, but you have to actually make that argument, not just claim that the animals _are_ red wolves.
Yup. In Jurassic Park terms: this isn't making a dinosaur with a bit of frog DNA to fill in the gaps, this is making a frog with a bit of dinosaur DNA to fill in the gaps
""The Trump administration has announced it will remove protections from many endangered species, citing Colossal's de-extinction of the dire wolf."
I've tried to track this down, and all I'm getting at the moment is:
https://factcheck.afp.com/doc.afp.com.39WX79D
"Secretary of Interior Doug Burgum claimed on X that the "revival of the Dire Wolf" signaled "the advent of a thrilling new era of scientific wonder, showcasing how the concept of 'de-extinction' can serve as a bedrock for modern species conservation."
Burgum doubled down during a live-streamed town hall on April 9, 2025 saying: "If we're going to be in anguish about losing a species, now we have an opportunity to bring them back".
"Pick your favorite species and call up Colossal," he claimed, as the current federal government continues to target protections of various endangered species, often tied to misleading narratives."
So not an official government pronouncement, just social media hoo-hah. Unless you can point me to official government department website saying they are officially scrapping the endangered species list?
You know, I can't help feeling that if we had President Kamala and one of her cabinet officials making a Brat Summer announcement of "extinction can be reversed!", the same guys tut-tutting about this would be all "yay science!" even though it would be the same company and the same con artists making claims.
Burgum is a member of Trump's cabinet. This shows clear stated intent to remove protecting regulations, even if it's not an official order yet. https://x.com/SecretaryBurgum/status/1909345951069651032
Re: your second speculation, our objections to Colossal's dishonesty are older than the Trump administration plan. Burgum’s recent statement, only two months ago, is the first time any of this has actually had any connection to Trump at all.
(And obviously it wouldn't be acceptable for Kamala to do this either. It's weird how quick people are to assume common sense must be partisan political signaling.)
You, and/or the guy whose article you linked, were all "the Trump administration has definitely done this thing!"
Now you've rowed back to "okay they haven't done it yet but this guy's tweet is an indication that they're gonna do it".
Wake me up when they *have* done something, not when "this guy who hates my political enemies wrote a hyperventilating article about how they're gonna do all the bad stuff".
I think there's more than enough room to give Colossal a good kicking without dragging in "and Trump will do villain stuff because of them!!!!"
I said "wants." The article said "announced." And, in fact, the tweet announced what they want to do, exactly as we said.
I know it triggers you to hear any unpleasant information about Trump, but please deal with that on your own time.
re: "challenging and multifaceted problem, for which a reasonable definition of success is unclear"
If it might be possible to someday successfully clone a real dire wolf with an actual dire wolf genome—instead of slightly editing a grey wolf genome—cool. But that's not what they did and not what they tried to do.
Although there might be an area where the line of success is fuzzy (starting with a dire wolf genome and filling in a few small gaps with grey wolf DNA?), what they did here doesn't remotely approach anything like that.
And, of course, it might be that it's still too hard (e.g. having to edit way more genes, to get to >90% dire wolf genome if that's our criterion). If it's too hard then it's too hard; that wouldn't be anyone's fault, but people should be honest about it.
I agree their "dire wolves" look like regular Arctic wolves, but from their woolly mice, it seems pretty clear they're developing the tech you'd need to turn elephants into mammoths. (I consider whether "taxonomy experts" would deem that TRUE de-extinction entirely unimportant.)
I do think Colossal is going to be the Theranos of this field. I don't think we're going to get mammoths out of whatever process they're using, but the woolly mice are undeniably cute (and I'm very resistant to cute animals), so if they pivoted to "exotic pet creation" they'd do everyone a favour by stopping pretending they're going to save endangered and extinct species.
I also think they just jumped right on dire wolves because of Game of Thrones, not because of the real extinct animal. The ordinary person who ever heard of dire wolves probably has an image of the GoT beastie in mind, so "actual wolves just bigger and whiter" is sold successfully as 'this is a dire wolf'.
Yup. They even got GRRM to post about them lol
I do wish they'd just call it living paleoart. Living paleoart is fun!
Yes, they’re kind of misrepresenting what they’re doing,
One possible use for that technology is filling the gap in an ecosystem left by a species going extinct; not bringing it back, but putting in a functional replacement. But that would likely raise the issue of the animal went extinct in the first place because other parts of the ecosystem it depended on are gone, too.
>(I consider whether "taxonomy experts" would deem that TRUE de-extinction entirely unimportant.)
You don't think there might be more to a mammoth than a hairy elephant?
