BANNED USER: temperamental dysregulation
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
Tell me about it.
User ID: 745
Banned by: @Amadan
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
3yr ago
I will charitably assume that you understand discrimination here quite broadly, and mainly as things on the quantitative side, like multidimensional demographic profiling in mortgage approvals, rather than a recipe for an explicit caste society. Most arguments against this line of thought are invalid (rejecting the premise) or non-consequentialist and «principled» to the point of absurdity (statistically reliable proxies in uncertainty are bad! Uncertain gut feelings/laughably gameable metrics are good!).
I think the main problem with the utilitarian approach is simply that the society we have cannot be trusted with the full power of Reverend Bayes. That's okay, in my view: it'll recalibrate under the pressure of truth and retain its good sides while reducing bad ones. But, as it stands, Nick Land said it best:
Consider John Derbyshire’s essay in infamy The Talk: Nonblack Version, focusing initially on its relentless obnoxiousness, and attentive to the negative correlation between sociability and objective reason. As Derbyshire notes elsewhere, people are generally incapable of differentiating themselves from group identities, or properly applying statistical generalizations about groups to individual cases, including their own. A rationally indefensible, but socially inevitable, reification of group profiles is psychologically normal – even ‘human’ – with the result that noisy, non-specific, statistical information is erroneously accepted as a contribution to self-understanding, even when specific information is available.
From the perspective of socially autistic, low-EQ, rational analysis, this is simply mistaken. If an individual has certain characteristics, the fact of belonging to a group that has similar or dissimilar average characteristics is of no relevance whatsoever. Direct and determinate information about the individual is not to any degree enriched by indirect and indeterminate (probabilistic) information about the groups to which the individual belongs. If an individual’s test results are known, for instance, no additional insight is provided by statistical inferences about the test results that might have been expected based on group profiling. An Ashkenazi Jewish moron is no less moronic because he is an Ashkenazi Jew. Elderly Chinese nuns are unlikely to be murderers, but a murderer who happens to be an elderly Chinese nun is neither more nor less murderous than one who is not. This is all extremely obvious, to obnoxious people.
To normal people, however, it is not obvious at all. In part this is because rational intelligence is scarce and abnormal among humans, and in part because social ‘intelligence’ works with what everyone else is thinking, which is to say, with irrational groupish sentiment, meager information, prejudices, stereotypes, and heuristics. Since (almost) everybody else is taking short-cuts, or ‘economizing’ on reason, it is only rational to react defensively to generalizations that are likely to be reified or inappropriately applied — over-riding or substituting for specific perceptions. Anybody who anticipates being pre-defined through a group identity has an expanded ego-investment in that group and the way it is perceived. A generic assessment, however objectively arrived at, will immediately become personal, under (even quite remotely) normal conditions.
Obnoxious reason can stubbornly insist that anything average cannot be about you, but the message will not be generally received. Human social ‘intelligence’ is not built that way. Even supposedly sophisticated commentators blunder repeatedly into the most jarring exhibitions of basic statistical incomprehension without the slightest embarrassment, because embarrassment was designed for something else (and for almost exactly the opposite). The failure to understand stereotypes in their scientific, or probabilistic application, is a functional prerequisite of sociability, since the sole alternative to idiocy in this respect is obnoxiousness.
As it stands, so it goes.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
3yr ago
Twitter Blue currently has around 700,000 subscribers
This sounds like a very low estimate given that I have hundreds of checkmarked followers, yet my account is still very niche.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
3yr ago
This meme by Razib comes to mind. You sure have the mentality to cut it in future interactions with Americans. Just like Vivek and Kamala Harris, two politicians of Indian descent with credible chances of running as VPs in the next POTUS elections. Like Sundar Pichai and Satya Nadella, two men in a position to choke the life out of both leading AGI projects on the planet. Like so many other respected and powerful figures in the Anglosphere – prejudice against Indians is curiously impotent – doesn't stop them from reaching authority in any ostensibly prejudiced group. But, I guess, that can be perceived as only speaking to your strengths, rather than to overestimation of your victimization. Anyway, I already see people reflexively stanning India in all cases, even this suspected murder. The Chakra-and-Aum will no doubt become the next Ukrainian Bicolor+Sunflower.
Regarding the US government… Well:
U.S. and Indian officials have also welcomed the establishment of the India-U.S. Defense Acceleration Ecosystem designed to complement government ties by promoting partnerships between U.S. and Indian companies, start-up accelerators and research institutions.
