RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
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User ID: 317
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1hr ago
Well one has to accept risk for future reward. I don't own any SpaceX shares personally, I'm wary of all the locked-up insiders. But in principle, finance should be supporting aggressive moonshots, investment and innovation that doesn't necessarily lead to quick profits. Broad prosperity and technological capability are more desirable than captured profits. I think there's excessive negativity about Musk and AI based purely on these financial factors. There are other valid reasons for negativity about AI and SpaceX as investment, certainly. I just don't think that these companies should be judged so narrowly on profitability when the tech is so powerful. This is not pets.com and it's not 'insanely profitable short form video' either, AI and economical spaceflight are extremely powerful general purpose technologies.
Apparently Costco is worth 400 billion USD. How could spacex be worth significantly less than that? How can the sky be less valuable than a supermarket with a membership fee?
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
6hr ago
2 trillion marketcap for Grok does seem high but 41 billion in losses for a massively world leading space launch capability and a few other things seems very low!
It's an interesting Eliezer post to raise...
I think the key thing that's sort of hinted at is that governments and institutions are not things that are for self-improving and optimizing towards clear goals from the point of view of well-intentioned people who live within them. Govts are their own kind of living thing and they live or die by the sword, by fire and famine and civil war. Not rational argument. How would it be if my muscle cells could protest if I was getting them killed? Traitors (cancer) will be shot!
If anyone could just easily change a system to optimize it, these govts would be like animals without an immune system. They'd immediately get eaten by something that does have an immune system. You want a nice garden but instead you get a whole lot of ants that eat the beautiful plants and then insects that eat ants, then bigger insects, then birds, then cats and eventually some ugly hyena that seems like it should be extinct (Approximately 60% of cubs die during birth, primarily from suffocation). But no, the hyena is good enough! They just cram out more kids, the kids kill eachother, survival of the fittest - species of Least Concern regarding extinction.
The USA is not powerful because it is well-run! The US is run pretty badly but America's other strengths in size and wealth production are so great that it can compensate for this. US governance failures, of which randomly poisoning children barely rank in the top 100, fail to inflict severe enough damage to break the wealth creating machine. And so the show goes on.
Visitor: Hold on. There must be less expensive ways of testing intelligence and conscientiousness than sacrificing four years of your lifespan to a magical tower.
Cecie: Let’s not go into that right now. For now, just take as an exogenous fact that employers can’t get all of the information they want by other channels.
Trillions down the drain on that alone. But unless the PLA march into Washington or the US fails to pay its soldiers and security forces, the show goes on!
RandomRanger
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1d ago
they have $41.3 billion in accumulated losses since their founding, and have burned $4.3 billion on AI in Q1 2026 alone
Who cares about profit or loss provided that first-rate technology is being developed and improved? Amazon barely made any money for years, they were busy investing in their business, improving their logistics, expanding.
Beancounter financialism is a huge burden on the West. People obsess about costs in money yet seem to scarcely consider the longer-term returns of investment. Or when investments are made, they're conducted very badly. $41 billion is peanuts compared to all the nonsense that goes on in the public sector, much of which is actively detrimental to society. That's about half HS2 in Britain, a single high speed rail line going a few hundred kilometres. In Australia it's about 2 Snowy Mountain 2.0s, a crappy power storage system. Or it's about 1/3 of US spending on the Iran war, not to mention lives lost and economic or strategic damage, or that the war is still ongoing and costs sure to rise further!
There's nothing excellent about HS2, Snowy Mountain 2.0 or the Iran War. SpaceX at least has achieved excellence in space. Compare to Boeing Starliner - that cost about 7 billion and it's crap.
Technology is real wealth, money is just an accounting convenience. An important convenience certainly but just a convenience.
RandomRanger
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4d ago
This is pretty poor behaviour. I'm seeing videos of Mexico fans making massive noise, lighting fireworks outside the hotel the English team is playing in in a (failed) attempt to disrupt their sleep. That's obviously crass and bad behaviour. How is this any better, just because it's done behind closed doors?
