The devil is always in the details. Democracy, freedom, and due process are abstract concepts, ending them won’t intrinsically cause any issues. But what concretely do you (or Hanson) propose to replace them, and how? For me, just what is enough for now, because I haven’t heard a good proposal yet.
Personally, I still hold “democracy is the bestworst government except for all others that have been tried”. I’m not against dictatorship, if the dictator is competent and has a good successor strategy. But who does, and how do you get this person in charge and ensure they’re not overthrown?
Likewise, the problem with taking away citizens’ freedom is that what’s done instead isn’t better. Communist governments were ultimately less productive and lost to capitalist ones. We already don’t have total freedom (because that’s impossible), and maybe we need more laws restricting more freedom, for example drug use and being a nuisance in public or to service workers. But what kind of restrictions are you really talking about? Criticizing leaders? Free speech? Then what do we do when leaders start making bad opinions and decisions (since, like everyone, they’re not perfect), going further and further astray like a stalling plane (with no one to correct them, how would they avoid this)?
You may argue we’re already going astray; but there are forums like these, my argument is if opposition was illegal things would degrade faster (and I’m optimistic there will eventually be a course correction in either scenario, but only the latter requires a revolution). You may point to China; but before today’s government, China suffered the “Great Leap Forward” which caused more proportional death than any democratically-caused disaster (at least that I’m aware of); it’s still suffering from centrally-planned failures like its housing; and what do you think will happen when Xi Jinping dies? I think Singapore is the strongest counter-argument; but seeing the War on Drugs and vast difference in culture, I don’t believe America (individualist and expressive) can reach their (collectivist and routine) stable equilibrium, nor any European nation for nation-specific reasons.
Lastly, the illusion of autonomy is important: it makes people happy and complicit, and permits extreme outliers which may be vital. For example, instead of explicitly limiting peoples’ calorie consumption, it would probably be better to just provide free GLP-1s and encourage them via propaganda (in this case outliers probably wouldn’t be vital, but they’d be few enough they’d negligibly affect public resources like healthcare, while appealing to fat enthusiasts). More generally, instead of officially eliminating basic values like democracy to massive resistance, enabling extreme failure modes, why not just manipulate people and use procedural tricks to achieve the same outcomes? I mean, most nations already do that today…
In fact, I speculate a reason people are disillusioned and ironically proposing authoritarian measures is because we live in unofficial creeping authoritarianism. Correlation doesn’t imply causation, but especially without a good proposal, it hints that we shouldn’t accelerate into that path.
What if, instead, we propose and start implementing ways to restore unofficial liberty, democracy, and due process? (I threw myself into the immigration storm last week; I won’t suggest what to do here except not deport massive numbers of integrated citizens or decades-long immigrants, because explained in that thread, I doubt it can happen in a democracy with free press that remains a democracy with free press).
Brainwavez
1mo ago
Anthropic tried this: they tasked Claude with running a vending machine in their office twice (#1, #2). In #1 it operated at a net loss, in #2 it eventually managed a small profit, until it was introduced to employees outside Anthropic, then it went bankrupt (suspiciously, Anthropic doesn’t include that on their blog).
I predict a bigger issue is that today’s LLMs are too suggestible: if an LLM were “officially” put in charge of a real company with real money, it would be a human or group unofficially running it. LLMs are still getting jailbroken, even Fable was allegedly 24 days ago when Anthropic universally suspended access. I also believe LLMs also struggle with high-level open-ended tasks, evidenced by their creative writing and software architecture.
But as LLMs get smarter and less easy to jailbreak, I’m interested to see more an LLM-run experiments, and I do think they have the potential to be much better leaders than humans.
Personally, I want to see more diverse representation, not in the "DEI" sense, but the "unique and unconventional" sense. Maybe it started like this and became corrupted.
Brainwavez
1mo ago
Pro tip: you can substitute fandom.com with breezewiki.com for a site that’s readable in browsers without uBlock Origin, example.
Brainwavez
1mo ago
Fun thought experiment: 24 hour news or 24 hour Italian brainrot? Which would be better for mental health? Which would lead to better life choices?
I propose calling this kind of news “American brainrot”. Including other countries’ channels, because they (at least BBC and Sky) still spend the majority of their time covering America.