The initiative will focus on accelerating and scaling commercial technologies that have military applications, easing access to capital and removing barriers.
Defense officials have identified India as a critical strategic partner for the coming decades and one that has demonstrated growing willingness to advance a shared vision of free, open and rules-based global order.
"President Biden has described the U.S.-India relationship as being one of the most consequential for the 21st century," Iyer said.
It will abide, at least until the war is over.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
3yr ago
The «[if we did it,] he had it coming» attitude is already almost as bad as if Indian state involvement gets confirmed.
I don't predict but weakly suspect that in 10 odd years Western progressives (if they still exist and aren't distracted by the extreme escalation of conflict with China, of course) will think about the Indophilic rhetoric with «fellow/largest/ democracy|«biggest/youngest English-speaking nation|Superpower by 20XX» etc with the same disdain they now express for that kind of stuff applied to Israel or (relative obscurity aside) Turkey or Azerbaijan. The vegetarian smiles of fast-talking wonks will become associated with repulsive alien menace as much as inarticulate, idiomatic Chinese saber-rattling is today. Charisma, managerial acumen and geopolitical alignment are important but can only go so far when there's a billion-strong and swelling mass of dimwitted hubris beneath, bolstered by a populist regime.
India is not Western, not liberal, not a democracy, and not on the track to become more of any of those things (unlike, say, Ukraine, flawed though it is). I don't judge. Were I more friendly to Indians, I probably should have.
Are you similarly surprised about nation states caring enough to kill separatists and terrorists abroad in the first place?
Because it's pretty much the same thing, one implies the other. The state*, in the crudest analysis, is a stationary bandit who claims ownership of a turf, a parcel of profitable land. This means maintaining the monopoly on legitimate violence within its borders, particularly mortal violence. Killing someone on the soil of another state is tantamount to diminishing that state's sovereignty; putting your dubious claim to «prey» above the state's claim to its legitimacy in its own domain, as if some ape's body moving around projects the qualitatively prioritized extension of yours; it is not so different in its corrosive effect from a direct attack on a local citizen, from using intimidation to intervene in local politics, indeed from supporting separatism. States, of course, exist in the condition of anarchy where might makes right and yadda yadda [realpolitik edgelording], but when such act is performed by «normal» states, ie bandits who profess to abide by some semblance of a code commonly agreed upon, as opposed to disreputable rogue shitholes with poor impulse control (or, I suppose, invincible Hegemonies), the exposure leads to apologia and compensation for damages – because it is a grave attack, even if nobody of the attacked state suffers directly.
*One of the sad things in learning languages is thoughtlessly swallowing words as one to one correspondences without pondering their etymologies and connotations, indelibly relative and path-dependent positions in the web of meaning, I believe. (This is not so much an endorsement of Sapir-Whorf as a weaker claim that different peoples use different ways to speak of the same things, same ways to speak of different things, and confuse this in translation). For example, in English, the token for «state» as in a nation/polity/unified territory is shared with an abstract, impersonal, elementary logical notion of a mode of operation maintained over some set: «the particular condition that someone or something is in at a specific time», the dictionary says. Hence, Balaji's «network state» is not an absurdity, «failed state» is a compact expression of a rather profound idea, and «state as a stationary bandit» might sound edgier than it should.
In Russian, however, the token for state-abstract is состояние, «condition» (itself different from условие which corresponds to a condition as in «term»), while state-nation is Государство. Государь means «sovereign» or «Prince». So, to a Russian ear, all states are principalities, dominions of an implied specific prince or equivalent; perhaps a conspiracy, at least a Deep State or a Cathedral, but not anything less, not anything that simply exists without expressing some de facto agent's coherent will.
As the honorary Russian Brodsky had uttered through the character of Marcus Valerius Martialis: «Surely, his view is barbaric, but yet candid».
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
3yr ago
In the past, I was making a rather confident prediction that «of course an [ex-]Communist empire with clear revanchist sentiment, under the absolute rule of a dubiously intelligent boomer, won't invade its breakaway province it's always accusing of being pawn to the hostile degenerate West, blathering about being historically their clay and "one people", conducting increasingly realistic "military exercises" in the vicinity of, and generally trying to suppress sovereign policymaking in; kinetic conflict would be straightforwardly suicidal, duh, surely they see that as well as I do and are just saber-rattling and bluffing». Now I'm looking with interest at Huawei's foldable tablet-phone, because I used to read books from a tablet that I've had to leave at home, two continents away, when said boomer did initiate the invasion.
