RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
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User ID: 317
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
I think this forum is about 60-70% INTJ or INTP. But in broader society the ratio is much lower.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
I don't know, wouldn't the Cathedral want control over superhumans? Wouldn't they make a power-grab to centralize control over these dangerous rogue elements lest they overthrow the empire of finance and paperwork with personal power? Wouldn't they want to divide and undermine any would-be Caesars? We saw in another universe the superhumans are in complete control, the 'Illuminati' rule.
However, I 100% agree that Marvel movies are stupidly written and don't make sense. The superheroes are weak in relative terms. A couple of Stryker brigades could demolish Thanos's army. Iron Man is worth maybe five to ten jet fighters. None of them could handle tactical nukes. All superhero movies seem to adore Bronze age tactics: mass charges and 1v1 duels.
DC did better I thought, Superman takes on seriously powerful beings who are fast and strong enough to overmatch human forces. He does tank nukes. It makes sense for people to fear him. But DC also had a lot of ridiculous plot decisions and some silly character interaction (your mother's name was Martha too, I guess we're best friends!)
You could have an interesting movie about the struggle for political, economic and military power between capes and mortal men. But scriptwriters aren't smart enough to write that or don't want to. It's as if they're taught in movie school 'who cares about having a plot that makes sense, we need to affirm these saccharine character moments where the power of love, cameraderie and family triumphs over all odds'. I think only the 5% of the population in the INTJ/INTP area really cares about having plots that make sense.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
I won't deny that they could be far-right, fascist, white supremacists (for a certain definition of white)... But the distinguishing feature of Nazism from those ideologies is anti-Semitism.
I reckon you could be really excited about authoritarianism, militarism and eugenics but lukewarm on anti-Semitism and still be a Nazi. But you can't be pro-Jewish. You can't take money from Israeli billionaires!
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
I think thrift is just associated with competence. Having long time-horizons and diligently looking for the best deals gets you a long way in life.
Though it does get ridiculous, optimizing electricity usage to reduce bills is silly for >10 M net worth.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
I have to agree with Dean, there aren't any real Nazis in Ukraine. You can't be a Nazi and fight for a country run by a Jew.
Far rightists? Ultranationalists? People who love sonnenrads and take every opportunity to get edgy tattoos? People who threaten anyone who opposes maximalist war aims? Sure. If we use the liberal definition of Nazism, then Ukraine is full of Nazis. The same people who were hysterical about Trump's fascist rhetoric could hardly ignore the Waffen SS LARPing.
The real trouble is all the weapons that have been pumped into such a corrupt country. They'll presumably find their way to third parties after the war, if not during it.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
It's funny that on the hard right, the sentiment is massively if not overwhelmingly pro-Trump. People go around saying stuff like 'countersignalling Trump this close to the election? We're going to do things to you that have never been done before.'
And it's not like Trump has great credentials on that front! He delivered tax cuts, a deficit reliant economic boom and half a wall. He's a devout Israel-lover, which is presumably popular in certain circles of the right though unpopular with others. He stood by while his supporters were swept off major forums, 'monitoring the situation'. He constantly begs for money in these emotionally manipulative ways with his campaign sending messages like 'Donald Trump thought you were a close ally but you betrayed his trust... give us some money'. His foreign policy was full of swamp creatures and Bolton types. He wasn't exactly strong on social issues, letting LGBT and pronouns run rampant. He delivered justices who reversed Roe but that's about it.
Maybe having a de jure enemy in the White House makes it easier to rally around the leader. Leftists were like that too.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
I'm not advocating omniscience or omnipotence but I reckon the power-scaling goes very high. In sci-fi, Time Lords >>> Xeelee >>> Star Wars > Mass Effect.
All of them could stomp us without much effort. AI doesn't need to be omnipotent to subjugate or destroy humanity, it only needs to be significantly stronger. Even if it can't predict a chaotic system like weather, it probably could control the large-scale outcomes by cloudseeding or manipulating reflection/absorption of heat. Even if it can't predict the economy, it could hack stock exchanges or create outcomes directly by founding new companies/distributing powerful technology.
I too agree that it's no good giving up before all the cards are revealed. But I don't think that pushing back against omnipotent AI is beneficial. It doesn't matter if the AI doesn't know how to achieve FTL travel, or if it can't reach the fundamental limits of energy/compute with some black-hole plasma abomination. That's not needed to beat us.
