RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
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User ID: 317
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
43m ago
There are many timelines where AI still ended up being a Big Deal, but where Altman decided not to release ChatGPT for safety reasons
Someone would've released this tech eventually though. It was more than just ChatGPT, there was character.ai reaching prominence in September 2022, Facebook was doing something similar for academics... People could've read some of gwern's posts about GPT-3 and seen the potential there. He was going on and on and on about how powerful this technology could be.
I admit I cannot predict timing. But just knowing that something will be big in the future at some point, that's worth something.
There are many timelines where AI still ended up being a Big Deal, but where Altman decided not to release ChatGPT for safety reasons and hence LLM's didn't see unprecedented human and financial capital investment, and where the hyperscalers had time to build out TPU's, Trainium, Ascends, whatever, and hence Nvidia never ended up becoming a multi-trillion dollar company.
They wouldn't need trainium if they didn't want to train AI models, nor Ascends... And we can judge the strength of Nvidia's execution and their knowledge, that's fundamental analysis. We can say 'ok the people making these kinds of accelerators for 20 years know a thing or two about it, whereas latecomers are less likely to do well'?
Tech tends to concentrate as the barriers of entry can be quite high in hardware. There are only a few companies that make HBM. No matter who makes the GPU they'll still need HBM. So that's a good pick. Or ASML. Only they make the most modern chip fab tools. 147% in 5 years is pretty decent, more like 250-300% since the start of the AI boom in 2022/2023. The big chipmaker is a pretty obvious buy for something that runs on masses of chips...
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1hr ago
The US took Afghanistan, as you may recall
Afghanistan is in a totally different league to Iran. Afghanistan didn't have much of anything but light infantry in technicals (and that was still enough!) Iran is an industrialized country. They know how to fight.
If the goal is just killing lots of Iranians, there's a simple tool for that: H-bombs. Killing people is not sufficient to achieve US strategic goals, which are more complex than just destruction. The US wants some kind of positive regime change - this strategy has achieved the reverse. The US wanted security of energy markets and to retain control of the seas. The petrodollar is now under attack by Iran's control of the straits of Hormuz.
but now that Iran's capability to bombard them is way down
the expensive part was taking out air defenses
The US navy will enter the straits of Hormuz.
You seem to think the war is all but won. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Iran's capability to bombard US bases is not 'way down'. The US has been evacuating its in-air refuelling aircraft further away after Iran keeps striking them with missiles deep into Saudi Arabia. A meagre sortie rate from a couple of carrier groups and a handful of strategic bombers is not sufficient to win this war. 44 B-1s at 47% readiness are not going to do much.
The much-vaunted US navy couldn't secure the Red Sea against the Houthis after a whole year of escort operations and bombing, how the hell are they supposed to secure the straits of Hormuz? They're staying well away from the straits because they're not complete fools.
The whole concept of this war is unfathomably dumb. Even people like Bolton are publicly questioning war with Iran. Do you have any idea how off the rails this has gone if the hawk's hawk, the warmonger's warmonger who's been agitating for this war for decades is criticizing the strategy? The plan was clearly 'quick war', they never anticipated that they'd need to bring in marines or extra THAAD from Korea. They are improvising because the strategy has already failed.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1hr ago
You were suggesting that this would work against Taiwan earlier this month.
Taiwan is an exception, as I said then. Only small islands with massive reliance on imported food and energy can be bombed into submission. Large countries with land routes cannot. It also matters if the power in question doing the bombing has China-level industrial capacity.
Iran would retaliate by wrecking the rest of the Middle East's energy infrastructure, including Israel. This would probably end up being a US strategic defeat when considering the global-level balance of power.
Trump is trying to keep energy strikes 'off limits' for the war, as per his latest tweets. He is not keen on an energy-destruction war!
RandomRanger
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23hr ago
but it is certainly true for a random guy off the street. I assure you anything you think you know about the war has already been priced into the market by an army of quants.
It wasn't hard to buy Nvidia shares at the lows in 2022 and make 10x. It was hardly an obscure company back then. Even pre-ChatGPT it was pretty clear AI was going to be a big thing if you'd read a few things about technology between 2020 and 2022. There were early versions of GPT-3-based AI that I, random guy off the street who couldn't tell you what a tensor is, checked out and was surprised by the intelligence of. Obviously this was going to be huge and worthy of investment.
I did that, made a good amount of money from Nvidia and later on ASML, AVGO... Of course I've made a fair few mistakes too. Nevertheless, my returns are much higher than market average.