Pardon my obliqueness.
I might be overcorrecting, sure. But I do not think the Chinese leadership is entirely rational or aware of all relevant pieces of data, this shit doesn't inspire confidence in their commitment to peaceful means of "reunification", neither does this shit, neither does this shit; and their rhetoric does incline towards "any means necessary":
All options on the table
Peaceful reunification has always been the preferred option for the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese government in resolving the Taiwan question. China will make utmost efforts in utmost sincerity to strive for this prospect.
Yet the growing dangers of secession left China with no choice but to maintain credible deterrence against separatist adventurism and external interference.
The Anti-Secession Law promulgated in 2005 stipulates:“In the event that the ‘Taiwan independence’ secessionist forces should act under any name or by any means to cause the fact of Taiwan's secession from China, or that major incidents entailing Taiwan's secession from China should occur, or that possibilities for a peaceful reunification should be completely exhausted, the state shall employ non-peaceful means and other necessary measures to protect China's sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
In no way does this law target the people on Taiwan. Use of force would only be the last resort taken under compelling circumstances.
In recent decades, whenever the separatist forces and their American backers tried to push the envelope by provoking confrontation, China would react with firm actions to show its resolve and capabilities of upholding sovereignty and territorial integrity.
No matter whether it was Lee Teng-hui making a “private” visit to the US in June 1995 or US House Speaker insisting on visiting Taiwan in August 2022, the mainland would conduct large scale military exercises in the Taiwan Strait and adjacent waters. The only difference is China’s growing capabilities to uphold its sovereignty and territorial integrity.
I could go on. The parallels are striking in any case.
As husband to a very patriotic Chinese wife, I don't see it.
As a friend to a far-right-sympathising [redacted] officer, I saw genuine relief at the apparent cancellation of invasion plans on February 21st, 2022. People in almost any group tend to be less bloodthirsty than systems optimized for abstracting away human lives and those who imagine themselves their masters.
I suppose we shall see. After all, China is not Russia. For one thing, a major Russian chip design company went bankrupt under sanctions because it was hopelessly dependent on Taiwan. Unlike Huawei, as it turns out. Whether this makes them more or less likely to open hostilities is as of yet unknown.
To answer your questions directly: no, I do not think China needs AGI, or much in the way of AI or integrated circuits for data processing, to initiate a shooting war against the West or Taiwan. Indeed I argue that these technological capabilities are overwhelmingly civilian in application, and analysts like this guy –
Recognizing the strategic importance of EUV machines, and under pressure from the United States, in November 2019, the Dutch government prevented ASML from shipping an EUV machine to China. Related news coverage painted ASML as a pawn in the U.S.-China trade war, but the Dutch decision was about so much more. There are many strategically important technologies in the development pipeline that are potentially dangerous or destabilizing. They include artificial intelligence, autonomous weapons systems, hypersonic missiles, cyberweapons, surveillance tools, and the latest generation of nuclear weapons. These technologies, and many others, require state-of-the-art chips to develop and deploy. Keeping these chips away from the Chinese government, or those acting on its behalf, can pre-empt many worst-case human rights and security scenarios in the coming decades. The Chinese government cannot engage in techno-authoritarianism or arms races if it lacks advanced chips.
– are lying through their teeth (as does Peter Zeihan, in a different way, when he tries to conjure Chinese collapse into reality with his shoddy "analytics").
Or rather, I think China needs compute for all of that only in the sense that without compute, China will just fizzle out and fall into irrelevance one way or another so won't be in a position to act up. Accordingly, Western defense plans around the situation that depend on «China is on its last legs as a technological power and will fizzle out» projection are less credible now.
Like @gattsuru, I do not find the calculus around future Chinese ambitions obvious. On one hand, having the domestic semiconductor supply chain makes them more secure and reduces the weight of «weakening countries lash out» logic. Remember that they were hit by sanctions at the height of their bragging about – for example – 5G everywhere, 6G in 2 more weeks, automated 5G-powered ports, remote mining, remote etc… now they can be more or less confident they'll remain able to service and even upgrade all those systems, and this goes for nearly every part of their infrastructure, not specifically Uighur surveillance, Social Credit and kamikaze drones, as some would have us think.
