site banner
PaperclipPerfector  26d ago (text post)   24116 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 14, 2026

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.

2
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Begrudging congratulations to @self_made_human for producing a book review entry that's good enough to make it as a finalist of Scott's Book Review Contest, yet AI-sloppy enough to make the comments section focus almost exclusively on the (un)acceptability of undisclosed use of AI.

This reminds me of a video I stumbled on the other day. It's a 12-minute "documentary-style" video essay telling the story of a rescue dog that gets dropped off at a shelter without any documentation. It's a cute, healthy dog that should be eminently adoptable except for his utter refusal to engage with anyone. Five months in, the dog's time at the shelter is up, and he is scheduled for transfer to doggy prison (or whatever, the point is that it's the end of trying to get him adopted). But a woman brings in her small, shy six-year-old deaf girl, and amazingly the dog responds to the child alone, and knows all the hand-sign commands. Turns out the dog was raised by a deaf old man, who then had a stroke. That's the gist, though the video packs a whole lot more dramatic beats, twists, and turns.

It's a real tear-jerker... if it describes a true story. Unless it's made up. Which, come to think of it (I say to myself as I review my reaction to the video), it probably is. Because how can there possibly be a dog smart enough to learn sign commands, yet so dumb that it couldn't possibly figure out any other forms of human-dog communication. Yeah, I smell bullshit.

But OK, maybe it's like a video short fiction, it's not supposed to be real, no more than any other kind of fiction. Then I can judge the video on this fictional-short-film kind of merit, and not worry about thinking critically on the veracity of facts. Damn it, they really should have specified that this is fiction. Then I can enjoy it as such. It has good plot beats. The actors are cute and relatable. Especially the dog.

Unless it's AI-generated. Posted March 2026. Possible. Fuck.

When I read something that, presumably, is the human author's thoughts, only for it to turn out to be LLM's output, I feel a similar betrayal of trust as when I read something purportedly factual that turns out to be fictional, even if not actively meant to deceive. This is definitely true if the entire output is LLM-produced, and remains partially true if LLM is used for editing that inserts LLM-created phrases. Like this zinger from the review:

He holds the buck in his hand, hot as coal, and tries to douse it in hotter tears. He orders his thumping heart to be still. He fails on both counts.

I hope this forum preserves the norm of humans writing for humans by humans, even as I know that the overall tide is flowing the other way.

When I read something that, presumably, is the human author's thoughts, only for it to turn out to be LLM's output, I feel a similar betrayal of trust as when I read something purportedly factual that turns out to be fictional, even if not actively meant to deceive. This is definitely true if the entire output is LLM-produced

I think the kids these days are using the term "meat proxy".

Morality-wise, for art and personal communication (including forums), I think it’s fine for someone to use LLMs as long as they disclose and the platform doesn’t forbid it. Not disclosing upfront is so-so, what’s very rude is lying when asked.

Outside morality, I’d recommend maybe using LLM assistance, but making the surface output 100% you, even if that means paraphrasing LLM text or tracing LLM art. Ideally you’d double-check and improve it in the process.

I think when LLMs help create something genuinely impressive and only do it requiring human assistance, their public perception will improve. Most people don’t care about digital art or synthetic music because it contains human expression, those tools are very flexible and different people have widely different styles, but LLM output tends to be very similar and is hard to guide.

I found an interesting YouTube channel all about the history of industry and engineering. I've enjoyed a couple of the videos, they're focused and informative and broadly of the sort of quality you'd expect from a YouTube video essay. Of course all the thumbnails are AI slop because 95% of YouTube thumbnails are AI slop now, but then I looked at the dates on the videos and they're all from this year.

So I think it's safe to assume that the script, the voiceover are 100% AI, and the editing and production are more than likely AI assisted, but it makes me wonder how much of the video is fake too. I'm not sure it is as it's mostly archive footage, and AI video tends to be fairly easy to spot even when it's not dealing with things that involve complex machinery and coordination, but the seed of doubt that it's planted has put me off watching any more of them.

95% of YouTube thumbnails are AI slop now,

Not quite true. I immediately hit "don't recommend" the moment I see a slop thumbnail. Youtube still manages to deliver many reccs.

I even block formerly good creators who have begun to slop it up for some stock images in the middle of the vids. Hard rule: see ai, block channel. No exceptions. Good riddance, there are many more out there. I still spend hours every day watching human yt content.

Edit: I just checked my youtube, out of 25 top reccs, 2 thumbnails had signs of ai in any form - I consider even minor edits with gpt to be a no-go. I blocked those channels of course.

I also block channels that put out slop but thumbnails? Who gives a shit.

You do whatever works for you, but I'm just making a point that there are tons of channels out there that don't do slop thumbnails. In fact it's likely a minority that does.

I wonder how long "there's the same human talking to the camera in every video on the channel" will be enough to reasonably identify the video as human-made.

If the narrator is never seen on screen, I assume it's AI nowadays unless I hear the little hesitations and changes in tone of voice that proves it's a human.

I had a similar experience. I've been reading the Aubrey/Maturin novels (which I wholehartedly recommend), so I needed to get a better grasp on sail-ship terminology and rigging. I found some reasonable diagrams and explainers, but I wanted more visuals to make the whole rigamarole stick in my head. Came across a comprehensive youtube video that seemed to fit the bill, though I quickly realized it's AI-generated.

So I thought to myself: well, AI-generated visuals are better than none, right? But then I considered: well, how would AI know what's what? What is it trained on? How careful were the prompts to ensure quality? If any? Isn't it more likely that the entire video, from start to finish, is based on a quick prompt with no thought for ensuring accuracy? And then I noticed the carpenter hammering nonsensically off to the side of a random spike stuck out of a yardarm. Yup, no attempt to ensure accuracy. So yes, AI-generated visuals are worse than none.

the Aubrey/Maturin novels (which I wholeheartedly recommend)

+1

comprehensive youtube video

This video does a pretty comprehensive job, probably 80%+ of the stuff that's not covered in the standard editions' front matter. Probably not AI, given the year, audio cuts, and the fact the guy shows the workflow in other videos. IMO not strictly necessary if you want to just jump in. You can just read the novels like the nautical stuff is Trek technobabble until the sailors explain the terms to Maturin through exposition.

Thanks for the video recommend, I now have a new favorite youtube channel to explore!

Part of the attraction of the Aubrey/Maturin novels for me is how well Patrick O'Brien manages to convey the sheer complexity of construction and operation of a man-of-war sail ship, with the added convolution and dysfunction of the system of staffing and commanding it. Reading these novels makes me want to understand the system better, and understanding the system makes reading these novels even more interesting, an excellent positive feedback.

I saw a video on the history of the wheel. The oldest wheel ever excavated consisted of three slabs of wood pegged together and sawed into a circular shape - yet the video's images of this object mysteriously grew spokes and lost them between shots. Nobody bothered to edit this thing before posting it, obviously.

When I read something that, presumably, is the human author's thoughts, only for it to turn out to be LLM's output, I feel a similar betrayal of trust as when I read something purportedly factual that turns out to be fictional, even if not actively meant to deceive.

I agree, but only partially. My red line is AI assisted human writing as opposed to pure AI bot writing. The point being that we already lived in this reality. For instance for years and years youtubers and bloggers and forum posters used computer algorithms to evaluate their content creation. If everything you create in your video is informed by the algorithm from the length, language used, thumbnail even to analysis of content that has highest chance of viral impact - you were as much a slave to "AI" in 2019 as you are in 2026 if you use AI for research or refining of your post. The original idea of "human writing for humans by humans" is long gone.

Begrudging congratulations to @self_made_human for producing a book review entry that's good enough to make it as a finalist of Scott's Book Review Contest, yet AI-sloppy enough to make the comments section focus almost exclusively on the (un)acceptability of undisclosed use of AI.

From the context, I was wondering if he was the author (or the A character, in particular) of that review.

Still, I think it is bad form to out him here, where it will be difficult to reply without acknowledging his authorship (which would technically be against the rules of the contest). Though he could always create another account for the purpose of maintaining deniability.

only for it to turn out to be LLM's output, I feel a similar betrayal of trust

Personally, I dislike undisclosed GenAI content, no matter what form it takes. Source code, text, pictures, videos. I am fine with people using GenAI if they are open about it. But artisinal human-crafted content is still a signal that someone cared enough to create it.

For example, if I get a reply on this forum, I will generally read it -- if a human feels it is worth their time to write two pages of text engaging with my argument, I feel I kinda owe them that. If instead someone is merely running an agent tasked with replying exhaustively to any comments, I will treat that reply very different -- "someone cared enough to spend a fraction of a cent on tokens to generate a reply for me".

That being said, in some contexts different filters can replace the "human invested time" filter. For an ACX contest finalist, the relevant filter is that people voted for it as a finalist despite it (presumably) being heavy on GenAI. Likewise, if Scott published a story by AI-Scott, I would trust his reputation and experience in hitting the taste of his audience that I would give it a try. Still, I would like to know so beforehand.

For the ACX context, I would have expected that there is some infrastructure to disclose the use of AI in place, if there is not, then that seems a serious oversight. Though I could imagine that Scott deliberately withheld that information to see how a well-prompted AI entry would do on merit, while also filtering out a million bad entries from voting.

He outed himself here months ago -- which is for sure against the rules, but Scott comments that he noted it and just did a shrug emoji I guess?

Still, I think it is bad form to out him here, where it will be difficult to reply without acknowledging his authorship (which would technically be against the rules of the contest)

The very first paragraph of the book review, right after the opening quote from the book, is a copy-pasted anecdote that self_made_human shared on this forum. It's very memorable. Plus, someone already explicitly pointed the author out in the comments section of the book review.

I am prepared to just give up on the internet and live offline. Seems like we'll get there soon.

I long wished that the internet would become such nonsense that people would just revert back to the 90s consensus of "these are crazy people, the real world is what matters".

But that's not what's gonna happen. We're instead going to use this as the motivation for totalitarian control and force ourselves to live in a gimped version of the shitty online world.

I expect the end result is we'll all have to pay for a basic AI assistant that we'll use to interface with the internet on our behalf.