Even if you accept a hairy elephant as a mammoth, it doesn't get us any closer to actually de-extincting other interesting species that aren't a simple aesthetic variation on a surviving one.
No, if they, or anyone else, have any specific criticism – like, head too small, tusks too straight, ears the wrong shape, or anything else – I'd be perfectly happy to concede that as a shortcoming, and then it's a matter of taste whether you think it a significant enough failing that it no longer counts as a mammoth. But the current level of criticism I've seen is on the level of "it wouldn't have the SOUL of a mammoth," and THAT is what I have contempt for.
I agree there'd still be a long way to go to sauropods, pterodactyls, etc. that don't have any living species close enough to hack together a facsimile from, but think it DOES get us closer.
I think it's less about having the "soul" of the extinct creature and more that these creatures likely differed from their non-extinct counterparts in ways that aren't externally visible or detectable from fossil evidence, such as social behavior, diet composition, effects on the ecosystem, vocalizations, brain and organ structure, etc.
And in that case labeling a modern animal genetically modified to look like an extinct animal as the extinct animal is misleading. You can't learn about actual dire wolf behavior from studying genetically modified grey wolves, and (since some people want to clone mammoths to rewild them in Siberia) you can't precisely replicate the effects on the ecosystem of a herd of woolly mammoths with a herd of genetically modified elephants, which might eat a rather different balance of vegetation and have a significantly different effect on the landscape. And people react strongly to this kind of 'deextinction' because there are suggestions we don't need to work that hard to conserve species that are currently alive, as long as we have the future option of making something that superficially looks like them.
This isn't "it doesn't have the soul of a mammoth."
This is "it doesn't have the anything-at-all of a woolly mammoth, even remotely, except for a tiny handful of gene edits, compared to the much vaster number of genetic differences between an actual woolly mammoth and an Asian elephant."
For the "direwolves," it was literally only 20 edits in 14 genes.
The mammoth plan is similar. It's not a plan to clone it from a mammoth genome; it's a plan to slightly edit a tiny handful of genes in an Asian elephant genome.
The tech is useful, I agree, including probably for fertility and genetic medicine.
I'll leave aside whether, hypothetically, the tech could ever be used to actually make a real mammoth with a real mammoth genome (instead of a slightly-edited hairy elephant). The point is that the "dire wolves" are not remotely dire wolves; and their current plan for a "mammoth" is exactly the same kind of not-remotely-a-mammoth.
If it was just their private fantasy, it would be unimportant. Or even for entertainment (I don't mind if Peter Jackson hires a hairy elephant to play a mammoth in a movie). But remember that Colossal and the Trump administration are both pretending this is *literal* de-extinction, and the Trump administration is already trying to use this as an excuse to remove protections from endangered species.
Are there any new/prospective parents who have experience with Alpha School a/b tested with home schooling? Reading the review, it really seems fantastic to a degree I didn't realize existed with off-the-shelf schooling options.
The current essay contest experience could be improved to a significant degree:
1. Everything being dumped into massive google drive documents kind of sucks; headings get weird, the pages are laggy, things have to be sorted, etc, and I'm sure it's a big pain in the butt for Scott and his assistants to copy and paste everything into the documents, especially as the number of entrants rises.
2. People submit essays for many reasons, but a major one is wanting attention/feedback/comments from a large, engaged reading population. The current rating system gives you no way to write comments for the reviews you rate, because it would be a massive headache to sort and collate comments. I had things I wrote down about each essay I rated, but didn't have anywhere to actually put them other than a separate ACX comment.
It seems like the solution is adapting an existing blogging platform or making a bespoke website for this purpose. I'm picturing a website where each essay is uploaded as a post by its writer, where anonymous comments can be left below each post, and where there's an integrated rating system on each post.
I know that someone had proposed an ELO system in a previous open thread, where instead of rating each post, you read two essays and say which one you liked better, and that over time results in an ELO score for each essay. It'd be great if that could also potentially be part of this, because right now, rating is tricky; I wasn't sure how to rate the first few essays I read, because I didn't know how they stacked up.
I'd be interested in working on this project, but have minimal web dev experience. I'm quite good at AI wrangling, but would love to see if there's anyone else who wants to work with me on making the essay contest experience better, who ideally is more experienced in website development.
That is a great idea--people who worked hard to write something basically always want feedback, and I would definitely often post feedback if there was a way for it to be attached to the specific review.
Wanted to say I like your/that person's Elo* system and agree with your rationale.