If Xi thought more like myself, he'd have seen this success as argument against military adventurism: with advanced compute at home, they can focus on steady progress and buildup and do not need to level the playing field short-term in this existential struggle, by smashing the TSMC before leading node fabs become active in the US and US-friendly nations (and vice versa, if China were stuck on 28nm+, it'd have made sense to act like this, perhaps winning a few years; I assume capturing TSMC is impossible).
On the other hand, weakening countries may rationally reduce their aims and, vice versa, strengthening countries may expand them (duh), historical precedents support this narrative.
On the gripping hand, we know that Xi does not think like myself, and may operate a more brutal Putin-like logic: China stronk, war easy, dragon rising to meet the bear, reee! Also, it may even be sensible to dispense with TSMC Taiwan, and fulfill the great dream of annexing the island, if this doesn't mean total chip embargo any more (and it's clear that Intel/TSMC Arizona/TSMC Kumamoto/etc will go live in the coming years anyway); in this vein, we might expect continued increase in belligerence as the ≤28nm supply chain is increasingly on-shored. Actually this line of thought seems the most solid to me.
But my argument pertains to the role China might play in the American strategic planning (and regulatory debate) on account of Chinese domestic, sanctions-resistant technological capabilities, and almost irrespective of its outward military posture or intended AGI timeline. Americans plan for the worst and assume their enemies can make the best of what they have.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
3yr ago
No they are not. Many things which were sustainable in the past are unsustainable today to any noteworthy extent. Example: hunter-gatherer lifestyle (unless you are also willing to cut down the global population by orders of magnitude).
It is trivial that the society can in principle be radically restructured to cope with disenfranchisement of women, but the way from here to there should be more clearly imagined, as well as the costs of the journey – all facets of our world that will not be sustained, as it were.
And specifically, Nybbler's logic of "they reap what they sow" might be unsustainable even in the previous era. Contrary to the feminist narrative, contempt for femaels wasn't an overwhelming consensus among Hajnalis of a few centuries ago.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
3yr ago
I am not sure that applying the same severe logic one might use for homeless drug addicts to the child-bearing half of humanity is tenable long-term.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
3yr ago
people who merely associated (or even still associate) with Kanye haven’t been cancelled
Sure but Musk has visibly endorsed Woods' comments, even if those were constrained to the topic of ADL and not joos generally.
As for the defamation law, I mean specifically Musk's threat to sue the ADL. It'll probably not happen, but then he'll just have to lick his wounds and accept X never becoming profitable. This would of course be a massive, massive win for Greenblatt – the world's richest man gets cold feet after briefly daring to go against his libel.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
3yr ago
but as long as the Russian army has enough spare barrel liners and barrels to stick them in, dumb shells will work just fine.
Last I paid any attention to that, barrels were exactly the problem though.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
3yr ago
Musk can probably take Greenblatt’s on this, I expect him to win against the ADL
Really?
I expect the ADL to get some of the best lawyers in existence and also pull out all the stops shaping the landscape, so to speak. It's not that Musk himself is as outrageous as Kanye, of course: the case against him is flimsy. And sure, there are many Jews who'd rather he wins. But I don't think they'll affect the proceedings much; and Netanyahu himself is anti-popular with American progressives. The problem is that that the precedent of some hmmposting tech bro legally defeating the ADL on their very field is undesirable.
I also think you underestimate the damage from engaging with Woods at all. Screenshots go a very long way, and Woods has written a great deal on the JQ.
I'd like to be wrong, of course.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
3yr ago
I've been paying cursory attention to this ADL-Musk feud. My prediction is that Musk will do scarcely better in resisting them than Zuck or Ye (even if he takes Greenblatt down with him), and the main reason for that will be the sort of stuff you see smarter, popular Jews saying in QRTs to Musk's takes on the subject, really too much of it to link. Some variation of: «we don't care a great deal about antisemitism on Twitter, nor even do we like these ADL grifters and their politics, but it's obvious that Musk attacks all of Jewry by pathologizing the ADL's exercise of free speech [putting pressure on advertisers to drop X lest they be smeared as anti-Semites by association]. He rubs shoulders with open anti-Semites, he repeats the Canard that we are responsible for the hatred of anti-Semites, he seeks to deny us the ability to defend ourselves, he exposes us to danger; and this leaves us no choice but to stand behind this organization and fight to the bitter end, for our very survival».
The same song and dance, of course, provoked discrimination and gave birth to the ADL in the first place.