Efficient pricing is cope. Fundamental analysis works just fine, your theses just have to be right and that's something that no amount of quant skills or training can teach.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1d ago
Less Ideally, we turn them into a failed state that wouldn't be able to muster up a nuclear weapons program even if they wanted one. If the choice is between reducing Iran to Afghanistan-esque hodge-podge of pre-industrial warring tribes and giving the IRGC access to nuclear missiles we choose to turn Iran into another Afghanistan.
This is where the issue appears - the US is not strong enough to do this without using H-bombs. And even if it were possible, it would be extremely costly and dangerous.
It is very hard to bomb an industrious country into being a failed state. Intense bombing was tried on North Vietnam and Cambodia. The US dropped about 50-70 kg of bombs per person on these relatively small countries. Iran is a large country. The number of bombs needed is extremely high! Even burning down whole cities is not sufficient. That was tried on Japan and Germany and again, did not work. A-bombs, famine, a Soviet ground invasion of Manchuria and the destruction of Japan's offensive capabilities in sea/air power were needed to force a near unconditional surrender. A ground invasion was imminent and they were preparing for it. In Germany the Red Army had to storm Berlin before surrender.
Let's throw the 'decapitation strikes killing leaders' theory of war right out, that has never worked in history and clearly isn't working here. Bombing people just makes them hate you more, they become less willing to surrender.
The US does not have the necessary ground forces for a ground invasion of Iran. It's extremely mountainous, difficult terrain on the other side of the world. The US navy doesn't even dare enter the straits of Hormuz because of all the drones and ballistic missiles. How is America supposed to deploy a million men or more to Iraq, to what bases, with what supplies? Those bases are being bombed and shelled. It'd take 12-18 months to get all the forces in the field. Would a million men even be enough? It's politically impossible, would incur a staggering number of casualties over a multi-year war with disastrous effects for broader US strategy. Iran doesn't fear a ground invasion, they know the US wouldn't try.
And then there are all the things Iran can do to strike back. Iran could attack with dirty bombs if they so chose, against the US or Israel. They could wreck oil production across the Middle East in revenge. They could launch drone strikes against the US homeland like how Ukraine does against Russia. There are all kinds of things 90 million smart people can do to make problems if they want.
While I'm not privy to the specifics my guess is that the plan is to hold Kharg Island hostage to force Iranian compliance.
It's not possible to force compliance by taking one small island. To force compliance you need to have enough strength to conquer the country. If the war goal is SMO style 'demilitarization', 'denuclearization' and 'de-antisemitization' (per Trump's rambling about picking the leader of Iran) then the US needs to credibly threaten a successful invasion and conquest of the country. Russia's ground invasion needs to reach that stage to secure victory. The Ukrainians would capitulate if their army was smashed. But they haven't capitulated since their army hasn't been smashed, they hold out hope for improved circumstances and just draft more troops.
Americans need to stop thinking as though the US is global policeman and more like a successful gangster. Lots of money and guns. But other gangs also have guns. Other gangs can impose costs too. The gains of a street war may not be worth the costs in blood, wealth and bitter feuding.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2d ago
If you think Trump is taking Israeli intelligence over American intelligence you have crazy priors about what is going on in the Oval Office.
He didn't listen to General Caine who warned about all the obvious flaws in the 'bomb Iran' approach that Trump is now discovering the hard way. Someone must've been telling him it would be easy, Iran was about to collapse.
The Israelis have been shovelling out that same old story about Iran being a few months away from a nuclear bomb, they've been going on about that for decades now. But Trump still buys it, he went on about how they were going to get a nuke and would've if he didn't stop them. US intelligence is much more cautious about this.
You can follow through on 99 promises but if you renege and do the opposite on a high profile promise and can't explain why (Israel was going to strike first, the nuclear weapons that weren't actually being made), it can easily outweigh whatever promises you do make. Especially if it raises oil prices and induces a recession.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2d ago
I admit I didn't perceive that it was an old paper. They certainly are continuing to do this kind of research nevertheless. Nobody has been held accountable.
And after all these many years, what have been the fruits of this research? Has it led to anything good or useful? Just general 'advancing theoretical science will lead to future unknown applications'? Could the money have been reallocated to other fields instead which would also have unknown future applications without the risk of creating deadly diseases?