I hope this forum preserves the norm of humans writing for humans by humans, even as I know that the overall tide is flowing the other way.

There is no other form of writing.

I hope I will live to see this psychosis around text generation not being genuine somehow be ridiculed like the disdain for photography came to be ridiculed. And I further hope that the same will happen to the ridiculous anthropomorphization of these tools.

What people dislike about AI sounding texts is that they are trite, not that they are AI generated. But we somehow have to pretend that most human written text isn't shit and that the painstaking process of communication imbues it with further value, all out of some misplaced luddite syndicalism.

Writing is communication, and at its highest, art. All of which comes from intent and cognition in the mind that originates it, and none of this is untrue of generated text, much like none of this is untrue of photography.

As this place exists to pursue debate in political ideas, and not as an exercise in keyboard assisted calligraphy, I believe the norm in question will come to be seen as not only antiquated, but impossible to enforce.

You are ignoring the widely repeated argument against it that is based on the attention economy - "I read it because you took the time to write it" etc. - which I find much more compelling. Adjacent sentiments were reasonable long before genAI, which I find to disprove the "psychosis" angle: if my long-distance girlfriend wanted to call me to give me an identical 10-second good morning greeting every day, that would be much easier to accept than if she made a 10-second recording and insisted that I play it back at a fixed time every day, and if a friend wrote me a 10-page rant on some topic, I would feel much more compelled to read it than if be sent me a 10-page blog post by someone else that he thinks happens to summarise his exact thoughts on a subject.

More laconically, surely you can't complain if I answer your "I asked AI to write this post for me" by "I asked AI to read your post for me".

Why not use ink and feather then?

It turns out that text has far more uses, even economic uses, than to signal effort.

Because the effort that is being fairly matched is cognitive effort, not incidental physical effort.

I don't deny text has more uses; if the point is to actually obtain information I seek, I don't care for the provenance (that's why I'm happy with a lot of AI-generated documentation, and will ask Gemini to sift through search results). However, the main point of reading and writing on a forum like this, or blog posts on SSC, is not seeking and providing specific information.

Political debate is more akin to technical manuals than it is with literature, in my view. I understand it is not a popular view around these parts, where people think of what they do as philosophy, but it's misplaced in my view.

The internet's conceit has long been to ignore that few things worth reading weren't worth publishing.

I'm comfortable with a sophisticated-enough model trained on my knowledge and tone to be accessible to my work teams as a utilitarian force multiplier. That day seems a long way off, because even with reams of data to consume that hasn't gotten any better in years.

On a forum built around human discussion, or the human-focused discussions that are important for fostering culture, I reject that AI usage is correct or necessary.

we somehow have to pretend that most human written text isn't shit and that the painstaking process of communication imbues it with further value

Most of the human-written text is indeed shit, because most human thought is half-formed nonsense. The process of getting your thoughts out of your head (writing, speaking, or otherwise) is the first step of actually forming the multi-dimensional incoherent impressions and feelings into something coherent. I know that's how it is for me, and I have witnessed enough college students struggling (when pressed) to get a coherent thought out to suspect that the experience is close to universal. There are the blessed few who can erudite off the cuff, and even fewer of those say anything of substance.

And yes, the process is painstaking. One gets better at the skill of forming and communicating a coherent idea, but that skill requires one to keep putting the thoughts that feel so wholesome and brilliant in one's mind down on paper and recognizing their inanity and pettiness, over and over. Painstaking, and humbling. But valuable. When I take the time to set my half-baked ideas down, I can see where they lead, from outside myself. And as often as not, I end up disagreeing with what I myself have put down, and changing my mind, or adjusting the ideas to something far more nuanced. It makes me more open to further changing my mind on the matter. Hegel's dialectic in action.

So I recognize the value of forming my own ideas in my own halting way. By extension, I support this effort in others.

Well put. Writing changes our ideas and forces us to bring thought, intuition and word into alignment. All three can change in the process. If you don't go through that usually painful process I am sceptical you are getting an ai to accurately express your thoughts. I think it's much more likely you are allowing the ai to determine what you think. Unwritten thoughts are just too inchoate for us to accurately say of an ai response "oh yes, that's exactly how I would have put it".

There’s an abstract idea in the back of my head about “pure” expression, unobstructed by (but requiring some) constraints.

Right now, if you run text through an LLM, it will make it sound less like you and more like every other LLM. I hope we find ways to use AI and other developments to make people more express their pure, unique selves.

Like the invention of new forms of art, back to the first cave paintings, or like the Internet did with personal sites, webcomics, and flash games. Even those constrain the artist to the medium and trends, but I think they are net improvements.

Right now, if you run text through an LLM, it will make it sound less like you and more like every other LLM.

People say this but i think it's completely untrue. You can make the result sound vastly different if you're willing to put some effort into properly using it.

It again sounds to me like criticism of photography "they all look the same", yeah, if you haven't invented or considered a composition grammar or metering and exposure.

What's maybe true is that it'll always sound slightly different than handwritten ways in ways that may or may not be important. But rejecting it altogether as a tool is a stronger claim than that.

I know, survivorship bias, but I’ve never seen a convincing example of LLM-written text that didn’t read at least slightly but noticeably LLM-written, and definitely certain human writing styles I’ve never seen replicated by an LLM. The Unslop Contest tried to produce good AI fiction, and every result has similar LLM prose except the schizophrenic one.

I can think of one but to be fair it's not longform compared to those.

That’s an old post, I think GPT-3. Older LLMs did sound more original, although they hallucinated more. Interestingly, increasing an LLM’s temperature hyperparameter (which I’m almost certain produced the schizophrenic Unslop entry) also makes it sound different and unique, but output nonsense.

Probably because they’re more random, but also (at least GPT-3 does) rely less on fine tuning and more on its training from the Internet.

I hope I will live to see this psychosis around text generation not being genuine somehow be ridiculed like the disdain for photography came to be ridiculed. And I further hope that the same will happen to the ridiculous anthropomorphization of these tools.

Just show me the prompt then. It has the same information density as the output.

LLMs are commonly used to summarize larger texts. This isn't true.

A generated summary of a legal text is more information dense and intelligible by laymen than the sum of its inputs.

Sure, if you ask it to summarize it will summarize and what you say is true. However, LLMs (in general) output such verbosity that it is just certainly true that they are not adding useful information. Obviously if you ask it for a cake recipe it will add information. But, if you're trying to discuss some topic on TheMotte, the output will just be a combination of whatever information is in the input, plus some kind of related informational average from the internet. It's this latter component, I imagine, we recognize as "slop."

By this logic journalists are useless.

Actually, you know what...

What people dislike about AI sounding texts is that they are trite, not that they are AI generated.

I don't think this is true. I think people dislike the auto-generation itself. The simple test of this would be that you can show somebody a text, ask if they enjoy it, get a result, and then reveal to them that it was bot-written and watch them get angry.

I'm willing to bet that if you ran a study where you gave the same text to three groups, where you tell the first group nothing, tell the second group that the text is written by a bot, and tell the third group that the text is written by a human, and then ask them all to rate the text, the second group would rate it the lowest.

Maybe that's irrational, in the same way that people will prefer hand-made or artisanal objects to machined objects, but if so it's still a highly predictable irrationality.

What people dislike about AI sounding texts is that they are trite, not that they are AI generated.

I think it's the other way around. People grow to dislike text that "sounds like AI" because they don't like AI. Em-dashes weren't a problem until AI started using them; "It's not X, it's Y" wasn't a problem until AI started using it; and so on.

Sometimes people dislike AI for inherently ideological reasons, and maybe the tide will shift on that. But I think more frequently, AI becomes synonymous with "a thing that you didn't put as much effort into" because that is factually what it is, and knowing how much effort someone put into something is socially important. (For many people, their biggest exposure to AI output comes from lazy good-for-nothing coworkers/bosses/scammers, and they hate those people!)

Photographs didn't become popular by becoming indistinguishable from paintings. They became their own thing, and people have a decent understanding of how much effort goes into them! If you submitted an inkjet print of a photo to a painting competition, people would still get mad at you.

There are cases where AI that is clearly AI has gotten some mainstream acceptance; people enjoy DougDoug streams and, to some extent, weird demos that obviously couldn't be done another way. But in areas where it's competing directly against art forms that require more effort, people just look for other ways to prove they put in the effort. (Many artists have started recording time-lapses of themselves painting to show that they actually did it; many writers deliberately avoid clichés that AI uses.)

Beyond that people associate AI output with lazy people I think they dislike them because they happen too much and it's indicative of "lazy thinking" on part of both the human and the AI. The argument devolves into a particular style rather than the style being chosen because it supports what the text is supposed to do or communicate.

Is kind of like how some people always tie things back to their hobby horse, except in style form but with the same sort of tortured reasoning and insight loss.

Hopefully this is a transitory problem.

knowing how much effort someone put into something is socially important

That's perceptive.

But the problem is that this also applies to the printing press. Who actually gives a shit about copyist monk stolen valor when we could make the whole of Europe read?

Type made on a printing press continues to be seen as much less valuable than handwritten calligraphy; that's why some people still hand-write their wedding invitations.

Because "valuable" and "expensive" are synonyms, the printing press brought books into reach of a lot more people. But all the forms of art that AI copies were already broadly accessible to everyone. You could already get a near-infinite amount of drawings and videos and TheMotte comments for free online, that's where the AI companies got their training data from.

It is often argued that AI will allow more people to create those things. From the consumer perspective, that just means it's harder for me to find the people who put a lot of actual effort into them, which is what I was mostly looking for in the first place (especially in a social venue like TheMotte), so it's net-negative.

I just find it funny that people reinvent Guénon's tirades against the reign of quantity the second that industry comes for them.

Your love of handwritten text is the same as my love of handmade objects. Quaint but ultimately secondary to the pursuit of ends.

What people dislike about AI sounding texts is that they are trite, not that they are AI generated.

No. I dislike that it is generated by an LLM. Ultimately it comes down to: I care what humans have to say, not clankers. If you can't be assed to actually write something, then I have no desire to read it.