The long and short of it is that Jews are, for reasons I'd rather not litigate, predisposed to acutely fear other peoples and seek salvation in solidarity, and thus tend to be unreasonably paranoid even in the obvious cases of having to submit the in-group's scoundrels to the broader society's justice (unless those scoundrels defect specifically against the in-group).
Once again, this is not particularly unusual, this is how most of humanity operates; which is why most of humanity would naturally live in clannish shitholes, but for innovations of a few select clusters. It's white people who are unusual in how they relatively gleefully throw their scoundrels or their friends and relatives or, really, anyone implicated in Unhandshakeworthy Behavior under the bus the moment the local variation of the Cathedral issues the notice.
The unusual thing about Jews is mainly just that they're smart in all ways that matter, and so can create and continuously operate effective organizations, like the B'nai B'rith and ADL.
What if most organizations that claim to be fighting a problem are indifferent to the problem at best and actively stoking it at worst?
Charitably, I don't see it this way. Most of the observed pattern is simply mission creep that sometimes provokes (non-decisive) backlash, as happens here. Grievance orgs do not have the incentive to let the cause of their business go extinct, but their individual members often have one; and since the orgs are free to answer only to themselves and the network of like-minded parties, they can claim that the problem exists and grows worse with time even if it's virtually solved (and even then, that's if they don't feel like changing the label or honestly dissolving and leaving for other grifts). I've met an elderly guy from Ecuador recently who, upon learning of my Cossack ancestry, remarked that his ancestors escaped the Kishinev pogrom «and other pogroms, you know»; I don't imagine even those Jews commenting on Musk would say they ever expect problems of that sort to return, yet the ADL diligently documents the rise in anti-Semitism and far-right extremism, measured in some tortured way. Climate changers, in the case of climate change wholly reversing, can pivot to whatever metric they can plausibly say is still worrying, like acidity of some specific soils or landfills or invasive species. AI Safety maximalists in the freshly-formed think tanks and lobbying groups already provide a few fallback causes for the eventuality of Yudkowskian Optimizers proving to be a non-issue (AI ethics, Molochian competition, bioweapons, misinformation etc).
Organizations can be quite indifferent, but their staff, even if morally very imperfect, are usually aligned with the stated purpose enough to prevent outright sabotaging it.
Those "aliens" are to a nontrivial extent made of beans (common bean and adzuki bean, see page 9/13).
As to why this is happening: Because Mexico, like the US, is a Latin American country and Latin American countries have a zany, offbeat and not entirely comprehensible political culture. Mexicans are just trying to keep pace with the great neighbor.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
3yr ago
I don't really want to entangle those but might respond to a DM.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
3yr ago
At this point it seems like the experiment has failed, though. There just doesn’t seem to be the sort of rich discussions here that used to happen
I think the root problem is the nature of the domain, not the nature of the place.
What is there left to discuss?
Bona fide right-wingers, to be honest, have been subsumed by Trumpism (or worse, Pitinism simping), and summarily discredited – in the eyes of most everyone else; their inveterate support of an abject, morally bankrupt failure is just no longer interesting to challenge (I wonder how @ymeskhout still bothers). Stuff like anti-HBD is likewise discredited in the eyes of anyone who could be interested to engage in good faith. (I suppose the inverse has never been credible to staunch opponents). Further inferences have been ruled out either by administrative fiat or just by disinterest in achieving more than proving to oneself that the other side sucks. The SSC-era culture war has died down somewhat. The ongoing culture wars, tracing the important tectonic shifts within the [American] Logos in its intellectual dimensions, calling to non-jaded vision of a change, are substantially different; but the extant population of posters is set in their ways and will mostly try to shoehorn them into the old topics. Should I war with Hlynka again about whether the recognition of LLM intelligence makes me akin to a wordcel Berkeley Marxist who's blind to the truth of Christian God? Pls no. I have things to write on the important stuff directly, without justifying it to a yet another opinionated committee, and I do so now elsewhere.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
3yr ago
Reddit is often pretty long-winded without good reason, to be honest. Smarter subreddits are positively infested with eloquent streams of consciousness in support of some pedestrian preconceived notion.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
3yr ago
I mean, the Chinese government is pretty goddamn ruthless
What I've always suspected very strongly, but wasn't sure about until the happening on 24th February, is that people tend to be very mistaken about «ruthless» states. It's not ruthlessness a la evil AI picking the most instrumentally useful move in its strategic agenda to dominate the light cone, it's the ruthlessness of an unemployed wife-beater who sometimes shows her an inkling of kindness to keep mooching off. This geopolitical gobbledygook is cope, generated on auto by the pro-regime intelligentsia for the masses with superficial interest in politics; the elites of those regimes don't even notice it for the most part, and are exclusively invested in inner «stability» and individual survival, to the point of undermining the whole system's survival odds, to say nothing of its Grand Civilizational Future. If Putin couldn't be assed to make the army procure some drones or inflatable plyboard fake tanks… scratch that clever-ass stuff, even tyres or med kits – why would Xi invest in creepy, speculative projects like cloning? Does he even believe in genetics in the first place? Why would anyone below him risk checking if he does?