The US was also using tricks with the Iranian team I recall, making them travel into and then quickly leave the country.
It's just a game, not a trade agreement or a war or anything worth cheating over. What is the point? Why not at least show a little magnanimity or sportsmanship?
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
8d ago
Marxism's root is in Christianity, Wokeness is Christianity that has evolved to the point of opposing itself
How about Islam? Islam is monotheist and spiritual, it explicitly endorses Jesus as a prophet and endorses the general spiritualist ethos that Marxism denies.
Are Muslims then Christian? No. Even though Islam is rooted in Christianity to a certain extent, that doesn't substantially matter, they belong in separate categories not least because of a long history of hatred and warfare between the two. Islam is far more rooted in Christianity than Marxism is.
Wokeness also rejects Christianity and co-opts Christianity to be more like itself. Wokeness has roots in Christianity but it's like I was saying upthread. Humans have genetic roots in mice (about 85-90% of DNA being shared) but aren't really mice in a significant sense. Wokeness --- Marxism ------------------- Christianity --- Islam.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
9d ago
rejection of the frame is still in the frame
So Piss Christ is Christian art then? As far as I'm concerned, it's an insult dressed up as art. Defacing a Koran isn't Islamic art, no muslim would think that, they'd get really angry about it. Marxism may descend from Christianity in some respects but Marxists hate Christianity and work around the clock to undermine and suppress it as shown from when they get any scrap of power and usually start killing nuns and closing churches. It's not really Christian. Is /r/atheism Christian? Many users were Christian at one point. But it isn't a Christian website.
Cultural power is a kind of power, it has an effect on the world. Where is Christianity's cultural power? Are we getting new words from Christianity? Or just a sea of old words, old words that people can barely define anymore? Prelate, deacon, abbott, cardinal - even educated people might not know what they mean. When's the last time anyone went to a conventicle?
Power is about making things happen. What has Christianity made happen recently? You're saying that everything in Western civilization is drawn from Christianity in some respect and alluding to extremely broad ideas like redemption, survival and self-sacrifice (notably shared by other cultures that never heard of Christ). But what specifically has happened recently as a result of this power, tangibly? Gay marriage, pride parades, a tonne of porn everywhere, women wandering around with buttocks visible through some skimpy hot pants, a fountain of materialist greed in everyone's social media, gluttony, envy, sloth, revenge and more aborted kids in the last 60 years than died in every war in human history?
Where is the cultural power going exactly, what is it doing?
There are no live controversies about saying the lord's name in vain, only saying 'nigger'. What does that say about cultural power?
The secular world you might want to see as separate does not contain a lot of mythic alternatives for artists to draw from.
Christianity doesn't even measure up to long-dead religions in this respect. Drawing from pagans today: Age of Mythology, Titan Quest, God of War, Hades, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Jotun, Northgard, and The Banner Saga. Valheim. The Pharoah Series. The Witcher.
Drawing from Christianity today: Darksiders, Diablo and Dante's Inferno + maybe the Binding of Isaac which is anti-Abrahamist.
Both pale in comparison to thematically modern stories about man and technology which gives us huge rich veins of sci-fi, robots, ray guns, flying machines, totalitarian states.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
9d ago
No, there's nothing in the New Testament... about not having sex slaves. There's plenty in the Old Testament about having sex slaves!
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
10d ago
How would you get rid of immigrants if Somalia etc. won't accept them? What if it's too expensive? What if it's dangerous for them? What about women and children?
How would you get rid of some guy sleeping at your house once you've decided your generosity is being strained, you don't like how he's been taking food from the pantry, money from your pocket or how he looks at your daughter? The guy might have no house, he might have no skills and no job and the street sure is dangerous... but it is not a reasonable expectation to turn your house into a hostel for arbitrary numbers of losers.
Why should Sweden be obligated to keep an arbitrary number of Somalians just because the Somalians don't want to go back to Somalia? Why would they want to go back to Somalia voluntarily? Paying them to go back to Somalia is idiotic, they can just come back again.