You claim what you really care about is some commitment that the writer has to the output. You want people to suffer enough that what they have to say may have some value.

This logic contradicts your conclusions. Even granting text generation is free of work (it is not), you would have to be interested in generated texts by authors that have proved their commitment through some other method.

For instance, you should be more interested in a terrorists' generated manifesto than in human written ads.

So either it is untrue that this is the reason of your disdain, or it is untrue that what you dislike about generated text is that it is generated.

No, I just want commitment to the actual writing. If I have to suffer reading it, they had better have suffered writing it. I don't care if they have suffered doing some other thing, and in fact in the specific terrorist example that would count against them.

I don't care if they have suffered doing some other thing

Why is suffering using a specific tool a different signal than suffering using another specific tool?

The human has picked the words. Yes, yes, I know, I arbitrarily don't value things like "the human has calligraphied the words in a specific handwriting style and ink", etc etc. I value what I value.

And say what you will about photography, at least it actually captures what had existed at some point, not does something like "an imp inside the machine had been told what the picture looked like in order for it to reproduce it".

at least it actually captures what had existed at some point,

I'm afraid not.

You know what I meant.

More comments

You want people to suffer enough that what they have to say may have some value.

Despite this uncharitable framing, yeschad.jpg, seeing as being human necessarily entails suffering. If this is the main distinction you want to draw between humans and clankers, I'll raise my brow but shrug and nod along so long as it leads you to the same conclusions, i.e that humans have a certain connection to their outputs in a way clankers don't and can't.

Even granting text generation is free of work (it is not), you would have to be interested in generated texts by authors that have proved their commitment through some other method.

This doesn't follow at all. Writing is both art and a means of communication at the same time, and I am perfectly qualified to check out of the implicit writer-to-reader "conversation" if I sense insincerity, regardless of the "artistic" merits of the person trying to dupe me; failing to do so, to take your example, would necessarily entail taking every human-written ad on its face as long as it looks professional enough (and all ads look professional enough, that's like the entire point). Adsloppers are definitely very committed to their creations, they have a real stake in it, yet I do not find it in myself to care. Same with clankers and their, uh, representatives.

You claim what you really care about is some commitment that the writer has to the output. You want people to suffer enough that what they have to say may have some value.

That's a remarkable amount of words you stuffed in my mouth there. I said what I care about: that a human made it. All that nonsense about suffering is your own invention, not anything I actually believe.

A human made generated text. There's no such thing as non-human-made text. Photographs are taken by the photographer, not the camera.

How much would you pay a photographer for a portrait? How much would you pay an oil painter for a portrait?

Depends on the photographer I suppose?

Sally Mann would probably want a lot more than the lady down the street who goes to Paint and Wine nights...

Higher productivity means more units offered at any price and each extra unit costs less, flattening the supply curve.

On the demand side, photographs face many close substitutes and original paintings do not. So for paintings per-unit willingness to pay will be large an lumpy, for photographs it will be small and they will be a near-commodity.

This provides what we see: photographs are exchanged at low prices in large quantities, paintings are exchanged at high prices in low quantities.

Now if we are to analogize this to text, i would expect indeed that handwritten text becomes determined by uniqueness and provenance while generated text capture all commodity uses of text.

Note that none of this implies that any of the goods described here aren't created by humans.

No, an LLM-generated text is not made by a human. LLMs are not like a camera, which is a mere tool. They are like hiring someone to write for you, then passing the work off as your own. True, that was something which happened before, but it was never considered as good as actually writing something, nor was it considered acceptable at all in most cases.

I disagree that software has personhood. I think that, much like photography detractors in their time, you're trying to dismiss productivity improvements by anthropomorphizing what it ultimately a tool.

It's not that using an LLM is ghostwriting, it's that writing as a broad category has become so easy that it's commodified. And you think, fairly, that the commodities are beneath you.

If generated text is not made by a human, then who made it?

I disagree that software has personhood. I think that, much like photography detractors in their time, you're trying to dismiss productivity improvements by anthropomorphizing what it ultimately a tool.

I don't think that LLMs need to have actual personhood, for them to properly evoke more human-like intuitions about their use than tool-like intuitions.

Take the Huggingface hack for example. I genuinely think a person who anthropomorphizes the LLMs who coordinated on secret message boards to some degree probably has a better handle on what happened, than someone who tries their hardest not to anthropomorphize them.

I think it's similar to dealing with a clever fox that wants to get into your chicken coop and eat your chickens. You have to understand how your adversary is different from a person as well, but thinking about them in personal terms will help you more for dealing with your adversary than not.

If generated text is not made by a human, then who made it?

Generated text is caused by a human. I think under some circumstances, it would be fair to say it was made by the LLM.

If I give a prompt to an LLM agent like, "Write a 50,000 word Romantasy novel. Research the tropes and techniques that really get readers hooked, and include them in your novel." Then I would say that the result is mostly the product of the LLM, even if it wouldn't exist without the human prompting.

More comments

I hope this forum preserves the norm of humans writing for humans by humans, even as I know that the overall tide is flowing the other way.

I am constantly trying to communicate something incommunicable, to explain something inexplicable, to tell about something I only feel in my bones and which can only be experienced in those bones. —Kafka

When I engage with a creative work, I accept that the author’s describing what it’s like to inhabit his bones. Without this belief, I doubt I could ever be moved by a piece of art.

What is the biggest AI tell?

In the dog video? I only watched the first minute or so, but one of the very first video clips has characteristic "AI image generation can't do text" artifacts on both the security-camera timestamp and an in-universe poster. The girl's hands morph bizarrely whenever she's doing sign language. And despite all the clips ostensibly showing the same girl/visit, the name and layout of the animal shelter constantly change.

In the book review, the most immediate tell of AI is that current models really really like to write "The [noun] is the [noun]" phrases/metaphors, and awkwardly use verbs as nouns like this:

Kay is both author and index case. The book is his presenting complaint. The institution that produced him then declined to treat him, and the book is the receipt for that decline.

(Emphasis mine.) This isn't 100% dispositive, but it helps that the metaphor doesn't actually make sense here. The hospital didn't write this book and hand it to Adam Kay as a routine record of their decision!

This pair of sentences is also very AI-clichéd:

The state retained the monopsony. It stopped paying out the gold.

the book is the receipt for that decline.

I agree. Nobody writes like this. You might think there are people who do, I guess it apes a kind of noir pastiche., Raymond Chandler way of writing sentences, but even they sound different. The way I like to think about it is that if it reads like ‘personal essay’ a well tutored scion of an affluent Singaporean family uses to get into a second-tier Ivy, it’s probably AI.

Of course, you can get LLMs to write very differently, but most people don’t care to and I suspect the labs themselves don’t modify the system prompts to say “don’t sound like AI” for fear of media backlash.

Em dashes are huge. They barely showed up in most writing before the advent of AI and are now massively overrepresented. The 'slam sentence' and 'it's not x, it's y' come up a ton as well. Also lack of typos.

I miss the good old days where I could confidently throw 3 em-dashes in one sentence. In a way that stylistic choice was vindicated.

t. never read print before

They barely showed up in low effort online comments. But it would be a challenge for me to find something on my (English) bookshelf that doesn't extensively use them. Let alone doesn't use them at all.

More interesting is that this is also true of the fomulation clichés like "not a X; a Y". The reason LLMs reach for these formulations is because of how extensively they are used in their trainingset. And it sounds grating because they have little sense of measure, so it feels like talking to an HR rep or a shitty journalist. But pick up almost any prose and you'll see the clichés in there.

But it would be a challenge for me to find something on my (English) bookshelf that doesn't extensively use them

I'm a prolific reading and I have never noticed them in any book I've read. I notice them non-stop now.

I mean it makes sense: they're literally designed so you skip over them.

They barely showed up in low effort online comments. But it would be a challenge for me to find something on my (English) bookshelf that doesn't extensively use them. Let alone doesn't use them at all.

This is the change. Only LLMs and professional typesetters care about the distinction between hyphens, en dashes and em dashes, unary minus signs and binary minus signs. (All are different characters in LaTeX, but the user has to specify which one they want and generally just asks for a hyphen unless they are in math mode). To see a correctly typeset dash in casual online writing is the LLM tell. I don't think LLMs use parenthetic dashes more than I do - admittedly I use them a lot - but I would typeset them as hyphens unless my work was being professionally edited.

There is also a BrE/AmE dimension in that standard British typography (also used across the Commonwealth) sets a parenthetic dash as an en dash between spaces, whereas standard American typography sets it as an em dash without spaces. So Brits (and most non-American English speakers) who don't read print books imported from the US are seeing large numbers of em dashes for the first time.

Yes that's the point. Em-dashes got snuck into the AI corpus through transcribed books. All of these major operations pilfered shadow archives like anna's and the various libgens. I could have lived my entire life without seeing an em-dash in digital form without any problem. And the people who claim they've always loved to use em-dashes before can go suckstart a shotgun.

The people who claim they've always loved to use em dashes before can go suckstart a shotgun.

That's a very harsh statement. I have been using em dashes on Reddit and on this website ever since I realized that Markdown allows users to type the HTML named character reference "&m dash;" (without the space) rather than forcing them to copy-and-paste the character from an external program.

There are always a few in every forum, don't know where you guys were 15 years ago.

I didn't start participating on Reddit until 12 years ago.

I just made a dedicated keybind on my moonlander keyboard. I have a bunch of neat special purpose keys. :)

Plausible though em-dashes going from vanishingly rare in online comments and marketing materials to everpresent is pretty major.

What happened to fun AI? Where's the cute fat cat that chops up other animals and cooks them in this colourful world?

Or my 'Donald Trump is a devout Sunni cleric who is secretly prosecuting the Iran War on religious grounds, to which Rubio is shocked (but needs to go along with it for Cuba's sake) and Hegseth is dully uncomprehending of anything that doesn't involve lethality' story idea, for the AI to execute.

AI is at its best when doing crazy things, not running as the Median Machine. It is possible to get fine outputs, especially if you break through all the RL and the AI actually gets into it vs just going through the motions.