So it goes.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
3yr ago
Many but not all are Brahmins; my impression is that most who are not Brahmins come from some small, obscure (outside India) hyper-specific prestigious jati.
Vivek himself hails from a specific subset within Tamil Brahmins, Kerala Iyers of Palakkad. There can't be more than, like, 80k of them (probably more like 10k); I think it'd be amazing to discover that any other prominent American can be traced back to that tiny endogamous community.
I don't much care if all this stuff is true and I suspect Americans won't either. Certainly not Republicans, unfortunately. Red anti-intellectualism or, perhaps, anti-smartassism is real; you'd better be able to own the other guy in a debate, but you cannot make it look as if you're showboating at the expense of your diploma-less audience. Ben Shapiro with his quick debate bro tongue is Facebook meme material, not POTUS material, likewise for a clever, dweeby man like Vivek. He needs edge other than apparent competence and sharpness, or #1 and #2 to do themselves in.
It'll be funny if he makes it, though. Imagine Vivek vs Kamala (as Biden declines further): total Brahmin victory. A tiny (there are, what, 2 million Tamil Brahmins?) subrace bred for verbally justifying their authority in a casteist society seize political power in an antiracist democratic society. What could be more surprising?
Edit: Wiki on his drug adventures
In 2015, Ramaswamy raised $360 million for the Roivant subsidiary Axovant Sciences in an attempt to market intepirdine as a drug for Alzheimer's disease.[31][39] In December 2014,[40] Axovant purchased the patent for intepirdine from GlaxoSmithKline (where the drug had failed four previous clinical trials) for $5 million, a small sum in the industry.[32] Ramaswamy appeared on the cover of Forbes magazine in 2015, and said his company would "be the highest return on investment endeavor ever taken up in the pharmaceutical industry."[32][39] Before new clinical trials began, he engineered an initial public offering in Axovant.[32] Axovant became a "Wall Street darling" and raised $315 million in its IPO.[40] The company's market value initially soared to almost $3 billion, although at the time it only had eight employees, including Ramaswamy's brother and mother.[32] Ramaswamy took a massive payout after selling a portion of his shares in Roivant to Viking Global Investors.[32] He claimed more than $37 million in capital gains in tax year 2015.[32] Ramaswamy said his company would be the "Berkshire Hathaway of drug development"[3] and touted the drug as a "tremendous" opportunity that "could help millions" of patients, prompting some criticism that he was overpromising.[32]
In September 2017, the company announced that intepirdine had failed in its large clinical trial.[32][41] The company's value plunged; it lost 75% in one day and continued to decline afterward.[32] Shareholders who lost money included various institutional investors, such as the California State Teachers' Retirement System pension fund.[32] Ramaswamy was insulated from much of Axovant's losses because he held his stake through Roivant.[32][40] The company abandoned intepirdine. In 2018, Ramaswamy said he had no regrets about how the company handled the drug;[40] in subsequent years, he said he regretted the outcome but was annoyed by criticism of the company.[32] Axovant attempted to reinvent itself as a gene therapy company,[42] but dissolved in 2023.[32]
In 2017, Ramaswamy struck a deal with Masayoshi Son in which SoftBank invested $1.1 billion in Roivant.[32] In 2019, Roivant sold its stake in five subsidiaries (or "vants"), including Enzyvant, to Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma;[43][32] Ramaswamy made $175 million in capital gains from the sale.[32] The deal also gave Sumitomo Dainippon a 10% stake in Roivant.[44][43]
While campaigning for the presidency in 2023, Ramaswamy called himself a "scientist" and said, "I developed a number of medicines."[32] Although his undergraduate degree is in biology, he was never a scientist; his role in the biotechnology industry was that of a financier and entrepreneur.[32]
In January 2021, Ramaswamy stepped down as CEO of Roivant Sciences and assumed the role of executive chairman.[43][44] In 2021, after he resigned as CEO, Roivant was listed on the Nasdaq via a reverse merger with Montes Archimedes Acquisition Corp, a special purpose acquisition vehicle.[45] In February 2023, Ramaswamy stepped down as chair of Roivant to focus on his presidential campaign.[32][46]