From our point of view, superintelligence will be unbeatable, it may as well be omnipotent. I am highly confident that we won't be able to detect its presence or malignity until it's far too late. Once we do, we won't be able to act quickly enough to deal with it or even communicate securely. If we even get to fighting, I expect it to run rings around our forces tactically and strategically. Maybe that's nanomachines or mosquito-robot swarms or more conventional killbots and nukes. Maybe it's over in hours, maybe it takes a slow and steady path, acting via proxies and deceit to cautiously advance its goals.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
The Aschenbrenner thesis relies upon AI doing the work of AI researchers and recursively self-improving. That's a realm of pure software development, very alien to human intuition where machines might get more traction.
Maybe there are ways to speed up molecular modelling, maybe there's some hack that needs 10 years of uninterrupted research from a 240 IQ ubermensch to find. How could we know, we're not super-geniuses!
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
That's not a practical scenario, it takes far too long for forces to get there no matter how large NATO armies are. You'd have to bring them down through Turkey, through all the mountains, get shipping and supplies. Look how long it took the US to get set up for the Iraq War. The geography of Iran is hellish for an invasion.
Missiles move in minutes, militaries need months.
The correct response to Iran firing nuclear missiles at Europe is to fire nukes back, not invade the country. Or if they fire conventional missiles, just fire conventional missiles back. It's not like they can do much damage with conventional warheads.
And IRL Iran is pretty careful and rational. They resist the urge to launch massive attacks at Western countries, Israel excepted. Even when the US assassinated Soleimani they only shelled some US bases.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
Putin NOW actively states he wishes to send arms to states hostile to the west in order and we would see actual fucking deaths if there were western assets ripe for the picking
Precisely. This is why we shouldn't have antagonized him. Going after Russia's friends in Syria and blowing up Libya wasn't helpful, the whole Ukraine farce isn't helpful. We've spent a great deal of effort on making a dangerous enemy. They have thousands of H-bombs, missiles and all kinds of weapons that could make our lives a misery. Maybe they'll send the Houthis some exciting toys. From day 1 I pointed out that this was one of the many fruits of the poisoned tree and everyone goes 'oh let's keep planting the trees, it's so virtuous to eat poison, I love poison, you're unpatriotic if you aren't ready to chug down poison'.
Right now Putin's putting SMO veterans into positions of state power, he's ensuring that his successors toe the anti-Western line.
This was avoidable! If our statesmen had a little tact, if they knew how to spell diplomacy, if they had a basic understanding of strategy, we could've brought Russian neutrality, not pushed them into China's arms. We could've done nothing and won. But instead we've blown up random countries, ushered Ukraine into the slaughterhouse and given China a golden staircase to world hegemony.
Hanhwa is making money hand over fist in Poland
There is nothing that South Korea can sell Poland that would change the outcome. Only H-bombs matter because Poland and co already have conventional superiority. Aren't you the one shouting that these disgusting subhuman orcs are so grossly incompetent? But for nuclear deterrence the Russians might just demand unconditional surrender. Raze a city every day until they surrender - you're the one who says they're so cruel. They don't think Poles are a fraternal people like Ukraine, they'd take the gloves off. Would France and Britain sacrifice their cities for Poland?
What is so hard to understand about my point?
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
Let's look at it from another angle. Why is NATO so obsessed with the 2% of GDP figure?
Never in human history has a country lost a war to an abstract ratio. They lose to brigades, warships and aircraft. Why is it that NATO insists on a budgetary commitment when what they need is a target for strength? They need to work out how many brigades are needed, how many reservists, submarines and so on to meet their needs.
When you actually look at the ratio of strength, you see that even European NATO alone is not threatened by Russia. Europe has more and better of everything except tactical and strategic nukes. The big European countries have fairly large, modern armies and a much larger overall population than Russia. The big countries alone have about 500,000 professional soldiers, ignoring the little ones. That's much more than Russia prewar. It's the same story at sea and in the air, probably even better for Europe there. At least 3:1 advantage for Europe alone, ignoring the US. And they have the advantage of being on the defence. Dean will of course come in with some galaxy-brained reasoning for why the Russian military juggernaut is really so much more powerful than the decadent NATO pigs, despite also being a pale shadow of its former glory and losing Putin's idiotic war in Ukraine - the worst strategic disaster for Russia since 1941. But for those of us who live in the real world where Ukraine is much weaker than the entirety of Europe, it stands to reason that Europe can defend itself from Russia.