After the first few million deaths it's time to stop giving out charity. If a nuclear power plant melts down, kills 20 million people and dislocates the whole of society for a couple of years, then nobody would be in a charitable mood for the people who slipped up making it. Regardless of intentions they demonstrated appalling negligence. If you're making something that can kill tens of millions of people you must be very careful and rigorously justify the value of your work.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2d ago
It is with great anger that I say they're doing it again. Indeed, they never stopped.
https://biosafetynow.substack.com/p/you-couldnt-make-body-bags-fast-enough
The Fouchier and Kawaoka papers on adapting the bird flu H5N1 virus to be efficiently spread between ferrets, and onwards to humans, provoked the dangerous GOF controversy back in 2012. Other papers doing the same thing on H5N1 from China or on different bird flu viruses in the US received much less attention – see end of essay for a list. Among them is the nightmare paper; there is nothing more frightening. It came from a well-known flu research group at the University of Maryland funded by NIH NIAID contract HHSN26620070001.
They took a H7N1 flu virus of ostriches and adapted it to respiratory transmission between ferrets, just as Drs. Fouchier and Kawaoka did with their H5N1 bird flu viruses. Readers will know this is synonymous with human-to-human transmission. Why do this?
They're making super dangerous airborne diseases in ferrets... For no good reason at all. Would this be dangerous for people? Who knows? You'd have to test it which is ethically and logically even more dangerous. So there is no value to this research. All we know is that 'this specific disease could be super dangerous' and they helpfully put its genome up on the internet.
If the disease is dangerous to humans like it is for ferrets and does leak out, then we're in for COVID with huge lethality rates, 30% rather than a measly 0.3%.
I think there is a real blindspot about people's motivations that many don't fully appreciate. There were all these conspiracy theories going around about how COVID was a US bioweapons attack against China or Iran, a plot to shackle everyone with vaccines... But so far as I can tell nobody had anything to gain besides publishing some 'good' papers. These scientists were just doing science with complete disdain for the risks. They were going out to caves to gather these coronaviruses and bring them to Wuhan. Daszak/Ecohealth were using humanized mice (mice that behave immunologically like humans) to assess pandemic potential of bat coronaviruses. They wanted to insert some furin cleavage sites too.
Then we get a virus in Wuhan. It's closest ancestor was from Laos. How did it get to Wuhan? In a truck. How did Covid get so good at infecting people? It was engineered, with those humanized mice. How did it get that weird furin cleavage site? Artificially.
And naturally the Wuhan virology database disappears due to 'hacking attempts' just before this virus is released. So nobody quite knows what viruses they were working with... Ironically this completely undoes even the silly scientific angle, they made all this effort to make a database of viruses and then conceal it forever due to 'hacking'.
And none of this is even helpful in any serious way! Who cares? The amount of super-dangerous viruses that could possibly exist is beyond measure. At least with AI there are some positive usecases.
Claude choked up even thinking and researching about this stuff that human scientists are getting paid to do. They keep doing it, there is no sign that they've stopped, even after the last lab leak killed tens of millions of people and made a huge inconvenience for everyone on the planet, they somehow persuaded everyone it was low-class to conspiracize about it. Everyone was just supposed to get over the experts bringing us Torment Nexus 1, Torment Nexus 2, 3 and 4 are still in the works (funded by taxpayers). The experts find that the experts were not to blame, there was some bat pangolin farce instead. They'll do it again unless stopped. GOF bioresearchers delenda est.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2d ago
Well Trump did run on a platform of 'America First' and 'no new wars in the Middle East, in fact Kamala is the one who'll start wars'...
It's like how in the UK, people were voting for Brexit as part of a way to reduce immigration. Then Boris ramped immigration way up. And so now the Tory Party is gone, effectively wiped off the map just after winning a huge electoral victory under a populist platform. Farage is clearly trying to do the same thing, there is this elaborate misdirection about his real agenda and priorities, he wants to get Poles out and bring more Indians in, to neutralize anti-immigration sentiment, he certainly has no problem with Islam... That's what Brexit was really about in his mind, a dog and pony show for the rubes to persuade them that they were being listened to.
Being a populist is easy, you just have to follow through on your promises and give your voters what they want. You've adeptly explained the 'make promises and then betray promises' part. The next arc coming up is 'get shown the door by voters'. Populism is a reaction against politicians who make all these promises and then renege on them.
All Trump had to do is what he said - mass deportations, cutting leftist grifting to dry up the NGO blob, avoiding foreign wars. Not hard! But instead he shows his real priorities - slavish obedience to the latest batch of Israeli 'intelligence' and all the shady Shapiros, Levins and Kushners in his inner circle.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2d ago
As we speak, Trump is trying (bitching on truth social) to marshal a global coalition to reopen the straits of Hormuz. Nobody has shown up.