My main concern is potential abuse by raters who don't necessarily read every essay but might rate every other essay as worse than the one they liked (out of a couple they actually read, say), or as better if they happen to really dislike one, etc.
*not ELO, it's Arpad Elo's last name not an acronym, sorry to nitpick
>It seems like the solution is adapting an existing blogging platform
Why not Substack itself?
Because it doesn't have a well-functioning commenting system, for one.
I'm not sure if it has the functionality we need; a volunteer could certainly upload each essay as a post onto a new sub stack, but I think comments that only show up after the voting is done would be nice, and I think rating should be integrated into each post, which seems tricky to do through substack. If there's a way to accomplish those goals, though, then yeah, substack would work well.
Parts of this seem like they would be relatively easy to do by a volunteer. For example, taking a huge google drive document, and splitting it into many small ones.
For commenting the submissions, a possible solution is a new thread on ACX where someone makes a top-level comment containing the name of each entry and a link to its document, and everyone else will reply to these comments. (Scott would create the thread but keep it "only available to those who know the secret URL", send the URL to the volunteer who would create the top-level comments, and then Scott would switch the thread to "public".)
So I guess what needs to be done is for someone to volunteer (it could even be me) and propose the specific kind of help to Scott, maybe publicly in a related thread, so that other people know what is going on. Well, the next time we do reviews.
The ELO system... yeah, that's much more work.
"someone had proposed an ELO system"
Essay No. 1 - it was excellent, giving this one a 'Last Train to London' rating
Essay No. 2 - solidly workmanlike, 'All Over The World' ranking
Essay No. 3 - will appeal to pretty much everyone, 'Mr Blue Sky' status
I laughed until I 'Turned to Stone' and felt the 'Fire on High'
But 'Hey! Boy Blue is Back'
I agree that the formatting on the entries could have been better, perhaps with each entry linking to its own post, with comments disabled/hidden until after the rating period ends. I too wanted to leave comments on some of the essays I read, though they would have been of more interest to the author than to Scott.
The question of rankings is interesting - ELO doesn't seem like the right tool for this unless you assign pairs of essays randomly to readers. (You don't run a chess tournament by allowing the audience to choose who plays who.) Conventional voting theories don't work because there are too many candidates for voters to be acquainted with (so ranked choice won't work) and you allow voters to participate as often as they like. It's an interesting maths problem actually, though someone who knows this stuff better than me might come along and say this sort of problem is solved already.
I think the Elo idea is assuming that you'd indeed present people with two random reviews. It's already the case that choosing reviews randomly is encouraged, but I imagine that it'd be desirable to have some kind of option for letting people rate a review of their choosing, and I don't know how that'd work.
I'd also be tempted to try to use something like the Smith set rather than Elo, but I don't know whether sample sizes would be big enough for that to be viable. It would at least solve the problem of how to make ranked-choice voting work when most voters don't know most candidates.
It's not clear to me that the best selection of finalists consists of the most popular reviews. You risk lacking variety. (I also don't know how you would find a Smith set, or how that would help here.)
An alternative approach would be to attempt to find the 'most X' reviews for various choices of X: surprising, well written, profound, thought provoking, etc.
I like this suggestion. It would be nice for non-finalists to be able to get some feedback.
Could be good to take a median review from the previous year to act as a standardbearer. "This one was a 5, rate others accordingly".
That seems like it flattens reviews too much to even be useful. Was the mid review mid because it's too controversial/not controversial enough, poorly structured, scope too broad/narrow etc. For book reviews the parameters are narrower so *maybe* it makes sense, but even then it's questionable imo. For open ended "review anything", the median means very little.
Seems kinda mean to the author of the officially mid-tier review.
I'm a webdev (and the person who does the random review script), and I'd do this if Scott wanted to, but I have no idea whether he does.
why not use Substack itself for this?
Substack offers very little customization, so while it would be possible to make a page for each submitted review, I'm not sure how it would help with any of the other features of the proposal. Also the process of creating the pages would still be fully manual.
First off, thanks for the work you've already done; I used pretty much exclusively the random review script to read reviews. It is up to Scott, of course, but it does seem like the current system involves a fair amount of work for him, with all the copy and pasting and compiling scoring information; I'd be happy to email him, asking if this project would have his blessing.
And if it does get his blessing, I'd be happy to help in any way that I can, though I'm unsure how much help I'll actually be.
I'll post my favorites here, to show my appreciation to the authors:
11 Poetic Forms: I'll remember what a Sestina is for the rest of my life.
Airships: Cool and steampunk. Would like to understand the technology better.
