RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
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User ID: 317
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5hr ago
If there's a crash, I predict it'll be due to energy prices and the war in Iran, not AI.
Anthropic is nearly profitable, or supposed to have been profitable in Q2. Some say that's phoney accounting and Anthropic says profits may not be maintained. But it seems that major investments are paying off. Furthermore, AI models are getting continually better as with Fable most recently. This trend will continue, bigger and better models working for longer need more compute to run them and so justify further intensifying investment. I guess that argument is forbidden by your post. But if it is The Singularity, if it is a New Paradigm then presumably that's good for stocks!
Anyway, energy is more important to the economy than AI right now. You can't just shut off a huge amount of oil and gas production without ramifications! The 1973 oil shock is a useful precedent. The market seems to have been expecting peace talks to advance more smoothly than they actually have been. Bombing has just resumed. Iran has announced they're re-closing the straits and possibly the other straits in the Red Sea too.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1d ago
I was also thinking about this with regard to 'how AGI could win the Iran war for the US'. A more obvious application is eliminating pilot loss by having the AI fly the planes. But maybe you could also get the ground crew to be replaced by random Arabs with headsets who're told what to do/supervised by the AI.
It doesn't seem very practical though. Surely the cost of supervising a person is higher than the cost of getting a robot to do things tirelessly, precisely, with full feedback and sensors. Homo sapiens main strength has always been intellectual, not physical!
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2d ago
I don't believe in surrendering to sadness, but it's a sign of health to be distraught about a future where a small number of capital-owners live like kings while the rest of us are relegated to the saddest jobs in existence
There is still time to get on the train? I'm not the most well-off guy in the world. But I have my AI stocks, if 'capital' means anything in the future I should be fine. People are still talking about the AI bubble and such. Lots of people are investing in property or value stocks. The singularity is not priced in.
Alternately if we get a 'fuck the shareholders, liquidate everyone who doesn't have a killbot swarm' scenario then you and I won't need to worry about doing sad jobs.
But you said that Roy's scenario was a fantasy? Can Clavicular make arbitrary women have sex with him on demand? Probably not. Does he slay mad puss? Yes. Would he be capable of this if he hadn't looksmaxxed, famemaxxed? No.
SV startups often give equity that can be worth a lot of money, they are different from Walmart or McDonalds. The tingles are a real thing in both cases. People worked for Elon Musk very hard even when they could've been lazy and useless at Lockheed because he gave them the tingles.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5d ago
the GigaChad as imagined by male incels and female 50 Shades readers, who is so hot that he can make stranger women drop their panties with a wink
Clavicular might not be quite capable of doing this but Roy's standard is somewhat lower. For example, Clavicular was talking with some girl that wanted to be exclusive with him and he went 'lol no, I'm gonna fuck other women' and she instantly folds:
https://x.com/permabulla/status/2045527650098171927
That seems pretty analogous to what roy was saying?
Gigachads and gigastacies might be very rare but are not wholly imaginary.
Lots of normies think Netanyahu is a war criminal and so does the ICC. Obviously the biggest crime a leader can commit is losing the war, that's the key issue. Kill lots of people and win - statesmanlike, to be emulated, FDR and Churchill. Kill lots of people and lose - infamous, hated like Nixon.
I don't think that Iran has maxxed out their abilities, if they wanted to destroy the Saudi pipeline to the Red Sea they could, they've demonstrated the ability to hit it. If they can hit US bases and Israel, presumably they can also hit oil facilities.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
7d ago
A dam in Pakistan displaced people, Some employers wanted cheaper labour too:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirpuri_diaspora
Under the British Nationality Act 1948, citizens of Commonwealth countries had the right to enter and settle in the UK freely. They then tightened this up somewhat later on. But in effective terms the gates are still wide open since there are ways around these rules and a political elite that actively resists immigration restriction.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
7d ago
The US doesn't have the sortie rate to do this. US aircraft already fired off the bulk of their standoff arsenal and achieved nothing of great significance.
The necessary munitions do not exist, nor do safe airbases to launch such a demanding operation.
Iran is much less vulnerable than the Gulf Arabs in a war of food and water, their retaliation would smash US regional allies and severely hurt Israel, who is also desal dependent.
