SkoomaDentist
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User ID: 84
SkoomaDentist
1yr ago
Why would the Russians blow up their own pipeline that they control?
Because Putin benefits from sowing confusion among Europeans. He also gives a signal that Russia can do the same to any other pipelines or cables in the sea.
What's best for Russia has long been irrelevant here. Putin goes with what's best for his personal aims and nobody in power dares to go against him (at least yet).
SkoomaDentist
1yr ago
All that is trivially shown false by how LLMs persistently fail at the most basic mathematical problems as soon as solving those would require understanding instead of just stringing words together. They are very efficient bullshit generators but to claim they "understand" anything is a massive exaggeration.
SkoomaDentist
1yr ago
Europe's geographic connectivity with MENA, SSA and to some extent South Asia means that pressures will be greater on Europe.
It should be said that this does not inherently mean a failure to stem immigration. Russia has a huge land border but AFAIK doesn't have a meaningful illegal immigrant problem. Guessing the reasons for that are left as an exercise to the reader.
SkoomaDentist
1yr ago
The motive part of it gets much easier when you stop thinking in terms of 'Russia' and start thinking in terms of 'Vladimir Putin'.
I don't understand why so many people ignore this. The whole war on Ukraine makes next to no sense for Russia but much more sense for Putin himself.
SkoomaDentist
1yr ago
Yes, three of the explosions were near the powertransfer cable between Sweden and Poland. I haven't heard anything of damage or if it is intact since the initial reports that it was close to the explosions. But it is vulnerable infrastructure.
Russia also has history of doing this before. They cut the fiber optic cable between Svalbard and Norway "for the lulz" (iow, to send a message / test their capabilities).
5 - 15th percentile.
Unratlike, 5-15th percentile: Low! You don't jive with most of rationalists say, AI definitely isn't going to end the world, you probably have a great exercise routine.
I don’t like blogs, I really can’t stand pages long drawn out waffling and I’ve long since come to the conclusion that being talked about here often is a major anti-recommendation for an author as far as I’m concerned. I also suspect the nanotech, condensed matter physics and genetic engineering questions assume ”rationalists” to have either studied the domain academically or (more likely) have major Dunning - Kruger about them.
Edit: I suspect the questionnaire could have been reduced to just a single question while keeping much the same result (albeit at much cruder scale): ”Do you like intellectual masturbation even if it doesn’t benefit your professional life or major hobbies?”
SkoomaDentist
1yr ago
As it happens, Finland has the tenth most civilian guns per capita in the world. What we don’t have (and what nobody here wants) is US style unlicensed access to guns nor allowing guns for self defence.
”Arming the populace” is a non-issue anyway, since nothing prevents doing it once the war is in progress.
SkoomaDentist
3mo ago
Artillery shells or tanks still won't do anything against missiles. Sure, China can keep shooting missiles but they have no chance of mounting an invasion if their navy is at the bottom of the ocean.
SkoomaDentist
1yr ago
The K-pop invasion of the west
What invasion?
I've yet to see a single trace of K-pop outside niche nerd circles.
SkoomaDentist
5d ago
Well, the last-last one did just get banned...
SkoomaDentist
2mo ago
They don't really need to though? I mean I think the main reason China hasn't tried to take Taiwan is that it recognizes it would end up destroying Taiwan and that it can just wait for US influence to continue declining due to internal issues.
Yes, which is why supplying Ukraine with what it needs (artillery & tanks) has next to no effect on being able to intervene in potential China - Taiwan conflict.
SkoomaDentist
10mo ago
I always get a laugh when people try to redefine the countries best representing the "blonde hair and blue eyes"-stereotype as "not actually white".
SkoomaDentist
1yr ago
I have a hard time believing that being able to search for specific size images would meaningfully help tracking federal agents.
SkoomaDentist
1yr ago
On a personal level, has anyone else noticed just how much Covid broke people's brains?
Not in the slightest except for the rare few cranks which you'll find about any policy. The only places where I see any sort of "Covid-brokenness" are this forum and one local politician who seems to be mostly obsessed with her personal power trip (which has not succeeded in any meaningful sense).
