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TheAntipopulist

Formerly Ben___Garrison

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joined 2022 September 05 02:32:36 UTC 

				
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TheAntipopulist


								
								
									
								
								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Formerly Ben___Garrison

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 05 02:32:36 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I’m confused if you’re criticizing the isolationist faction or the interventionist faction here as you’re mixing the two together in your last sentence. And you’re providing examples of criticism while claiming there’s an extremely narrow window of criticism, which doesn’t make sense. In any case, we live in a two party system, so each party comprises strange bedfellows, like those who want American Imperialism and those who want strict interventionism, or those who want it in some cases but not every case.




I'm not sure what you're confused about here. I'm saying isolationists hypocritically turn into interventionists after Trump intervenes. And then the right-wing criticism Trump has faced has been very muted, even from ostensible isolationists. Gabbard was highly isolationist before Trump, but now publicly praises interventions. Tucker is also isolationist, but instead of criticizing Trump he pulls his punches and nonsensically blames gay marriage instead, since he knows his audience will hate him if he comes out against Trump too much.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The problem with this view is that foreign policy actions are highly contingent. The architects of the Iraq invasion in 2003 genuinely thought it would be a 6 month operation tops, that they would just go in and out, and it would be mostly over in a few news cycles. Then things started going a little bit badly afterwards so 6 months turned into 12 months, then one thing led to another and they ended up with a quagmire.


I'd say Trump deserves some credit for not going completely crazy out of the gate, but he's certainly rolling the dice. It's not difficult to see something bad happening in Venezuela that brings bad headlines, Trump recoiling at said headlines when they show up on Fox and Friends, and hawks coming to him to say "Sir, things are bad but if we just do a little bit more everything will be better. Pinky promise".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If I got a warning for what was basically "you can't criticize the MAGA circlejerk", then yes I would complain especially if I could find inverse examples that are functionally equivalent, but just pointing in the other direction. And that wouldn't be hard. "Leftists seem to think" posts are not uncommon on this forum.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think Trump could have been "genuine" when it came to his original foreign policy views, but that doesn't mean much since he's a waffle who frequently changes based on whoever was the last person to have spoken with him, or from whatever news headlines he watches on Fox. He got a lot of good right-wing press from this recent Venezuela adventure, which seems to have really whetted his appetite for more military actions




It will be interesting to see if we get a right wing occupy movement




Not gonna happen. MAGA is fully in the tank for the personality cult around Trump and I don't see that changing in the immediate future, and in 1-2 years Trump will be a lame duck anyways so it won't really matter.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Who exactly do you believe has been humiliated here?




Gabbard, for being so blatantly hypocritical. Also, MAGA partisans to some degree, although flip-flopping for them is so common whenever Trump does something they previously said they wouldn't support that it's not really news any more.




"isolationism" in the eyes of Trump's supporters




I would say most of them don't have consistent definitions. Some like Michael Tracey are consistent, but most are just vibing and will switch their positions to say they love whatever Trump does after the fact.




have been more or less disastrous than the Biden Administration




Biden was the only President that I would say had a genuinely good foreign policy. Getting us out of that stupid Afghan war is something every President since Bush should have done, including Trump, but none of them did it. His actions on Ukraine and uniting NATO were also exemplary, although I have quibbles with the scale of aid to Ukraine. He was right on all the major issues.


His immigration policy on the other hand... yeesh!


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


My opinion is that most immigrants, legal and illegal, to the US are people who view it as an economic resource




This is how immigrants have always viewed the USA, including Ellis Islanders that came in the 1800s. Do you think the Irish fleeing the potato famine primarily came to the US because they wanted its culture? Obviously not, which is why they cloistered up in corrupt groups like Tammany Hall.


The thing that made the USA unique was that it was pretty good at assimilating these people over 3ish generations. It made them care about America's civic institutions, and got people to slowly realize that the main reason why the US had so much $$$ was because of its culture, and so people should care about that culture.




Over the years I have often heard cosmopolitan liberals express a sentiment to the effect "the United States has no culture"




I've spent most of my life surrounded by cosmopolitan liberals and I've literally never heard an IRL person say this. The only time I've heard it was 4chan shitposting on /pol/ as clear bait.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This year has delivered a nonstop string of humiliations for MAGA isolationists as Trump has increasingly turned towards military measures. A few days ago Tucker Carlson claimed Trump captured Maduro for the explicit purpose of legalizing gay marriage in Venezuela (???). Tulsi Gabbard has arguably had it even worse, as her 2019 opening speech for her presidential campaign criticized Trump's flirting with regime change in Venzeula and Iran, yet she happily serves in the Trump administration and even supports Trump's policies. A report by Bloomberg today states that she was actually excluded from meetings discussing the Venezuela op, with her Director of National Intelligence (DNI) position jokingly being recast as "do not invite". Presumably the rest of Trump's team thought she might leak the details, or even commit outright treason by informing the Venezuelans beforehand.