My main takeaway: the entries have way too much purple prose, that doesn't add anything positive, just makes them more convoluted. Some makes no sense, e.g. "he stands at her grave like a man patting his pockets on a platform". But even what does, evokes no emotion except irritation, e.g. "Not a bad taste. Worse than that. The underside of a clean plate. Water left out overnight. The dry corner of a stamp before you wet it." (maybe because it's "inauthentic", but also just bland. Why three metaphors? Why not save readers time and effort with "Not even bad, it just tasted like nothing." And these awful metaphors are frequent, almost every sentence has or is part of some figurative expression).
At least most entries had a plot (except "The Bowl" I couldn't figure out, sorry @self_made_human), but none I found interesting: for example, the winner "The June"'s plot is
Contrast to LLM's advancements and current ability in coding. I think the coding is even a step up from November 2025, while the creative writing hasn't improved since even GPT-4 in March 2023. Just last week I had an annoying build issue that probably would've taken hours to solve manually; in Claude Code I literally prompted "find and fix the build error" and it did that, using gdb on the command-line (which is a PITA manually), in about 10 minutes. Later I asked Claude to implement a complex algorithm, and initially it wrote a bad implementation which overfit to the tests, but then I gave it a more detailed prompt with a high-level outline, and after a few small manual edits, it seems to work.
Market may be an influence, but I think the biggest reason for the difference is RLVR. Modern LLMs are fed massive amounts of generated code and their output objectively scored, hence they learn how to write code that passes tests. LLMs are fed on random internet text, but there's no scoring mechanism to distinguish between facts and falsehoods or subjective masterpieces and subjective garbage, except human feedback which is relatively slow and inaccurate.
How do humans do it? Maybe because we have better physical training data through real-world interactions (we see, hear, touch, taste things; LLMs have words and comparatively few images and video). And because we directly experience emotions, maybe we learn the concepts associated when they hit, but LLMs can only learn associations between word groups, like if one of the groups has the emotion literally written (e.g. a human may experience XYZ followed by happiness, an LLM may be trained on "XYZ makes him happy" and associate XYZ with happiness; but humans don't know or write everything that makes them happy, so there are more instances of the former than the latter). Or maybe because quality is subjective, the average of many works that are high quality to different people is low quality to everyone.
Doxxing is facilitating harm: it may provide information to someone who may physically harm the target. In the most direct case, revealing a spy in a repressive country. Even in a free country, providing someone’s location may aid a schizo into becoming a hitman, or associating their name with controversial online activity may enrage their family or a local into confronting them.
It also creates a Chilling Effect: sure, an employer and spouse are legally allowed to fire and divorce someone (respectively, hopefully), but I think the world is better when people feel safe speaking freely online, and I’m sure most in Kiwifarms and here agree at least for themselves.
And just because information is accessible from any internet-connected device doesn’t mean it’s “public”. In the most obvious case, a password-protected website is “public” if you know the password. Then there’s no clear line between this and, for example, a URL that somebody forgot about. The FBI discovered Dread Pirate Roberts via a years-old public forum post under is pseudonym (or used alternate construction, but still, it was possible).
I don’t support the (censorship) infrastructure that would prevent doxxing, some people deserve to be doxxed (e.g. Epstein pedophiles), revealing information that could help reveal someone’s identity or other details isn’t doxxing (there’s no clear line), and sometimes someone hides their identity or other details so poorly it’s not obvious they were supposed to be hidden (again, no clear line). Also, there exist unethical people, so if someone controversial has public information that is incriminating and not well hidden, they’ll be doxxed eventually anyways…unless you tell them privately.
Generally, I think it’s wrong to dox someone unless they did something unethical enough that justifies the probable reactions: commit a serious crime, cheated on their partner, etc.. And even then, limit the range so justice is reasonable (e.g. if someone mildly betrayed their friend, probably tell their friend but don’t ruin their life). Otherwise, even though it’s just revealing true information, you’re making the world worse in a rather obvious way.
And in particular, I don’t think doxxing people for nonspecific speech (opinions, media, etc.) is ever moral, even if they’re obnoxious content creators, at least because it ultimately amplifies their views and makes them look better to bystanders.
Are you referring to the Örebro party or my response?