There is no path to victory for America here.
OK but then Iran would retaliate by razing oil infrastructure across the Middle East. And so Trump would be considered a Bibi-tier war criminal and also ensure very high oil prices, probably a recession.
That's not a victory! Wars are fought to achieve political goals, not just to blow things up.
How would Americans feel if Russia or China attacked key electrical and water infrastructure? How would Americans feel if a great power launched a sneak attack across their whole country? Would they cuck out like pussies or hit back hard? Iran isn't a country of pussies. They didn't give up after taking considerable casualties against Saddam Hussein (not known for liberal war ethics), they kicked him out of Iran and tried to conquer Iraq, only to get bogged down after years of bloody fighting. That was when they were at their weakest and Saddam was supported by both superpowers, Iran was very determined and tolerant of suffering in that war.
They didn't give up when Saddam terror bombed them, they're not gonna give up to US terror bombing.
To beat Iran there would need to be a full scale multi-million man ground invasion or large-scale nuclear attack, which is just not on the cards.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
7d ago
It doesn't take a Thiel-tier political genius to see that 'starting a guaranteed-loss war with Iran' will greatly damage Trump and perceived Trump allies.
Fuel prices were very damaging to the Biden administration. Humiliation/botched withdrawal in Afghanistan was pretty damaging. Amp both factors up considerably, what does that do to Trump?
Can't keep draining the SPR forever, can't keep manipulating markets with announcements forever. How can Trump survive midterms if there is a fuel crisis? There will be a fuel crisis by September unless Iran opens the straits. How can Trump survive midterms if he makes objectively humiliating concessions to Iran, who is not exactly beloved by Republican voters? They've been told that the war has been won about a dozen times by now, so a humiliating defeat is not going to go down well.
There can't be an 'Only Trump could go to Iran' moment like Nixon, not after a surprise attack Trump started. Few consider world-historically deft diplomacy to be a Trump strength either.
Thiel is to the left as Soros is to the far-right, they hate him a lot. But the left actually goes after enemies with institutional power.
Now I predict someone is going to come and suggest a military breakthrough will rescue the day for Trump and America. But what military breakthrough can there be? If there are amazing anti-drone weapons or other wonderweapons, why haven't they been used already? Or used against the Houthis earlier? If the straits can be secured, why haven't they been secured already? If there is ongoing work to degrade Iranian capabilities that will soon show fruits, why has the US been so quick to look for a diplomatic solution, why accept a partial truce that logically enables Iran to regroup and prepare for further fighting? If the blockade was going to degrade Iranian oil infrastructure why hasn't this happened already or when Iran lowered oil production in 2020? If Iran were to be more aggressively bombed, how would this prevent Iran destroying more oil infrastructure and heightening the fuel crisis?
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
8d ago
How is Argentina capable of birthing civilization when they go begging the US or IMF for a bailout every 2-5 years?
Europe and America are immensely richer, more populous and stronger than Argentina. A Brazilified America is still going to be far more capable than Argentina just from its industrial/capital legacy and remaining clusters of strong demographics.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
9d ago
Supreme Commander Forged Alliance had the community take over and continue development/multiplayer servers after the company collapsed. Starcraft and Diablo are presumably more popular than Forged Alliance ever was. I think the biggest threat is Blizzard legal department.
Well, the odds it has memorized the autistic game mechanics I invented are nil. But it can still implement and work with them.
Consider this paper for instance, they have the AIs devise experiments to derive physical laws in simulated universes unlike our own, Opus and the strongest GPT do OK: https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.26087
They can't have memorized imaginary physics. With sufficient repetition learning, creativity and intelligence emerge. Do we not hone mathematical talent by repetition? Github is a pretty diverse space, if there's some some set of components needed to make cool things, good odds they are on github. What isn't on github could be assembled from what is. Perhaps all one needs to do to write arbitrary software is assemble all the pieces in such a way as to meet the goal.
Let's suppose AI models aren't so great for mathematics and it's Terence Tao doing most of the work.
The primary commercial usecase for AI isn't mathematics, it's coding, as you say.