Why would I want to leave a 5-star hotel to my crappy apartment when I could stay and mooch off room service? That's just not how it works. The police would be called. They would find ways of getting rid of me.
The Algerians made it clear to the French that they had to leave or they would kill them, so they left. That's how it works. There is no police between nations, nations have to deal with this themselves and it inevitably gets messy and confrontational. Sometimes conflict is inevitable.
Being a nation without a state is an unpleasant prospect. Should the Swedes resign themselves to be like the Kurds, who just get hammered continually by nations that do have states? Why take any chances? Why should they worry about a Russian invasion when the streets of Malmo are unsafe for women because it's full of rapey Africans? What is the cost of a Russian invasion and conquest to Sweden? They'd merely lose political control over their country, risk unaccountable robbery and crime, get made to pay taxes for Russian interests...
Mass deportations can be done quickly and cheaply but not by handwringers and legalists who drag things out. In the UK they go through this whole dog and pony show about 'oh I'm gay you can't send me back to Nigeria because they'll be prejudiced'. You can't let people game the system by producing whatever rubbish will extend the process into the never never, there needs to be a disciplined exercise of authority. There are no magic words I can say to convince the hotel to let me stay in their room forever, not by producing sob stories or claims or phoney documents.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
10d ago
The Australian outback is a terrible place to resettle anyone. It's far more expensive than the coastal cities because the logistics of doing anything there are terrible. Trucking food for thousands of kilometres, diesel generators, dodgy satellite internet... Everything has to be imported and the climate is horrid. Government employees need to get bonuses to work there. Doctors sometimes have to be flown around on light aeroplanes to reach patients! There are barely any jobs either, the whole area is a welfare sink besides the mineral-rich parts. And mining is mechanized, unskilled labour is not really needed.
The Australian government also struggles to provide security there, the outback is crime-ridden. Alice Springs is one of the most violent cities in the world. Mostly that's due to the indigenous population being quite violent but an infusion of exciting new ethnic conflicts and the criminal refuse of other nations wouldn't make anything better.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
10d ago
"Forget about the industrial-scale killing of unborn children, parades devoted to sodomy and sexual deviance, pornography, breakdown of marriage rituals - the third biggest movie of the year's main character's name has Grace in it and he has to consider whether to sacrifice himself or not!'
Huh?
I confess I haven't read the book or watched the film, just skimmed the plot on wikipedia. But it's not exactly the Sistine Chapel! Looking at the themes, I see scientific materialism ranking ahead of Christian values.
The water I'm swimming in sure looks like it's about 98% iron oxide.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
10d ago
Well if the weapons of war are a laptop the US could save a lot of money by scrapping all those jets and bombs.
Furthermore, there's nothing in the bible about not having sex slaves, not buying sex slaves! Slavery was commonplace in biblical judea, there are parables about sending out slaves to do work for you. That's just in the New Testament. In the Old Testament the appropriate treatment and trading of sex slaves is laid out in black and white. So reading the Bible is quite misleading for this point you're making.
Genesis 30:1–13 repeats the pattern twice over. Rachel and Leah, competing over Jacob's affection and fertility, each give their slaves — Bilhah and Zilpah — to Jacob as wives/concubines so they can claim the resulting sons as their own. Four of Jacob's twelve sons (ancestors of four of the twelve tribes of Israel) come from these unions.
Deuteronomy 21:10–14 covers a foreign woman taken captive in war. The Israelite man may take her as a wife, but only after a month-long mourning period for her family, and if he later doesn't want her, he can't sell her as a slave or treat her as property — she must be set free.
Again, you'd be better off reading Harry Potter which makes more of a critique of slavery than the Bible!
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11d ago
The most popular movie this year is Project Hail Mary
It's Super Mario Galaxy: https://www.boxofficemojo.com/year/world/
Project Hail Mary doesn't have anything to do with Christianity thematically, it's a sci fi alien story.