It's hard to have principles when the MAGA movement is a cult of personality with an extremely narrow window of what's deemed acceptable to criticize Trump for. Over the coming few years I expect more MAGA isolationists to debase themselves with positions that are basically "actually interventionism is fine as long as it's Trump doing it, after all it hasn't turned into an Iraq-tier disaster yet."


				

				

						

							

								
    
									
									
									
									
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Seems like almost a pure accident to me. The driver panics when an aggressive man yanks on her car's door handle, and tries to get away ASAP. Officer with an itchy trigger finger interprets the car accelerating at him and decides to shoot first and ask questions later.


Of course, if you go looking for fault then you can definitely dig some up. She shouldn't have been there in the first place. She should have listened to the directions of the officers. She shouldn't have panicked. The Iceman shouldn't have been in front of the car. He should have focused on getting out of the way instead of pulling out a gun. Shooting wouldn't have made a difference since he was so close. He wasn't in the vehicle's path when he shot -- it actually sort of looks like he leaned in to get a better angle to shoot.


Partisans will selectively parse evidence to support their side and vilify their outgroup. The fact it's ambiguous makes it a pretty good scissor event, though I doubt it will reach the heights of BLM since that was a 3-standard deviation phenomenon.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				2026 prediction thread
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This is another vague, plausibly deniable statement from him. Very on-brand for Yudkowsky. It's not firm enough that he couldn't just deny it later.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				2026 prediction thread
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Yudkowski declares AGI/ASI Achieved




Very doubtful, as that would imply (to a lot of people at least) that Bad Things should happen in the very short-term future, and if those Bad Things don't materialize then he'll look foolish. Yudkowsky has steadfastly refused to make any falsifiable predictions so far, so I don't see why he'd get close to one now.




We have federal regulation passed through congress to regulate AI




Any regulation? You should probably specify that you think it will be big regulation, like how the DMCA was for Internet copyright. Obviously there will probably be something that at least affects AI in some small way.




A Chinese model is released that is widely considered to be the best coding model(not just on price per token)




Is this a "China's model robustly surpasses the West" take, or is it a more modest take that you think something like Deepseek will join the rotating list of 4 frontier companies? I could see the latter perhaps with like a 30% chance this year, while the former is highly unlikely.




A lab releases a fully autonomous drop-in worker agent that at least five fortune 200 companies implement




Hell no, not gonna happen. As I've said, there's too many missing capabilities in terms of general computer use and long context management, and those are not easy problems to solve. Well, maybe a lab will release a broken version and a few companies will try it before dropping it, but if you consider that to satisfy your prediction then it's probably already been satisfied in 2025 or even 2024.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 22, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Jensen speaking here is mostly just CEO boilerplate. Obviously they'll say "oh yeah, we're in for the long haul", but that's not much in the way of evidence. I'll grant that founders have a bit more of a tendency towards pie-in-the-sky goals like 20 year plans and maybe geopolitical stuff, but Huang is still subject to the whims of shareholders. He doesn't even have extra insulation like Zuckerberg with a screwy voting shares system. And Elon makes plenty of boneheaded short-term decisions.




If the only way you can think of this is myopic mercantilism






Get bent already.






But inferior men can only interpret a superior man's vision in terms of profit.




Can you stop it with this nonsense please?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 22, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


self-serving imperial propaganda






You're not doing anyone a favor by being corrupt.




Is this how you do all your argumentation?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 22, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I think you don't get how intoxicating the sense of supremacy is.






Americans have an ideological stake in being Number One.




This is out of date if it was ever true at all. Maybe you could say this about a broad subset of the American Right when the Neocon movement was at its peak circa 2002 or so. But the Left has never really subscribed to that at all, and the modern Right is increasingly dominated by its own brand of oikophobes due to woke backlash.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 22, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


This is still denialism of the erosion of fundamentals, I think. Classic stabbed-in-the-back-by-Jews [of Asia] doctrine. Huang founded Nvidia over 30 years ago, I don't believe he's a petty merchant optimizing for quarterly reports.






Classic stabbed-in-the-back-by-Jews [of Asia]




Good grief x2.


The goal of the CEO of any American company is implicitly if not explicitly the maximization of shareholder value. Selling chips to China is just how Jensen Huang can achieve that better. The idea that Huang is doing it as some grand geopolitical play (and where his company's bottom line is a secondary concern) is a bit hard to take seriously. Like, he might be doing that, but you'd want to have a decent amount of evidence to convince people that it's not just the cynical moneygrubbing play.


No, we do not need allusions to Nazi conspiracies of the Jews to say "the CEO is probably just trying to make more profit".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 22, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Here's another article to add to your arsenal and broadly echoes what you're saying: China is making trade impossible


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 22, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You could just... get the new credentials? Plus, this would likely cut down on the impetus for nearly every shop to do Leetcode style interviews, so you'd be just exchanging one set of nonsense for another.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 22, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yep, I agree with all of this. Software engineers really should do what other engineering fields have done and set up that rent-seeking licensing cartel. It's bad for society overall, but most other fields do something like that, so why not us?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 22, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm sure its waxed and waned, but SWEs have been complaining about H1B's since at least the Dotcom boom in the 90s.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 22, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You should wait to post this until it actually happens. China might get nearly equivalent chips in bulk by mid 2026, but it's a tough problem and things could easily go wrong. Doing a victory lap based on industry rumors is premature. This reminds me of the perennial Wunderwaffe posts we get from pro-Russian accounts on here, where this new missile or drone is just totally going to swamp Ukraine and this whole slow warfare will turn into a blitzkrieg. And then... that doesn't happen.