Thus there is no defensive rationale in further conventional militarization. They could not lose to Russia in a conventional war, not if they were prepared to station forces in the Baltics. Given modern satellite surveillance they should be able to foresee a Russian invasion of the Baltics and move forces there to defend them. They should already have forces there if they want to defend them (and they do to some extent). Why offer NATO membership to the Baltics? It's strategically ridiculous, those countries have negligible military potential and bad geography. But if you look at it from the point of view of Lockheed and BAE, it's genius. They can create threatening stories about the Suwalki gap and sell more hardware. Diplomats and statesmen can feel important, prestigious and patriotic standing up to Russia.
Problems arise if Russia goes nuclear, since that's the one place Russia does have advantages. Given their conventional weakness, it makes sense to go nuclear, that's the TLDR of escalate-to-deescalate. They have something like 10:1 in tactical nukes against all of NATO and a large, modern strategic force. Britain and France can still get their warheads off and destroy much of Russia. The US can destroy all of Russia. But why would Britain and France accept megadeaths to ensure that Poland or Lithuania are immolated rather than having to bend over for Russia? It doesn't make much sense but it's possible - Britain has made huge sacrifices for Poland before. They don't even have permissive action links on their nuclear subs, British submarine commanders might execute their own foreign policy.
Why would Putin risk nuclear war with NATO over irrelevant countries like the Baltics, does he even want Poland? The whole scenario is very strange. But if we imagine that Putin is this evil megalomaniacal conqueror, what Europe needs is H-bombs. Tactical and strategic nukes would actually ward off Russia. We can have little doubt that Poland doesn't want to bend over for Russia and would use nuclear weapons to defend themselves.
Who doesn't want European nuclearization? The US and Russia. Nuclearization increases European strategic autonomy, it lessens US influence in Europe. It means that Europeans won't buy overpriced US hardware to suck up to America, that they won't feel the need to show up to wars that don't help them. It means that other countries around the world will nuclearize and lessen US strategic flexibility.
Who wants Ukraine to be in NATO? It has very little defensive utility. The Ukrainian military adds more mass to NATOs but NATO has plenty of mass already. It pushes Russia in the Black Sea. It puts NATO missiles closer to Russia. It raises tensions dramatically, Putin repeatedly warned this was a red line. Nobody's security is enhanced, least of all Ukraine's. But it does sell a lot of weapons!
The mainstream argument seems to be 'Europe needs to produce more weapons to give to Ukraine so they can fight Russia'. But why? Why does Ukraine fighting Russia advance European interests? It hurts European interests, Russia is Europe's natural energy supplier. It would be silly for Europe to attack Azerbaijan for assaulting Armenia or to fight America over Iraq's independence. Don't join wars that don't advance your interests. But when the experts have a chance at lucrative spots on the board of Raytheon, when the decisionmakers want to look strong and patriotic...
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
The key thing is that the US isn't indispensable here. The Houthis aren't blocking shipping generally, they're targeting Western-aligned shipping because there's a global struggle for power between two power blocs. The US does the exact same thing as the Houthis with sanctions against its enemies. Sometimes they seize the ships as opposed to flinging missiles at them but the result is basically the same.
It's not that the US pulls back and the whole thing collapses into anarchy. If the US pulls back, other powers will replace America in setting rules and norms. That's why the US isn't pulling back. There are great advantages in being the strongest great power. The buying power of the USD is propped up by American military power. We have the Washington Consensus (named because the World Bank and IMF are based in Washington) the UN based in NY. The US is clearly very concerned about far-flung places like Ukraine or Taiwan. The former isn't important to US interests but it is important for US prestige and dominance in world affairs. The latter is very important for US interests, losing Taiwan and possibly South Korea would be catastrophic for America.
America has gotten used to importing cheap manufactured goods from China and exporting little bits of paper to pay for them. America has gotten used to sanctioning everyone else for poor behaviour, attacking countries without facing serious consequences. That's not baked into the universe, that's an arrangement based on changeable power distributions. The British used to set rules and control the seas. The US took over that role. China could take that role, they have a much bigger maritime industry than the US does. They're the biggest trading nation, they're naturally interested in controlling sea lanes and trade routes.
I have yet to see evidence that this actually works
Highly religious groups have high fertility, this is pretty straightforward!
The alternate thesis isn't 'growing number of elderly people soaking up resources doesn't cause problems' but 'states will take action to prevent elderly people consuming the resources'. Eventually people will break out of the neoliberal fantasy that fiddling with subsidies will raise fertility, or that universal basic income is solely reserved for the old.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
Full English Breakfast is great!
