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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   33059 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 4, 2024

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OpenAI Shifts Strategy to Slower, Smarter AI as GPT Scaling Limits Emerge, OpenAI's upcoming Orion model shows how GPT improvements are slowing down

Paywalled, but here's a summary from reddit:

"Some OpenAI employees who tested Orion report it achieved GPT-4-level performance after completing only 20% of its training, but the quality increase was smaller than the leap from GPT-3 to GPT-4, suggesting that traditional scaling improvements may be slowing as high-quality data becomes limited

  • Orion's training involved AI-generated data from previous models like GPT-4 and reasoning models, which may lead it to reproduce some behaviors of older models
  • OpenAI has created a "foundations" team to develop new methods for sustaining improvements as high-quality data supplies decrease
  • Orion's advanced code-writing features could raise operating costs in OpenAI's data centers, and running models like o1, estimated at six times the cost of simpler models, adds financial pressure to further scaling
  • OpenAI is finishing Orion's safety testing for a planned release early next year, which may break from the "GPT" naming convention to reflect changes in model development

“Some researchers at the company believe Orion isn’t reliably better than its predecessor in handling certain tasks, according to the employees. Orion performs better at language tasks but may not outperform previous models at tasks such as coding, according to an OpenAI employee. That could be a problem, as Orion may be more expensive for OpenAI to run in its data centers compared to other models it has recently released, one of those people said.”

This is one of several articles/posts/tweets coming out of the LLMsphere over the past couple of weeks that are renewing concerns over LLMs hitting diminishing returns.

Of course this is just speculation until OpenAI actually releases Orion (or whatever they end up calling it). And really we would need several models past Orion too to actually extrapolate a pattern. But this does fit with my subjective impression that the leap from GPT-3 to GPT-4 was not as big as the leap from GPT-2 to GPT-3, and the leap from 4 to o1 was not as big as the leap from 3 to 4. The fact that they're considering again releasing a new model without calling it GPT-5 is also telling. They know how psychologically important the "GPT-5" moniker has become at this point and they won't give that name to a model unless it really represents a major leap forward.

A big problem is how you measure intelligence.

Any human can count the number of r's in strawberry but most would be hard-pressed to translate Chinese to English or do anything at all in python or other programming languages. Intelligence is multi-domain, possibly the most complicated thing we can try to measure.

Even within domains, how do you rate intelligence? Sometimes it would be worth spending 10x more to get a marginally better programming AI because 'marginally better' is like a 0 to 1 increase in that it provides genuinely useful input that a human can use to get a good answer and speed up their work.

A new brutally hard question set dropped a few days ago. I have no idea what any of this gibberish means, it's well beyond me.

https://epochai.org/frontiermath

The two toned-down o1 models get 1%, along with GPT-4. Claude 3.5 and Gemini Pro get 2%. Does it follow that Claude 3.5 new is smarter than I am since I would get 0 and that therefore AGI has been achieved? Probably not, Sonnet 3.5 makes all kinds of order of magnitude mistakes that I can eyeball as wrong. But it is pretty damn smart and noticeably smarter than its older incarnation, it has certain new tendencies in writing that qualitatively improve it.

GPT-2 would get 0 on nearly all benchmarks because it just babbles. GPT-3 would also get 0 because it just babbles (albeit more interestingly), remember these are the base models that might just answer your question with more questions. GPT-3.5 was the inflection point where AI became useful for a bunch of things, for consumer use. The old GPT-4 (as of March 2023) opened up coding. Opus 3 was thought to be the first really creative writer, it can maintain an engaging twitter persona. Sonnet 3.5 is on a whole new level in coding, opening up Cursor. The newest Sonnet, o1 and Gemini can start to barely grapple with these advanced mathematical questions.

From the perspective of 'can it answer Frontier Math', there have been no advances in AI before the last 6 months or so. Intelligence is so complex, what looks like a slowdown in one domain can just be the start of something new in another domain.

AI is still limited to text boxes and text manipulation or content generation; it has failed to live up the hype otherwise, like life extension, replacing workers, or treating disease, imho. The point of diminishing returns has been reached. it will take a whole new paradigm for AI to make the next leap. As far as transforming writing papers for college students, yeah, it has totally crushed that, and even then teachers are wising up. [If AI is able to produce a fiction novel that is a best-seller and or critically acclaimed either with text prompts or feeding it samples of other novels, I will be sold]

AI is still limited to text boxes and text manipulation or content generation

What? Of course it isn't.

AI is used all the time in a whole bunch of "invisible" applications that have nothing to do with text or content generation. Take a photo with a phone camera? You're using AI. Use Nvidia RTX voice? AI. Deal with pharmaceutical molecule research? Fair chance of AI being used. Play guitar and use the newest generation of amp modelers? That's AI again.

This is mostly because "AI" is a nonsense term. There are many different machine learning techniques being used in each of those applications and the fact that transformers have become somewhat general purpose doesn't change this.

But saying it's all AI is like saying it's all computers. It's missing the trees for the forest.

The tradeoffs and composability of these techniques are not uniform.

It's like saying that word processor spreadsheets can replace doing it by hand. It does not solve the spreadsheet problem, only makes it more efficient. Maybe the problem is me, but I am not seeing a big difference. I think the closest thing to truly transformational technology with direct, tangible real-world applications is printed buildings ( those cheap amazon.com homes that can be erected quickly), but this is not directly AI.

life extension, replacing workers, treating disease

But all of these problems are reducible to text generation. In some sense every conceivable problem is, because solving the problem means writing out the solution, in language.

For “solving” medicine, just have the LLM print a formula for the drug you want. A lot of remote work just is text generation in a sense, but for physical labor, a sufficiently intelligent LLM would be able to accelerate progress in robotics significantly.

Whether LLMs can actually achieve these things though is an open question.

In some sense every conceivable problem is, because solving the problem means writing out the solution, in language.

