RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
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User ID: 317
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11hr ago
This assumes that the Wuhan lab knew The Truth about what was going on
But they were the ones doing it? They couldn't accidentally be collecting these coronaviruses, testing them on humanized mice, putting furin cleavage sites in them...
I blame the scientists who were actually doing this stuff, not Chinese politicians who probably didn't understand or care that much and delegated to the 'experts'.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1d ago
What're you gonna do about it, demand the world embargoes China
The Chinese govt wouldn't knowingly release a deadly virus on their own people. They made a costly display of how very 'anti-pandemic' they were, these are the people who invented lockdownism and stopping the spread.
The Chinese govt is naturally unwilling to admit any level of guilt or culpability for such a huge disaster, so they are covering it up and blaming the US. The US is behaving similarly.
My issue is with the researchers themselves, I want them punished severely to send a message and discourage others. Discouraging others is the whole point, we need to ensure this doesn't happen again. I don't care about the geopolitical level, all the blame should be dumped on Daszak, Bat Lady and the other gain of function researchers themselves.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1d ago
If it was zoonotic, why did the Wuhan laboratory take down their database of virus samples because of 'hacking' in late 2019 right when COVID emerged and then never bring it up again? How could they be so unlucky - this is key evidence that could've proven their innocence, if indeed they had no COVID precursor virus samples?
Who hacks databases of boring genetic information?
The whole epistemology of this is so bizarre. Biological researcher consensus concludes that biological researchers are not to blame for the biggest pandemic in living memory after all the evidence needed to confirm it either disappears or is solely under their control, is that really worthy of consideration? It was pretty straightforward in 2020 when we learnt about the biolab with its bat virus gain-of-function research program on humanized mice right next door... Nobody's going to do anything about this though. We live in a NGMI civilization.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2d ago
It seems like a very American invention, and a facile one, that we are seen as stupid outside of the US.
I enjoyed much of the essay but disagree here. Outside the US, amongst non-Americans, Americans are indeed looked down upon and considered stupid.
Some clips from Jeremy Clarkson: https://youtube.com/watch?v=JsMVncOU1K4
It's not merely my personal 'America is a greatly flawed country in many respects but also with great strengths' opinion but the strawman version of 'Americans are stupid, fat, uncultured, violent and fascist too'. My well-off Australian friends constantly bemoan America, how they harass you and ask for passwords and social media and fingerprints if you want to enter the US - those are just stories they've heard since they don't want to visit the US with Trump and all.
Even before Trump America was looked down on, the Clarkson clips are old and somewhat representative of ambient anti-American stereotypes. The War on Terror is perceived as a dumb idea executed badly, that the US dragged us into. Same with the war in Iran for that matter. They don't like American lifestyle either, how the food has chemicals in it, the tipping culture, the drug commercials, feeling unsafe in major cities... When I went to the US with some friends we didn't really like it, saw some guy shooting up on the street which was a new experience. Much preferred Europe, though it's also hard to feel safe in Paris with all the troops wandering around.
Nobody respects 'American institutions from law and universities to science and the humanities'. Nobody really thinks about them at all, except insofar as Trump is perceived as wrecking them. What good are these institutions if Trump emerged and seemingly took over, people think. My legal-inclined friends don't like US jurisprudence, they think it's a mutated and degraded cousin of proper common law. All maluses and no pluses. It's an immature way to think about countries but that's just how the media seems to behave, that's the base expectation. I could point out to them that in terms of authoritarianism, our freedom-of-speech is much more limited than the US, the UK arrests many more people for political crimes but that's not something that people feel comfortable saying or thinking so much.
Maybe it's different in the developing world or China or Japan.
As a side note, this is untrue. J & S / WB belongs to Palestinian Arabs only in the sense that (1) the Arabs successfully ethnically cleansed Jews from the area in the 1930s and 1940s; and (2) under the principles of anti-Israel types, once the Arabs ethnically cleanse Jews from an area, it becomes Palestinian Land forever. So that if Jews return, they are "stealing" land.
This is false. If the Israelis are going in, knocking down houses or just taking them, then that is stealing land. QED. Again, Israel has been expanding in territorial size. Neccessarily this means it must be taking land off of other groups.
Whether it was Israel or America that attacked the girls school in Iran is not of great importance. I recall you were the one implying that it was somehow the Iranians who attacked their own school. Now going 'acktually it was America not Israel that blew up this specific war in an Israeli inspired war against Iran' does not advance any kind of serious position, it's just a lame Parthian shot.