You can make perfectly decent food at home with fish, beef or lamb and vegetables. That's Western style. Steak, sausages, carrots, potatoes, beans... Put some salt and pepper on. Good to go.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
I urge caution on taking Zeihan seriously. He's very charismatic, I watched one of his talks and the talk about rivers and geography was quite interesting.
But is he actually right? The man was predicting 'collapse of China in 5 years' for about the last 20 years. He's been predicting 'America number 1 as the rest of the world collapses' for ages. And that's not the world we're seeing. His core thesis wasn't just wrong, it was the opposite of what actually happened. It's not 'America retreats inwards in splendid isolation as everyone else fights, world sea trade collapses along with China', it's 'American relative power is diminishing as China, Russia, Iran work together to pressure and undermine the US world order, which America bitterly defends'.
Whenever you see Zeihan you should think 'what if he's just completely wrong'. And I think he's wrong specifically here too. If we're talking AGI by 2027 or 2030, then demographics doesn't really matter. War may well delay AGI but AI is now a part of military development. China has their robot gun dogs. Israel has their AI targeted airstrike program. Everyone wants the targeting and sensor edge. High-tech wars are won by sensors and software and AI is clearly important for both. China has Made in China 2025, high-tech development to develop new industrial forces. The US has the CHIPS Act. The race is on!
Population aging starts really mattering by mid-century. It already has some effect of course but how could it severely slow AI development, which is happening on the year-to-year level? And there are clear counter measures to aging-induced malaise. People can reduce the consumption of the old. Nations can reintroduce fertility. It's really not that hard. People naturally want to have children. It's only that vast cultural energy goes into suppressing this urge - TV, movies, memes and so on all create an expectation that young men and women should spend their most fertile years in higher education and work, not raising children. It's a cultural issue that needs a cultural solution.
Affirmative action for parents in the workforce and education. Glamourize parenthood. Return to traditional marriage, encourage devout religion. Anything but these measly subsidies.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
There are also strategic uses for reviled and prohibited CSAM.
Political enemy? Put some CP on his computer and arrest him!
Your internet censorship and spying campaign isn't popular? It's needed to fight CP!
Intelligence and security agencies generally are full of pretty sinister figures and they have a lot of temptation to abuse their power. They've done all kinds of crazy chaotic-evil things in the past, injecting people with hallucinogens and plutonium. Weaponizing CP is to be expected.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
Sailer isn't exclusively pro-Jewish: https://www.unz.com/isteve/jewish-advantage/
https://isteve.blogspot.com/search?q=jew
He has a nuanced position. Yes, Jews did do well in the sciences. Yes, Jews showed up and enthusiastically implement a bunch of extremely dangerous ideas. He criticizes a bunch of them for behaving obnoxiously, Sacha baron-cohen for instance. Anyone who links that infamous LA Times article where Joel Stein rejoices in Jewish control of Hollywood and concludes with this paragraph isn't exactly a conniving crypto:
It's funny how history gets written. Back in Golden Age Hollywood, eight major studios were nepotistically run by Jewish moguls who hired their relatives and in-laws as executives, and the other studio was owned by Walt Disney, who nepotistically hired his relatives as executives. For decades now, a controversy has raged over whether Walt Disney was anti-Semitic. No comparable controversy exists over whether the other eight studios were anti-Gentilic. In fact, the term "anti-Gentilic" doesn't even exist. (As I recall, George Orwell had some insights into the political usefulness of the nonexistence of words.)
And his thesis has its virtues. Wokeness didn't start in Poland or Belarus where the Jews were mostly present. Only when they got to Britain and the US did things start happening. Clearly there were structural weaknesses in Western European and especially Anglo society that let such a domineering leviathan erode and decay. I can't imagine that people like Noel Ignatiev would ever prosper in another society. Imagine going to China and making a living out of trying to abolish the Chinese race, founding journals and getting university professorships that undermined their national identity. He'd have an absolutely miserable time if they even let him live. Even Israel would suppress this guy, they hated his criticism of Zionism. Only nigh-limitless Anglo tolerance allows this kind of behaviour.
On the other hand, Protestantism was also a big supporter of white supremacy. You had the Nazi Party doing very well electorally in all Protestant Germany but flickering out like a candle in Catholic Germany. All the Protestant eugenicists you listed too.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
if Taiwan falls both of them will almost certainly withdraw from the NPT and acquire nuclear weapons in order to deter the PRC from blockading them in event of conflict (and thus allow them to have foreign policies that aren't dictated by the PRC by that threat)
But wouldn't the South Koreans come to some kind of negotiated deal with China before it got to that point? If they see that the Chinese blockade won't be broken quickly enough to avoid hunger and malnutrition, wouldn't they come to terms? Maybe there'd be some phoney federal agreement with North Korea that looks good on paper but does nothing IRL, maybe they have to share technology with China and give up some air or naval bases.