Too bad LLMs also only have access to solutions that were also previously written out, in languatge.

I mean, they are capable of "solving" novel problems not in their initial data. The problems just have to have the same "shape" as problems already in their training data.

And certain kinds of "language" type problems can be solved purely on the basis of the LLM's "knowledge" of English. Those problems aren't necessarily super hard for a human to do, but could save time on tasks like that.

Kinda sorta I guess?

For the examples given, if you ask an LLM to "print a formula for a drug you want", it will print something that looks like a formula for drugs that it's seen -- not super useful, other than by 'infinite monkeys' means?

Not sure what he's getting at on robotics, but the 'talking about awesome robots' role does not seem to have any shortage of applicants. To be frank, it's bullshit other than for people with bullshit jobs who feel they should continue to be paid but not have to sully themselves by personally generating the bullshit.

(the PR people at my work are super interested in LLMs, for example -- like, your life is not meaningless enough banging out 500 word communiques, you need a machine to do that for you? I really don't know what else to say)

The big problem with medicine has always been testing. Human trials will always be expensive and time consuming

it has failed to live up the hype otherwise, like life extension, replacing workers, or treating disease, imho.

Tesla is all-in on reinforcement learning for their next generation of Optimus robots, but they only spun that team up this summer. When I heard this news the stock price was at like 180 and I bought some calls for 230/250/270 for next June. After some movement I pushed these up to 300. Yet this still looks way too pessimistic. I think some exposure to $500c by the end of next year might be warranted.

The TSLA call options so expensive though. I like the 2x leveraged TSLA ETF instead. if TSLA doubles the ETF in theory will gain 3.5-4x, maybe offset decay by selling a long-dated ATM put + call

Me from a couple months ago...

Speaking from inside the industry OpenAI hasn't been pushing the bar forward so much as they have been expanding access. To be fair this can be a lucrative buisiness model, Apple became the powerhouse that it is today by making "tech" accessible to non-techies. But Apple was also pretty open about this being thier model. Nobody expected thier Mac to represent the bleeding edge of computing, they expected it to "just work". Contrast this with openAI where they and thier boosters are promising the moon imminent fully agentic super-intelligence but when you start peeling back the skin you find that the whole thing is a kludgy mess of nested regression engines with serious structural limitations.

Interesting stuff! Makes sense to me that Transformer architectures won't take us all the way to AGI, but I remain bullish on the prospects for AGI before 2030. ChatGPT released almost exactly 2 years ago, and its impacts won't be felt for years to come, especially in terms of the influx of human capital and investment in frontier capabilities it prompted. Millions of people are now working towards an AI career who weren't doing AI in November 2022 - a smart 18 year old freshman who was inspired by ChatGPT to switch from Physics or Engineering to Compsci would still be getting his college credits.

Speculation: It’s interesting that the bottleneck is given as lack of data rather than architecture. That opens up the possibility that we may be able to get things moving again by finding some other method of obtaining/creating useable data.

LLMs were historically created to use next-token-prediction as a means of solving natural language processing tasks. I think we can regard that problem as provisionally solved. When people talk about GPTs limits, they aren’t talking about its ability to take English input and produce readable English output. They are talking about general intelligence: the ability to output sensible, useful English output.

In short, LLMs are general learning machines using natural language as a proxy task. Natural language is cheap and information rich but any means of conveying information about the world is fair game, provided that it can be converted into the same token space that GPT is using using CLIP or something similar.

What is needed is large quantities of data that conveys causal information about the world. Video is probably a good place to start. Some kind of simulated self-play might also be useable. What else could be useable?

(I’m not sure how next-token prediction would work here)

It’s interesting that the bottleneck is given as lack of data rather than architecture.

It's not lack of data as such (there's gobs and gobs of raw data). It's curated high quality data of a suitable form and that can actually be used (be that for legal or technical reasons). The reason synthetic data is used because it solves (or claims to solve) the curation and form issues. The trainers can directly instruct the source AI to provide data of type X in quantity Y.

Indeed, but this introduces its own problems. This is arguably a large part of why Google's AI products are noticeably more prone to "hallucination" than thier immediate peers.

Of course. I'd estimate that using synthetic data results in an overall worse performing AI but I could see it being used to fill specific gaps in the real training material (probably using a specialized model that's good at that specific type of data and possibly not much else).

What else could be useable?

Somewhat speculative, but non-invasive recording of brain activity seems like a promising underutilized modality. When sufficiently discreet devices reach the market -- say, for controlling your phone -- they would be worn anyway, continuously throughout the day, so just add a few more lines about personal data collection in a license agreement. To get labeled data, make an app which prompts humans with various signals and records their reaction. Gamify, pay if needed, etc. Seems scalable.

In effect LLMS aren't smart, they are just great at recognizing patterns they are trained on. Google is great at recognizing text strings that it remembers, LLMS don't need matching strings they match on patterns and are able to combine patterns from multiple sources. LLMs aren't truly intelligent because they are dumbfounded if there isn't a good matching pattern in the training set. They are stumped in a way a human isn't if they encounter something new.

LLMs aren't going to replace humans because the set of all data is miniscule to the set of all potential patterns in the world.

LLMs aren't going to replace humans because the set of all data is miniscule to the set of all potential patterns in the world.

I mean, you can say LLMs aren't going to replace humans...but the 'potential patterns in the world' are all reducible to data in one way or another.

So some Machine trained on language AND physics data AND biology AND etc. etc. is still a potential contender, no?

the 'potential patterns in the world' are all reducible to data in one way or another

I mean is it? Quantitative Realism doesn't exactly seem self evident.

I've consistently pointed AI hype believers to their own metaphysical assumptions and this is the crux of it.

Are we just pattern matching engines or does agency have another source and is that in anyway connected to our experience of consciousness?