Arbitraging Several Dozen Online Casinos: in terms of potentially relevant new skills learned, this was #1. It's not really about "arbitrage" though, or am I misunderstanding that word?
Two Years Of Parenthood: Heartwarming!
Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy: Wouldn't have read it if it weren't for the random review script. I liked the connection to the author's experience as a writer.
Also, a shout out to the first Sermon on the Mount review. I liked how it adds some contrast to Scott's post on early Christian growth and strategy.
I gave that review a poor rating because I consider it epistemically irresponsible to make such strong/spicy claims about matters of historical fact without providing more evidence than the review did. In particular, I would have liked to see some links to academic biblical scholars (not just theologians) who prefer the essay's interpretation, so that I could get a sense of how mainstream or fringe it is in the field.
I see what you mean. The historical context presented in the review seems plausible to me; things like a left hand taboo and laws governing forced labor. That said, whether Jesus or Matthew really had these things in mind remains a matter of interpretation, and I guess no amount of biblical scholarship can provide a definitive answer to that.
It's an isolated reading. I've heard the transgressive reading of those three before, but there are four statements in that section, and the last one is "give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you." I haven't seen someone offer an anti-Rome version of that one.
Kind of like how people will put together a cause-and-effect explanation of the Ten Plagues of Egypt, but then don't bother explaining that time Moses and the Egyptian wizards turned their staves into snakes.
I'm sure one could make a case that high interest rates were a tool for oppression, and that moneylenders were heavily regulated ;-)
But you are right that it would be quite a stretch.
For folks living in NYC who are voting in the Dem primary for mayor, I wanted to a) remind you that the election is tomorrow, please go out and vote! and b) strongly encourage you to rank Mamdani over Cuomo.
I disagree with both of them on policy, but of the two it seems obvious to me that Mamdani is legitimately interested in making the city a better place, while Cuomo is corrupt, self-interested, and (following the Trumpian approach to politics) is an all-together indecent person.
The Democrats need fighters. But those fighters must be as virtuous and honorable as they are aggressive, people who are so clean that nothing sticks to them so they have full ability to go after everyone else, people whose very presence on the debate stage shines a light on the hypocrisy of those who would seek to use public office for anything other than the good of the country.
Cuomo is not that guy. Mamdani is.
I make the case for Mamdani (and for decency in politics generally) more extensively here (https://theahura.substack.com/p/decency-is-more-important-than-policy)
A point you could have made is that Mamdani, like Bill DeBlasio, might moderate significantly in office since there’s a limited appetite for hard left policy in the city (as opposed to primary voters).
Also, the Democratic establishment really needs to start backing better candidates than these uncharismatic insiders. Just look at how much money got poured into Cuomos’s lousy campaign!
I purposely wanted to avoid policy discussion, because it's not germane to the larger point. I'm rather disappointed how many people here seem to be willing to vote for someone who is obviously a bad person if it means small concessions on their policies of choice.
Well, it's done.
I have time until November to think up some falsifiable predictions about the next four years.
From what I understand, from all of Mamdanis promises, two that he can execute on without too much interference are a) expanding rent control and b) repurposing subway station into homeless help centers.
Both of these are tragically bad in my opinion. The latter seems easier to do, so my first prediction will be that the homeless situation in NYC will begin to resemble that or Seattle or SF (before the latest elections)
A competently corrupt politician is often preferable to an enthusiastically well-meaning but inept one. The corrupt politician has an interest in not befouling his own nest; the enthusiastic idiot often won't even notice he's doing that.
If you want reform, find reformers who understand how things actually work.
a few folks already posted this, kenny's steelman is here (https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/open-thread-387/comment/128812105) and my response
> I agree this is the steelman, but implicit in the steelman is the assumption that the earnest person is also dumb or blind (because they wouldn't realize or be willing to realize that their policies aren't working right). I think it's extremely rare that someone is dumb/blind, earnest, has ideas that are so bad corruption would be better but is effective enough to actually implement those policies over the objections of others, AND is able to mount a successful campaign. Bayesian prior of all of those together is extremely low. (Trump gets almost all of these except earnest)
I don't particularly want reform. I want politicians that are going to act like adults and try and solve problems. I disagree with your use of the word "often". I would say "very very rarely"
The idiot doesn't have to be *effective* to be a menace. If their dominion is facing real and serious problems, being ineffective and blocking more effective people from solving those problems, is sufficient.
Or is the contention that NYC doesn't face any really serious problems and doesn't need capable high-level governance?