That seems like a much better deal than a nuclear war or starvation.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
PRC's nuclear deterrent is fairly fragile
Fragile by nuclear superpower standards yes but not by anyone else's! They have many mobile ground-based launchers. It'll be an absolute pain to find them and target them quickly enough. The siloes are there to soak up inbound missiles away from Chinese population centres, not so much for second strike.
As of 2022 they've been installing JL-3s on their submarine arm, they can hit the US from home waters. Now Chinese subs are generally thought to be awful but I wouldn't want to be an American attack sub in the East China Sea. The Chinese have littered it with fixed underwater sensors, just like the US has festooned other parts of the Pacific with similar.
Chinese boomers can camp in the Bohai Sea and dare any foreign submarine to hunt them there.
acquire nuclear weapons in order to deter the PRC from blockading them in event of conflict
Does this work? Suppose you're South Korean president and you've got a few dozen recently-acquired A-bombs attached to short-range missiles. Are you going to demand that China refrain from sinking ships or you'll fire nukes at... what? The Chinese fleet? A Chinese airbase?
They could fire nukes back in greater number. Could you credibly threaten to go to strategic and start hitting Chinese cities, at which point your country would likely be razed? Only annexation by North Korea would make such a threat seem credible. It'd make more sense for South Korean leaders to accept some kind of satellite-relationship like Korea has usually had, Finlandization. Japan is a different story, they're relatively bigger and less exposed with more historical antipathy. Japan seems harder to subjugate.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
What specifically does he get wrong? What he's asking for is 'lock down all AI labs so they don't leak to China' and 'centralize all AI research under a new Manhattan Project', not to attack anyone unless they look like they're close to pulling ahead.
If AI is super powerful, then logically it becomes super valuable to the big powers. The core of his argument seems pretty sound, provided we accept the technical aspects.
The primary counterarguments I can think of are:
- Openly declaring an arms race with this massive securitization of AGI invites laggard powers to lean more heavily into their own areas of expertise. Superintelligence counters nukes but nukes counter power plants and server farms. Russian semiconductors are woeful but their H-bombs are first rate. They could aim for high-altitude air bursts to disrupt US AI rollout with the EMP.
- US government interference might be counterproductive. There's a certain shortfall in competence in recent USG procurement and development. The Constellation class frigates come to mind. Pentagon IT is infamously bad - https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/28/us_dod_computers/
- Neither Silicon Valley's most cunning tech billionaires nor Washington's most powerhungry bureaucrats are especially trustworthy, even when compared to leading lights in the CCP. A true global partnership would be ideal, albeit almost impossible to organize.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
But ours is the only civilization that can contemplate such abstract theoretical questions. We have words like philosophy, evolutionary, heat death of the universe. I'm pretty sure hunter-gatherers don't have that. They don't usually have writing, their language actually is limited to what's directly needed for survival.
I think we industrialized people shouldn't romanticize nomadic or pre-industrial life overly. Much of it would not be to our liking. India and the other poor countries are not enthusiastic about such a lifestyle.
Questions that are irrelevant to contemporary concerns can often be useful - but ideas that cannot possibly be implemented are much less so. Indeed, some knowledge can be harmful. Suppose that it is true, then we'd be forever unsatisfied trying to return to monkey and failing due to competition and coordination problems. Perhaps there'd be more terror groups in the style of Ted. Ignorance can be blissful in certain cases.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
It's a pretty lame thought experiment if it requires made-up dynamics hugely divorced from common experience or conceivable logic. That nobody wants to build the Torment Nexus because it doesn't obviously create value is a strong argument for it not being competitive.
Industrialism was very unpleasant for some. You'd work long hours from a very young age in a polluted and unsafe working environment. But people still went to cities for jobs! Lots of people became richer and better off than before! Their children inherited the fruits of an advanced civilization and squandered much of it, yet there is much to squander and at least people aren't dying of tuberculosis much these days.
Presumably, you would never choose to live in such a society, no matter how evolutionarily successful they were.