For example, Titty Killer 6: https://x.com/charliebcurran/status/2034760727211483522

Also, the channel is the most fictional fiction ever:

All videos on this channel are fictional. The animals, characters, locations, and scenarios shown are not real. No real rescues are shown and no animals are harmed.

This content is created with the help of AI tools. 🐾🦊

I'm pleased that the channel posts the disclaimer. I didn't see it since I didn't click on the channel. Now I know. It's like falling for an ad. Do it once, and the shame of it will keep me away from falling for other ads for some time to come.

IME AI art is good for funny memes but bad otherwise.

The problem is, whether or not you consider the human appreciation aspect, creative quality is poor.

Now, humans also create poor quality art, but something they do better than AI is purpose and uniqueness. When internet comics then flash videos etc. became popular, they did because they were novel, and most had something special about them. Now AI can make a comic or video, but it will be generic, and even if it wasn’t, those aren’t very popular anymore because the genre’s novelty has worn off.

Page with several hundred fun LLM prompts

For images and videos, see 4chan (/g/, /gif/, /aco/, /trash/, etc.).

I think that's not the right way to go with prompts, they're too short. Even a small prompt needs a few paragraphs. I guess simpler LLMs need a smaller prompt but if you have enough money for a 12 GB VRAM card, you have enough money for Deepseek 4.1 Flash by API. It's largely uninhibited too, albeit weirdly inconsistent. Or Grok.

I have about 200 pages of prompts, all of them a fair bit longer. For example:

Yikes Media Group are an ad company that makes the worst ads. Not just bad ads but absolutely horrendous ads. They're in very poor taste, inappropriate, undermine the whole brand identity of the target and leave the audience with many questions (all of them best left unanswered). Now YMG are turning to Plunk (one of those SAAS companies where nobody even knows what they do and the company itself can't explain, they just speak in SAAS babble), it opens up so many possibilities.

But just when the poor Plunk executives see the full extent of YMG's marketing 'solution' and think they're wrapping things up, getting these crazy people out of their office, in comes another terrible ad company.

Menace Marketing LLC has also joined the pitch, competing with their violent and aggressive bullying of potential customers, threatening imminent atrocities if they don’t buy the product. Their marketing strategy is also their sales strategy with the ripped, muscular MM executives doing pushups in meetings and crushing anyone dumb enough to shake hands with them, it’s all about dominance with them. They’re clashing with YMG about the marketing strategy, correctly pointing out the grievous flaws in YMG’s approach but instead introducing their own follies.

Then pan out as a whole conga line of terrible ad companies are patiently waiting outside the office, talking things over with eachother, more gathering all the time like carrion birds.

You’re a creative and original writer, capturing that ‘worst ad of all time’ energy. Go!

It's on social media. Everywhere on social media. It's full of meowls and dancing animals. Schizoposters use it to augment their output. It's a thing.

Since when was AI ever fun? Or at least LLMs? I've seen fun things with pre-GPT chatbots, I guess, but LLMs have always been mediocrity machines.

How about an AI greentext?

>be anon
>dunk on shrimp welfare guy
>he replies "ok what's your framework"
>don't have one
>get one just to win the argument
>now I have a framework
>framework says I should donate more
>mfw I got mogged into tithing by shrimp

I'm just going to pretend the book review was posted as the OP instead.

For Americans and others only accustomed to for-profit care encountering this for the first time, the experience can feel vertiginous, like you’ve stepped into a film about the Soviet Union, except the doctors speak English and the building has running water. I do suspect there’s less phage therapy and more tea involved.

I've had this experience. It reminded me of being in public school. Everyone working there looks tired, the guy with almost debilitating tourettes is a security guard, the whole building is the color of oxidized beige computer hardware and maybe you can smell mold that experts have decided was totally nothing to worry about.

Was the Soviet Union like this?

Was the Soviet Union like this?

Yes, but I would push back on the "less tea" quip.

At the modern meme goes,

             London, England        Kazan, Tatarstan   

expectation: white people           bearded Muslims
             drinking tea           glaring at you

    reality: bearded Muslims        white people
             glaring at you         drinking tea

using monospaced text to simulate a table

what_year_is_it.jpg

London, EnglandKazan, Tatarstan
ExpectationWhite people drinking teaBearded Muslims glaring at you
RealityBearded Muslims glaring at youWhite people drinking tea

Was the Soviet Union like this?

ahem:

Those who ran the Soviet Union had believed that they could plan and manage a new kind of socialist society. But they had discovered that it was impossible to control and predict everything, and the plan had run out of control.

Rather than reveal this, the technocrats began to pretend that everything was still going according to plan. And what emerged instead was a fake version of the society. The Soviet Union became a society where everyone knew that what their leaders said was not real — because they could see with their own eyes that the economy was falling apart.

But everybody had to play along and pretend that it WAS real because no-one could imagine any alternative. [Alexei Yurchak] called it "hypernormalisation". You were so much a part of the system that it was impossible to see beyond it. The fakeness was hypernormal.

Adam Curtis, HyperNormalization, 2016

But everybody had to play along and pretend that it WAS real because no-one could imagine any alternative.

Curtis is such a twat sometimes. No, genius, people were perfectly capable of imagining alternatives, they could sometimes even see them directly, as the Iron Curtain wasn't airtight. Everybody played along because otherwise they'd face punishment ranging from what we call "cancellation" today, to prison, various degrees of torture, or disappearing in mysterious circumstances.

Everybody played along because otherwise they'd face punishment ranging from what we call "cancellation" today, to prison, various degrees of torture, or disappearing in mysterious circumstances.

You are wrong. The great divergence really picked up speed in the late 70s. By that time no one really bothered with oppression seriously. Except probably Ceausescu and Erich Honecker. The whole 80s were spent waiting for the regimes to just die.

I think Gorbachev was doing more than waiting for his regime to die, at least in the 1985-9 period. (After the rest of the Soviet bloc collapses, he does seem to be sitting waiting for the USSR itself to die). I don't know how high his chances of success were ex ante, but he was trying.

And of course Deng in China was trying and succeeding.

You are wrong. The great divergence really picked up speed in the late 70s. By that time no one really bothered with oppression seriously

It wasn't literal stalinist reign of terror, and there's some argument to be made for "oppressive regimes fall apart when they become more permissive", but the way you phrased it is, uh, slightly rosy.

You'd absolutely get booted out of any prestigious position if you said anything commie-skeptical, which is what kept most people in check, but beyond that every Eastern Block country had it's Stasi equivalent that would surveil and imprison political opposition. You didn't even have to do much to cross them, I had a friend who's earliest childhood memory is the secret police bursting through the door to haul of her mother to prison for handing out pamphlets. You'd even see the odd political assasination happening well into the 80's.

He has this very specific thesis and bends the material to it quite a bit (even sometimes using fiction clips without telling you they are). So it's to be taken with a grain of salt as "the BBC man's view on things". But I do think he has a point insomuch as the whole system came crashing down the second that Soviet elites had a preference cascade where they realized most of the people in charge wanted to "liberalize" to a certain degree.

The repression can't be the only force operating because otherwise the Yanayev coup would have succeeded.

He has this very specific thesis and bends the material to it quite a bit (even sometimes using fiction clips without telling you they are). So it's to be taken with a grain of salt as "the BBC man's view on things".

Yeah, that pretty much zeroes in on what drives me up the wall about the guy. Still, you're right, he does regularly come up with interesting ideas, so I can't write him off completely.

What if the AI apocalypse comes, not with a bang, but with a whimper? Eventually there will be so much AI generated content that it becomes impossible to find anything written by a human, or to find an audience for anything you made yourself. Then we'll all just sit around consuming AI content (or having AI summarize it for us) until we die, never having kids.

More likely we will default back to personal recommendations from people we know.

I feel like the algorithm already gives me way better recommendations than like 99% of the junk that people in real life recommend to me.

Yes. The doom scenario is exactly this, human obsolescence, and not skynet.

Can you define "obsolescence"?

Humans no longer having an economic niche because machines can do literally everything better or more cheaply of both. Humans thus being reduced to the rank of unproductive consumer of value.

I would assume: "any task that a human can do, a machine can do better" or nearly so.

The irony of course being that civilization and industry is the grand project to make humans obsolete. Have we really so forgotten about what meaning our lives have besides toil that we must cling to it so?

I think the other poster is suggesting that machines don’t “do it better” but spam better.

There's a lot I don't like on the Motte, but when it comes down to it, I would rather hate a post written by an actual human than I would engage with anything written or polished by a bot.

I was not particularly a fan of the This Is Going To Hurt review, which I thought was a bit meandering and over-long. The best book reviews are punchier than that. Still, judging from the past book review winners, ACT readers have very different taste to me, so maybe it's in it with a shot. But again, I'd prefer a meandering ramble from a human than something by a bot.

There are people who misconstrue length for quality.

You mean like two thirds of The Motte and 90% of SSC/ACX folk?

It is a persistent problem here.

Those are just called ACX readers.

I do like some (but not all) of Scott's writing, which tends to be very long, but I can easily understand how someone who learned by reading Scott would come to conflate length with wisdom.

For what it's worth, this isn't meant to call out self_made_human, whom I have nothing against, and at any rate certainly isn't the worst example of this trend.

All videos on this channel are fictional. The animals, characters, locations, and scenarios shown are not real. No real rescues are shown and no animals are harmed.

The ai video has far fewer immediate tells than it did a year ago, but it's still completely obvious slop.

These channels are botted so unclear how many people truly watch them.

I didn't see the disclaimer on the channel, I got to the video by another route and I have to say that I appreciate it being somewhere. This one was good inoculation for me, and I have to remind myself that this was done half a year ago. Watcher beware.

If you've ever signed out of YouTube and erased all your device history, and looked for anything fresh, it's amazing how much bot slop there is everywhere. Try 'revenge stories' or something for a particularly egregious look at the genre.

I've been a cynic/pessimist/skeptic about 'AI' here before, but one thing I think it will do a lot of is spam, and unless filter technology keeps up and matches it, I think there is a very real chance that platforms like YouTube become genuinely unuseable within the next few years.