I cannot code beyond the most basic Khan Academy beginner sense, my actual end to end abilities are completely worthless. And yet I can make useful AI tools for work, processing documents in various ways that saves lots of human time. In a certain sense, I'm providing most of the 'secret ingredient' since you cannot just tell an AI to do these fiddly tasks and expect them done properly in oneshot. It will usually not work the first time. So I give it some counsel and tell it what to troubleshoot, errors, differences from expected output, clarify my intentions and ultimate usefulness. Eventually it works and then I refine it to work better and better by getting AI to handle all these edgecases and Word-induced BS.
And how could I make a (still under development) 4X game with AI if I can't code? There's a fair bit going on. Space battles, ground battles, culture, technologies, buildings, resources, goods, markets, map generation, turn order, trade between provinces (intra faction), trade between factions, freighters, pops and social classes, loans, diplomacy and war plotting, coalition building... Some things are not well fleshed out but there is quite a bit there.
I was just now getting it to make an evolutionary testing system to refine ship designs and fleet compositions and so define the meta. First time it worked OK, then when trying to make it better (too many bad mutations!) it broke, then I overhauled it and now it works great and with multicore processing too. Apparently the dominant strategy is getting hundreds of incredibly cheap and terrible warships to act as chaff for a small core of high-tech warships to exploit the targeting and reinforcement logic. So clearly I need to change how reinforcement and targeting works, raise minimum costs for ships.
It was my idea to make this tool, my idea behind the overhaul and my ideas behind every mechanic but I could never have done it myself. The secret ingredient is clearly the AI.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
15d ago
So long as these beings have a conscious experience of their own and they are still capable of loving, fighting, fearing, suffering, and failing
Why would they have love? Why do we have love? In large part because we have sexual reproduction. Even without that there's parental love...
What is love for a machine that can copy itself out as necessary, self-modify directly? Can you feel love when it's just different versions of you (different parts of you?) or is it narcissism? We don't really have words for this.
Why would they suffer? Pain acts as a reinforcement signal, a warning. But if the full focus of the mind is already fixated on a goal then suffering is just wasted energy.
I think people underrate how alien a Powerful Being would be. Not merely some superintelligence derived from a mostly-human text corpus (already unprecedented and alien) but something that evolves or self-modifies into existence later on in a post-singularitarian environment.
This would be a fundamentally different environment to all organic life. Conscious self-analysis and self-modification is an absolute gamechanger, nevermind every other trump card these beings would have. I'd expect something fundamentally different to emerge.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
15d ago
Who says HBD means all countries run by smart people are more pleasant than countries run by stupid people? I'd rather live in Fiji than North Korea. But Koreans are more capable than Fijians.
Also now I look at it, Russia has twice Mexico's GDP per capita PPP. And even if you look at median incomes, Russia is still about 70% higher. So I don't think that Russia is even poorer than Mexico in any meaningful way and murder rate is lower too. Hard to be more murderous than Mexico. So unless we look at nominal GDP figures which are distorted by sanctions, then Russia is clearly better off. HBD bros win again.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
15d ago
They did do a tonne of buybacks, that's why their share price is so high!
Google, 317 billion of buybacks in 10 years. Meta $208 B in 10 years. Apple $735 B... Over 1 trillion in 5 years is nothing worth sneezing at.
They have since lowered buybacks because of AI spending. Trillions in share buybacks absolutely does drive stock prices.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
15d ago
I was just trying to be a little artsy and alliterative... Don't read so much into it.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
15d ago
Good point, that's what I meant but not what I said!
Russia isn't a counterexample against HBD. The USA was reliant on Russian spacecraft to reach the ISS for some time (which again the Russians helped build). Likewise the US relies on Russia for about 20% of its enriched uranium.
Mexico doesn't produce machine tools, oil industry equipment, aircraft engines, rocket engines, radar or any sophisticated technology at all. Mexico only assembles electronics. They assemble cars and components designed by others, with machinery supplied by real industrial powers.
Russians are far more capable than Mexicans, which is why the US casually dominated Mexico whenever they clashed, whereas Russia was and is much more of a challenge. Russia can reduce Europe and North America to ash in hours, Mexico can barely control its own territory from gangsters nevermind prosecute foreign policy.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
16d ago
There are tradeoffs.