I won't get a choice, will I? If the Torment Nexus is on-path (for reasons I can't fathom), then it comes regardless of whether any individual wants it. My opinion does not matter at all. I wouldn't like it, nobody would like it but it would still be here and it would be better in the same way that machine guns are better than swords. Swords might be more aesthetic and manly and heroic and skill-intensive. They might be better socially, creating cultures where the best survive wars rather than the lucky... But none of that is nearly so important as the innate quality gap between the two.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
if we extrapolate current trends in fertility, the median Motte user will be outbred and replaced by individuals with lower IQ and religious sects like the Amish and Hasidic Jews
If they're around and we're not, then they would be better than us. I subscribe to 'if you're so smart, why aren't you rich' logic on this. Unless we get wiped by something beyond our control like an alien invasion, we're responsible for our own destiny.
I say no, the Amish and Hasidics won't be around. If society breaks down you get warlordism and peaceful religious cults will get shredded by the violent ones. Something like the Taliban or a drug cartel is more competitive than Amish and Hasidics. Hasidics are very good at surviving in these credulous bureaucratic states that can be rules-lawyered. Amish technology is simple and robust in certain respects against EMP or supply chain breakdown. But their culture is not on the upward path.
If our civilization fails, someone else will use the methods of industrial civilization to subdue the rest, they'll re-establish the upward path. Someone will try course-correction, aggressively increasing fertility or embracing massive cloning or AI...
Aesthetic and moral considerations are secondary to survival. It's no good saying 'oh preindustrial civilization is so great' even if it's true, Ted should've had the wisdom to understand that nobody is going to pull back. Competitive dynamics prohibit it.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
If the paradisal order was so great, hunter-gatherers wouldn't have been getting stomped by farmers for the last 10,000 years. Yes, occasionally the nomad horse-archers went out on great rampages to beat the farmers - but they always lose in the end.
Suppose we took the socialist narrative as true. Maybe women did have better sex under socialism, maybe it was fine to work casually at your guaranteed state job and have fewer Bing Bing Wahoo electronic gadgets that destroy the souls of children. I expect people here immediately think about leaky refrigerators, televisions that exploded, 10-year waitlists for bad cars, breadlines, torture and repression...
Imagine that the social, human-enjoyment problems of socialism were greatly ameliorated - it still wasn't competitive. Capitalism produced greater technical sophistication, more advanced weapons, more of everything. Even if socialism was more fun, it couldn't compete. The innate human will to power and wealth draws people away from socialism. Likewise with hunter-gatherers. As Scott says, maybe it was really fun to hunt without much care for the future, have fun around the fireplace, skin and brutally torture beaten enemies. Maybe it was way more fun not having to do these tedious scientifically managed tasks. Even then, there was a darker side to their existence.
Noble or Savage, it still doesn't matter, they couldn't compete in armaments or numbers. And so they go into the dustbin of history. If apprenticeships and playful imitation were the optimal way to learn, they'd be the ones ruling over us. We need literacy, advanced mathematics, management and hyperspecialization to maintain a vastly more complex civilization. We need hundreds of thousands of words to describe everything in the universe, they only need to worry about things they can physically observe in their forest.
Of course there are problems in our civilization. Superstimulus for instance can and should be regulated. Education can be greatly improved, it's not fit for function even by scientific standards let alone student enjoyment. There are many political/societal problems that need to be addressed. But we're not falling from grace, hunter-gatherers are far below us.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
'They caught us off guard' = they skilfully evaded US reconnaissance with night marches and camouflage. Macarthur was warned repeatedly but was too careless in his advance. Zhou Enlai gave his warnings and was ignored.
You're making the exact same mistake that Macarthur did. "The Chinese are poor and weak, we can ignore them lmao" -> "WTF, holy shit, they're everywhere, how did this happen, I need nuclear strikes!" All they had was clever infantry tactics back then.
China is a tough adversary, as was discovered in the 1950s. They weren't the biggest manufacturing power in the world back then. Massively underestimating your enemies is not the path to success. It may well have been a good idea to kneecap China back in the 1950s or work with Brezhnev to crush them (a decapitation strike in the 1990s could also have worked) but it's too late for that now.
If you were a skilled artist, surely you could make such a film entertaining. Imagine a band of heroic scouts discovering some deception operation, that the enemy was trying to outflank them or that a seemingly huge army was actually just balloons and dummies. What about a duel between cyberpunk drone operators, scrabbling around a ruined megacity as their drones hunt eachother's weak flesh and blood body? That's just extending what we see in Ukraine a few steps.
What about using clever tactics to get around superior firepower by fighting in close quarters? Or basic things like fire and manoeuvre, characters working together?
Tanya the Evil was well-liked IIRC.
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