Again, I understand in theory that all of this is true, but I think you have a steep hill to climb when you're openly admitting that the counterfactual is someone who is openly corrupt -- and presumably, also effective (at being corrupt). My prior is extremely high that decency will lead to better outcomes on average than corruption. And unless you think that being a decent person is somehow highly correlated with being extremely ineffective, your prior should also be equally high.
John already climbed that hill at least partway by pointing out the corrupt person still has an incentive not to "befoul his own nest", and also has the means. He might take bribes all day, but if he's also smart enough to understand that his own welfare depends on that of his city (as does the decent incompetent), and is also skilled enough to maintain that (as does *not* the decent incompetent), then the city will likely continue to do better than if the decent incompetent is in charge.
You could argue that that still isn't enough to close the gap, but you haven't made that argument yet. Meanwhile, there are multiple examples from history that ought to lower that extremely high prior you possess.
Sorry, no, the burden of proof is on the guy who's arguing that corruption is fine. I don't feel the need to do the work of "looking at history" or whatever if other people aren't going to make that argument.
Also, at this point you're basically arguing a tautology. "The person who does better will do better"
Fine, I'm willing to concede that I can't defend putting a person with the IQ of a banana in office vs a corrupt person with the IQ of an average person.
While I broadly agree about NY political corruption, you do realise you are inviting investigation into whether Mamdani has any skeletons in the closet? Cuomo and his scandals are already known, but is Mamdani as squeaky-clean as you make out?
I'm not particularly interested in this election but simply reading the news gives me, whether I want it or not, a lot of coverage. And honestly? all the hagiography around Mamdani makes me think that if elected, he'll be an AOC type: yeah, talk the talk, be very good at holding on to their seat, maybe try a few Big Things but get slapped down or have them watered down, and settle comfortably in to being a career politician.
I don't mind a bit of the ould socialism myself, but expecting (pace Jacobin) "a promise of a fundamentally different way of doing politics for the working-class majority of a city facing an out-of-control crisis in the cost of living" makes me smile. Every hog, dog and divil running for election promises that. Then they get into power, have a look at the tangle and mess facing them that has been left behind by all the previous administrations, court cases, regulations, etc., and realise that it's going to be business as usual for them.
Even Elon and the chain saw couldn't cut through it all! I don't think New York has much wiggle room for sweeping changes to how the money works in order to make the working-class very much better off.
Speaking of that Jacobin article, really, Mamdani? Really?
https://jacobin.com/2025/06/new-york-times-mayoral-mamdani
"Far from “show[ing] little concern” about crime, public safety has been a prominent part of his platform. Mamdani’s ambitious plan for a Department of Community Safety pledges to build out social services and mental health care to help humanely address the root causes of crime."
Now, when was the last time I heard about a Committee of Public Safety? 😁 He might want to rethink the name there. And yeah, I'm sure a corps of social workers is going to stop violent/crazy criminals in the streets.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_of_Public_Safety
> any skeletons in the closet
I mean, he's running as a socialist and campaigns with the slogan "globalize the intifada." What kind of skeletons do you imagine that could be worse?
You could try to muster some rape accusations, but those won't stick. Maybe you could find (or "find") video of him singing along to rap in high school or something, but that's weak sauce.
He doesn't seem to have been in politics very long, so what did he do before?
There's already been a little kerfuffle over "intafada". He was a rapper as a young man? Then somebody must have sample lyrics of him rapping about bitches and hoes and drugs and guns (unless he was an exceedingly wholesome rapper) 😀
Swearing about your granny? Having your (actress playing your) granny swear? Oh, my!
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/may/10/mr-cardamom-madhur-jaffrey-nani-video
"How do you get an octogenarian south Asian screen icon to swear in a rap video? According to hip-hop MC Zohran Mamdani, a little context can be helpful. When he came to prepare world-famous actor and TV cook Madhur Jaffrey for her role – lip-syncing along to the words of his expletive-laden tribute to his maternal grandma, Nani – he had a little explaining to do.
Mamdani, who performs under the name Mr Cardamom, can remember Jaffrey asking him: “In the lyrics, who is this ‘mother fucker’ for?” he says. “Fuck this person, fuck that person; now whose ‘fuck’ is this?”
The guy may indeed be squeaky-clean, but if someone wants to dig deep enough and far back enough, it may be possible to find something that could have a bad interpretation put on it.
Update: they found something that might work. He did the Pocahontas thing of lying about his race to get affirmative action benefits.
> He was a rapper as a young man
> hip-hop MC Zohran Mamdani,
Wtf?! I didn't know that: I was simply using "singing rap lyrics" as an example of the kind of thing normal decent people get smeared for*.