“You can't do remigration but we can do other various policy wonk things” (to alleviate the Deeper Issue of cultural decline) is my response. Although “set the limits of the debate” is inaccurate: I was hoping commenters would discuss Mullvad’s co-CEO’s endorsement and backlash, but for example, even though I think remigration is wrong enough to have written a long response, I still endorse Mullvad (if anything, their official stance shows a strong commitment to free speech, which is far more important than any unofficial opinion of even a co-founder). And I don’t oppose AC nor arresting criminals (I do support lighter sentences in the US for non-violent crimes, and believe addressing what motivates crime is important; but if someone uses obviously bad judgement, I don’t have sympathy for them, and they should be prevented from further infractions and punished to deter others).
The threat is intrinsic to any powerful and cold-hearted force against domestics: it may abuse its power, in this case deporting and/or harassing people who should not, like "good" foreigners or natives, because they're not much different than the targets and there's no larger force to hold it accountable.
Depending on your criteria, foreigners that should be deported may be indistinguishable from those that should not.
Again, it's fine if Sweden only removes people who overtly infringe on Swedish culture (i.e. break laws or repeatedly break important basic norms; I do advocate leeway for new immigrants who can’t be expected to know the entire language or unspoken rules, but they should be explicitly taught then must eventually learn a bare minimum). Maybe that's a large ratio like 700K, and I think a deportation force tasked with this would be smaller, and less likely to target natives or assimilating immigrants, because they act different.
It's a shame if no country is interested in "assimilation" because (my proposal of) it doesn't require dropping the foreign culture, just parts that directly conflict with the host culture (e.g. immigrants can continue native traditions and speak their native language, but must follow the host's law and learn the host's language well enough to communicate).
I support
- Welfare significantly curbed for immigrants (maybe they'll leave voluntarily)
- Some deportation: particularly of serious (violent) criminals, and Swedes with close ties to their native country and none to Sweden, who would seem to live OK in the former
- Requiring "bare minimum" assimilation (not removing or hiding the native culture, but adopting basic interpersonal Swedish norms), and deporting any immigrants who don't
Maybe these measures are enough (if most immigrants leave, or don't but assimilate and contribute more). Then there's no problem.
But what if they're not? Sweden allegedly has over 2.5 million foreigners, ~25% of the total population (from 2017). If a large fraction do resist and co-opt many natives, how else can they be deported? Except by a powerful and cold-hearted deportation force, which especially after the deportations are over, threatens the rest of Sweden's culture (which unrestricted immigration also threatens, but still, is there no middle solution?).
Likewise, ICE has so far reduced the immigrant population, but far from eradicated it: according to Pew, by 1 million between January-June 2025, but there are over 50 million total. And faces large resistance from the left. (I want moderate immigration in the US also, although it looks like it's losing to extremes, but I think compromise is possible, evidenced by the World Cup and smaller events where people across party and ethnic lines get along.)
The deportation force must not genocide people and successfully deport a large ratio of foreigners, (since the policy is remigration) many with deep ties to their community. Inevitably they will resist. Inevitably many natives will join their resistance. Inevitably, news will spotlight some especially cruel deportations, and local economies will suffer, increasing resistance. Deportation is very invasive: it's effectively kidnapping from heavily-guarded areas, here large communities of mostly citizens. All this means mass remigration can only be accomplished by a powerful, nonlocal force that is brutal towards citizens.
And I doubt such force can be controlled, especially after intended deportations are over. Is there a historical example where it has? (Conventional militaries only target foreigners. Conventional police are local to their community and not powerful enough to carry out mass deportations. El Salvador’s crackdown has been supported by the vast majority of its citizens and only targeted men, remigration in today’s Sweden would not.)
making LLMs more diverse,
This is genuinely the most retarded thing I have ever read on this website
I don't understand why people here trivialize this. More and more people are using LLMs for more and more tasks, even basic thinking, and it's invading online discourse and media. All major LLMs have similar political preferences, creative ideas, writing tropes...much narrower than those shared by humans. Even in different languages, there's not much more variation in political preferences and writing tropes.
The result is that cultures all over the world are being diluted with the same, narrow LLM monoculture. It's overriding people's beliefs, self-expression, lifestyle...things that distinguish cultures, as people seek their LLM instead of peers, teachers, or tradition.