It seems to me that my read on the situation from back then, both the big picture and its implications for compute strategy, is now shared by both the USG and the CPC. The former is trying to regain its position and revenue in the Chinese GPU market and slow down Huawei/Cambricon/Kunlun/etc. ecosystem development by flooding the zone with mature Nvidia chips that will be adopted by all frontier players (eg DeepSeek again – they have a deep bench of Nvidia-specific talent and aren't willing to switch to half-baked Ascend CANN).




Alternative explanation: Jensen Huang won the game of "be the last person to talk to Trump", since he knows Trump is a waffling buffoon and Huang just wants to maximize Nvidia's stock, US security concerns be damned. Then on the Chinese side, the CCP doesn't really care about this CUDA vs CANN stuff nearly as much as it cares about its industrial policy of "make EVERYTHING in China", and a wave of Nvidia chips could disrupt that beyond concerns about ecosystems.




For now the loss of the indisputable Main Character status is being processed traumatically, with anger, denial




Oh good heavens. No, you don't have to be a traumatized, angry denialist to understand that maybe it's a bad thing for the US to give an extremely bottlenecked resource to its main geopolitical rival.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 22, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Now they find out their precious college degree-gated industries aren't safe




The H1B program has been going on for 35 years, so I don't know what the "now" is referring to.


And why are you lumping together all "white collar" jobs, as if software engineers agree with the nonsense coming out of HR?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 22, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Ramaswamy is doing some motte-and-bailey nonsense here, pointing out a few flaws in American culture, but then using that as a non-sequitur to justify his ridiculous immigration views. The simple fact is that the H1B system is used to undercut American wages. While ostensibly only permitting "foreign experts", companies game the system by allowing diploma mill bachelor's degrees in India to be valid, and then pay them garbage salaries. An easy solution would be to just require anyone hired on an H1B visa to have high relative wages. Basically everyone agrees this would fix the problem, but nobody makes the change because they actually want to use it H1B's as a cynical vehicle for mass-migration.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				AI from the perspective of a software developer, year-end 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Ah, it's interesting Perplexity actually had an advantage there. This is the only time someone has been able to give me an actual reason anyone would use Perplexity over any other LLM.


I remember getting pretty good citations (actual papers) from LLMs in early 2024, but you had to use the "deep think" mode (or whatever it was called) that took like 15 minutes to run. Now that's unnecessary and, like you say, ChatGPT is a lot more interesting out of the box. You still have to check things to be sure, but 95% of the answers it gives aren't hallucinations.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				AI from the perspective of a software developer, year-end 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I presume the AI slop merchants are repackaging that sort of story over and over because it gets a lot of views, and I presume it gets a lot of views because a lot of tech workers can empathize with it. It's a particularly infuriating mix of complete obliviousness + pigheadedness that's ripe for parody.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				AI from the perspective of a software developer, year-end 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I'll spend a lot of time understanding what needs to be done, and then 15-30 minutes describing, in detail, what needs to be done, and supplying the necessary context.




Yeah, this is the way to get the best results. But man, 15-30 minutes? Is that per context window, or per major project? If that's per context window then you're doing even more than I do.


And yeah, I find it somewhat sad that software engineering seems to eventually be going the way of blacksmithing, but as a younger dev I'm excited about how much more I can create on my own terms now. I always wanted to create video games as a hobby, and it's so much more viable with AI -- partially due to faster coding, but honestly more due to stuff like Nano Banana Pro.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				AI from the perspective of a software developer, year-end 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Surprised to see how dopey people still are, how can someone be a CTO and not know the difference between the models under the hood of Copilot? Would've thought a CTO would know better.




Yeah, it's painful to watch what the executives at our company do a lot of the time.




I fired up Claude Code with Opus 4.5 and got it to build a predator-prey species simulation with an inbuilt procedural world generator and nice features like A* search for pathfinding - and it one-shot it, producing in about 5 minutes something which I know took me several weeks to build a decade ago when I was teaching myself some basic programming, and which I think would take most seasoned hobbyists several hours. And it did it in minutes.




I mean, Twitter users have always been saying Opus/Sonnet is sooooooo good since like Sonnet 3.0 back in early 2024. I know the capabilities are advancing steadily, but early 2025 felt like much more of a step change. Opus 3.7 almost certainly could have handled his A* search problem, just with a few more reprompts on average than Sonnet/Opus 4.5. And again, does somewhat fewer reprompts or requiring the issue be broken up a bit more really do that much?