*Mostly by the kind of people now preaching about how decency is so important.
OTOH, if he adopts Mme Guillotine as a core part of NYC's justice system, *that* could work to keep crime down....
> you do realise you are inviting investigation into whether Mamdani has any skeletons in the closet
good?
> he'll be an AOC type: yeah, talk the talk, be very good at holding on to their seat, maybe try a few Big Things but get slapped down or have them watered down, and settle comfortably in to being a career politician
I'm pretty neutral on AOC, but, like, is your take that AOC is very corrupt or something? "a career politician" did she do something bad? or are you just annoyed about the aesthetics?
Net net, I purposely did *not* focus on either Cuomo's or Mamdani's stated policy positions, because the point I want to make is that being a decent person is a necessary precondition to talking about policy at all. I still think that's true, digs about the French Revolution aside.
Okay, if Mamdani avoids photo ops of him bawling his eyes out outside a parking lot, that would be an improvement.
In a race between someone who is a corrupt petty sex abuser and someone with aesthetics you don't particularly like, I personally would go with the mid aesthetics
Not the aesthetics, it's the opportunism. Turns up with a 'Tax the Rich' designer dress at the Met Gala. Yeah, really getting down with the proles there, Sandy!
Though I do have to respect that she's managed to retain her seat and get her career well-established, unlike the rest of the Squad who have either faded or got bogged down in sectarian controversy. She's dug herself in for the long haul as representative for that Bronx/Queens district, successfully turfing out the old Democratic party guard there.
Honest, Well meaning socialists did a lot more damage than corrupt capitalists.
I would recommend asking the right questions. First of all in the original Marxian analysis, the problem is with the system itself, not capitalists as persons. Now, libertarian economists tend to see the market also something like a machine, except that they see it as a good one. So I guess both agree capitalists do not have much personal responsibility, the market is a machine, if there is money on the table, someone will take it.
OTOH socialists dictators DO have a lot of personal responsibility, because this was not a machine like that. Stalin could have easily decided to not create the GULAG.
I think that several people have this take, and it always seemed like handwavy vibes-based feelings grounded in GOP scaremongering more than anything based an actual political outcomes. If you have any actual examples of this (and I mean relevant examples, not, like, "This cambodian general called himself a socialist in Khmer Rouge") I'd be open to seeing it.
But, also, fine, rank any of the other candidates, just not Cuomo.
San Francisco
San Francisco, a place that’s so undesirable to live in that you can rent a 2-bedroom apartment for … oh, hmm, $4,000 a month.
Sorry, what was your point again?
Only a modern-day progressive would cite unaffordable rents as evidence of success
Even though you're being snarky here (which is fair, you're responding to a snarky comment) I think this is obviously a silly take under the hood. Progressives are famously supposed to be the people who *dont* understand market dynamics. But here you argue against market dynamics while tarring progressives for...understanding them? Very backwards.
As an aside, dinging vectro for being a 'progressive' like its a big scary dirty word really just says more about you than anything else. Ooo vectro is a progressive...what are you gonna call him next, vegetarian?
increasingly of the opinion that people don't actually know what policies mamdani ran on or have any idea who the major players are in the big cities in the US
What *about* San Fran? Are you saying Mamdani is like Lurie, a moderate? Or like Breed, an establishment Dem? What policies do you think are the same between these people? Have you lived or visited SF over the last 10 years? What is your understanding of the problems that SF faces?
How did that work out for Brandon Johnson?
I think Michelle Wu or Lisa Hidalgo are equally reasonable comps who have done extremely well, so its increasingly unclear that Johnson isn't just a fluke or a particularly bad candidate/mayor
I dunno enough about Chicago tbh. I've heard the comparison a few times and agree that it's possibly a good comparison. Do you know more / have an informed opinion? Is Johnson unpopular because of policies? Gaffes? Scandal?
https://www.slowboring.com/p/progressives-need-to-reckon-with is a decent summary of the case against Johnson.
Thanks. I think just reading this, with nothing else to go on, it seems like the biggest problem with Johnson is not the ideology, but rather being too ideological. He seems like a crusader more than a leader, someone who does not know how to make trade offs because making a trade off of any kind would be impure in some way. The left absolutely has these people; left activists even more so. But I think this is true of any political affiliation or party -- you have the people who are shrewd leaders who actually know how to do things, and the people who are ideological warriors who are best when they are pointed at certain things by people in the first group. One of the big failures of MAGA is putting all of the ideological warriors in charge. The Dems have historically not done this in public office (Bernie, for eg, famously got knifed by the Dem party). It's likely that there is more appetite than ever to elect warrior types into office on the Dem side, and I agree that would be terrible, as it seems to be with Johnson.