Resident Evil Requiem doesn't seem to have anything to do with Christianity in the game. The word itself doesn't carry much weight.
The most anticipated game of 2026 is GTA 6, which is a pretty unchristian game thematically given it's all about shooting police, robbing people and girls in bikinis. GTA is a 5x bigger franchise than Halo too. The Combat Evolved remake isn't even a new game or a new remake (they already remade it in MCC)
The one part I agree with is that the Bible is needed to understand pre-1900 culture.
The cultural power of an iron age desert cult does not extend to a post-industrialized hyperurban internet economy. We are not shepherds, we don't give servants talents of gold to invest. We pick and choose various interpretations of biblical verses to suit our arguments at any given time, you of all people must be sick of the good samaritan being waved around as a leftist sigil. In that case, it's Christian arguments being made for fundamentally secular reasons, objectification of Christianity as a bludgeon, not actual sincere belief which would probably be smeared as fundamentalism. And it is kinda crazy to try to live by these rules in a thoroughly different society.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11d ago
Yes, marriage is a very important ritual in Christianity and public life generally. Who can marry whom is one of the most fundamental pillars of society! You used to need an act of parliament to divorce. Henry VIII had no end of religious problems with marriage.
The state has basically reduced marriage to a tax strategy and a party.
Furthermore, it's not like everyone is abiding by all the rest of Christian dogma on usury, fasting, work on the sabbath, lust, abortion, licentiousness and only gay marriage slipped through the net.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11d ago
How does reading the Bible help you understand modern culture, exactly? It can teach you about the values some people profess to believe, it doesn't teach you about what actually happens, about real behaviour in the West. Harry Potter is more relevant.
In the England of King James II people really cared about the Bible, interpreting from the Bible about what the church was supposed to be, they were ready to stake their lives for particular interpretations of that book and the meaning of various rituals. That is not happening today! Nobody is waging war for Christianity in a Western country. They are fighting for oil, for national pride, for security interests, for human rights...
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
12d ago
All that is kind of true but how can a country with state sanctioned, state-promoted pride parades even be anything but anti-Christian? Both the medium and the message are pretty explicitly anti-Christian? How can a country with legal gay marriage be considered Christian, never mind divorce rates?
Even if Russia's goal is just vaguely seeming to be against globohomo, that's still way closer to Christianity than the Western countries who are promoting, spreading, directing globohomo.
I don't believe in the 'based trad Russia' meme. But in terms of social vice, it's hardly worse than America or the West generally. Abortions: 13.1 per 1000 vs 14.4 in America, 20 in UK. Russia is number 7 in drug deaths per capita but America is far ahead at number 1 worldwide, 4x Russia.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/abortion-rates-by-country
https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of-death/drug-use/by-country
Trying but mostly failing to be anti-LGBT in the military seems a lot more Christian than promoting LGBT and diversity in the military. However cynically Putin may use Christian rhetoric he's 10x more Christian than the average Western leader who's mentally redefined Christianity to mean 'more leftism but with cross aesthetics'.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
12d ago
Certainly the Bible is the most influential book in Western thought
Is it? In 1900, sure.
But in 2026?
Do our politicians read the Bible and actually implement biblical doctrine, socially or economically? Is Christianity a major social movement in the West today? The recent pro-life moves in the US only gave individual states the ability to ban or legalize abortion, that doesn't seem Christian so much as federalist.
Sodomy is very fashionable, there are literal Pride parades. Bigamy has made a comeback with polyamory. The less said about usury, lust, greed, sloth and envy the better.
In media, any major new works of Christian art? Film? TV? Video games?
What about the Pope? Any Crusades recently? His powers to excommunicate, have they been relevant in world affairs much? Or does nobody really care if they're excommunicated, what does that say about the Pope's abilities?