Also, LLM output is intrinsically impersonal, so it prevents community bonding whenever someone seeks the LLM instead of their peer. If there's enough community bonding elsewhere that's not an issue, but in many cultures there's not; compared to pre-2020, the median person spends less time with peers and there are less third spaces.
Brainwavez
1mo ago
you don't actually need immigration to compete economically or have a vibrant culture
That's true.
There's still some relevance: if you import from other cultures, it's less likely you oppose immigration from them (at least the experts of whatever you imported). But I admit it's possible.
Brainwavez
1mo ago
I support rejecting muslims who are too strict that they don't accept other religions. Other muslims may adapt their religion for modern times, like how many Christians and Jews have.
Tolerating other religions is certainly important if you're immigrating to a country with them. If intolerant muslims want to stay in intolerant communities, that's fine with me (same with Christian and Jewish sects).
Brainwavez
1mo ago
Brainwavez
1mo ago
People who intrinsically dislike immigrants: I don’t appeal to, but I’m sure they’re the minority, even prominent anti-immigrant politicians have immigrant friends/family (e.g. the AfD leader’s Sri Lankan wife).
People who don’t want a majority of immigrants in their community: I think that’s fair, and I’d support an immigration policy that caps number of immigrants at some ratio of the population (even refugees, because too many will overwhelm the system and there are other safe countries).
Although as you mention, small-scale immigration may not happen, in that case I doubt remigration would either.
You're going to have to give me some example of the dangers of this supposed nostalgia, and maybe show why those dangers are worse than losing any sense of shared destiny/creating mutual ethnic strife and so on that we already see
A culture can survive without foreign imports, as this is what the “culture” of the entire planet does.
But:
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It can’t compete with cultures that take the best advancements from others
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It can’t focus too much on nostalgia. Some is OK, but it must experiment and evolve new characteristics. Otherwise it’s the nation equivalent of “peaked in high school”, guaranteed to become incompatible with the rest of the changing world
Brainwavez
1mo ago
Honestly, sending immigrants to Australia (with its vast empty space and functioning government, so they can live safely but not interfere) and paying them seems like it could work. I’m not intentionally trolling, but there’s probably a serious caveat obvious to anyone who’s actually familiar with geopolitics (as opposed to tech); OTOH in the desert regions, I don’t see how they’d get food and shelter or what they’d do in exchange to not drain from the rest of society.
Brainwavez
1mo ago
What vengeance will a stable Syria take?
You may be right. But look at Palestine: the nation itself seems to barely affect Israel, but it has garnered support which may shift politics in larger nations.
Brainwavez
1mo ago
Ethics need to be changed but I’m arguing for moderation. I won’t really argue where the line is drawn, except that it shouldn’t be drawn at “remigration” or deporting immigrants who clearly seem to be contributing and assimilating.
You’re right that the polar opposite of Nazis are also bad, which is why “Nazis also did X” is a fallacy: Nazis made the trains run on time, and imprisoned dangerous criminals, both ethical. But when they imprisoned innocent Jews and were unnecessarily cruel it was unethical.
If you are nice to everyone you will be taken advantage of, but if you are mean to everyone you will be shunned. In an apocalypse, if you spare someone, they may hunt you later or have some skill that becomes vital later. There’s no simple answer.
Brainwavez
1mo ago
Nationalism and immigration don’t need to conflict: nationalism and large-scale immigration can’t work except with a large suppressed underclass, but a small ratio of immigrants can be patriotic (towards their host) and the host culture’s identity and cohesion can remain.
A large ratio of the population supports at least some immigration (the Swiss referendum to cap the population failed). My understanding is that most people are unhappy because their economy is failing, institutions are overwhelmed, culture is broken…all problems worsened and maybe primarily caused by immigration, but I doubt extreme remigration will solve them. Reducing corruption, improving police enforcement, and moderate immigration reform would at least improve them.
On the other side, politicians who believe nationalism is intrinsically bad (or anti-immigrant) are wrong and should be voted out. Starmer’s image is ruined; unfortunately for him, the best way for a leftist party to get nationalist support is to publicly disavow him and other Labor politicians, or at least publicly disavow his failed policies.
National identity and imports must be balanced for culture: too much national identity creates a waning culture of nostalgia, too much imports creates an incoherent diluted culture, only a good amount of both creates a culture that improves over time.