But it's not at all clear to me that people like Mamdani (or even AOC or Sanders for that matter) are so ideologically uncompromising that they do not know how to hire good people, read the room, and be outcomes driven. This matters because on the ground, the policies of Johnson and Mamdani _don't_ seem that similar. Yes, there's a general tax and spend attitude, and I agree that is similar across the two of them, but I think the similarities more or less end there. It was Cuomo who was more embedded with the Unions, and more likely to cut favorable deals with them in exchange for their backing. And it was Cuomo who would regularly refuse to create a reasonable budget for the city and state, mostly to fund vanity projects or things that were obviously unworkable. In these things, Cuomo and Johnson are quite alike.
I think there is a way to do tax and spend that doesn't cause the city to burn. The question is whether Mamdani is too much of an activist to be able to thread that line. And that frankly remains unclear to me. But I think he's talking about the right things, and the ways in which the city can make things easier for constituents by *removing* red tape (eg here: https://x.com/ZohranKMamdani/status/1878853557111414795)
What about hugo chavez from Venezuela?
what about him? Why do you think this is a reasonable comparison, beyond Chavez also calling himself a socialist? who are the corrupt capitalists you're comparing against in Venezuela that would have done better?
If you want to point to Venezuela without any further explanation, I think it's equally fair for a socialist to point to the nordics with equally little explanation.
There are enough corrupt capitalists in south america to choose from. They are and were bad, not as bad as Chavez.
Which policies the Nordica have do you find socialists? They are pretty capitalists, though with a big safety net.
Calling the nords socialist or socialist-lite is pretty common i think. From wiki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model):
> This includes a comprehensive welfare state and multi-level collective bargaining[2] based on the economic foundations of social corporatism,[3][4] and a commitment to private ownership within a market-based mixed economy[5] – with Norway being a partial exception due to a large number of state-owned enterprises and state ownership in publicly listed firms.
> While many countries have been categorized as social democratic, the Nordic countries have been the only ones to be constantly categorized as such. In a review by Emanuele Ferragina and Martin Seeleib-Kaiser of works about the different models of welfare states, apart from Belgium and the Netherlands, categorized as "medium-high socialism", the Scandinavian countries analyzed (Denmark, Norway, and Sweden) were the only ones to be categorized by sociologist Gøsta Esping-Andersen as "high socialism", which is defined as socialist attributes and values (equality and universalism) and the social democratic model, which is characterized by "a high level of decommodification and a low degree of stratification.
Social corporatism, mixed economy, and norwegian state ownership are often seen as 'socialist'. Also I think generally welfare state stuff is seen as socialist too in the US. I think that's kinda dumb -- imo healthcare is obviously its own thing and I think universal healthcare in the states would immediately solve so many problems its honestly silly we havent implemented it yet -- but it is true that about half the country thinks obamacare is socialist (and half those think its communist!)
For better or worse, I think that 'socialist' in America has come to mean 'strong safety net and high taxes'. Which is more or less what mamdani is proposing, like I haven't seen him saying stuff like "we should nationalize oil"
> There are enough corrupt capitalists in south america to choose from. They are and were bad, not as bad as Chavez.
I think this is kinda weasely. You made the claim that Chavez was a good comparison to Mamdani! Can you back it up more than this?
Based on your comment history I dont believe your verdict is informed by his decency. You prefer the socialist to the moderate because hes the socialist (and being coy about policy disagreements) Whether you think thats fair or not, I think readers have high bs sensitivity to decency based arguments that are just laundering political preferences. See GOP preference for decency during clinton/bush era vs now.
In my experience socialists are very prone to equate agreeing with them politically = being a decent person. And historically socialist regimes have treated political disagreement as one of the most heinous crimes (and recruited even family members as informants.) I think it’s an intellectually and morally bankrupt political philosophy, but it seems to stick around in institutions of higher education and in the minds of their students.
It’s interesting that we seem to have learned only the lesson of fascism, and not the lesson of communism, from the 20th century. No one ever says we need to try fascism again, Hitler just did it wrong - but I hear it frequently about communism from seemingly earnest people who are quick to dismiss Stalin and Mao as aberrations.
There are decent and sensical reasons why communism is never going to be fully purged from the Overton window despite being a bad idea: https://balioc.tumblr.com/post/614257600500989952/communism-in-its-simplest-conceptual-form-is-an
> agreeing with them politically = being a decent person
This is a far more widespread position than you imply.