The Church of England? Well the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, the King 'protects the space for Faith within the multi-faith nation' per the Palace description of the role of the Head of State. He still holds the role of being 'Defender of the Faith' but it seems fairly clear his heart is not really in it. De facto the King issues milquetoast proclamations that nobody pays much attention to:
His Majesty also has a special role in bringing communities and faiths together, engaging with them across the regions and nations of the UK. The King and the other working Members of the Royal Family recognise achievements and support charitable and voluntary work, serving as a catalyst for civic responsibility and charitable action.
No reference to Christ can be found in the whole 150 page document. Only in Russia, in Africa, in Latin America is Christianity taken more seriously. Defacing churches in Russia and LGBT behaviour is treated very seriously indeed.
Christianity's influence is mostly historical, like how mammals in the time of the dinosaurs were mostly tiny mouse creatures. They had tremendous influence in a certain sense. We are descended from tiny mouse creatures. There are still tiny mouse creatures around. But the tiny mouse creatures around today are not really influential and we are not really tiny mice. Even if most of our DNA is mouse there are important distinctions.
Marx is more relevant than the Bible to Western thought today, there are powerful cadres of communists, true believers (still!) Or the Limits to Growth - degrowthers and climatists have significant influence on the left and especially in Europe. They see datacentres, power plants, industry and development but unlike Christians they don't just murmur or complain about things they're against, they reach out and crush them to death. That's not to say that it would be good to teach people Marx or other bad ideologies but they're certainly more relevant.
RandomRanger
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13d ago
Well they have a good shot at 'divine right to rule', as good as any theocracy or real monarchy at least? Institutional legitimacy?
They seem to have won a series of rebellions and only got overthrown because of exceptional madness in their ranks.
https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/First_Blackfyre_Rebellion
RandomRanger
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14d ago
I agree, states and religions could just be the same kind of thing fundamentally.
The Arabic empire and Islam were at one point one and the same, before splitting apart. The USSR and communism were, at one point, virtually the same. Most communists took their opinions and marching orders from Moscow.
Only ideologies and religions as we know them don't have that territorial dimension of a state, they're not quite so powerful most of the time.
RandomRanger
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15d ago
Good point. I recall an instance where this schizo US policeman got spooked and shot some random woman for no reason.
RandomRanger
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16d ago
So far as I can tell, the shooter himself managed to kill a male cop (Algerian immigrant named muhammed), then the female cop shot and killed some random guy (a rabbi working at pornhub?) and ran away from the shooter?
I think this is a pretty clear signal that women are not supposed to be performing martial roles like being police officers. That's a male thing. Being cool under fire is tough. Men went through thousands of years of brutal selection for martial prowess, bravery and tactical intuition. Boxing, fencing, wrestling, warfighting, streetfighting, wargames... these are all male things, male pursuits and should really be left to men. When there's some story about 'heroic civilian beats terrorist stabber/shooter' it's almost always a man, they are more likely to have that dog in them. Along with the terrorism, shooting and killing too of course. Division of labour, women have their own roles of great importance.
RandomRanger
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17d ago
International law is based heavily on what actually happens, it's not like real law where the rules are written down explicitly and there are at least attempts to implement them impartially. While Iran controls the straits de facto, opening and closing them as they see fit, 'international law' there bends in their direction. So there may not be a toll on transiting the straits, only administrative fees and insurance regulations. They can whip up some framework to get what they want pass a surface-level legal review.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
18d ago
Upon the signing of this MOU, the Islamic Republic of Iran will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels with no charge, for 60 days only, from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman and vice versa. The traffic of commercial vessels will immediately start, and considering the need for removing the technical and military obstacles, and demining by the Islamic Republic of Iran will be instated within 30 days.
The Islamic Republic of Iran will conduct dialog with the Sultanate of Oman to define the future administration and maritime services in the Strait of Hormuz in discussion with other Persian Gulf littoral states in line with the applicable international law and the sovereign rights of coastal states of the Strait of Hormuz.
That only means that the wolf and a few sheep will decide on tax rates for the farm. Sovereign rights of coastal states reads like code for 'Oman can hustle in on the racket too'.