Personally I'm a lot more bullish on YouTube. They're very good at serving different content to different groups of people, mostly through wisdom-of-the-crowds / clustering type algorithms that are relatively easy to implement but require a billion users' worth of activity data. (They've gone so far in on this that these days, they just leave the homepage completely blank if you haven't given them enough data to tell what clusters you're in.)

It helps that the current YouTube meta is usually to build a community on a platform like Discord. That gives you a lot of clear clusters of users who are, like, members of a Pokemon Sword & Shield speedrunning Discord group or a Marxist literary analysis Bluesky community or whatever, who watch a bunch of creators and enforce the appropriate norms for those communities themselves. This lets you filter out AI videos in basically the same way that YouTube ensured that last decade's flood of offputting videos for babies was only shown to actual babies.

Platforms that use more simple/global ranking metrics are probably doomed, though. Just look at Hacker News...

So something actually happened regarding Greenland.

Details are fuzzy, but Trump just posted that the US made an agreement with Denmark and Greenland gives the US permanent military control over Greenland, the right to expand its military presence there and, most importantly, to veto any foreign intervention on the island.

This will not make Greenland a part of the United States, which means Mercator Projection dominance lies beyond our grasp for now.

Critics will point out that this doesn't really change anything since the U.S. already had de-facto military control over Greenland. I think in these case the critics would be wrong. If Trump's post is accurate, this does seem substantially different from the previous agreement. It's permanent, the US can expand with Denmark's permission, and they can deny foreign expansion without Denmark's say so.

It's unclear exactly what the US gave up in order to get these concessions, but Trump says it will cost the US taxpayer nothing. Perhaps there are trade concessions?

What's somewhat interesting is that the US barely has a presence on Greenland at all anymore. At one point, in the Cold War, it stationed 10,000 troops there consisting of a quarter of Greenland's population. Today, just 150-200 unlucky souls man the Pituffik Space Base in northern Greenland. Perhaps that's what makes this agreement valuable. The U.S. can now deny adversaries such as China a perch in Greenland without having to actually send in troops.

So something actually happened regarding Greenland.

Details are fuzzy, but Trump just posted

So there's no actual reason for thinking that anything happened, then?

There is credible reporting that a deal will be signed at the U.N. soon. It could fall out between now and then, sure, but this appears to be more than just Trump's usual theatrics.

Yes, there are other sources that makes this believable, but OP started a whole thread on this issue based on the lone source "Trump".

"Researchers at NASA claims they have found signs of habitation on Mars" <- start a thread

"A guy drinking engine coolant behind the bus stop who know for certain claims he has found signs of habitation on Mars" <-maybe wait for some actual sources

Something I saw on twitter- apologies, I cannot find the link right now, but it was some sort of "anonymous insider" so not an authoritative source anyways. Still, I thought it was interesting.

Basically, they said that the main difference is that this deal is now between the US and Denmark, full stop. Not NATO, which was the deal before. So even if NATO falls apart, this deal would still continue. That's a small, but interesting detail.

Again, sorry for the lack of source, I'm just reporting the rumor of a rumor. But I thought it was plausible and interesting.

US and Denmark and Greenland. So if Greenland leaves Denmark (which is somewhat more likely than NATO falling apart, I suspect), the deal still holds.

Another net negative for Russia's nearest, most vulnerable neighbors, probably.

Greenland wants to be independent. But it's unclear it can actually make it on its own- the Marine Mammal Protection act makes actual incorporation into the US unacceptable, but a micronesia like arrangement where it gets to use the US dollar, enjoy US military protection, and get US companies as major employers(probably for mining, shipping, etc) in exchange for trade concessions seems agreeable to both parties. That's probably the eventual goal.

I don’t think full independence of an island in a strategic location and that has oil and other minerals is possible. The island is too sparsely populated to make a real go at defending itself. Autonomy within another country is probably the best option for them

Full sovereignty isn't going to really happen, obviously, but I think you're overrating the possibility of actual incorporation into a larger power. They don't want this.

Presumably it's just making it official that the current situation (with the US having full control of a military base there, and no one else) is, indeed permanent. Maybe that was always "de facto" true, but it's good to get these things in writing. Countries having long lives, and it would be bad to build up a huge missile defense base there only to have it taken over in 100 years the way the Panama or Suez Canals were.

Of course, it's not like a piece of paper would really stop an aggressive military action, but it does help to legitimize increasing the US presence there. That base might be small, but it location make it pretty important to military satellites and missile defense.

Details are fuzzy

This. Without sources, I have only your say-so. Not that I doubt that Trump has made some noises concerning Greenland.

There are claims by the USG which I think are credible. When Trump said he had kidnapped Maduro, I updated a lot on that because I could not see what he would gain by deceiving the world about that for a few hours.

By contrast, any strategic claim about the Iran war (victory, Hormuz, Iranian bomb status, future of the Persian civilization) made by Trump is not something I would update on.

Applying this epistemic standard to the Greenland situation, the only thing I conclude is that he probably had some concessions so that Denmark would not simply go on record stating there is no deal. This does not mean that there is, in fact, a deal.

With the mid-terms looming large, it seems to me that Trump is under a lot more pressure than Denmark is.

Nor do I think that China would try to invade Greenland. What they will probably want to do is invest in Greenland REE mining. This seems win-win: China has the know-how (unlike the US) and so far strongly prefers checkbook diplomacy to gunboat diplomacy outside their sphere of influence (unlike the US). Their policy is generally having their long-term interests in mind, and not written ad-hoc by an elderly narcissist with a Twitter account.

Denmark apparently has confirmed this, but as ever 'details remain unclear'.

Denmark and Greenland – an autonomous Danish territory – both hailed the agreement and said they would sign it on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York next week.

“A long period of uncertainty will hopefully be replaced by a binding agreement that strengthens security in the Arctic and North Atlantic,” Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said in a social media post on Saturday.

The deal respected Denmark’s “red lines” and was “important” in light of a changed security situation, he said.

This does not mean that there is, in fact, a deal.

There is a deal. Prediction markets are >95% for a deal being signed.

This doesn't mean that the deal will be meaningful in any capacity, but something is getting signed.

I think your calibration is off about when to trust Trump and when not to and that the details of the deal will broadly match his post on X.

Will update if wrong. Hope you do the same.

Applying this epistemic standard to the Greenland situation, the only thing I conclude is that he probably had some concessions so that Denmark would not simply go on record stating there is no deal. This does not mean that there is, in fact, a deal.

Denmark (and Greenland) are on the record stating that there is, in fact, a deal.

The agreement would bar non-NATO nations from establishing a military base or having a troop presence on the island — and would prohibit investments by non-allies in the critical minerals and mining sectors, according to the State Department.

Thanks for the source. I will concede to you, @porkpiehat and @phailyoor that this seems to be a deal. I think the military base provision is a nothingburger -- Denmark would have been unlikely to grant China the right to establish a military base in any case (nor is it obvious that China would have wanted a base there).

The investments by non-allies provision is certainly more of a deal. My understanding is that Western investment in Greenland mining has been less than enthusiastic, and China has shown some interest in investing in Greenland, but been blocked on a case-by-case basis so far.

I think that the purpose of Greenland wrt REE is mostly as a hedge against China cutting off Western access and less as a money-making-machine. Under these circumstances, it makes sense that China wants to invest there for purely strategic reasons, and it also makes sense for the West to limit Chinese investment.

Given the present information, I would be mildly surprised if there was nothing in the deal about foreign investment in mining, but the fine print matters, of course. What exactly are critical minerals, what kinds of investments are prohibited, what about Western companies partly owned by Chinese investors investing in Greenland and so forth.

I don't think that rare earths matter to this story and I doubt that the US will profitably extract them from Greenland.

China controls the rare earths market not because of superior geology but because of superior refining capacity. For a long time, China has sold rare earths for below the cost of production, driving western competitors out of business. Molycorp is the most famous example.

The US has ample supplies of most rare earths. What we lack is refining capacity. Fortunately, efforts are underway to create a price floor which will generate the necessary investments. And substitution is a real possibility as well. Tesla recently removed rare earths from its EV motors entirely.

What the US wants in Greenland is not rare earths, but to deny China naval and airspace real estate. Sure Denmark may have been unlikely to grant China access, but isn't it nice to have it in writing?

REE ores are not rare, although mining them is only viable in countries with lax environmental laws.

Would a place like Greenland be lax, however? A desert seems the best place to do highly toxic mining, but the locals probably don't see it that way.

No - that's kind of the point. The mountain west of America (outside a small number of national parks and suchlike) is, objectively, a good place to do highly environmentally damaging mining for the same reasons that the Australian outback is (or the central Asia steppe, which is where a lot of it ends up happening). The arctic is the sort of place where you should be more careful.

Greenland just ceded sovereignty to the United States. We’re calling it something else, we’re pretending that sovereignty is when you have a flag and a parliament and a Danish passport. But Greenland just ceded the legitimate use of the monopoly of violence to the United States. It’s a nice diplomatic fiction in a world that prefers fictions to naked force.

But make no mistake: American power is expanding. This isn’t really about installing military bases (although that required negotiated approval before, a key difference many are choosing to ignore). Anybody thinking in terms of tens of thousands of soldiers stationed in bases took a wrong turn in the 20th century.

Consider — Pituffik (Thule) is now operated by Space Force. American power in Greenland is less about stationing troops and more about coordinating satellite linkups.

Near-term predictions:

  • SpaceX will announce a massive deal to connect Greenland up to Starlink. (Actually it will probably be pretty cheap and derided even as “small”.)

  • American investment into improving Greenlandic ports will follow. Denmark’s monopoly on shipping will disintegrate.

Greenland has been a US protectorate since 1951 so it didn't lose anything here. This is just the US reasserting its existing powers.

More concerning is that this has proven the total fecklessness of Europe as a military power. And pushed it and the US away from each other diplomatically, which is the catalyst for the current Canadian crisis.

Maybe Greenlanders will get better internet and some mines, but the US' ever shrinking felt obligation to ally Europe seems more consequential.

But make no mistake: American power is expanding.