I think when people believed that larger gizmoes we don't fully understand would give us the answer to this question, they were deluding themselves, and I'm somewhat dissapointed that I was right since we are still without answers. But at least the possibility that we have a soul, ghost or another manner of special thing that automata don't is still secure.

Now the real test will be this: if Musk can convince enough people to use Neuralink and get their brain patterns recorded 24/7, and if someone trains transformers on that, what will be the outcome? Can we Chinese room our way to general intelligence?

I don't know, but it seems like the most logical way forward, since access to immense unpolluted datasets is no longer a possibility.

I mean is it? Quantitative Realism doesn't exactly seem self evident.

Isn't Computational Complexity Theory supposed to tackle questions of this kind?

Scott Aaronson offered the following highly evocative metaphor:

The best definition of complexity theory I can think of is that it’s quantitative theology: the mathematical study of hypothetical superintelligent beings such as gods. Its concerns include:

  • If a God or gods existed, how could they reveal themselves to mortals? (IP=PSPACE, or MIP=NEXP in the polytheistic case.)
  • Which gods are mightier than which other gods? (PNP vs. PP, SZK vs. QMA, BQPNP vs. NPBQP, etc. etc.)
  • Could a munificent God choose to bestow His omniscience on a mortal? (EXP vs. P/poly.)
  • Can oracles be trusted? (Can oracles be trusted?)

And of course:

  • Could mortals ever become godlike themselves? (P vs. NP, BQP vs. NP.)

Although I doubt such general questions and theories are that helpful in guiding our research: they provide boundaries for what is possible, but what is practical typically lies far away from those boundaries.

Scott's metaphor is funny to think about but it has no philosophical rigor.

Complexity theory is not meaningfully different from other mathematics in its relationship to the metaphysical: it's a pure reason construct that attempts to map out necessary truths.

In many ways it it actually completely disconnected from the question at hand, because the machines it is concerned about are abstractions that are not and cannot possibly be real. They just happen to map onto real objects in a useful enough way. As you point out.

Scott isn't the first to connect this type of endeavor and the sacred. Pythagoras did it a long time ago. But the connection isn't relevant to the question of intelligence in my view.

I think pure data is a directionally useful way of looking at the world, and useful for most problem-solving purposes. I am a theist so I think there’s more beyond just physical reality, but whether or not it’s true, I think that for most projects, reducing the universe to data is going to work just fine. Consciousness is produced in the brain, and definitely experienced there, so I think you can get something like a conscious AI simply by recreating a brain. Might be easier to start with a dog or something like that, but I think even though there’s a metaphysical aspect to consciousness, that doesn’t mean that there’s no point to studying it in brains.

I suppose it comes down to whether or not there is a ghost in the machine.

If human intelligence is all neurons that can be modeled as a graph with weighted edges then we should be able to simulate it.

Maybe we do that and still can’t get human intelligence to pop out of the simulated brain and find that something is missing.

It would be a bit funny if they design a machine that is provably a 1:1 simulation of a human brain, switch it on, and get an error message to the effect of "Cannot Execute Commands: This unit is not ensouled."

“Humunculus not installed: please refer to manual.”

I mean, that kind of sounds like you're saying it's provably not a 1:1 simulation of a human brain.

What you're describing is measurable evidence of new physics. Every physicist in the world would want to buy you a beer.

...Please contact your local soul provider for further information

If you believe that you've received this message in error, please contact your system administrator at t0.yahweh.root.

Control thread not found.

Finally, a reason for MMOGs to come back to the mainstream as data production interfaces.

That EvE online cell structure minigame was ahead of its time.

We’re exhausting almost all the data, video included. We’ve recently taken to generating synthetic data. For images, this would mean generating novel images and then feeding them back into training. Imagine taking an image of a car and then rotating it behind some thick leaves or a chain link fence.

Kamala wanted to run the country. In the end, she couldn't even run her own campaign.

Apparently, the Harris campaign is $20 million in debt despite spending at least $1 billion over the last 3 months. On the other hand, the Trump campaign was frugal - spending only about 1/3 or 1/2 as much as Kamala (quibble about the exact numbers all you want). Staffing in particular seems to have been a major difference with Harris spending perhaps an order of magnitude more than Trump. Harris hired high paid consultants while Trump relied on free labor from passionate supporters.

It gets worse.

The Harris campaign has been accused of paying celebrities for exposure. Surely, already rich celebrities like Beyoncé and Oprah would be happy to support their favored candidate for free. Right? Apparently not. Fox News has reported that the Harris campaign paid Oprah a million dollars to interview her. Lizzo and Cardi B have also been singled out as receiving payments.

Is it any wonder that these celebrity endorsements don't work when they are so fake?

Contra Scott's too much money in dark almonds piece, I think the reason that political campaign donations are relatively low is that it's really hard to buy an election. Bloomberg tried to back in 2020 and his campaign went nowhere. Money does matter, but the candidate matters a lot more. $1 to Trump makes a bigger difference than $3 to Harris. And Trump appearing on Rogan might have been worth $100 million, but he didn't have to pay a cent.

Contra Scott's too much money in dark almonds piece, I think the reason that political campaign donations are relatively low is that it's really hard to buy an election. Bloomberg tried to back in 2020 and his campaign went nowhere. Money does matter, but the candidate matters a lot more. $1 to Trump makes a bigger difference than $3 to Harris. And Trump appearing on Rogan might have been worth $100 million, but he didn't have to pay a cent.

yeah. Hype is overrated, as is money in politics. Look at all the hype over bitcoin over the past 3-4 years yet the price has hardly done anything; meanwhile unsexy SPY/voo crushed it. VC/crypto bros showered $ on Trump for his support; if i had to wager, they will see big fat zero for their efforts. It's hard enough to pull the levers of power by the very people who are are in power...good luck doing it indirectly. Politics in the US is influenced by seniority and connections, which is how such underwhelming choice as Harris got so far anyway. She had paid her dues.

Bitcoin is at $81,000 right now...