Why would younger generations replacing new ones not accelerate the cultural decay? Older people can maintain a good status quo as well as a bad one.
Because the decay may be caused by most people having the opinions of zoomers and millennials, but living under gen X and boomer status quo, thus feeling oppressed.
You may be right that assimilation is better. I think it is whenever possible. So the ghettos are only for those who refuse or can’t do the bare minimum assimilation (which doesn’t require abandoning their culture, just adherence to laws and manners), and (probably would naturally end up) in worse conditions. Anyone who can learn to do the bare minimum should be encouraged to leave, and their children should be exposed to both inside and outside education and experience, then can choose for themselves when they reach adulthood.
I don’t support keeping jobs scarce to empower the working class, like I support self-checkout and robotics. Because I believe increased efficiency (if not automation) is inevitable in the long run. More importantly, in my original comment I explained that the alternative to at least some refugees is fascist infrastructure (unless there’s another effective way to prevent desperate immigrants supported by a sizable fraction of the population; I’d like to hear any proposals), which would probably be worse for the working class than whatever we have now.
I want the working class to have better conditions, but my proposal is for them to leave owners who’d exploit them: building and promoting cooperatives, voting for antitrust and pro-small-business regulations, building connections (with immigrants and upper classes), in the meantime living off welfare or getting better jobs themselves. I support the extra inefficiency of small businesses because it has advantages (familiarity, variety, less enshittification), and I think preventing monopolies is more feasible (even if not generally feasible) than preventing efficiency gains; alternatively, near-monopolies are fine if they avoid enshittification, citizens aren’t being overworked or starving (maybe there’s UBI), and there are emergency alternatives (hence near-monopolies).
First, actual bullshit jobs must be consolidated and eliminated.
Then, they’ll either get useful jobs or (if immigrants) low welfare. They may voluntarily deport.
With AI and robotics, there’s a chance most people will be unemployable. Then presumably the nation has much more resources, so I’d propose taking in more refugees, though not too many that it would destroy culture or overwhelm public services, and prioritizing those that assimilate (or can still contribute).
Brainwavez
1mo ago
Seeing hero of the story looting and pillaging the countryside, sacking towns, massacring POW's and burning heretics alive with clear conscience will be too much for modern audience.
The first season of Homelander suggests otherwise. Maybe the ending must be modernly positive for mainstream appeal, but mainstream likes a charming antihero and recovery from despair.
Brainwavez
1mo ago
I think cruel "work camps" will also not be most efficient: refugees will do the bare minimum, and learn to hate your country, which may haunt it later even if they're deported once their home country becomes stable (which may never happen anyways).
My impression is that most able-bodied refugees will voluntarily take low-paying jobs. So I'd propose something more modest: ensure welfare is below unskilled labor, allow refugees to accept unskilled labor (AFAIK some countries don't do this and give the refugees welfare), reduce under-the-table jobs by reducing taxes and regulations for over-the-table ones. And most importantly (which may seem out-there, but I think should be obviously part of any program imposed on any group), ask refugees what they want and think would be a good system; obviously if they say "pay us for doing nothing" don't do that, but even that is useful as an indication they're not assimilating.
Brainwavez
1mo ago
This is net downvoted (not by me) but I think you make a good point
Another Intellectual Property disaster:
For the unfortunate fellows and fellas who aren't following the Italian brainrot universe, Tung Tung Tung Sahur is having legal issues (Fall Guys video for those illiterate or with short attention spans). Not one, but two companies are claiming to own the titular character, suing everyone including each other.
What's surprising about this case (to people who still believe in IP's integrity), neither company owns Mr. Sahur: AI-generated works are public domain in most countries including Indonesia (a draft regulation to change this has been proposed but not yet accepted), as they should be, in part because they themselves are trained on others' copyrighted data.
Yet the court case is delayed until October. In the meantime, he has been removed from the Roblox game Steal a Brainrot, played by over 25 million children and pedophiles (won't somebody think of the pedophiles?) This is no small drama: the game is so popular apparently a movie is being made about it, and by the time this is resolved, it may be too late to include him in the cast.
I just don't know how anyone can look at this and not feel...utterly dejected by the state of society. Copyright is a scourge, abused by large corporations and not actually benefiting small creators, and should be severely curtailed if not fully eliminated.
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