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 -
I have the exact opposite view on this. Market share is the long term play – maybe 30 years. Your “long term” AGI supremacy play is a no-term Hail Mary premised on some dubious assumptions and, frankly, low IQ racism about Chinese capacity for independent R&D.
It's a philosophical commitment to independence. They enact protectionist measures for fledgling industries, and scale them down after achieving competitiveness, like they cut subsidies for EVs or batteries.
As I've repeatedly said, current Chinese AI software has low adoption, especially by talented collectives, and thus low development velocity; so long as it doesn't get adoption it doesn't matter if they can physically make good chips, they'll remain vulnerable to export controls and will have to do another multi-year moonshot after the next Democrat opportunistically cuts them off. H20 and RTX Pro 6000D are just not providing enough value to justify further software stagnation (not to mention reduced revenues to domestic manufacturers). H200, because it is both a powerful GPU and scales to large training clusters, seems to be marginally valuable enough so we see more nuanced regulation. After domestic chips become better than H200 (or rather, domestic systems + power subsidy become competitive with Nvidia clusters) and there's wide adoption of Huawei CANN and Cambricon NeuWare, I predict that they will relax controls on imported chips, maybe replacing it with a simple tariff. Your model suggests that they will tighten controls. It's an empirical matter, we will see in a matter of 2 years, most likely.
As explained above, it does not follow and you're refusing to understand what they're doing.
Hardly. If Chinese chips become better than the best Nvidia has to offer, there is, as you say, little reason to ban imports since approximately nobody will want to use them. EVs are a good example - how many Chinese people buy American EVs? I'd assume the number is approximately zero since American EVs are about 5x the price for a comparable product.
Of course, if Chinese chips are better than Nvidia's best, the prospects for Nvidia market share become quite slim. You seem to want it both ways - Nvidia exports to China will ensure Nvidia's dominance in China (lock in! Efficiency! Yields!), but also China is going to ensure that domestic chips are the market leader.
Well, this reveals the problem with first principles thinking popular among rationalists. Tesla model Y is consistently one of the hottest EVs in China. They totally love Teslas. It genuinely has advantages over domestic cars, they constantly make videos where its FSD dunks on Xiaomi and other competition. Upper class Chinese buy Teslas.
(Of course, it's Tesla made in Shanghai. It so happens that Shanghai Gigafactory is about 2.3x more productive per worker.)
Similar logic can apply to Nvidia.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link