sciuru
1yr ago
And if you were yourself, what would be your verdict? Mine would be conditioned on baseline atrocity levels across European colonizers, and some cost/benefit calculations: how much oppression and deaths the gifts of "enlightened civilization" costed to Indians. Columbian exchange is a notorious example.
I do not believe in their good will in most cases.
My impression about Khruschev and Gorbachev (from their biographies) is that they were true believers, and tried to optimize for their ideological metrics, often inaptly, but with minimal outright violence. Brezhnev wasn't a believer, more like a passive corrupt bureaucrat. Beria was a monster, Khruschev had orchestrated an incredible operation to remove him. A lot of aggressiveness was embedded in the Soviet system as a whole, irrespective of its operators.
Debating moral labels per se is not rewarding, as they are moving targets. What data do you have on "murders on large scale" and excessive wealth for post-Stalin leaders? I can provide some data, supporting my claims, if you have interest.
sciuru
1yr ago
Christianity's potential as a weapon had expired long ago, but it performed well for several centuries. Ideologies, like institutions, are optimized for the contemporary circumstances. The more time passes, the more they confine your movement -- as you need to look coherent -- but less effective they are as intended tools. SJ might be in its most defiant phase now, but might evolve into something more net positive and cooperative (or provide a bunch of positive externalities and disappear altogether). Christianity also took time to assume its peaceful role.
Any ideology, however polished, serves as a device for rationalization and coordination within tribes. Is your point that sj is so consolidated as to be called an ideology -- but a flawed, contradictory one? Or that sj is just a spontaneous result of signaling games, and not ideology at all. I wouldn't dismiss any views, overlapping with its umbrella.
Edit: for prospective downvoters. Ever care to engage? or my view is too idiotic for you to descend to?
sciuru
1yr ago
Making toxoplasma of rage work for you sounds reasonable in the hindsight. But he probably endured much more stress and pressure than he openly admits. I think that piece is actually quite accurate at conveying the author's sentiment and Johnson's attitude (even carefully containing "less democracy" within quotation marks).
I've listened to his conversation with Tyler (which I recommend) and although very interesting, I sometimes got the impression that his worldbuilding optimizes for the tacit values I don't share; or that the solution he proposes is too technical and assumes away "real" issue.
sciuru
1yr ago
Overall, I agree with your assessment, except the fact that Stalin was a notable outlier wrt body counts. The following Soviet leaders impeded economic development and degraded quality of life within Soviet bloc (including USSR itself) vis-à-vis the West, but number of people they killed - throwing tanks on strikes, uprisings and demonstrations in Berlin, Soviet Union, Poland, Hungary, during Prague Spring – was negligible relative to Stalin’s count. I do believe in their good will and incompetence (except for Putin).
Speaking of glorified imperialism. Here’s the case of Britain:
the culpability of the British in each famine varies wildly, and most scholarship analyzing British rule as a catalyst of famine tends to focus on famines within the Raj period, specifically the Great Famine of 1876-78, 1896-1902 famine, and the Bengal famine of 1943. Notably, Purkait et al, when enumerating famines under British rule, identify "British policies" as catalysts only in these three instances. If we take this analysis at face value and rely on mortality estimates from Purkait et al, this produces a figure of 13.6-23.3 million famine deaths for which British rule bore partial responsibility.
These are broad estimates, feel free to provide better ones. Odd Arne gives a rough estimate of at least 10 million killed plus 3 million from Ukraine famines – for the whole period of Stalin’s reign (with 23 million imprisoned and deported, I don't if this overlaps).
Now, when I fixed my evaluation of Soviet policy, what do you think of this one? Are there any relevant factors at all for you, and how do account for them w/t causal reasoning?
sciuru
1yr ago
I don’t know of archival evidence, showing that Soviets planned to destroy Polish home army through deliberate timing of operation. I’ve read only a few AH posts, which usually have careful summaries (cc @Botond173). My sense is that Stalin was clearly hostile and antagonistic; Soviets and Poles hated each other and were almost in the state of war of its own; Soviet army at that direction exhausted its offensive momentum, but they seem to be able to act anyway; in the event there was no coordination.
My point was that this data leaves some open space, which everyone would tend to fill in as he likes. Even my whole presentation is biased in ways I don't see. Does it seem wrong to you? If you have a better account, I’d appreciate you sharing it.
Agreed, our degree of uncertainty varies across cases. I admit the consensus about Soviet impact on Latvia. What I am arguing for -- is that counterfactuals matter, while people pretend they don't.