There are 2 US carrier groups in the region. Even they aren't brave enough to go in close to Iran and open up the straits.
If the IRGC are incompetent, then what is there to be afraid of? Why should the US and Israel need to call for help in this war? Coalition-building clearly wasn't part of the plan before the war, Trump spent much of his time sneering at Europe. It seems that only very recently has Trump discovered a need for allies...
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
3d ago
Absolutely in the Iran war. All videos under 10 seconds are now suspect. It's really annoying since now shaky camera angles and ditzy women repeating inane comments again and again are now signs of authenticity.
There's a long and annoying discourse about whether Netanyahu is really dead, based on sus analyses of him having six fingers in a video when for the life of me I can only see 5, whether a coffee spills or not...
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
3d ago
When the oil runs out, the Gulf States will wither into nothing. Already it rather looks like they're withering away since they're so shit at fighting, even with all the fancy weapons they purchased. The crass prostitutes and grifters seem to be moving out of Dubai.
I dispute that the Gulf is highly developed. All their development is done by other people. It's just development that happens to be located in the Gulf and whose fruits happen to accrue to Arabs since imperialism went out of fashion at a very fortunate time for these people. It's not true development and comes without the underlying productivity and industriousness one expects of a real developed country.
Nigeria is a 'it never even began' country, irrelevant. They make the Arabs look like a bastion of civilization.
If the water was really off in Tehran, wouldn't the people be dying of thirst? The water situation there is bad. But droughts do make it difficult to get water. In Australia we also had problems with water during the Millennium drought requiring rationing. It didn't get quite as bad as Iran but it was pretty bad.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
3d ago
I don't know why they added the vortex, another 'can steamroll if you get the right techs' unit like the arclight. I guess it's weak to light units? Seems like it can get oppressive at times with that dps.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
3d ago
Ideas like Elan, Warrior Spirit, and Bushido seem to be total bullshit in modern war
Whenever there was rough material parity, the Japanese usually won. They often won while outnumbered. The Allies never achieved a feat like the Malaya campaign where they steamrolled a Japanese force that outnumbered or outgunned them. You see battles like Guadalcanal and it's always the same story. Allies: 60,000+ men. Japan: 36,200 men. Not exactly an impressive feat of arms, winning with more men!
Warrior spirit and elan really is important. What happened in Korea? The Chinese soldiers really wanted to win and that apparently is enough to compensate for having no armour, airpower, motorized supply, just being a light infantry force... They put North Korea back on the map with elan.
Sufficient firepower can overwhelm warrior spirit of course, supplies are obviously needed... At the end of the day it doesn't matter how you win so long as you do.
But look at Afghanistan! What did the Taliban have, exactly? Money? Weapons? Training? Numbers? Or was it just elan and will to win, determination and confidence in their values? I doubt 1 in 10 of our soldiers would tolerate fighting like the Taliban did, without medivac, without armour, without sophisticated training, without airpower, without all our advanced technology.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
4d ago
The Gulf Arabs are absolutely in the petrostate trap. They don't make things, they just function as a shady tax haven and cheap-energy zone for certain industries. They have ambitions in AI, not in making AI models but buying GPUs made by industrious countries, hosting AI models made by clever companies, exploiting their cheap energy.
The Gulf buys US weapons, they buy Chinese weapons, they buy (or attempt to buy) US protection. Who makes the actual oil equipment and drills? Halliburton, Baker Hughes, Samsung... The Saudis have some Chinese made ballistic missiles waiting for Pakistani nuclear bombs they think they paid for.
Iran makes their own oil equipment. Iran's MAPNA Group makes gas power plants at world standards. They are trying to export technology, not just oil. Their oil industry has problems, as you would expect given sanctions. But it is their oil industry and not imported oil industry.
Iran makes things, they build their own missiles, drones and weapons. They develop their own strategies to take advantage of their enemies' weaknesses. Their proxies do a good job.
The UAE's proxies in Sudan haven't covered themselves in glory and they're merely fighting Sudan, not exactly a tough opponent. The Saudi army has all this fancy US gear. And how do they perform against the Houthis? They got wrecked by the Houthis.
Iran is far superior to the Gulf Monarchies in governance. They may be an enemy of the US but they are not stupid. There's a huge power gap between Iran and Turkey and Pakistan at the top end of the Islamic world, then there are the Gulf monarchies and below them assorted Arab riff-raff. The Gulf states don't know how to fight or do anything correctly. Their manifest impotence in this war is obvious, America has to do all the fighting for them.