Slutty Sabrina might want Chad Centimillionaire and settle for Nicholas Niceguy. Patrick the Patriarch might want Virginal Virginia and settle for Somewhat Slutty Sarah...
Also 25% of US adults under 40 have never married. So it is completely plausible that Somewhat Slutty Sarah is just not going to marry, same for Nicholas and Patrick for that matter. 25% of the US population seems not to be marriage material.
Have you missed the last 30-40 years of financialized capitalism where shareholders encouraged companies to forego investment, cut R&D and provide short term profits?
Aggressive investment has absolutely not been rewarded by shareholders in the recent past. And nor is it rewarded today.
The company reported first quarter 2026 earnings results on Wednesday and raised its full-year 2026 capital expenditure guidance to $125 billion to $145 billion, up from a previous range of $115 billion to $135 billion. Meta told investors the boost was the result of higher prices for components and “additional data center costs to support future-year capacity.”
Last year, Meta spent $72.2 billion on capex, up roughly $30 billion from the year before. The company is now guiding to nearly double what it spent in 2025, and more than it spent in 2025 and 2024 combined.
In after-hours trading, the stock tumbled more than 6% as a result of the jump in capex guidance. In contrast, Alphabet and Amazon—which are also spending enormous sums on AI infrastructure buildout, and which both announced earnings on Wednesday—saw their share prices rise after hours, in part because they both reported AI-related growth in their massive cloud-services businesses.
Investors understandably are not rewarding companies just for investing in AI without showing that it's raising revenue (which it is, even with Meta who's making a fortune off improved ad targeting). They only reward investment that seems to be delivering returns. And even then they're skittish about big investments.
I've made one such auto-proofreader, I use it, it works just fine bringing up real mistakes for me to fix, hardcoded what kind of English I'm using, only a handful of false positives that I can quickly ignore. Every white collar worker I've shown it to says 'huh this is really cool, picks up things I've missed, saves lots of time' and they routinely ask to use it...
Absolutely massive own goal by Microsoft and big tech that most people's main experience of AI is a derpy chatbot that mangles documents or genericises things and not well-designed processes to solve specific tedious problems, nor the extremely flexible coding tool I used to make the auto-proofreader.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
16d ago
Superintelligence by end of 2027 is roughly what Anthropic/Dario seem to predict, so it's only roughly as maximalist as the most bullish frontier lab. The AI 2027 crowd backed out a year or two but I think they were roughly on the money the first time in their analysis. I'm not so keen on their 'centralize all US AI research and hand ultimate authority to a chosen council of experts' proposal though.
How do you even do that, are we supposed to believe that some company with $500 million to spend didn't know how to use cost tracking? Cost tracking comes with the pleb-tier management tools I get!
And if they were trying to goose the valuation then why would they admit it was unintentional, it makes Anthropic sound expensive? (They are expensive). It sounds more like an anti-Anthropic story to me.
The story sounds greatly exaggerated or misleading IMO. Who is this mystery company too, what are the details on this? More likely some company just consciously spent a lot of money on Claude AI and then some reporter fluffed it up into a narrative we all hear instead of a boring article that goes nowhere.
Regarding energy, even though the US is a major producer and isn't as badly affected as other countries like Australia, Europe or poor countries, the world economy is global. Problems in Asia will spread to America. The US is busily exporting oil, including the strategic reserve releases, to take advantage of price gaps and stabilize markets. But this is a temporary fix. The price gaps will narrow. The invisible hand of the market will slowly but surely squeeze the US economy if this price pressure remains. Even if oil producers profit, much more of the US economy relies on truck transport, plastics, feedstock, jet fuel, lubricants and all the other chemicals which support industrial civilization.
Venezuelan oil is low quality and requires years of patient investment and capable administration to realize much net gains from. Crude oil production there is barely half of what it was in 2016 and shows no signs of making up for the current supply loss. Nobody is a bigger fan of nuclear than me but nuclear energy is not going to lower fuel prices in a matter of months.
https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/venezuela/crude-oil-production
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