This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
From /u/gwern (@gwern ?): analysis on China’s semiconductor industry.
Recent export controls are directly targeting the Chinese ability to fabricate cutting-edge chips. The subsequent effect on electronics prices and the much-maligned supply chain won’t be pleasant—especially for China, and especially if their industry is already slumping. Consequences for the rest of the world are left as an exercise to the reader.
Given the forum, it’s not surprising that the focus is on AI. I’m more interested in the geopolitical outlook. This is an incentive to retaliate, perhaps even against the other regional semiconductor fabricator. And it is suggested that the timing is a calculated insult to Chinese leadership, as they are apparently going through a periodic dog-and-pony show of elections. Gwern suggests that China would otherwise be raising hell.
The counterpart in US domestic politics: crunching semiconductor supply will not mix well with inflation. I don’t think adding $50 to the next iPhone will make or break Democrats, but it seems unlikely to help.
I want to place predictions, but I don’t have a good grasp of the metrics involved. Place your bets, I guess, for:
China taking economic action
China taking military action
Consequences on Chinese industry
Tech policy towards China becoming a wedge issue in American politics
My response on reddit:
All those alarmist articles about China growing to eclipse the US by 2032 or whatever, and then making a move on Taiwan... (On Iran making da bomb...) If it's clear to analytics what «will» happen in 2025-2032, then why wait and allow it to happen? Why not counter it the instant the advantage is sufficient, if that's what is plainly implied? Did everyone buy into the assumption that American decision makers are uninformed bureaucrats just going through the motions reactively, because that's implied by how some of our pet priorities with high expected utility get treated? Just the psyop known as Hanlon's razor?
Earlier discussion.
My belief is that I cannot predict the details of the next stage and will inevitably get embarrassed, but that my Political Von Neumanns thesis will be vindicated, as it is already vindicated by this extremely effective economic war – a classic problem with predicting entities smarter than oneself. The US of A is one of a handful of countries with intelligent elites, and it's an economic, military, cultural hegemon, therefore possessing great freedom of action. Its laws, sanctions, fashions and even risible delusions of its campus activists hold exterritorial power. It will win one way or another; does it matter which disaster move exactly they'll get to exploit? China, meanwhile, has only disaster moves left.
Open military moves? What can that achieve? (Though I'd have advised an attempt at annexing Taiwan, and escalation to a total nuclear war. It won't do them any good in the moment but may secure some possibility for surviving people of Han background to have agency in the future. Naturally, no sane decision maker and no CCP apparatchik reasons like that). There's no chance of a fait accompli annexation, especially after the Ukrainian case. They'll have all targets of value destroyed, probably fail the annexation anyway, get embargoed and starve; strategically significant Taiwanese will either refuse to cooperate or flee with American and Japanese aid. Even in the absolute best case, by the point PRC gets anywhere with plugging seized assets into their supply chains and replacing the unobtainable imports, Americans will be launching domestic 3nm fabs and finishing their military AGI development.
Keep biding their time, now with deflating economy? To what end? In a few years, Taiwan will leapfrog the Mainland in military technology both domestic and imported, and eventually declare independence and enter defensive pacts, precluding the success of conventional attacks. I have to remind people here that the idea was to build competitive economy in Pearl River Delta Economic Zone, edging out Taiwanese businesses, brain-draining the island, lowering the «Taiwanese identity»'s relative prestige and eventually just swallowing it by fiat, sort of like it was done with Hong Kong (and even then it relied much more on brute force). Can't really do that when the gap with Taiwan is growing, not shrinking; the gap in scientific productivity e.g. Nature Index, GDP per capita, comprehensive economic health, life satisfaction, everything.
Economic action? Like what? They need the world more than the world needs them; much of our common prosperity over the last few decades is powered by Chinese labor, and we shall weep for its passing, but prosperity is not strategically vital. Even those fancy new TSMC chips are not vital – Arizona, Israel, South Korea can produce adequate ones. Everything that the Chinese do is commodified and reliant on higher-margin, more sophisticated Western tools which could just as well be utilized to rebuild industry elsewhere. Realistically they only have monopoly on rare earth metals, and it's wholly a matter of political will on the West, preparedness to weather a few hard years. I am positive that when presented with the frame of an «existential conflict with fascists», people of the «free world» will not just forgo buying another iPhone but proudly starve and freeze to death, if politely asked to. The assumption of materialism and small-mindedness of the opposing side is a characteristic failure mode of authoritarian regimes, and in this particular case a projection (same story with jaded Russian «ilita»).
In the end it's very trivial. Rule one: be attractive. Rule two: Don't be unattractive. If you cannot attract talent and cannot keep domestic talent in, you will fail – you'll just bleed to half-death and begin making erratic self-defeating moves that only talentless people consider reasonable. Of course, if you lack talent yourself, you'll fail to realize the depth of those rules to begin with. Xi is not very talented, and it seems like he doesn't listen to talented people.
So it goes.
That's funny. When you've spoken about the powers that be before, I've wanted to suggest you check out The Second Apocalypse. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, that seems like the kind of thing that would be commonly brought up in a book club thread here.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link