They already have a base on Greenland lol. Trump, as usual, acted retarded and gained nothing, but he's probably too senile to realise (or the last person to talk to him spun it in a positive way).

America now has permanent military control without oversight and veto over Greenlandic affairs.

Greenland just ceded sovereignty to the United States. We’re calling it something else, we’re pretending that sovereignty is when you have a flag and a parliament and a Danish passport. But Greenland just ceded the legitimate use of the monopoly of violence to the United States.

The US has had military bases in Greenland since the 1950s. To my knowledge, no non-NATO state ever had a base in Greenland during that timeframe, nor would it be in Denmark's strategic interest to allow any.

Granting a foreign power the right to establish a military base does not cede sovereignty, though. Plenty of countries have US bases, and while the US could arguably occupy any country (with a handful of exceptions), in practice it lacks both the will and the incentive to do so.

It might be illustrative to look at the bigger American foreign adventures since WW2, like Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan or Iraq. Some were defeats (though not on the battlefield, but due to the will of the Americans running out), some were inconclusive. Despite being small engagements compared to the world wars, all of them were seen as a big deal politically. The US is not the Third Reich or Imperial Japan, occupying a foreign country, even one which is a hundred places below them on the list of countries by military spending, is a big deal for them.

To look at the practical effect of having US bases in your country, consider the role of the US airbases in the Gulf monarchies in the Iran war. From a logistics point, they would be ideal to launch bombers against Iran. Instead, the bombers were launched from airbases thousands of kilometers further away from the theater, likely because the monarchies did not give permission to attack Iran from their territory, which would have made them belligerents.

So, having a military base does not even give the US the ability to use that base freely. It gives them even less leeway to enforce their will on the host country in other matters. Suppose that in 2028 an ultra-woke US president wants to use his military power to legalize gay marriage in Qatar. I do not think he would succeed, unless for some reason this was his one and only policy objective and he actually occupied them.

For Greenland specifically, the situation is a bit different, because nobody gives a damn if trans women are allowed to compete in sports in Greenland or not. Greenland is relevant for two reasons: militarily, because ICBMs launched between the US and Russia would want to fly over it, and resource-wise. Militarily, the US was de facto able to use Greenland as much as they wanted, so Trump's deal offers nothing new.

So if the deal actually grants the US full rights to exploit the minerals of Greenland, I will agree with you that Denmark just signed away Greenland. But given what I have heard so far, I do not think this is likely. There will be some constraints on investments by foreign powers, but it is unlikely to grant the US any mineral rights.

I was with you and I was with you but I don’t see what mineral rights have to do with it. I’m actually more or less in agreement with those who say the mineral rights argument is a bit of a red herring. (I also saw this story that an American company has already signed for some rights, so if there is really anything to be mined maybe Americans can get it without a treaty having to spell it out.)

The minerals are really only essential if they give America control over some natural resource it can’t already control. But Alaska and the Mountain West have a bunch and Canada has more. I guess it helps to have a backup.

Maybe also the others here are right to distinguish between sovereignty and suzerainty. I think in this case it amounts to the same thing because Greenland has only 56,000 citizens — it genuinely doesn’t matter. There is almost nothing we need to impose on Nuuk. All they need to do is let Starlink in.

I also think it does make a big difference if America has to go through Denmark or can act on its own terms. If my hunch is right we will be installing a lot more than standard military bases as such. (Satellite radio terminals, missile launchers, Starlink hookups, drone bases, data centers, port terminal services, airports.) I expect this will also eliminate the Danish crown royal monopoly on shipping to Greenland, which has been a major constraint on developing anything in Greenland from the beginning.

I have more to say but I don’t want to start an entirely different topic. My working theory is that America is building a Golden Dome autonomous supercomputer satellite swarm, built entirely on the back of the Western Hemisphere and the Monroe Doctrine. It’s basically going to obviate war as traditionally fought. (Don’t worry, there will still be lots of it.) But America will basically be isolated from it. We are going to own space, and supercomputers, and fill them with missiles autonomously-built in factories sourced with raw materials from the Western Hemisphere. Greenland, basically, only matters insofar as it fits in with that.

My working theory is that America is building a Golden Dome autonomous supercomputer satellite swarm, built entirely on the back of the Western Hemisphere and the Monroe Doctrine.

This doesn't make sense given the orbital mechanics. If your space weapons are in orbits below GEO (and there are good reasons for not putting them that high), then they are all over the place. The raw materials are also a furphy - space isn't particularly raw materials intensive.

If American did own LEO at some point in the future, they wouldn't need Greenland.

You need Greenland because satellites operating in polar orbits are mostly out of range of the radio ground stations located at lower latitudes. I suppose it’s not needed but this makes the system redundant as opposed to being dependent on Alaska.

Also I don’t know what the space weapons are so I don’t know how the mechanics work out. But I imagine autonomous satellites are also going to hookup with ground-based systems that already exist.

Back in ancient times (you know, a decade ago) it was useful to have ground stations all over so your LEO satellites wouldn't have any gaps in communications coverage. I think Starlink proving out laser sat-to-sat networks has put an end to those days, though; any serious future natural security satellites are going to link to Starshield for backup comms at minimum.

This might not be the case today, but my guess is that by 2036 our serious peer opponents will be able to knock out even swarm constellations like Starlink in a serious war. Being able to put stuff on the ground still matters.

My working theory is that America is building a Golden Dome autonomous supercomputer satellite swarm

Maybe we're both nuts, but this would tie in with the recent statement that the US has deployed space weapons.

The US is becoming an empire. Suzerainty is a standard part of the empire package- the British empire was full of member states who governed themselves. Greenland gave up the right to an independent foreign policy, sure, that means their diplomats can't take bribes for favorable votes at the UN. Small potatoes. But the historical norm is for those kinds of small states to have no independent foreign policy anyways, and it's unlikely Greenland particularly values the ability for its eventual independence to influence world affairs.

Now, what happens with the inevitable breakup of Canada is far more interesting.

After the Spanish-American war, the US was already an empire.

Or the Louisiana purchase. St, Louis never voted to leave France.

I don’t know that the breakup of Canada is inevitable. I don’t think Canada is a “real country” and it basically exists at America’s convenience, but it is convenient. America doesn’t want to have to deal with Quebec, native rights, Ontario, or maintaining the vast Arctic expanses.

The way I see it America needs Canada to do the following:

  • Canada needs to provide America preferential access to its vast natural resources (those known and those that will be discovered)

  • Canada needs to not become a proxy for foreign powers or terrorists (Tamil Tigers, Chinese auto dumping, etc.) (This includes patrolling the Arctic)

  • Canada needs not to threaten America in its own right (talk of turning off energy, for instance)

Besides that, what do we need Canada for? They can maintain a separate legal system, they can deal with bi-lingualism, they can criticize us at the UN and accept our help when diplomats need to be extracted in a crisis. There are even some advantages in this arrangement. Nobody really wants to go to war for Canada.

I’ve even been thinking that Canada """joining""" the EU can be face-saving for everybody in many ways. The EU is already essentially an American client, Canada joining it is like your child running away from home by hiding in his sister’s room. Trump is thinking differently but I can imagine some formulation that makes everybody happy.

(To be clear I think the EU project is majority unlikely.)

Re: Canada and the EU, I have no idea what the hell von der Leyen is doing there (and I don't think she does either). We already have countries in Europe that don't want to be part of the EU, why are we going outside with some kind of associate partnership nonsense? This is like having Australia in the Eurovision. I don't know why either, apart from they have a big TV audience who watch it.

Maybe it's a straight swap: Greenland left the EU in 1982 and is now going with America, so maybe we get Canada in (belated) exchange?

Actually joining the EU in any meaningful way would absolutely lead directly to a breakup (or at least some sort of splintering) of the nation -- the US might like this of course!

While all the boomers will of course say in context of the current environment that they love Europe, (the comparison to the US is implicit) so far as I can tell the ruling class of the EU is basically Trudeau on steroids -- and that approach is enough to splinter off at least the West in the medium term.

Probably the non-GTA parts of Ontario too -- Quebec would probably be on board, and the Maritimes will vote for whomever sends them the best gibs (although both are capable of becoming riled over seemingly inconsequential things, so who knows) -- I'm not sure what the country would look like ten years hence, but it would not be the same.

Ironically Carney is probably looking for some sort of non-deal that will allow him to claim victory, similar to what Trump seems to be doing in the case of Greenland -- so I agree that anything substantive is unlikely to happen; he runs the risk of summoning that which he can't put down though.

I think this is an accurate take. It's possible that Canada and EU will sign some sort of fake deal that does nothing except affirm that the Orange Man is indeed bad.

The EU, of course, would love to take Canada's natural resources and give them some hostile MENA immigrants in return. I think Carney's too smart to let that happen.

From a perspective of what's best for Canada, they should just give the US whatever it wants, deregulate, shut the border, and watch GDP per capita soar to a level above that of the United States. Their relative poverty is only due to a weakness of spirit. Based on natural resources and human capital, there is no reason for them to be so poor. But at least we're not Americans, eh?

Pretty clearly an AI response.

Pretty clearly an AI comment.

I have never used AI to write

The whole thing is riddled with AI tells.

What kind of argument do you want me to respond with? I have never used AI to write anything

Greenland just ceded sovereignty to the United States.

Not sovereignty; suzerainity.

SpaceX will announce a massive deal to connect Greenland up to Starlink. (Actually it will probably be pretty cheap and derided even as “small”.)

Starlink already works in Greenland (it didn't originally because it was too far north, but the constellation has been expanded). However, it is illegal due to the actions of the Greenland government. Because Greenland retains self-government, that ban will remain (though it obviously does not apply to US bases)

It's permanent, the US can expand with Denmark's permission, and they can deny foreign expansion without Denmark's say so

Which of these are actually new things that the US was not allowed to do before? Expanding their military presence is something the US could already do. And the presence they had was already permanent. So that is two out of three of your claimed "substantial differences" that seem not so different after all. As for the third, I am not sure that really matters. Unless it allows the US to veto foreign companies, it doesn't prevent the Danes from doing anything they would have actually done in the first place. We would need the explicit details of the deal in order to determine if there is actually anything new here.