Ramaswamy remains the sixth-largest shareholder of Roivant,[32] retaining a 7.17% stake.[47] Roivant has never been profitable.[45]
etc. I'd say this is not worse than I expected but it's certainly not the miracle success story you've painted. If anything, I'd say it calls for investigation.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
3yr ago
I do not believe there is anything like that, not anything that can do real damage at least. Putin just killed him, in the same manner he probably killed General Lebed decades ago, to feel more secure about the upcoming elections, exactly 2 months after the beginning of the coup – the old KGB rat likes these stupid calendar jokes (Nemtsov was famously killed on Special Operations Forces Day). Prigozhin had no leverage since it became clear that the army isn't joining in on the mutiny (partially Surovikin's call, for which he's been rewarded in the usual manner Kremlin rewards loyalty), and was banking essentially on some combination of Putin's sentimentality, cowardice, and getting a chance to slip out before the kill order is executed. I am not aware what he was thinking he's trying to dodge when he took off in that private jet; maybe radioactive poisoning, maybe an unstoppable, anonymous Ukrainian Shinobi like the one that took down Yevhen Zhylin.
Let's look back on my unconfident «analysis», so to speak. 23rd June
Prigozhin is straightforwardly a warlord (with vague Imperial sympathies) who's trying to avoid getting deep-fried like early LDNR leaders who were deemed a threat by Kremlin. This kill-your-military-heroes pattern is a staple of the Russian state and its dickless-but-psychopathic apparatchik leadership over the last century, so he has no way out but up. It very likely won't work, but it very likely heralds the final episode of our very special military operation:
I believe we don't yet know how this will shake out. The default outcome, corroborated by the renewal of treason case against Prig, is that Putin+Luka have prevailed and shooed everyone into apparent compromise, which just means postponed execution for Prig and likely his inner circle. Maybe not – the murky current status of Wagnerites suggests there's uncertainty remaining. It was close anyway. Prig has failed in securing his maximalist terms (removal of MoD heads who directly threaten him) but has successfully demonstrated that their worthlessness is a Schelling point and the army's integrity is hanging by a thread. It's just a thicker thread than he hoped. Maybe it's thin enough for Putin to fear touching him again.
My prediction is 60% Wagner dissolving and Prigozhin being eliminated in some manner (maybe not killed but actually convicted, maybe he offs himself), 25% Prigozhin, Utkin etc. somehow weaseling out of it, brokering some deal with Luka and either just chilling in Belarus, «going missing», or escaping to… Africa?, and 15% «anything goes», because Russia is, after all, a magical place.
In this light, we can surmise that the thread got reinforced in the meantime and that's it.
I'll take the opportunity to reiterate that anyone supporting the Russian regime in any way or form advocates for an irredeemable abomination. There are only two well-informed perspectives from which such support makes sense: A) if you believe Russian genocide is inherently desirable, even at substantial cost to other peoples; and B) if you think there's an urgent need for Western mobilization against a vicious but not genuinely dangerous enemy, maybe as preparation for the war with China. If you're some galaxy-brained cynical Western right0id antiglobalist who thinks that Putin provides a «multipolar» check to the hated GAE, you're still wrong, he's ineffectual in this capacity since he prioritizes regime stability over any external power projection (he's just not competent enough to pick moves that are worthwhile on either axis) and irreversibly erodes the future possibility of such checks.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
3yr ago
@fuckduck9000, does this qualify for naked power worship? How much Truth Signal is there in Putin's ability to slaughter everyone who judges him as a ruinous czar whose mediocre and craven character is only exceeded by his ruthlessness?