In terms of its Arab neighbors, Israel has repeatedly given up territory for peace
Yet Israel's territory has grown larger over time? They gave Sinai back to Egypt after taking Sinai off Egypt, OK. They didn't give back the Golan heights to Syria, they've recently taken more land off Syria. They've been busily taking land off Palestinians in the West Bank for years now, knocking people's houses down or just stealing their houses. Right now they're going into Lebanon perhaps looking to seize more land.
They have this comically villainous strategy in the 'mosquito protocol', using Gazan civilians as human shields, making them enter buildings ahead of IDF troops to clear out explosives or booby traps.
Or they just take potshots at peaceful protestors in Gaza, back in 2019: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-release/2019/03/one-year-on-from-protests-gaza-civilians-devastating-injuries-highlight-urgent-need-for-arms-embargo-on-israel/
They had huge protests rallying behind soldiers who were briefly arrested for raping prisoners, in support of that kind of activity. You can actually watch video of the Israeli soldiers forming up in this cluster around a prisoner with shields on their backs to block the camera from seeing exactly what happens. There's actual video of an Israeli govt minister saying 'for them, anything is permitted' with regard to sodomizing prisoners with metal objects. The pro-rape faction seems to have decisively won, with the soldiers being freed of all charges.
Why the special criticism of Israel?
Countries are formed by taking land, that's how it works. The essence of warfare is inflicting pain and suffering to reach a political goal. But Israel behaves in an especially egregious way for a supposed liberal democracy. Simultaneously they whine and bitch about anti-semitism and claim to be the victim whenever anyone criticises them. Amnesty international is apparently antisemitic, the UN is antisemitic, that American girl they ran over with a bulldozer was probably antisemitic, along with the USS Liberty survivors who maintain they were deliberately attacked. All these Palestinians were born into this world with hatred of Israel in their hearts, we are led to believe. It takes two to tango.
The Israelis go around complaining about Hamas using human shields while they do it themselves. They complain about the terrorism of others when their country was founded by terrorists - they shot a UN-appointed Swedish diplomat Bernadotte for being too pro-Arab, they captured and executed British troops, planned false-flag attacks against the West in Egypt and run a uniquely murderous intelligence agency in Mossad. It's a very obnoxious way for a country to behave. And yet their cheerleaders in the West like PragerU will say that the IDF is the 'most moral army'.
The hypocrisy upsets lots of people. Israel should be treated with the same naked contempt and grasping opportunism they treat other countries. They should be left to fight their own wars, use their own weapons, pay for them too. America has just plunged the world into a major economic crisis over their obsession with Israel, it's not at all a minor issue.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5d ago
China does not GAF, they want to make money.
And who has more money, the Israelis or the Arabs? China's official stance is pro-Palestinian, being anti-Israeli fits with their whole BRICS thirdworldism ethos. Iran is a friend of China, Israel is on the other side.
The moment America stops shielding Israel, stops debanking and harassing anyone who goes against Israel, the whole structure comes crashing down both militarily and economically. Boomer evangelicals are dwindling in relevance.
Expelling another million people and creating another migration disaster is not going to make Israel any friends in Turkey or Europe and will only bring forward disaster. America routinely throws allies under the bus, so too will be the fate of the 'greatest ally'.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5d ago
Past a certain point, sanctions are going to come down and then Israel is finished. A large country can withstand sanctions, small countries with fragile high tech economies cannot. The Germany 1939 gambit of securing more lebensraum and expelling ethnic enemies only works if you're a big country with a large army.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5d ago
This is the first war in which one of the adversaries is going strictly after the elite and is able to actually get them. Which is actually the right way to wage war.
If ukraine and russia could reasonably kill each other's key people - there would have been peace years ago.
Why are people still stuck on this idea?
Israel tried this with Hamas and Hezbollah. Did it work? Did the flashy assassinations achieve victory? Did Israel destroy Hamas and conquer Gaza? No! If they couldn't destroy a small, poor organization in territory they totally surround with total air control, how are they supposed to defeat Iran?
All Israel managed to achieve in a couple years of fighting is killing a fair few of Hamas, killing a lot of civilians, blowing up a lot of buildings, making the Russians of all people look like positive humanitarians. Unlike the Russians, they made zero territorial gains. And they made people trust pagers a lot less, hate Israel a lot more.