RandomRanger
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4d ago
Kulak clearly says that the US will fuck it up somehow, that the actual plan will be way more shambolic and half-cocked and sure to fail.
I agree. Also, Azerbaijan is probably weak to drones/missiles. They don't want to lose their oil do they? Wouldn't it make more sense for them to profit off the price spike than potentially get wrecked?
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
4d ago
I don't think the Iranians have any intention of 'playing ball.' They're very angry. The guy in charge just had his father, wife, kids get blown up by US/Israel. I don't think he gives a damn, he is out for blood.
The people who might've been doing the 'friendly regime' are eating bombs and perhaps changing their political stance. Why would some random person in Tehran think more positively about Israel or America after getting their apartment blown up or coated in a thick layer of toxic petrochemicals from all the oil fires?
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
4d ago
There's already been a good deal of bombing of oil infrastructure. Take a breath of fresh air in Tehran, you can smell it. Haifa too. Oil infrastructure in Oman got bombed.
Much easier and safer to just counter-blockade from afar I think.
RandomRanger
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4d ago
I can't understand what the point is of seizing Kharg island. The US could just bomb it to leave it unusable for as long as they want? Or just steal the tankers at sea? It's not like it would be hard to blow up some oil storage terminals.
Landing troops there would just make them a juicy target and difficult to resupply. Iran can launch all kinds of things from inland at them.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5d ago
Killing civilians is part of the nature of war, that's the risk taken on when starting a war, just like how losing soldiers is inevitable.
I didn't say 'you must only hit confirmed military targets'. I say that this innate risk must be taken into account, wars must not be whitewashed as squeaky-clean 'precision strikes' against just the buddies. There is no 'sci fi precision' killing just combatants, there is no 'literally every single casualty is military' outside a propaganda reel.
I don't think even Hegseth would disagree with me here, if he were being honest.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5d ago
The US has hit Iran with thousands of bombs and the general level of precision is terrifying sci-fi absurdity. There's Iranian doctors purportedly reporting that literally every single casualty they've seen is non-civilian.
Really? The US military kills lots of civilians in all prior wars, even up to the very end of the Afghan war they were accidentally hitting random people with suspicious tubes in their truck.
Suddenly they've developed incredible accuracy and precision, in the last couple of years? Under the watch of Hegseth 'slash and burn, oohrah, real manly warfare no legal bullshit', just as they cut the office who's supposed to be preventing this? And they can manage this precision in a country with much more sophisticated air defences than Afghanistan or post-invasion Iraq, where ISR drones can and are being shot down?
How can this be? AI? Israel makes great use of AI and they killed lots of civilians in Gaza in some combination of neglect and malice.
Killing civilians is part of the nature of war, that's the risk taken on when starting a war, just like how losing soldiers is inevitable.
Focusing all your attention on the single incident that might possibly have been the US hitting a civilian target
It's not going to be just a single incident, come on. Weapons miss, intelligence is faulty, fog of war is fog of war.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5d ago
The Iranians weren't blocking the Straits of Hormuz until after the war began.
Like what? White supremacy or multiculturalism? Fascism or Marxism-Leninism? Scientific racism and social darwinism? Monarchism and the divine right of kings? Catholic integralism? These are all Western ideas.
I guess you mean liberal democracy. But how liberal should democracy be? Should voters be allowed to get what they want, or is that populism? What should be censored? Communists? Nazis? Porn? Anti-feminists? Islam? What should be taught in state education, what is the correct kind of history? Who should be debanked and suppressed? Who controls who is let into the country and in what numbers? Are there such controls? Or are they racist? Who can be murdered with impunity? Who can say certain words? Who runs the administration?
'Western values' as we mean them are a recent idea. They aren't even Anglo. The Anglos of old did not really believe all the things we believe today. The Americans of old believed in white supremacy, homophobia, all kinds of things that are unfashionable today.
There is indeed a Western culture, language group, philosophy, worldview to a certain extent. But it's such a vast tree with so many branches. It's like 'America' in a certain sense includes Peruvians, Alaskan natives, Montreal latte-sippers, Texas cowboys, Venezuelan lowlifes. But that meaning of America is so broad as to be all but useless. It's ever changing and whole groups disappear in time, changing beyond recognition. The cowboys are mostly gone. The Aztecs are all gone. The Puritans are gone.
The issue is not just in 'not anglifying' others but in others changing what it means to be 'anglified.'
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