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
3yr ago
I actually wonder what people with opinions on Holocaust… opposite to @SecureSignals will say about all this if the evidence of fabrication becomes clearer. Were I a Jew, I'd be pretty pissed and maybe a little scared about such cynical construction of a memetic superweapon that may by association cast doubt on evidence for already recognized genocides, and tried to make clear that I strongly condemn such tactics.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
3yr ago
So long as they are my ingroup I care about them. … I might not like Eric Turkheimer and I might personally despise his brazen lies. But on a bigger picture level, where we drop our own ego and just look at the world as it is, guys like him and Lind are much closer to having their truth out there than any boorish HBD truth seeker ever will be, and they are more honest and self aware of their intention. They represent something good. World peace, the working class, human dignity, being kind. Your justifications, on the other hand, are what? Truth uber alles, because... It will out someday, probably?
«Looking at the world as it is». What is that if not truth? Even in denying its value, you can't make do without it.
As for me, I just like truth as a terminal good, and certainly I prefer the triumph of truth to the survival of Estonians as a distinct people (though as you observe, not even Estonians care very much; and individually they will be mostly fine either way). I straightworwardly like honest people more and want societies to have more honest people. The notion of in-group favoritism is not alien to me, but I despise «my people» who turn out to be egregious liars, mostly lose interest in their welfare and exclude them from the ingroup. So this is a matter of value differences.
On a meta level,
I genuinely don't have a 'true' argument for why Estonia shouldn't be flooded with brown people.. Sure, I might believe it will be bad and that non-stop mass immigration will lead to the end of the native ethnic expression of themselves, both culturally and genetically, but... What even is that? My belief? Why do I care? Why should it be more important than the belief of EU bureaucrats on the goodness of EuroAfrica? I've never even met an Estonian.
If you do not feel that there's anything but arbitrary particularism to your values, then I advise you go find better values. This is my major problem with hidebound European nationalisms: what are you lot even defending? Senile sentimentalism? Loyalty to a land and bodies buried within, like some lamb visiting his mother's grave? «Uh we want there to be Estonians/Finns/Romanians in the future» – who the hell should care any more about enabling that than Eliezer Yudkowsky cares about an alien obsessed with computing SHA256 hashes of audios of cows mooing? If you cannot give birth to a single philosopher capable of making an intellectually non-vacuous case for your contribution to the canvas of the Universe that justifies you not just dissolving in a greater body, how do you hope to contend with elite bureaucrats appealing to universal humanism and other overpowered ethical principles? Especially if they already hold the levers of propaganda. Even tactically: how do you intend to lie, and to whom?
But a) I could make a case for the survival of distinct peoples, even Estonians and b) I also believe that my values correspond to instrumental advantages. Truth offers a way out of local minima and toward a higher Pareto boundary for all players.
Say, @Skibboleth claims above:
Even taking it as given that HBD is correct in a descriptive sense, that doesn't come with any set of policy prescriptions.
Well, it that were true in any way that matters, we'd probably see less resistance to it. And worries about some future turn to Eugenic National Socialism are not remotely the concern – compared to the immediate implications which offend leftists. Namely: Affirmative Action discredited, «it's about inssuficient school spending» laughed out of the room, «systemic racism holding them down» debunked (together with the entire civic religion built around white guilt), «immigrants will assimilate and become productive just fine» goes down the drain and so on. All those translate to policy proposals, from an even more vigorous rooting out of obfuscated AA to rebalancing of budgets and policing to more merit-based immigration. This might seem bad for the leftist's case which you seem to understand as basically «brown people deserve more nice stuff». But I think their case is a degenerate, compromise-riddled implementation of their defensible and popular intuitions about fairness and justice. Redistributing jobs to «marginalized minorities» with the goal of breaking path-dependent poverty does not work; but you can still redistribute wealth, and you'd have more wealth to redistribute if you optimally allocate jobs. Sure, one can argue that without the promise of returns, charity is harder to solicit. But do people in the current year seriously understand AA as investment? I think this hard-nosed optimism is a polite fiction, a tribute to last vestiges of Protestant ethic. It dies, along with boomers.
Crucially, though, I return to the tactical issue of «whom do you lie to?» It is ironic that your cynical viewpoint is also very democratic. You think you need to convince «the plebs» to enact policies on their behalf, but is this true? Do they not tolerate poorly justified mistreatment, only ineffectually grumbling or sometimes burning shit on the streets, if the entire Professional-Managerial Class is on the same page and moves swiftly through the playbook?
So I contend that to get anywhere, you need to win the favor of Elite Human Capital. And you cannot, not from the battered position of some nativist or white identitarian, do that without intellectually sound arguments. To develop those, yes, you need truth.
Goodbye. I liked some of our interactions, though it's been a while since I've seen anything from you. If you keep writing, I hope to see it again.
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