Over 3 years (from the last ATH in November '21) it's roughly even with SPY, maybe a little behind. Over 2 years it crushes SPY. Over 4 years (and any further) it crushes SPY.

Comparing it to spy actually handicaps it in favor of bitcoin. A more appropriate comparison controlling for volatility would be something like 2-3x SPY, like UPRO, which beats Bitcoin by a bigger margin. Controlling for volatility, Bitcoin has , as of Today, slightly greater returns and vastly more volatility which makes it worse .

But so far, yes, you're right that Bitcoin as of now is the better performing asset nominally speaking.

UPRO doesn't seem to have performed that well.

https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/fund/upro

On 1/1/2020, it was at $36, now it's at $95. Tesla went from $36 to $335. Bitcoin did even better, going from about $7,000 to $88,000 today. Even Apple went from $74 to $224, it did better than UPRO (and pays dividends). Microsoft did similarly well.

It's not like Microsoft or Apple were unheard of back in early 2020, they're basically blue-chips.

ETFs are generally mediocre investments and have management fees, better to just pick out stocks or crypto specifically. If we look at just the 1 year, Bitcoin is up 140%, UPRO is up a measly 100%. UPRO might be a decent investment but it's not a great one.

A decent amount of volatility is good. You want to get in before the institutional investors, not after they've pumped the market up to high heaven. They're already all over ETFs.

It has done well but it hasn't exactly been 'belly button lint in exchange for untold riches' if you've jumped on board any time since like 2016.

If you jumped onboard 14 hours ago, you'd already have made 7-8% profit, which is what SPY might make in a year. It's at 87K now, rising to 88 as I write this post.

Untold riches for nothing is a very high standard that we've only ever seen with bitcoin and ETH (which was originally distributed to BTC addresses). There used to be BTC faucets where people gave them away, evangelizing to new users.

Hype can certainly help. Without some positive attention even the best product will sit on the shelf. On the other hand most people will be smart enough to notice when the sales pitch is overselling the actual product.

Kamala had a lot of negatives that were pretty obvious. She’s annoying and has a nervous laugh that’s obnoxious. She can’t give interviews, and when she does, her obvious non-answers are barely comprehensible. She cannot generate enthusiasm for her own ideas. Her rallies needed concerts just to get people to show up. At the end of the day, all the marketing in the world can’t make New Coke taste good.

She is a caricature of everything the right attributes to the left. But we're talking an extremely shallow pool of choices.

It continues to strike me as odd that a party that dominates the Ivy Leagues and Wall Street has had to field back to back candidates that went to Delaware and Howard grads.

And the party that loves the uneducated went with the Ivy League; both Bushes went to Yale and Trump to the University of Pennsylvania.

And Vances is OSU>Yale IIRC. A path generally only for the hyper gifted.

Undoubtedly he’s smart, but hillbilly kid who enlisted and became a military journalist in Iraq is one of those stories Yale admissions would love, not that I’m sure he didn’t also do very well on the LSAT.

You would think so, but actually admissions stats indicate a strong discrimination effect at Ivies against rural kids.

Really? A straight married middle aged woman who dresses professionally, supports Israel, is seen as moderate by the progressives in her base, is the caricature of everything attributed to the left? I'd have to disagree pretty heavily.

I would have thought that a young LGBTQ Palestine defender who is single or promiscuous, has had multiple abortions, supports UBI, and has blue hair would be the choice of caricature for the right leaning among us. Do I misunderstand what the right attributes to the left? Is being 'annoying' and not generating enthusiasm all it takes to be a leftist caricature?

It's funny because the day after the election I was overhearing my colleagues talking, and somehow, the impression they had was that Trump winning is the proof that rich people can just buy elections in the US. I don't expect that canadians would know much about american campaign finances, but still.

Just a few days ago I was reading multiple posts on this forum about how the $44 billion Elon spent on Twitter was worth every penny to the Trump campaign and now the Harris campaign spending $1 billion is a sign the big money is on the side of the Democratic Party?

I have no idea how much was spent by whom on each side (and quite possibly no one does), but the war chests of the official campaigns seems like at best a weak proxy for estimating that. (I'm sure there was also quite a bit of money spent on trying to get Harris elected that's not being accounted for in the $1 billion her official campaign touched.)

Just a few days ago I was reading multiple posts on this forum about how the $44 billion Elon spent on Twitter was worth every penny to the Trump campaign and now the Harris campaign spending $1 billion is a sign the big money is on the side of the Democratic Party?

Going by the numbers on Forbes, Harris spent 1.6 billion, to Trump's 1.1 billion to contest the 2024 election. Musk spent $44 Billion to contest the entire culture; the relevant frame here would be the amounts spent on, say, every other major media and tech company in the nation. So yes, the big money is on the side of the democratic party. Blackrock alone has somewhere north of ten trillion dollars under management, to give one example of a company aligned to Blue Tribe.

I listened to Pod Save America after the election and they were saying this election shows us that we need to get money out of politics. I immediately thought they were talking nonsense since they are the side that spends the most by far. These are smart, informed, experienced Democratic operatives mindlessly parroting "money in politics" talking points when the exact opposite is clearly true.

The debt isn't a bad thing: it's common for campaigns to end up with debt. 20M/1000M is 2%. When you're spending those kind of sums over a very short time period in a high stakes situation, with uncertain, variable income streams, it's almost inevitable. It will end up being paid off, and IIRC donation limits are reset after the election (though, if someone was a Kamala donor, I do not envy how much begging they're going to endure for the next couple weeks). Maybe Trump will magnanimously bail her out.

And, although she lost, I'm not sure you can say it was badly spent. As stupid as it is that paying Beyonce to fart in your direction can make voters want to vote for you, if you're flush with cash and you think it'll help, why not? What else would the campaign spend it on? Yet more clueless college grads to run social media accounts and spam Reddit with Kamala memes?

Final point: Kamala did much better in the swing states where the money was being spent than the country at large. A ~2% shift across every state would have resulted in Kamala holding the blue "wall" and winning the electoral college, while still losing the popular vote. Going into the campaign, the expectation was that Kamala would need to be running 2-3 points ahead of Trump nationally to have a shot at those states, but the campaign managed to eliminate this gap. This wasn't done through offering thoughtful policy proposals that addressed their specific regional concerns, or through her personal charismatic connection with white rust belt voters.

Money is good, and it's an edge Democrats will have for the foreseeable future, even if there are diminishing marginal returns to it. They just need a better product to market.

She will do fine. i can see a remunerative career in the cards in the private sector. these people always fail forward

"The debt isn't a bad thing." Okay, what would you call being personally 20 million dollars in debt if not a bad thing? Because apparently you're unaware they changed the rules so that candidate personally assumes the debt of the campaign

The debt won't exist 6 months from now. The campaign will continue collecting contributions, pay off the debts, and Kamala will walk away with none, rested and ready for her sinecure.

sinecure

Where do you think she'll land? Unlike Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama she doesn't have her own political machine. So there's not really much to be gained for anyone to ingratiate themselves to her.

And speaking engagements will be thin. No one wants to hear from a loser, especially a midwit who is by all accounts a deeply unpleasant individual.

Clearly, she'll land somewhere. But the fall is going to be steep.

Somehow in my career, I ended up being in a position to be in the room for many private conferences. One of the things that was particularly obvious to me is how human (in the worst sense) the elite "speaker" circuit is.

People imagine those kind of conferences as a meeting of powerful people exchanging important insights, but few of them were more interesting than what you'd hear on a very average TV fluff interview. Maybe one of them was at a level of discussion that would be comparable to what we have going here. In a couple of cases I even realized that I, the IT guy babysitting the tech setup, knew more about the topic than the speaker did, nevermind the attendees. Pretty much always the attendees' questions were shallow. It seemed obvious that the attendees, rich but unknown business leaders, were starstuck and enjoyed being in the same room as someone "famous". It certainly sound glamorous to drop into a conversation an aside about that time you were at a private conference of former prime ministers, VP, etc... I know I enjoy it.

In that context, Harris definitely can do that circuit if she wants. If she was just a failed presidential candidate, maybe the interest would fade fairly quickly. But I guarantee you there are lots of rich people who want to be able to say they were at a private conference of a former US Vice President, even if the presentation is just word salad about unburdening what has been. Having been Vice President, she can probably milk forever if wants.

If the audience is composed of midwits does it matter, and also, many people really do unironically like her--just not enough to win an election. No one is expecting her to lecture about physics.

Howard is a solid guess. Throw in a book deal, lucrative speaking engagements with audiences who don't really care what she has to say, maybe some corporate board. She'll be well taken care of. Not for any particular affection anyone has toward her, but to signify to others that they'll be well taken care of.

Howard University.

They may not like it, but she's probably now like a Top 5 or 3 alumni. Also, Black Women voted for Harris something like 90-10%. Howard University is 70% female. So this lines up well for her to bring in donations.

Probably also some sort of leadership role with The Links. She's literally listed in the opening paragraph of the Wiki page.

TollBooth's Top 5 All Time Howard Univ Alum (in no particular order)

  • Thomas Sowell
  • Thurgood Marshall
  • Zora Neale Hurston
  • Toni Morrison
  • Nick Cannon (I don't even know If I'm joking)

Chesa Boudin didn't have a machine of his own and they gave him an entire department at UC Berkeley after his disastrous recall loss. A department specifically made for creating propaganda for his policies that the voters rejected.

There's a larger machine at work, much greater than the petty personal ones individual politicians can build. There's a chance she gets nothing, but I expect they'll at least give her a nonprofit doing $10000/plate "rich women's issues" dinners. That was her key demo, and they need to send the signal that they take care of their own.

And, although she lost, I'm not sure you can say it was badly spent. As stupid as it is that paying Beyonce to fart in your direction can make voters want to vote for you, if you're flush with cash and you think it'll help, why not? What else would the campaign spend it on? Yet more clueless college grads to run social media accounts and spam Reddit with Kamala memes?

This is glossing over the miserable optics of paying (out of touch) celebrities to be your friends. Of course this wasn't known prior to the election results but it's another count amongst many in which the democratic are currently a laughingstock.

That indicates that Democrats are weak when it comes to earned media. That's a massive issue, but it's a separate one from "I have a giant bag of money and need to spend it." The latter is a good problem to have, even if you're chasing after increasingly marginal edges with each additional dollar.

The latter is a good problem to have, even if you're chasing after increasingly marginal edges with each additional dollar.

Only if it's not also in direct conflict with your "get billionaire funding out of politics!" messaging.

If the rumors are true, it was very badly spent indeed. People are saying that she paid Beyonce $10 million, Lizzo $2.5 million, Cardi B $3 million, and Lady Gaga $5 million.

The value of these endorsements is close to zero. In fact, Lizzo and Cardi B may have negative endorsement value given what they represent. Lizzo: "Just imagine, if Kamala wins, the whole country could be like Detroit".

The payments seem so high as to be scarcely believable so I'd hold off on judgment for now. But if true, it seems like she ran her campaign like the Biden administration has run the country, with no regard for frugality and wasting money on useless vanity projects.

lol lizzo . even the marketplace agrees she is overrated

Maybe I'm delusional regarding the cost of things but it feels like you could do so much more with all this money. Just hire Mr. Beast and give him 100 million. Hell, go to a swing state and spend 20 million on some small scale infrastructure project. Or just hire a different candidate.

but who? it becomes evident, when you look at it, the dems have such poor choices. They put all their eggs in the Hillary/Biden baskets . The GOP can always find populist Trump wannabes of the same sort of mold.

Just hire Mr. Beast

A man who became famous primarily by creating content appealing to a demographic who are too young to vote?

This is better than lizzo, beyonce,

I don't think mr. beast is a democrat through and would refuse

Considering the mental maturity of those doing the voting, he's the perfect guy.

Harris staffers seem to have been running a campaign that appeals to themselves, personally, with the celebrity concerts and so forth. A fun big party for the Dem staffer class. Of course what appeals to the Dem staffer class is not what appeals to the voting public, in many ways opposite to it.

While the sort of corruption where politicians misuse taxpayer money obviously gets more attention, the sort of lower-level corruption where political parties and organizations misuse donations, membership fees, money from ownings etc. for this sort of stuff is probably rather more common.

It's winning by losing. among the biggest recipients of those trump tax cuts will be wealthy liberal elites and woke businesses anyway.

Like Springtime for Hitler?

A fun big party for the Dem staffer class.

A good description for the Democratic Party as a whole.

Harris staffers seem to have been running a campaign that appeals to them, personally, with the celebrity concerts and so forth. A fun big party for the Dem staffer class. Of course what appeals to the Dem staffer class is not what appeals to the voting public, in many ways opposite to it.

The parallels between She Hulk Attorney at law and kamala's campaign are writing themselves. Up to Megan Thee Stallion's ass twerking convincing the public that showrunners have no idea what they are doing. And the end results.

The purpose of a system is what it does. This is related to the iron law of bureaucracy. The reason campaigns want money isn’t so that they can win elections. The reason campaigns want money is so that they can run the campaign. More money = more stuff for the people running the campaign.

As for why it seems to affect Democrats more than Republicans, guess which party has non-profit employees as a constituency.

Celeb endorsements also are about building a coalition of supporters. Winning is secondary. Even if young people are unreliable voters or cannot vote, they still will grow up and enter society and affect it in many ways.

A tweet I just saw:

Trump is President-elect for two days:

  • Stock market hits record high
  • Migrant caravan at our border dissolves
  • Hamas calls for end to war
  • Bitcoin hits record high
  • Putin ready to end Ukraine war
  • Qatar kicks out Hamas leaders
  • EU will buy U.S. gas not Russian gas
  • Putin will sell oil in U.S. dollars
  • Zelenskyy phones Trump & Elon
  • NYC Mayor ends vouchers for illegals
  • Mexico to stop migrants at U.S. border
  • China wants to work peacefully with us
  • Big U.S. company to move out of China

I repeat: Trump has been President-elect for two days.

Can any of you confirm or deny any of these claims?

Stock market hits record high

It's easy to hit a record high when the last prior high was the day of the election. I believe though that Trump will make the world safer by acting as a deterrent by being perceived as less of a pushover compared to the Democrats. Trump introduces uncertainty into the diplomatic calculus. With Harris you know what you will get; less so with Trump.

NYC is ending their voucher program, although it's not clear that Trump has anything to do with it. https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/4980386-new-york-city-ending-migrant-debit-card-program/

Previously, illegal migrants were given ~$1k a month ($350 a weeks) for groceries via prepaid debit cards while they were staying in hotels. It started in part because the free food vendor previously used by the city wasn't cutting it, so it was viewed as more cost efficient to switch to the cards.

I did look into some of those:

Stock market hits record high Bitcoin hits record high EU will buy U.S. gas not Russian gas Zelenskyy phones Trump & Elon

These are true.

Hamas calls for end to war

This is true but highly misleading, they want Israel to surrender, basically.

Qatar kicks out Hamas leaders

This is unclear, Israel says they did, Qatar says they didn't.

China wants to work peacefully with us

This is true but they say it after every election.

Putin will sell oil in U.S. dollars

Putin has not explicitly stated whether he will or will not sell oil in U.S. dollars. Due to the sanctions, Russia is actually unable to sell oil in U.S. dollars.

Russia has not sought after and does not seek after rejecting the dollar use, President Vladimir Putin said at the plenary session of the Valdai Discussion Club.

"We - Russia in any case - do not reject the dollar and do not intend to do this. We were merely denied of using the dollar as the payment instrument," Putin said. "In my opinion, this is very foolish from the side of US financial authorities because the entire power of the US to date rests on that, on the dollar," he noted.

Russia is not struggling with the US currency but is thinking of creating new instruments in response to new trends of global economic development, he added.

https://tass.com/economy/1869185

Putin ready to end Ukraine war

This implies that Putin's terms for ending the conflict/war goals have changed since Trump became president elect. In June this year Putin stated terms were Ukrainian recognition of Russia's annexation of the four oblasts and abandoning any plan of joining NATO and that still seems to be the case.

Trump: Your terms are acceptable.

If Biden were smart, he'd pre-empt Trump and take the exact same deal. He might even win a Nobel Peace Prize if he did.

China wants to work peacefully with us

They've been saying that for ages, they have this holier-than-thou attitude where they go 'unlike the US, we think the world is big enough for America and China to be big powers - also stop making provocations in the South China Sea and encouraging separatism, you're stirring up trouble and spreading a Cold War mindset'.

The Chinese version of 'working peacefully with us' is just the same as the US version of 'being held accountable to the international community', it's a polite way of saying 'we are the good guys, we set the fundamental rules on what's acceptable, you can retain some sovereignty but not where it crosses our red lines'.

Not to dispute your point that nothing changed about what they are saying, but equivocating the two positions seems a bit off. Chinese "red lines" are drawn around the PRC itself, a bunch of reefs and one island next door; US "red lines" are conterminous with the PRC border on a good day, while on bad days they actually reach inside the country to also enclose HK, Xinjiang and/or Falun Gong.

True, on reflection there's a lot of flexibility with these things. The US used to only focus on the Americas as its sphere of uncontested influence - that changed into a global crusade.

China used to be principally concerned with mainland Asia and its immediate neighbours, acting in Korea, Vietnam and India. But even in the Maoist era they had a global foreign policy, propping up Albania against the USSR. Today they're still most interested in immediate neighbours but they do have global interests in resources, investments, infrastructure and so on. Australia is competing to out-influence China in the Solomon islands, well beyond the Nine Dash Line.

They're a big power and I think they have big ambitions. They're feeling the same seductive rush of power that saw America head out into the world all those years ago.

Putin ready to end Ukraine war

Putin has been ready to end the war since day 1 of the war, and likely before day 1 as well.
Having one side surrender is a definite way to end a war.

Hamas calls for end to war

Hamas would be happy to end the war any day since about October 8, 2023.
It's very nice when you do what Hamas did on Oct 7, get a slap on the wrist and just walk away.

China wants to work peacefully with us

China would certainly want to stay at peace with the US while, for instance, invading Taiwan. There's nothing wrong with wanting to not be on the receiving end of a trade war, tariffs or sanctions.
Especially when you are doing something that should get you sanctioned.

The part missing in all of these is some kind of a trade in return, for instance China dropping all claims on Taiwan.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to not be on the receiving end of a trade war, tariffs or sanctions.

Trade wars only have receiving ends.

The part missing in all of these is some kind of a trade in return, for instance China dropping all claims on Taiwan.

Has the United States ever made this request? It recognizes that Beijing is the sole legal government of China, and that Taiwan is part of China.

I believe the official position of both Taipei and Beijing is that there is but one China and that Taiwan is part of it. They disagree on which government is legitimate for it, though.

As such, I'm not surprised the US endorses this stance (although it does have some relations with Taiwan). I do hear that the vibe in Taiwan is shifting toward more acceptance of standalone independence, too.

The US? Probably not, the US has been quietly maintaining status quo amid open discussion of very much not peaceful actions in case China would actually attempt to enforce the sole legal government part.

Qatar kicks out Hamas leaders

This point isn't accurate. It's based on anonymous US state department officials and has been denied by Qatar. Qatar has said that they think both parties are negotiating in bad faith and that they are no longer willing to be mediators for that kind of dialogue. What that actually means for Hamas' polticial office in Qatar is unclear, but it certainly isn't "Qatar is in awe of Trump so they're kicking Hamas out."

Alternately they're kicking 'em out now before the cheques start bouncing.

As another user pointed out down thread, one of the most effective things the first Trump administration did to stablize the Middle East was to cut US funding to Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Et Al. Biden has since reinstated the old Clinton and Obama era policy of funding radical moderate muslim fundementalist groups in the name of "outreach" but the Qataris aren't dumb, and presumably don't want to find themselves left holding the bag when Hamas' money runs out.

Is the US funding Qatar in any real way ?

The US's biggest international military base is in Qatar. Qatar sells oil to everyone. If anything, the US doesn't buy much because it sources oil locally.

What leverage does the US have on Qatar ?

Is the US funding Qatar in any real way?

No, we're funding ISIS and the Iranians. I'm merely suggesting that the Quatri are smart enough to figure out which way the wind is blowing.

Yes I don’t know why the posts above don’t acknowledge that Qatar hosted Hamas, the Taliban etc with the explicit support and encouragement of the US.

Only because you didn't actually read the post did you?

We were supporting them but now we probably wont be.

At least not for the next four years.

Yes but the implication above was that the US merely tolerated or accepted the presence of these forces in Qatar, and that they were expelled out of fear this tolerance would not be extended. In truth, the US actively wanted them there for many years so that there was neutral ground for negotiation.

Hamas calls for end to war

Putin ready to end Ukraine war

China wants to work peacefully with us

These have made occasional suggestions of such nature for years now.

EU will buy U.S. gas not Russian gas

EU already buys a lot of US gas (19,4 % of all EU gas, according to this). https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/infographics/eu-gas-supply/

Zelenskyy phones Trump & Elon

All world leaders of note will congratulate whatever US president gets elected and will try to communicate with him as a matter of course. Harris would haev been no different. The only notable thing is Elon's participation in the call.

The stock market and bitcoin are in fact at all-time highs. To be fair, they were already close to all-time highs before the election, but there was a large spike immediately after the election that can only be attributed to Trump. (The popular cope is that the markets were reacting to a decisive result, not nessesarily to Trump himself. This is cope.)

(The popular cope is that the markets were reacting to a decisive result, not nessesarily to Trump himself. This is cope.)

If this 'cope' isn't true, why did Biden get a similar boost in 2020?

Because he ran on a "return to normal"? I certainly don't think his (well Warren's) economic policy was priced in at that time. People weren't expecting the SEC to antagonize every sector of finance or for inflation to balloon to such levels.

I don't necessarily believe it's cope. A weak government (of either side) with no mandate is just less good than a clear victory (of either side).

Sure there's individual losers and winner (oil & gas especially), but I'd say there is a combination of a Trump bump specifically attributed to him with a bump for "someone has a mandate to govern decisively".

EU will buy U.S. gas not Russian gas

My gas bill went up 2.5x times in '23. US LNG is, at the very least, 3x more expensive intrinsically compared to piped gas. It's quite likely following the war, Nord Stream is going to be repaired (currently 3/4 pipes are broken) and put back into order.

Gas prices have already devastated German industry, we could just shutter everything and keep buying US energy, but I don't think that's likely. Not everyone's like me and considering leaving this place.

China wants to work peacefully with us

That's what you heard. What the Chinese meant is that they're not Khorne enthusiasts, they don't consider shedding blood the point of war and want to see US bow out of the contest over who gets to call the shots in East Asia peacefully.

Their plan is, build up the army and the army's navy to the point US is going to be facing insurmountable odds - overwhelmed with masses of precision weapons. According to simulations, US is almost always losing the war anyway because it has no good missile defense, not enough interceptors and all local bases are in range of Chinese missiles.

In addition, likely China can blockade Japan and Korea from, at least tankers, without ever leaving home. If Iran can make a few 100 ballistic missiles, Chinese can make thousands and thousands of accurate ones. US is making ~150 ABM interceptors a year. No contest.

So a protracted war would hurt everyone, not just Chinese, and ever more so, as China's moving to using more EVs and building up their domestic grid.

According to simulations, US is almost always losing the war anyway because it has no good missile defense, not enough interceptors and all local bases are in range of Chinese missiles.

I expect by 2030 that the US stockpile of hypersonics will compare or exceed China's and the calculus will change considerably. The US machine moves more slowly but once it gains momentum it tends to get there.

Hypersonics are asymmetric. A hundred hypersonics flying toward CSG-7 have much more significant implications than a hundred flying to some missile battery in Shandong.

The US machine moves more slowly but once it gains momentum it tends to get there.

It was not the case back in the glory days of WW2. Today, it took Americans 15 years to solve oxygen issues in an oxygen generator for pilots.

The only possible case of this happening is if both are true a) US develops AI, and it's not a matter of compute but some special sauce (it has a proverbial moat). b) US manages to get around all the legal issues in expanding industry - endless wrangling over backyards, enviromental issues

If a) is not true, China will boost their manufacturing likewise. If b) is not true, US won't be able to expand its own manufacturing.

Also, unless AI at the level of hypersonic aviation researcher become available, China will have an edge population wise. Chinese aren't as imaginative but are less easily distracted - way more engineers. Furthermore, rivalry will drive out Chinese ethnic workers out of the US, quite likely.

It's other way around, every Chinese engineer with a 120 IQ is aiming to live comfortably in California rather than raise their kids in a totalitarian dystopia.

If anything, it further underlines how essential it is that we return California to a state of at least half-decent quarter-decent government. Last week's moderate sweep in SF gives me a sliver of hope.

Chinese engineers and scientists elect to live in the USA because you can make crazy amounts of money here. Style of government is rarely part of the decision function.

I know a lot of Chinese engineers and none of them are against the government, even though plenty have specific complaints here and there. Only one has taken up a hobby, hunting, that would be unavailable to him if he moved back.

Culturally they go along to get along but still most of their entertainment, food, and holidays are Chinese.

Used to be the case. Very much used to be the case. Not the case anymore. Lot of science talent has gone to China. Lot of white scientists have gone to China, where there's no DEI, and ideology in science is restricted to having students take a few hours monthly. They have no problem with insane school policies, homeless junkie schizos etc. China is cleaning up the air. Closing down old power plants, building up wind & solar in inner Mongolia, building new coal power plants with an eye to be converted to modular nuclear. They're currently in lead in nuclear reactor tech - having learned everything the West forgot, building up old & new types, more than the rest of the world combined. Cost of living is a lot lower in China, and wages are getting better.

Assuming you're american, China is extremely cheap, the RMB undervalued by 50%. You can go see for yourself. If you've got foreign SIM card, your internet isn't even gated behind the great firewall. With machine translation, you wouldn't even really be lost. Don't think they install shit on your phone unless you enter from one of the 'stans where they have an insurgent problem.

You could just go take a look. Or look around for someone who works there.

Guy here has a number of episodes interviewing whites who work or worked in China. https://www.manifold1.com/episodes

I've been more than a dozen times. Beneath the glossy exterior there's a society where everyone's fate is at the hands of a midwit apparatchik.

Moreover, the fate of your kids is dismal.

where everyone's fate is at the hands of a midwit apparatchik.

... who do you think caused European energy policy ?

Midwit unaccountable apparatchiks ruining entire continents is SOP. Germany's disastrous energy policy started when the fucking Greens got two secretaries or undersecretaries to the ministry of economy, iirc, cca 2000.

Try to show me Energiewende, based on wishful thinking, was sound policy. It wasn't. It was pie in the sky, cost must falls, we'll make it nonsense, that led to what everyone predicted. Sky high energy prices, burning more coal, spending megabucks on keeping standby plants running so you don't have brownouts.

Yet that doomed an entire continent. No one was ever asked.

I ask you again who in the US wanted infinity migration and 7% of population of Haiti moved in?

At least the CCP has somewhat sound priorities: having power and getting rich. Not turning China into Brazil with worse weather.

Oh, I totally agree on midwit policy makers.

I do think there is a funny kind of duality here -- in the west some moron can wreck your country but at least you can't personally be thrown in a dungeon for making fun of a politician on social media.

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It's other way around, every Chinese engineer with a 120 IQ is aiming to live comfortably in California rather than raise their kids in a totalitarian dystopia.

This doesn't seem to track to me. Aren't a lot more Chinese students electing to go back to China rather than stay in the U.S. these days?

From my experience, many Chinese people really enjoy Chinese culture and want to live there over the US even though US wages are much better. Maybe 20 years ago things were different, but China is a lot nicer place to live in now.

Another thing to consider is that a single Chinese-born man living in the US has bleak dating prospects.

Sure, the supply of Chinese students graduating exceeds demand. But there are a couple million around LA man.

Plus, they can make beautiful wasian babies.

We can't even produce enough shells for ukraine. It's explosive in a metal container, how hard could it be? And on the other end of the scale we can't produce enough ships, and also some of the ones we do produce are garbage, and we don't have enough sailors to properly man said ships. I don't see much reason to be more optimistic about the shiny new thing.

It could be worse. Here's what things are like in the Indian Navy.

But yeah, the idea that the US is capable of outproducing China is comical.

Hamas calls for end to war

They always called for the to the war. They offered to return hostages in exchange for IDF staying out of Gaza.

EU will buy U.S. gas not Russian gas

EU was sanctioning Russia since the Ukraine war, so probably nothing to do with Trump.

China wants to work peacefully with us

China has been saying that since the Nixon visit?

They always called for the to the war. They offered to return hostages in exchange for IDF staying out of Gaza.

How is this even a thing? Why don't they simply return the hostages unilaterally?