Sure, it’s people on both sides, and it sucks when any of them do it.
But hey, I disagree with Scott politically and I still think he’s a great writer, thoughtful, intelligent and I avidly read anything he puts out. I also enjoy Freddie DeBoer even though he is “far left.” He’s honest and that’s more important.
Yes, but I wasn't actually making a "both sides" point here: You said it was only "socialists," and my point is that it's not just the fringe, but a mainstream position among Democrats as well.
Well, Scott still lets me post here, but it's true he's one of the rare classical liberals who still strongly defends free speech. I wouldn't last 2 seconds on Reddit or BlueSky. And yes, it's definitely worse on the left than the right - as much as liberals like to complain about Elon, they are welcome to do so and post their hottest takes right on Twitter/X (although many have left because the mean rightists keep replying to them and Elon never seems to do anything about that)
a) claiming to have special insight into the motivations of a person you don't know beyond their stated motivations is...bold, to say the least. Very bayesian of you. (Claiming to have special insight into the motivations of "readers" -- also very bold)
b) my comment history is motivated by a disdain and disgust of the Trump administration and everything it stands for. That you think 'hatred of Trump == socialism' says more about you than it does me.
c) vote for literally anyone other than Cuomo, it doesn't have to be mamdani he's just the person who's second. If Lander or Adams were second, they would be better choices. Literally *anyone* would be a better choice than the multi-time sex pest with a penchant for corruption.
Why do you feel the need to defend the multi-time sex pest with a penchant for corruption? "Our policies at any cost" is fucking stupid, sorry. I care about voting for decent people, because at the end of the day my own policy preferences are likely to be misinformed, the policy positions of candidates on the campaign trail are *definitely* misinformed, and when push comes to shove I want my public leaders to put their constituents over themselves. Cuomo is so selfish he's willing to split the vote just to stay relevant in politics. It's disgusting, as is defending him because you're stuck in the cold war.
In case it matters, I'm pretty economically centrist. More taxes on large corporations and the wealthy. Universal health care. Way fewer regulations, especially on construction. No taxes for small businesses.
I think most of Mamdani's policy positions are mixed to bad. I don't like rent freezes or rent control, and I don't get the groceries thing. Cuomo's policies are shockingly similar, though no one ever really reports on this. Doesn't matter though -- the main point is that decency is a prerequisite to even being considered a candidate. Mamdani isn't going to be cowed or bribed by Trump because, and I can't stress this enough, *he's a decent human being*. If Cuomo thinks being pals with Trump will benefit him, he will turn immediately -- just like Adams did before him. No thanks. I want to actually like my leaders.
"I dont believe you" is something ppl are allowed to say and doesnt require them to believe they have special insights into your motivations. And if I dont believe you, others probably dont either, because im not so special.
I offer no defense of Cuomo, and the things you say about him are probably true. But sorry, I dont believe you, and also I think mamdani would be bad (see I can just say that outright)
I agree, and further suspect this stance that one's policy preferences shouldn't outweigh "decency" would be abandoned as soon as the differences become significant enough*, probably by arguing that anyone who held those positions ipso facto lacked decency, and so voting for the corrupt bully with your policies over his honest opponent becomes the better choice after all.
*The opposite position on ALL of gun rights, abortion, affirmative action, LGBTQ+, and immigration, say.
> is something ppl are allowed to say
If the best argument you have to advance your point is that you literally are allowed to say it, you might as well just concede there's nothing here. If you want to make claims about my political positions as a means to disparage me, at least have the decency to back it up with evidence. You claim to have ample evidence with my post history after all. Or is "socialist" just a bad word you're using to tar by association?
That was a rebuttal to your own reasoning.
"Based on your past actions,I suspect your motives"
"You dont know my motives as well as I do"
"So what, the whole point is I think you are being dishonest"
It is true, I havent taken the time to prove you are being dishonest about your motives. And I wont because, my goal is not to take you down.
I thought you might feel like my skepticism was unfair, I said as much in my first post, I am just giving you my honest feedback. I cant take your argument touting a leftist above a moderate (fine I wont say socialist) on grounds other than their leftism serious because I see you commenting like leftists do. There are people who criticize Trumps terribleness without giving a leftist impression. You arent one of them, and it affects how others receive your arguments.
> I see you commenting like leftists do
I'm sorry you don't like my aesthetics. I'm not a leftist, but you're welcome to your opinion. Death of the author, consider my position despite your dislike of the leftist that you think I am.