Everyone else has moved on with regular life now that people are vaccinated and most have gotten infected with Omicron strain once anyway.
Then again, I live in a country where the available policy options were not only "full lockdown" or "do nothing at all".
SkoomaDentist
6mo ago
To me it's obvious that if "vibes" and official inflation measures disagree significantly, the official inflation measures are broken and don't measure what's actually relevant to people. Housing prices are more important to most people by a massive margin than the price of cheap consumer crap from China. The second artificially pushes down inflation measures while having ultimately very little effect on quality of life.
For quite a few years I've thought that an inflation measure that better matches peoples' lived experience could be built on just two things: Housing prices in the parts of the country that get the top 30% population growth and the price of a cup of coffee. The first is a fairly good measure of the parts of country that actually matter (what the inflation is in some place that'll be half empty in 20 years is largely irrelevant) and that will be even more relevant in the future. The second captures "opportunistic inflation" that measures price pressure for consumer visible businesses (the ones driving inflation) and is immediately felt by ordinary people.
SkoomaDentist
1mo ago
He also doesn't explain how come those movies were getting made before DVDs ever became a thing. It's funny how he talks about the 90s when the DVD only became a thing in 1997 and took 2-3 years to really get popular.
SkoomaDentist
11mo ago
Linking it to some fashionable phenomena does not look very useful
Except for the very important point about how Putin clearly started the war on a completely false premise he had been fed due to everyone being afraid to report anything other than "things are great". IOW, a perfect example of what Hlynka wrote about.
SkoomaDentist
1yr ago
Why do you fixate on GPT?
Old style expert system "AIs" have already been better than doctors at diagnosis for decades.
Much of the reason doctors are used is because the establishment doesn't want to release too many medications to be effectively prescription free. A deterministic AI can be worked around easily while a fairly expensive (either in money, time, or effort) human in the loop acts as a deterrent against patients gaming the system.
SkoomaDentist
1yr ago
The main reason beer is safer for water-bourne diseases is because you boil the water before making beer. The other is that spoiled beer tastes absolutely foul.
The whole "beer was drunk because it was safer" thing is purely a myth. The advantage was that 1) most people rather like the effects of alcohol and 2) beer is a fairly easy way to get calories when you're doing heavy manual work.
SkoomaDentist
1yr ago
I have no problem believing f.ex. the local Finnish media is biased (ironically often slightly on the pro-Russian side until Russia went out of their way to burn every bridge they possibly could). Claiming that they're controlled by some US body is some next level conspiracy theory stuff, though.
SkoomaDentist
6d ago
jannies are treated as valued curators of harmony, not power tripping egoists.
That applies to almost all jannies here. Alas, there is always that one or two who end up power tripping and should be forbidden from any janny duties that aren't just obvious spam removal. This has been the case since almost the beginning back on reddit.
SkoomaDentist
1mo ago
Phased plasma rifle in the 40 watt range, obviously.
SkoomaDentist
4mo ago
That'd be because Finland was much more sensible about the masking and "lockdowns" (*) than US / Canada ever were.
*: Why yes. I am still annoyed by too many Americans here implying that actual lockdowns were some universal western phenomenon.
SkoomaDentist
6mo ago
Note "parts of the country that get the top 30% population growth" which is the key. This measures the inflation for new adults who are moving on their own and starting families which is the segment that matters much more than pensioners who have already paid off their houses or living in areas that will have few people in 20 years. It addresses the very common complaint that the wages are no longer enough to buy a reasonable house / apartment even though the official inflation says everything is perfectly fine.
It is one of the few significant parts where the cost is largely determined by policy (ie. city planning, building permits and, if necessary, public projects).
It'd be redundant (and risky) for USA to sabotage Nord Stream 2, as it was killed and buried the day Russia attacked Ukraine. Trying to continue the certification would be a political suicide in Europe unless Russia faces a complete regime change. It's Nord Stream 1 and the related continued dependence on Russian gas that has been the problem.
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