ThenElection
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User ID: 622
ThenElection
14d ago
"they are more long term" here referred to the demographic problems predictably developing into a problem only on the scale of decades, not to any inherent civilizational differences in discount rates. The idea that Chinese government inherently is better at long term planning is a useful domestic myth/international propaganda.
ThenElection
14d ago
Latter. Tech savants and trans people are both disproportionately neurodivergent.
ThenElection
14d ago
I do not believe that China is any kind of perfectly rational, efficient society. And it creates fewer true geniuses (paradigm breaking) than Western systems. But, it is plausible that AGI isn't something that comes from a radical shift in paradigm but some combination of massive aggregated data and incremental engineering. If so, China is in a very strong position.
ThenElection
14d ago
The time to catch up is time for their own demographic and economic issues to implode
China does face severe demographic issues, moreso than the US. But they are more long-term. If we make it to 2040 without a conflict, I'll feel very happy and secure. But technology and China's economy progress much faster than demographic trends; within the next ten years, there will be a peak in China's relative strength vs the USA, and that's when they will act.
gets to be an involuntary organ donor
China turns its undesirables into something useful; the USA lets its undesirables run amok degrading everyone else's quality of life. Human rights etc aside, it's not at all clear the USA's approach is superior for the health of the nation and progress of civilization.
ThenElection
14d ago
Anthropic obviously believes that MAGA will not retain total control of the government for long, and that it is therefore not in their best interests to do a lot of ring-kissing.
They are wrong: MAGA will control the relevant parts of government at least until January 2029. People may differ on AI timelines, but the Anthropic people I know all have shorter timelines than that. This is not a long term iterated game.
ThenElection
14d ago
One of my hot takes that is very obviously true (to me, at least) and angers everyone is that trans women are superior programmers (and pentesters) to cis men, cis women, and trans men.
ThenElection
14d ago
That doesn't answer why only Anthropic is considered dangerous
I, personally, am not disputing that the Trump administration is not applying objective standards here. My point is that Anthropic wants an institutional ecosystem where powerful governments select which models are safe to release to the public (a system I agree with!); you can't just push for that and then throw a hissy fit when actually existing governments do it wrong, secure in the belief that the Righteous are somehow destined to fix things.
given the likely short timeline
That is everything, here. And I don't think Dario is making rational, utility maximizing calculations here: I think he has his set of values and is then applying them blindly thinking that because they are good, their blind application must be utility maximizing. That is not sufficient for the situation I (and from what I can tell, he) believe is at hand.
ThenElection
14d ago
one strong strike for her expertise
ThenElection
14d ago
Even granting that the long arc of history bends toward whiteness, part of that involves countries like the USA recognizing and responding to foreign threats.
Also, have you met Canada?
Her Twitter is somewhat trans-coded, with the mask, pronouns, and hair, which is worth at least one strong strike for her expertise, and kind of cancels out the attention seeking lawsuit, which would then be par for course if she's trans. (Though, as far I can tell, she's not actually trans.)
Generally, she's well-regarded. tptacek, years ago, has referenced her as credible on HN; she's not a no-name who has been elevated from obscurity for political purposes.
ThenElection
14d ago
Regardless of who's to blame, China is watching from afar and grinning. American dysfunction gives them more time to catch up; the finger pointing about who's really the bad actor is just a cherry on top of the pie of distraction.
There are other enemies in this world than the near ones.
ThenElection
14d ago
Then why is only Anthropic targeted and why only foreign nationals?
In principle, Anthropic agrees the government should control when releases are made and models are recalled. Obviously it'd be better if this were done by some objective standard than fits of pique and grudge, but there's the world we want vs the world we have.
I'm sure Anthropic could make this all go away if they slipped him some 24 karet gold statues and a few million dollar dinners hosted at Mar a Lago.
I mean... They should. AI is world historical in importance, and the next 2 years are more important than any years before. Paying off a goon, though distasteful, is strictly superior to e.g. destroying the world. They could probably get away with a million dollars and some nice words, even: Trump is a very cheap date. And, given the stakes, a billion would be a good deal.
Safety needs to be either the actual number one priority, in which case you sacrifice other values for it. Or, if other values trump it, then your commitment to safety is shallow, and people will rightly see advertising of it as duplicitous.
ThenElection
14d ago
Opus 4.8 offers a series of recommendations that, although we would all likely find room to quibble with, seems like most would agree would be better than Anthropic is doing now (admittedly a very low bar). Probably could go back to models from 2024 and pass that, though.
I think the human leadership of Anthropic just finds digesting and following those recommendations very distasteful.
ThenElection
14d ago
It was always weird to stitch xAI and the SpaceX together. The latter is a solid, well executed company that is in a dominant position with innovative technology and a clear market, with its only downside being that its market offers (relatively) limited upside. The other is a gesture towards almost infinite upside, but in practice seems to be a data center REIT.
Combine them, sprinkle in some Elon reality distortion field, and you end up with wild 13 digit speculative TAMs of orbital data centers.
ThenElection
15d ago
Does anybody else remember our discussions from a few months ago? Because what's been reported so far looks nothing like what many confidently predicted back then.
My recollection was more that people thought it would go on for a couple months and ultimately be a whole lot of nothinghappens, except we'll have burnt a giant pile of money and raised oil prices, accomplishing nothing.
My silver lining take on the war (as it's certain that this time, it will finally be over!) is that we'll likely be much more skeptical about being dragged into pointless wars by "allies" who are much more trouble than they're worth, a learning we've gotten in a relatively low stakes environment.
ThenElection
15d ago
A deal to maybe in sixty days announce another deal.
ThenElection
19d ago
More recent than Dradis's claim, but OAI claims to have discovered a similar influence campaign from China yesterday:
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/06/10/openai-china-ai-data-centers-report-00957612
ThenElection
19d ago
The first generation TPUs were for Search and Ads, bread and butter moneymakers.
ThenElection
19d ago
AI is going to be a massive, world historical disruption--yes, even the Singularity--but that doesn't mean we're not in a bubble. Railroads, the Internet, canals, even arguably finance itself were born in bubbles: investors take huge losses, and society and technology continue on, faster than ever.
So, how to avoid being one of those investors getting reamed? Hell if I know. I've moved to more conservative investments myself, but that only very partially reduces my exposure. I'm expecting a pretty nasty correction in the next year that hurts all of the economy, government budgets, etc. Then, will buy things on fire sale.
ThenElection
21d ago
What alternative investment thesis would you propose?
De facto AI/tech YOLOer here, though it's more something I've developed into by accident instead of any AI permanent underclass thesis (alas, my VOO has given up any pretense of being anything but a handful of tech megacaps).
I'd be surprised if more than a dozen escorts in the Bay Area actually make more than $1M/year from escorting. It might even be substantially less. Their customers comprise a market that, though not exactly thin, is at least ragged enough and demanding enough that escorts can't simply line up a constant stream of guys to occupy all their working hours. And, if you treat $1M/year as an earnings cap for the very top performers in your career (that will last, very optimistically, a decade), in the Bay Area that isn't really shocking or impressive.
It's not even the best strategy if you're a woman looking to trade her looks and charm for money. Just marry a well-off guy, of which there are plenty. Or be like Lucy Guo: join a company early as the token pretty-ish woman, get fired, and walk away with billions.
ThenElection
23d ago
One angle I hear is that Christianity and progressivism are of single, unified lineage, and we've got to RETVRN to the prelapsarian world of blood and suffering.
ThenElection
23d ago
Maybe the early stages of pregnancy should be something you do in private. I always thought that you weren't supposed to tell anyone until 3 months in at a minimum; plenty of things, even besides Downs, can go wrong early on.
ThenElection
23d ago
There's the wrinkle that choosing to have a severely disabled child also imposes a burden on their siblings, particularly after you're dead. Some parents explicitly think of this as their lifelong care plan; others just implicitly let this happen. Impressively, somehow making "I'll let society deal with it" seem relatively responsible.
To add some descriptive flavor: the vast majority of China's involuntary organ donations were of mundane criminals--rapists, murderers--along with the very occasional particularly obnoxious dissidents. It's also decreased a lot in the past decade. And, most forced political dissident organ donations aren't of rival factions in the CCP (actual potential rivals of political power), but what's fairly described as FG lunatics. Actual political rivals suffer more mundane consequences when they lose: being sidelined, fewer economic opportunities for their children. Maybe a prison term if they made a wild miscalculation.
Although bad in many ways, it's less different than the US system than many Americans like to admit.
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