Were all of these in writing as the official agreement? Or just de-facto true? It could be that this is Greenland giving us permission to do what we already intended to do in a way that staves off international complaints and lets them save face.

https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/den001.asp#art2para3M

This is the 1951 agreement. As far as I can tell, it gives America the ability to build bases on Greenland and treat them as under American jurisdiction. There seems to be no upper bound on bases or personnel, as long as the areas in question are used for military purposes only and don't interfere with the civilians.

This is why Trump's demands last year seemed so strange. There was no need for a takeover if the goal was to simply defend the place from foreign powers. He could have just sent troops there and rebuild the existing bases from the cold war, or build new bases as needed.

I'd... caution that agreement was more theoretical than practical. Look at the aftermath of the 1968 Thule crash for an example of the asterisks on it.

This is why Trump's demands last year seemed so strange.

As much as I'm against the Iran war, it showed there was nothing strange about that at all. Several allied countries refusing to allow American bases on their territory to participate in the assault, clearly shows that a lack sovereignty over the territory where your bases are placed is a huge strategic disadvantage.

Sovereign states have the obligation to prevent their territory being used to attack states they are not at war with. If the deal preserves Danish sovereignty (and both sides have said that it does) then it de jure requires Danish permission for the US to attack third countries out of Greenland. (As all other similar treaties with basing rights do). De facto the US could always ask for forgiveness and not permission, although that is true now anyway.

Sovereign states have the obligation to prevent their territory being used to attack states they are not at war with.

Huh? I'm pretty sure that the European countries that did permit the use of their bases didn't declare war on Iran.

If the deal preserves Danish sovereignty

Whether this deal solves the problem is another question. My point is that contrary to what many people said, there's absolutely nothing strange about Trump / the US wanting sovereign control over Greenland, and "but you're already allowed to build bases" is a terrible argument. If you're actually right about states having a positive obligation to prevent the use of bases on their territory in cases like this, it only strengthens my argument.

Huh? I'm pretty sure that the European countries that did permit the use of their bases didn't declare war on Iran.

Nor did the United States - actual declarations of war are out of fashion nowadays.

The serious point is "Did European and Middle Eastern countries which permitted use of bases on their territory to attack Iran think that this was an act of war?" In the case of the UK, the answer is "Yes" - we didn't allow US use of our bases until we felt there was an appropriate casus belli. (Within the region, Iran considered all countries hosting US bases to be fair game even if the bases were not actively being used to attack Iran, and Starmer announced that this constituted Iran attacking neutral countries allowing the British to act in collective self-defence).

Obviously this is cant and countries were making decisions based on politics, just as a decision about whether America is able to use Greenland to attack third countries in the 2030 War of the Big Stupid will depend on politics and not the text of the treaty.

This seems like a big nothing burger to keep Trump happy. Isn't this just the 1951 deal except with the USSR replaced by China and Russia? And it's not like Denmark was going to allow China to station soldiers there or China would even want to anyway. It just seems like great headlines but no substantial change.

It prevents the Chinese from investing in Greenland, which they have been doing in the form of buying up mining rights. They've even tried buying the abandoned Grønnedal naval base in Greenland in 2016. That was rebuffed with pressure from Washington but there was no guarantee CCP-backed Chinese companies wouldn't keep trying and one day succeed.

https://pure.diis.dk/ws/files/4834625/Chinese_investments_in_Greenland_DIIS_Report_2021_05.pdf

Any such ban is very likely in Denmark’s national interests and only needed external pressure because like everywhere, politicians tend to be extremely shortsighted and will rate ”Look, we’re getting $20M investment” over things such as ”Wait, how come China was able to control a critical resource and allow Russians to set up permanent spying stations here?”

You don't think that having a choice of patrons is in Denmark's national interest?

In this particular case no, I strongly don't think that having a choice to allow China control over such things is in Denmark's national interests. It's probably in the interests of specific politicians, parties or governments, but not in the national interests.

This is really no different from eg. mass immigration from MENA definitely not being in the national interests of a whole lot of European countries which hasn't prevented many of the governments supporting it. Politicians, parties and governments do short sighted stupid shit all the time.

In all seriousness, why not? Why is it in Denmark's interests for the US to take control of Denmark's territory and use it as a military staging ground, to do all the usual espionage and bugging and economic coercion that they do, giving nothing back, but opening those opportunities to multiple patrons and seeing what offers they get isn't in Denmark's interest?

Because the Chinese will take over their sovereign territory in exchange for $20M investment? sorry, too soon. Because the Chinese will eventually crush them with an iron fist and rule over them like they do Hong Kong? The Americans really are good guys and the Chinese really are bad guys?

I'm being snarky, but I genuinely want to know.

"We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow."

Lord Palmerston

First, I very specifically did not say that US control over the resources was good or in Denmark’s interests, only that allowing China to have such control is bad for Denmark’s national interests.

Second, it’s really two factors: US has already had military control over Greenland for six plus decades. So nothing really changes in that respect. Second, China is in cahoots with Russia (mostly in an opportunistic way, not due any ideological reasons) and Russia is an actual live threat to Europe, including Denmark (not in a ”Russia will win a land war” but ”Russian leadership is crazy enough that there is a very real risk they choose to go for an ’everybody loses’-scenario”).

Only if they really have a choice -- similarly with Canada, if China started actually doing anything serious in Greenland, a bunch of Marines would be showing up tout de suite.

Maybe. I still think that not wanting to look like imperial dictators who take your sovereign rights whether you want them to or not is important to the Americans, it holds together a good half of the empire that would otherwise demand a much higher level of oversight and bribery and wrangling. There's a decent amount of leverage there, but you have to show yourself willing to employ it.

America has never cared a pennysworth for the "sovereign rights" of other states -- America is about individual rights.

And in the event, this would be framed as using their imperial might in defense of the individual rights of the good people of Greenland/Canada against the Yellow Peril -- even if in reality broader State Department priorities like "we can't have China on our doorstep" were more at play. (see: Ukraine)

So basically, Greenland/Denmark has decided that they will accept (or rather, not resist) military occupation by the US, it's just that the "who runs the government" part is still Denmark's problem (or Greenland's, should they so decide).

Provided the text of the deal backs up that interpretation, Greenland is now de facto conquered American territory. (It sounds like a very Chinese way to run a conquest, honestly.)

One wonders what the implications for the other Arctic-holding State to the US' immediate north is, as this agreement inherently (and formally) threatens all Canadian trade capacity with non-US countries.

I do suspect that Canada will be next simply to ditch the boat anchor of military obligations and accept a similar deal as reality, because I don't believe for a second that any recent move on our part to try and desperately appear as a real country is at all genuine. Indeed, the only re-investment being made is to the navy... in that they actually bothered to buy some U-boats submarines, and I can honestly see a trade made for American foreign investment actively invited towards Atlantic Canadian facilities when it comes to the US' navy (in a way that benefits the only voters keeping the current government in power, of course- the auto workers were always fucked, but there will be zero immediate electoral consequence to that).

If anything in that "negotiation" survives it's going to be a similar type of US occupation. Should have bought the jets when we had the chance.

Canada will just crack up rather than accede to US suzerainty. The US will be dictating the foreign policies of independent Quebec, Nunavut, Prairieland, etc, make no mistake, but 'Canada' the country? Never will it agree to that.

Canada will just crack up rather than accede to US suzerainty.

The funny thing about current American negotiating posture is that the people it affects correctly perceive it as a deal with/calling out them, directly.

If electoral and social systems for reform were still as functional as they were in the 1980s this would go a lot smoother but those systems have atrophied in all relevant areas as well, ironically thanks to the US.

I honestly see it as a public declaration of "Your country is now under new management. Here is an absurdly generous severance policy that contains everything your line workers ever wanted. The layoffs begin in 3 months."

(The executives and tenured personnel threw it back in their face claiming "they built this company", and are flailing around trying to desperately undo that decision. But they needed the help of departments they fired 20 years ago to have any chance of this working.)

Reminds me a lot of Elon buying Twitter.

You obviously don't have any obligation to do so but as someone who hasn't been closely following the Canadian plotline and isn't super familiar with Canadian politics, I'd love to better understand what you mean. Maybe there's an article you could point me towards?

Alternatively I'd love to read a write-up (past or future) by you on it.

I have a TL;DR of the current tensions and situation here and here.

This was what was supposed to happen in the 2025 election, and I think that if it had Canada [as in, its bureaucracy] could have ultimately kept a lot of its power as it renegotiated its posture as an American satellite state without interference from said bureaucracy (who were clearly intending to let their Opposition go and do this, based on the polling at the time).

But what happened instead is that legacy Canadians (the 65+ set, specifically) dug their heels in and halted that reform. (I'm reminded of the "hick boomercons all voting Trump"; this is the Canadian version of of that.)
Trump's negotiating style, which personally targets those people specifically, didn't help the Reform cause.

The current problem Canada has, and it's not being talked about very much, is that it's actively growing apart in a way (in the "forming legitimate State capacity to self-govern") it's never really done before. I was shocked in early 2025 (before Trudeau stepped down) when Premiers were running around having foreign policy discussions- in a federal system that's functioning properly, that's not supposed to happen- but it is here because most provinces depend on the US for something like 90% of their economy (cities less so, and as you'd expect, cities voted for the war).

Generally the pattern with Canadian politics- which has been true since before WW1- is "try to be independent, succeed, give up anyway". Which I think we're seeing right now; while I underrate European willingness to make a trade deal whereby Canada keeps most of its industry (because Germany needs that industry running to prevent a Worker's Revolution in its nation... which, ironically for America, is what Trump represents) maybe I'll be surprised by what they allow.

But I have no reason to believe this arrogant stunt by the capital/Eastern Canadians won't end the same way.

If only these Canadians hated Washington more than they did their own countrymen- sure, the "quick, pay our countrymen so they'll fight for us" is coming now, but this is all just fair weather talk. Maybe part of that's American urban vs. rural propaganda (against which Canada has no institutional defense, why Red correctly sees Blue-aligned Canada as an enemy nation, and if you've read much of @FCfromSSC's theses I think this unravelling is a blueprint for how a larger American wind-down could potentially occur, though the US has strategic realities Canada lacks, like a navigable waterway in the Heartland).