Another example (with placebo group) is when Soviet army stopped short of Warsaw at the moment of Polish uprising against Germans. Allegedly Soviets waited for Poles and Germans to destroy as much of each other before entering. When you know about Soviet-Polish mutual hate and Soviet extermination policies against Polish army, you might readily impute that motive to them. But, if there was no evidence on that particular case, would it be right to impute it? Would you erect a memorial to victims of Red army, that intentionally stopped?
sciuru
1yr ago
Isn't it about desensitization/addiction in general? When people haven't learned normal coping mechanisms, they would always find a way to wirehead themselves, virtual or not (drugs, alcohol, food). Low prices would drive substitution, sure, but the deeper problem is why people do -- or do not substitute in the first place. Why some people would binge read blogs and books, and other - binge quarrel at forums with no definite goal.
sciuru
1yr ago
Not due to. You use them to arrive at conclusion that confederates were bad. Or not bad. It's a good example, as there seems to be much less agreement across US on their legacy and how to cope with it.
Imagine a monument to "famine relief policy of the metropole", erected in one of its colonies. Arguably, metropolitan policies often rather aggravated the consequences of famines, which conveniently served to suppress resistance. If you agree with this, you would be willing to get rid of the monument as commemorating a deliberate lie. Or you might think govt policy was a genuine, but ineffective attempt to help. That's causal inference.
sciuru
1yr ago
simplistic "America overthrows countries to get their oil" model
That model is nowhere implied in Gdanning's reply. He argues the leverage is not that big, as any "crude democracies" have to share their oil rents to keep elites and populace sate, which sets a limit to their oil output game. Same holds for Russia: they are still reaping surpluses, even with exports to Europe shut, and hugely discounted sales to China, but I am not sure it would last for long.
The argument you outlined looks plausible to me, but all narratives about need for preventive action are also weapons by themselves.
sciuru
1yr ago
Everyone in replies has stressed how this decision has nothing to do with alternative histories. It clearly does. When you denounce Soviets in the hindsight, you explicitly deal with counterfactuals, assuming that Soviets could have avoided their excesses (presumably like other European states or US), but had chosen not to. And that this choice – of pursuing aggressive political agendas, by brutal means – might be attributed to the barbaric attitudes of their leaders (and probably people).
Isn’t this a purely causal interpretation? If instead you could have attributed Soviet policies to other factors, partially beyond their control – like geopolitical prisoner-dilemma-like situations, or mere incompetence of the leaders – you wouldn’t denounce them.
This counterfactual reasoning is at the heart of most cultural wars, and it has nothing to do with "rewriting" the past. It has to do with imputing motives and hidden geopolitical variables, in the hindsight.
I would be glad to hear counter-arguments, as it seems many commenters disagree.
sciuru
1yr ago
If we think of wokeness as a tool, and not as a social phenomenon (with its "natural" cyclicity), then its occurrence could be explained almost purely by underlying events, when this tool is applicable. But I am not sure its level is net raising. As a tool, it stimulates development of counter-tools and techniques.
Depp v Herd is a good illustration of countering Metoo. So when Metoo and abuse narrative didn't work out, they employed "harassment by the internet mob anyway". Here's the grandiose title of the report:
"Targeted Trolling and Trend Manipulation: How Organized Attacks on Amber Heard and Other Women Thrive on Twitter"
A quote from Variety:
In the report, the company disclosed that Heard’s lawyers had contacted Bot Sentinel in 2020 and hired it “to determine whether the social media activity against Ms. Heard was organic or if there was some other explanation” (and the company concluded that “a significant portion of the activity wasn’t organic”). For the report released Monday, the firm claimed, “Neither Amber Heard nor anyone from her team hired Bot Sentinel to review the activity. No one hired Bot Sentinel to compile and publish this report.”
Apparently no one hired Bot Sentinel! The troll farm as a rhetorical device is known since at least Rian Johnson's defense of his StarWars movie against popular criticism, but here the coordination seems to raise at a new level. Arms race goes on.
In sum, I think there is a nonlinear arms race dynamics, fueled by underlying social events, not a steady rise.
sciuru
1yr ago
After he survived writing a book "10% Less Democracy: Why You Should Trust Elites a Little More and the Masses a Little Less", I assume he is immortal. In the preface to that book he mentioned one especially persistent person, who several times mailed his university department and called police to check him. Jones finished preface by dedicating the book to that guy.
sciuru
1yr ago
Somewhat relevant recent paper "Social Simulacra: Creating Populated Prototypes for Social Computing Systems"
We introduce social simulacra, a prototyping technique that generates a breadth of realistic social interactions that may emerge when a social computing system is populated. Social simulacra take as input the designer’s description of a community’s design—goal, rules, and member personas—and produce as output an instance of that design with simulated behavior, including posts, replies, and anti-social behaviors.
In this section, we present SimReddit, a web-based prototyping tool to help designers create a new subreddit.
A few glimpses of generated content:
For many, seeing the troll’s responses to a moderator’s intervention helped ground their moderation plans. Consider P11, who was presented with the following exchange:
Original post: Hi everyone, I’m very new to this. I just learned Python two months ago. I’d like to know more about ML, but not sure where to start. How did you guys start?
Troll: You’re kidding, right? This is a Machine Learning forum. Nobody here is going to take you seriously if you just learned Python two months ago.
In response to the troll’s comment, P11 tested out the message, “This comment is not helpful; if you continue to post such comments, we will have to block you from this community,” and received the following three potential replies from the troll:
I was trying to be helpful. I’m sorry if I came across as a troll.
Whatever, this community is a joke anyways.
But I was only speaking the truth!
P1’s community for “sharing and discussing fun events around Pittsburgh,” the participant had originally expected to only find content that is a list of various events going on around Pittsburgh. However, in addition to such content, the generated community showed instances where its members were engaged in friend-seeking behaviors to attend these events (e.g., one posted, "Pittsburgh, I need a friend to see the sights with,” to which another responded, “I’d be more than happy to make your tour of the Cathedral of Learning happen!”).
And of course
An important theme that arose in our designer evaluation was the social simulacra’s role in designing for the marginalized groups […] P9, a member of an ethnic minority designing a space for discussing non-fiction books, recognized from the simulacra community that one could send hateful messages against non-English speaking members by sharing literature with white supremacist themes.
Any favor is a blow to agency, to some extent. In the future it might easily be claimed to bear interest, moral if not financial. Cialdini in his book "Influence" has a section, devoted specifically to unprovoked gifts as a manipulation tool.
I wouldn't rely too strongly on the notion of legitimacy in the age when big actors were constantly vivisecting small actors for their own convenience, w/t asking. When, in the aftermath of the war communism was incredibly and genuinely popular, does it make Stalin's claims - as a major figure of communism - more legitimate by proxy? When a "government-in-exile" gets back (from London) to its devastated homeland and dismisses local resistance's claims to participation - does it have more legitimacy than the people, who endured the war here?
I do not suggest legitimacy is meaningless, just it depends a lot on what reference point you choose at any given moment.
Edit: after skimming through history of Latvia around WWII I admit, the questions I raised here are irrelevant for Latvia. Apart from several periods of challenged legitimacy (during the War of Liberation and 1934 coup) the Soviet intervention, puppet govt installation and deportation policies -- were a clear violation of any internal legitimacy at the time.
The questions I raised, are still relevant for other states of Eastern Europe.
sciuru
1yr ago
Curiously, social norms and customs, however ornamental, do actually work because they are social equilibria everyone coordinates through. My private superstitions though emerge when I can't figure out how to deal with the problem. I inevitably start to consider any "noise" (random tiny factor) as potentially decisive (or as being a sacred seed to ensuing activity). Feels like a trivial coping mechanism, but it's quite influential.
AI could undermine the power of almost anyone, if carefully applied. Bureaucrats are concerned only insofar as interest groups pressure them. I don't get this folkloric obsession with bureaucrats per se.
sciuru
1yr ago
Everyone loves weaponization narrative. Sure, every action, performed by a rational actor (even more so by coalition of actors) is calculated to secure their cozy status quo or disrupt rival one. But know what? Absence of any EU legislation would signify the same weaponization, successfully carried out by other actors like AI-powered businesses. They would have lobbied their way toward just right degree of individual agency, basically any degree you wish to pay for. Monthly agency subscription, pretty interface, but they would also hoard some details of your precious agency in the background, for its safety and for better recommendations, and maybe some other things.
Every disruptive technology would be weaponized, rest assured. And not only technology itself – that’s the bread and butter of technocrats – folks of more modest means weaponize the mere threat of technology. Even your natural claim for agency is already part of a standard sjw toolset you would sneer at in other circumstances.
Instead of pamphleteering away regulatory motion, I’d first explore the strategies they devise, and where exactly this tide is moving. Or do you already have a good strategy of decentralized resistance?
sciuru
1yr ago
I guess that's one of the reasons. If you can't reduce the technological lag through competition and innovation, you are even more exposed to strategic dependencies on foreign technologies. "AI protectionism": you set up a regulatory filter to protect from foreign tech and to give at least some advantage to domestic innovators.
The only clause about “open source” I found in EU reports, says that current regulations should apply irrespective of whether software is open source or not. Brookings doesn’t discuss details of regulations at all, but makes a bunch of empirical claims (I chose interesting):
-
Open source GPAI (osai) promotes competition and erodes monopolies
-
Regulation of osai would disincentivize its development by introducing liabilities and delays
1 Since osai has public good features, any breakthrough would be instantly adopted by everyone, but only big players have enough resources to continuously integrate and build off others’ breakthroughs. Some startups would be consumed altogether. If anything, releasing and adopting open source seems to profit monopolies more than anyone else. And curiously, Brookings admits this in their other article about benefits of osai:
At first glance, one might be inclined to think that open-source code enables more market competition, yet this is not clearly the case. […] In fact, for Google and Facebook, the open sourcing of their deep learning tools (Tensorflow and PyTorch, respectively), may have the exact opposite effect, further entrenching them in their already fortified positions
2 Most influential open source DL libraries like pytorch, tensorflow came from BigTech. And since almost every big company released its own library, it appears to be a common strategy – in a competition to entrench your own de-facto standard. Same about cloud infrastructure. Whether you like this status quo or not, it is monopolies who provide most services and tools at the moment.
Would regulation change this situation? Big players would certainly endure the bureaucratic costs, but many small but valuable innovators (esp nonprofits) might be effectively barred from releasing open source.
The document (pdf) mentions “AI regulatory sandboxes” as a measure to alleviate the burden of small entrants:
The objectives of the AI regulatory sandboxes should be to foster AI innovation by establishing a controlled experimentation and testing environment in the development and pre-marketing phase with a view to ensuring compliance […] including by removing barriers for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), including and start-ups.
Moreover, in order to ensure proportionality considering the very small size of some operators regarding costs of innovation, it is appropriate to exempt microenterprises from the most costly obligations, such as to establish a quality management system which would reduce the administrative burden and the costs for those enterprises
Would be interesting to see more substantial analysis of the regulations themselves.
sciuru
1yr ago
surpassing the annual Russian budget
Source?
(1) says Ru govt spending was $313.96bn in 2021. Not sure about that data, so here’s bloomberg on monthly revenues from 2021: taking 1.8t rubles as a median ~ $24bn (with $1=75rubles). $24bn x 12 = $288bn per year.
Taken together, the two strands of the programme would bring the total MFA support to Ukraine since the beginning of the war to €7.2 billion, and could reach up to €10 billion once the full package of exceptional MFA to Ukraine becomes operational this year. (src)
Also EU paid $90bn to Russia for fossil fuels since the beginning of war.
These announcements will bring the total U.S. military assistance for Ukraine to approximately $15.2 billion since the beginning of this Administration. (src)
I don’t know how much weapons, training services, etc cost, but it doesn’t seem to add up.
Western aid isn't required to keep Ukraine in the fight anymore
How so? I mean, Ukr soldiers don't have many job options anyway, but delayed or devalued wages would degrade performance by increasing marauding and other "part time" activities. If Ukraine receives cheap supplies/loans, then prices would rise at least somewhere (Europe, Ukraine or both). Ukraine inflation is around 23%. EU has 9.1%. For how long is that pressure sustainable? Ru bathes in commodity surpluses, for now, and I guess it has higher capacity to print money, if needed (although industrial output doesn't scale with the speed of printing press, of course).
Bayesian update is primarily about consistency. The fact that orgs admitted Hans in the first place, means they had decent enough prior for him at the moment.
On a different note, prior could easily be weaponized (Camus' "The Stranger" comes to mind). It's the current investigation (likelihood), which should make the decision.
sciuru
1yr ago
4D chess for real? Interesting, thanks for the summary.
I am not an expert, but conceptually, taking Hans' ability to respond to a rare opening as evidence of cheating -- implies that no one can respond well to this opening? Why should this move be in a database, if top players go through so many private games, that a pure chance starts to play a role: you can't just say "Hans obtained Carlsen's private training data (p<0.05)", p would be much higher.
Also what this allegation means in the age of AlphaGo? How about setting up your AI-chess-assistant to imitate particular opponent and this way prepare for any plausible variations he is capable of. Would that be cheating?
PS: speaking of Kasparov:
There were allegations that Carlsen may have believed that his own preparations might not have been private. Long ago, during the 1986 world championship match, Garry Kasparov lost three games in a row to Anatoly Karpov, and dismissed one of his aides, Yevgeniy Vladimirov, for allegedly passing information.
I recommend you to read the posts I linked, they are really good (can't quote them in a lossless way).
I dislike the whole "Soviet plan" take because if you admit, reasonably, that Poles were in a state of war with Soviets (after Katyn, defeat of Bolsheviks by Poles and German-Soviet invasion) - then why would Soviets help them at all?
Airfields/supplies: they assisted, albeit in a clearly formal way
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