Also negotiations have already broken down as you predicted with more Trump threats, fighting in Lebanon continuing, the Israelis openly ignoring this and the straits being formally reclosed. They were never really open in the first place, fighting in Lebanon never really stopped...
The US did it in Iraq, they secured ground against an entrenched enemy - and in much larger cities too. US infantry are actually decent at fighting. Or Russian infantry, they secure cities too. They took Mariupol, it was a tough fight against committed Azov defenders. They took Bakhmut, which is bigger and a lot better defended than these random hills in Lebanon. But they actually take ground and once ground is taken it stays taken. The Israelis go on these raiding missions into Gaza and blow things up but can't seem to take and hold territory.
caring about PR
The Israelis 'care about PR' but would never let it affect their military tactics, which include terror bombing, torturing prisoners and just randomly shooting people. They go on twitter and write these random screeds. This is from the Israeli minister of national security:
For every tear of an Israeli mother, a thousand Lebanese mothers must weep. All of Lebanon must burn! With all due respect to the Americans, Israel must make it clear to the entire world that the blood of our sons and the security of our citizens are not forfeit. All of Lebanon must burn. Our supreme duty is to protect the citizens of Israel and the soldiers of the IDF, and this commitment takes precedence over every other consideration.
I told the Prime Minister, even in our private meetings: For every tear of an Israeli mother, a thousand Lebanese mothers must weep. Enough with the ping-pong. In the Middle East, you don't win with measured responses and restraint—you need to go berserk. To obliterate. To crush the terror.
But even with them blowing up all these buildings, dropping all these bombs - that is not achieving political goals! Even if what you say is true and that no nation can handle entrenched urban enemies while 'caring about PR' against tough, determined foes. Then that should affect strategy. I would simply not attempt military operations that cannot achieve my political goals, or that cost more than they gain!
Same with the US. Blowing up the Iranian airforce and navy, even if the US actually did that and it's not just cope... who cares? Did it accomplish US political goals? No! Blowing up power plants would've just seen the Iranians blow up more oil facilities in the Middle East. That doesn't help America achieve its goals, quite the reverse.
If Israel wants to conserve its international reputation, avoid casualties, conquer land, defeat and divide its enemies... well it needs to prioritize, Israel is not a great power and can't have all of those things simultaneously. The US can't do everything it wants simultaneously against determined opponents. If Israel embrace a doctrine of using human shields (the 'mosquito protocol') to approach boobytrapped buildings, that's necessarily going to affect your international reputation. There are tradeoffs and limitations for these powers.
Well for the last 4 years we've been burning through benchmarks at great speed. We're onto ARC-AGI 3 now, SWE-Pro is just now out... What benchmark were they supposed to make 10 years ago, 5 years ago, 1 year ago? How would that benchmark help with anything? We can already see a clear trend in rapid capability growth. Just the other day OpenAI's entry trounced a bunch of people at the AtCoder world programming contest. In that sense it's 'superhuman'. Not in all senses but in some, certainly.
These were the guys who are worried about recursive self improvement and then we have Anthropic nerfing Fable's ML skills so it doesn't help competitors making AI, we have OpenAI guys on twitter saying 'GPT5.6 Sol did the post-training on GPT5.6 Luna'.
That seems pretty self-improving to me? Doesn't seem like ASI is too far distant.
Has the legal system come up with a benchmark for aligning humans in the last 5000 years? Not really, that's not something we can do. We can tell between more or less trustworthy people though, set up incentives and checks and scrutiny. Same with AIs. There are a tonne of benchmarks for safety, just like there are tonnes of checks put on people working in intelligence agencies. Do they actually work, would they work on something inhuman and super smart? Who knows! That's the whole point!
It's an innately tough problem. How do you tell if your subordinate is planning to betray you? This issue is older than human civilization and has certainly not been benchmarked!
There are lots of other reasons to be skeptical about their assumptions. Them not producing a tonne of benchmarks should not be one of them. Their desire seems to be pretty good, it's just an innately hard problem.
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