Israeli military practice is so bad it should be first, second and third in 'what not to do'. They suffer an embarassingly big terrorist attack from a foe they should totally outclass. Then they totally fail to capitalize on it in world opinion, quite the reverse. They fail to secure any strategic advantages whatsoever with their much vaunted military, despite enormous expenditure of US munitions. Maybe a few months ago they could claim 'oh at least we decapitated Hezbollah' but Hezbollah seems to have just grown another head like a hydra and are taking huge bites out of the Iron Dome.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
6d ago
But if those small companies go under, who cares? It won't have much economic effect, startups go under all the time. That's capitalism.
It's the hyperscalers who are too big and rich to go under and Nvidia that matter.
Suppose OpenAI collapses because of all their debt and spending. There'd just be a feeding frenzy as Microsoft just takes over their researchers, Anthropic and Google gain marketshare, maybe Chinese companies also make gains.
I guess that's what you're saying about the tech not going away but I don't see how anything would significantly change. People would just go to Gemini instead of 'Chat'. Kling or Seedance or Grok Imagine instead of Sora. What would the bubble popping actually mean?
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
6d ago
But why is this even the right frame of looking at things? If it looks really powerful and useful, probably it is just really valuable. There might be reasons why it isn't but they should be specific.
What has tech been doing for the last 10 years besides AI? I can't think of any great improvement between 2012 and 2022. More irritating ads, having to subscribe to Microsoft Office, VR headsets with a handful of good games... Incremental advancements at best.
But now if I want to do something with a computer, I can get an AI to give me precise instructions or just do it outright. That's a genuine improvement. I don't have to wade through forums or oceans of SEO + ads with a search engine. I don't have to learn to code to make and sell code commercially - they seem to enjoy it and find it very helpful. I can just have it output niche, highly specific pieces of writing just for me, on a whim.
The technology sector has finally contributed something positive after about 10-20 years of resting on their laurels and now people are complaining about a bubble, it seems bizarre to me. This is putting aside all the scientific innovation and prospects of superintelligence.
Between 1995 and 2000, the Nasdaq Composite stock market index rose 400%. It reached a price–earnings ratio of 200
Cisco had a P/E of 200 back in the day, Nvidia is in the 30s and is the largest company in the world. Where is the bubble? Is it just isolated to the AI pureplay companies like Anthropic or OpenAI who aren't profitable because of all the R&D they're doing?
I know it's cliched to say 'this time it's different' but if it looks different, then it probably is different? Maybe OpenAI has just gone down too many paths and finds that short-form video is not cost-effective since it caters to a population of poor people trying to game porn restrictions and upsets influencers/artists who love to hate AI video. Whereas selling coding AI actually makes lots of money, so they're redirecting compute for business use. In my experience it's far harder to make a profit selling AI to consumers than it is to businesses.
Agreed, prior to this war I thought that Trump was at least better than Bush Junior but he's dived a whole league beneath Bush with this. At least Iraq wasn't strong enough to be a big pain like Iran.
This is what happens when you can't think soundly in strategic terms. The value of Greenland is microscopic compared to the value of Europe. 2 nuclear powers, ASML chip equipment, machine tools, 600 million people, precision optics, a fairly advanced defence industrial base and about 2 million troops. Europe could be a decisive factor in a world war with China, they provide the numerical weight to somewhat counterbalance China. There was coalition-building where Britain and France were going to help send fleets to Asia, that was part of the strategy.
Greenland is a frozen wasteland. The only vaguely valuable thing there is basing and radar that the US already has! Trump wanted to map-paint there, antagonized much more valuable countries over it. Same with tariffs. Tariff your enemies and not your allies.
The Iran war was predictably a terrible idea. The US seems to be getting kicked out of Iraq, while Iran has secured the straits of Hormuz de facto, possibly soon formally. Trump is reduced to telling other countries to go in and secure the oil themselves, since Iran has been 'decimated'. If Iran is so beaten then why not just go in with the US Navy and secure the oil, secure a big W for America? It's obnoxious to falsely declare victory and then usher allies into the death zone to do some futile bleeding, demand their assistance in a war that worsens their interests, a war they lack the power to win.
It's worse than Suez. Britain and France and Israel were crushing Egypt militarily, they landed troops and took Port Said in a week. There was no doubt they had the power to prevail on a purely military level. British troops weren't 'working from home' sitting in hotels because their bases were getting bombed out. The US is not just losing strategically but hasn't made any traction at all with regard to the strait. There has been no traction with regard to regime change either. Maybe that will change in future but it's looking really bad.
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