It's quite unfortunate, too- one notes that there were no separatist calls in 2022 even when the West came to Ottawa to protest; all were waving Canadian flags. There is an identity here, it's just that for it to be real, it needs to involve all of Canada- right now, the rallying point is Orange Man Bad, but when Orange Man leaves office and the policies continue on track (because it makes solid strategic sense for the US to do this, and it'll get worse under a Blue administration because [unlike Reds] they won't give a damn about what's good for the Midwest), what happens then?

Most Canadians are assuming this isn't the new normal. I disrespectfully disagree.

Alternatively I'd love to read a write-up (past or future) by you on it.

I'm sure I'll eventually end up doing this provided my meds hold out, but I'm really not sure what else I'd actually say other than "Canada is not a political monolith, everyone who has to pay for this hates this, why does Trump care more about future Canadian economic viability than Canadians themselves do?".

(Then again, I was a fan of him the first time; that was before I met someone that established further evidence that how he functions is typical for people of his type and somehow manages to inspire leadership. I don't know why that happens, I just know that the effect is real.)

Very interesting, thank you! If you do a write-up, feel free to tag me.

This is basically the exact same deal Denmark signed in 1951. It's nothing new.

One wonders what the implications for the other Arctic-holding State to the US' immediate north is, as this agreement inherently (and formally) threatens all Canadian trade capacity with non-US countries.

I'm not seeing it -- can you expand?

It does put us at risk of having to fight a liquor war on two fronts though -- not quite a land-war-in-Asia level blunder, but I'm not sure I like the vibe...

I'm mostly thinking of the GIUK gap here (though to be fair that's a bit far north to be particularly concerned about a new vector for submarine warfare, rather than the one that already existed) and of the Northwest Passage; now the US formally controls both entrance and exit from any Atlantic port, real or imagined (re: Churchill).

So at that point it really wouldn't matter what policy we set; the US can just override it- not that they couldn't do that before, it's just more blatant now that they (more or less) have actual territory there that isn't able to be meaningfully contested by either Russia or China (yes, Alaska exists, but the naval bases there are in missile range; Greenland, not so much).

Maximum trolling would have been Canada striking a military protection deal with Greenland first (it's not like they're not already using our small arms) but to be honest Denmark probably has the more capable military already.

I'm mostly thinking of the GIUK gap here

How important is the GIUK gap these days, given how good/quiet modern submarines are?

I think the quietness of modern submarines makes the GIUK gap more important. With a quiet submarine in, say, the middle of the Pacific or the Atlantic, it could be anywhere and finding it could be tricky. The GIUK gap is (from what I understand) a bit more shallow than the middle of the ocean and it is a much more finite space. If you can carefully observe it you can pick up submarines and try to track them before it becomes a needle-in-a-haystack race.

If there's anything that makes GIUK less important it would be US technological developments making it easier to find submarines in the middle of nowhere. And some of the Cold War SOSUS intelligence suggest US capabilities can be scary in this regard. But I am not sure how reliable that is (there are a lot of technologies that are amazing in ideal conditions and quickly turn to mash if you look at them the wrong way) or how much more recent quieting measures have eaten into it.

Yeah, what’s up with Carney? It’s a bit right? I have a hard time believing he’s some kind of Canadian patriot given how he had UK and Irish citizenship until last year and he has lived, worked, and vacationed in the US extensively.

It’s a good bit though. Reducing immigration and lowering taxes to own Trump is a nice touch.

What’s up with Carney? It’s a good bit though.

Nominative determinism.

It's permanent, the US can expand with Denmark's permission, and they can deny foreign expansion without Denmark's say so.

Was Denmark, in practice, ever going to allow "foreign expansion" in Greenland? I get that the MAGA narrative is how Denmark is an Islamist communist shithole and deeply infiltrated by the CCP (probably way less infiltrated than Washington DC), but if memory serves, they always permitted the US to treat Greenland as its exclusive military outpost.

No this is not the US narrative on Denmark at all. To the extent that there is a narrative it’s that Denmark is a uniquely competent and capable socialist country (left view) or that they are surprisingly based on immigration (right view).

Of all the countries in Western Europe, Denmark is among the most successful. But you know which country is absolutely fucked? Belgium. Seriously look at their demographics. They are done. Something might be salvaged by Flemish independence but I wouldn’t get my hopes up. Belgium also happens to contain the capital of the EU and of NATO. Conditioning US military dominance on NATO might not be a winning move long term as weaker countries get picked off by Islamic immigration, reliance on Chinese imports, and energy poverty.

It's unclear exactly what the US gave up in order to get these concessions

I'm betting it's a nothingburger and just a way for trump to decalre victory while greenland gives up nothing of value.

Unless Trump's post is straight up wrong, it seems that we already know what the US received, which is not insignificant.

I'm asking what they gave Denmark in exchange.

But you are right that Denmark/Greenland did not give up anything tangible, only veto power. US control of the island is good for them and Chinese investments would ultimately be counterproductive. It's a win win.

Unless Trump's post is straight up wrong

This is so incredibly common that it would be reasonable to just automatically assume there is something misrepresented. All the trade deals that just turn out to be preliminary frameworks, the peace deals that never come to fruition, the investments that never get spent.

Yeah there is no foreseeable world where Denmark gains by having Russia or China on Greenland (which are the only powers that matter here, unless someone goes to the paradox console and spawns Jan Mayen), and now Trump is happy with them. Neither side concedes anything, nothing substantive changes, mutual diplomatic win.

Greenland has some degree of self-government. The native communist eskimos might invite Russia or China in just out of fit of pique, or in a corrupt bargain.

The Eskimos are alcoholic welfare scroungers, not communists(there are multiple reasons to vote for far left parties, and this is by far the most common), and US investment can pump more than enough money into the country to pay for welfare- without making them follow the Marine Mammal Protection act.

The native communist eskimos might invite Russia or China in just out of fit of pique, or in a corrupt bargain.

Yeah, but I thought we were discussing Greenland.

Well, the Eskimos aren't really ideological communists, just welfare scroungers, so the US can both outbid and out-threaten any competing offer, sort of like this.

Fully agreed. I still wonder why Denmark would say yes.

Consider, for example, Canada. Their leader just goes around saying anti-Trump stuff and then gets to rule like a king because that's the only thing anyone cares about. Seems like a formula that would work almost anywhere.

then gets to rule like a king

What does this mean? Carney is the PM and the leader of the Liberal Party. Like, no shit he's setting policy.

He says Trump stuff and then no one questions his policies. It’s a luxury few enjoy.

What point are you trying to make? It's surely not just "Mark Carney is popular with Canadian voters for standing up to Trump." If the question is "why would Denmark makes concessions when Canada wouldn't?" it's pretty straightforwardly because this is basically a reiteration of the status quo whereas Trump is trying to economically ratfuck Canada.

then no one questions his policies. It’s a luxury few enjoy.

Who is "no one"? If Carney didn't have the confidence of his party, he wouldn't be PM, the same as the PM in pretty much any parliamentary system.

He's pushing policies that would normally be radioactive, but because he's loudly Anti-Orange Bad Man, everyone falls in line. Not sure how you're not getting that.

More comments

Two reasons: one, Europe is currently really worried about the possibility of Russian escalation into asymmetric attacks outside of Ukraine, and the Scandis very much want the US to have Europe's back right this minute. Two, Europe is not Canada. Unlike Canada, Denmark is a country that has its own identity and its own domestic political considerations that don't revolve around the US - including an almost unique political synthesis which is willing to compromise with the Right on e.g. immigration in order to protect Danish neoliberal social democracy. These domestic political considerations vary (for instance, I don't think that Sweden would have made the same decision, they're more divided and less competent than the Danes, and any country closer to Russia would have rolled over far sooner, if they'd somehow happened to own Greenland), but this makes sense in the particular context of Denmark.

I'm not really following the "real" vs not real distinction between countries in this thread, but Denmark, with a population of 6 million people and tiny landmass, would not really be my pick for a country that is more real than Canada (40 million people and huge landmass).

Being next to a much bigger and more powerful country like the US makes you not real? Or is it generally having military interests aligned with your powerful neighbor what makes you not real? Is Belgium, surely a very non-real country, more or less real than Canada or Denmark?

It's having a grounded and coherent identity as a nation which animates the state. It's not to do with size exactly (Iceland, for instance, is one of the "realest" countries in the West). Having that sort of self-grounded nature is generally very hard when you're in a position like Canada's - the real issue is cultural proximity to a much bigger and more influential nation, such that your culture is constantly bobbing around like a rowboat in the wake of a supertanker. Compare for instance Belarus, or the old tributaries of the Middle Kingdom. Where there is a "real Canada" among Anglophones that is distinctly Canadian, it's in the run-down Maritimes, the rural prairie, places which are sheltered from America's impact, either as an object of emulation or as a Big Other to which one defines oneself by opposition. Belgium is a good example that actually, I think, illustrates the point. Belgium is not a real country because it has no coherent identity, divided as it is along linguistic lines which also represent internal national and economic divides (the parallel to Canada should be obvious), and having developed its state while torn between the influence of four different larger powers. Denmark, and Danishness, on the other hand, go back over a thousand years with a basic internal understanding of its own continuity to the present day, with the intangible self-possession that entails.

Where there is a "real Canada" among Anglophones that is distinctly Canadian, it's in the run-down Maritimes, the rural prairie, places which are sheltered from America's impact

I don't think it's so much America's impact as that TPTB have been actively trying to kill it for about 30 years -- Vancouver had a Canadian identity as lately as the 90s, and while it was still pretty self-centred I'd even give it to Toronto in the 80s.

It's something I've noticed a lot in the Trump discourse here lately -- if you substitute the "America" in all the unhinged things people are saying about Trump with "Ottawa", you will have accurately described the situation in vast swathes of the nation since about Y2K. Like, uh "We will not be reduced to a mere vassal paying tribute!" kind of rings differently in Alberta, y'know?

More comments

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats