domain:open.substack.com
ABigGuy4U
17hr ago
You’re trying to have it both ways. You claim that Antony Blinkin and the State Department do not speak for Ukraine, then you turn around and list all the ways that they have MASSIVE LEVERAGE over Ukraine. So which is it? Are the documented statements by official representatives of the American government that Ukraine will have elections when they have Crimea (read: when pigs fly and the sun rises in the west) a legitimate statement of policy of not? Why should I ignore the rantings of Ukraine’s very rich, very influential benefactor that could scotch their war effort on a whim?
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
17hr ago
I may or may not be an AI skeptic by your definition - I think it's quite likely that 2030 is a real year, and think it's plausible that even 2050 is a real year.
Absolutely not, at least by standards! You acknowledge the possibility that we might get AGI in the near-term, and I see no firm reason to over index on a given year. Most people I'd call "skeptics" deny the possibility of AGI at all, or rule out any significant chance of near-term AGI, or have modal timelines >30 years.
I agree that LLMs are missing something, but I'm agnostic on whether brute-force scaling will get us to undisputable AGI. It may or may not. Perhaps online learning, as you hint at, might suffice.
Still, LLMs have a tendency not to actually coin new terms, and to fail to use the newly coined terms fluently in the rare cases that they do coin such a term (which is probably why they don't do it - if coining a new term was effective for problem solving, it would have been chiseled into their cognition by the RLVR process).
I wonder if RLHF plays a role. I don't think human data annotators would be positively inclined towards models that made up novel words.
Thank you for taking the time to respond!
Tiber727
17hr ago
Ukraine is already too weak to attack Russia by choice, and that's not going to change no matter what the outcome of this is. I don't believe this is actually Russia's condition.
As far as I can see, the problem with this option is strictly that neither the current Ukrainian government (which surely would collapse in such a situation) nor the West (for whom a neutral Ukraine with present borders is of little value, and they would have to credibly signal that they would defend it, vs. the option to have it cheaply continue killing Russians and gamble on the absolute bonanza that a surprise Russian collapse would be) would actually want it.
I would contend that Russia would also not accept this proposition, but even without that contention you already make it sound like a nonstarter.
If another country were actually willing to face Russia, they could do so right now. At this point, I think that if almost anyone but the U.S. said that they were sending troops and kept those troops in Ukraine, Russia wouldn't actually use nukes.
JarJarJedi
17hr ago
Yeah that's why pretty much stopped playing - to have a good game takes at least a whole weekend, maybe longer, for pretty much every game I'd enjoy. And I can't justify spending that much time to myself. I played Disco Elysium though recently, and didn't regret it, but probably won't do anything like that again for a while.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
18hr ago
Acquiescence+aftercare from the US was reportedly that the Americans told the Germans before the attack, as well as soon after.
My opinion is Biden could basically call Scholz and say "I hope none of your folks are working on these pipelines of yours, because we're blowing them up tomorrow".
@dr_analog, you got your wish!
That's good! You'd probably have a vision problem if you did. One typically does not see stunning rebukes of foreign, and former, political appointees who are providing rhetorical, financial, and military support to your own side.
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
18hr ago
If you believe, as I increasingly do, that most of our societal ills with corruption and collapse of state capacity revolve around the mass importation of high time preference demographics incapable at a genetic level of pursuing generational projects, deporting them is not only a solution, but the only solution.
What? No, that's not true. Granting the (very substantial) premise, the conclusion is obviously going to be "don't let these people run society", but that only requires disenfranchisement, not deportation (except in the edge case of a supermajority that can overthrow the disenfranchising government).
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
18hr ago
Do you feel like these snarky comebacks add anything, impress or convince others?
The galaxybrained 'you're just projecting your own ignorance and whenever you point out the silliness in what I'm saying - it's actually you that's wrong and each time you point this out it only shows how wrong you are' approach was fun but it's gotten a bit tired by now. You need a new routine.
ABigGuy4U
18hr ago
Opposition parties remain banned, the press is still under government control, the Verkhovna Rada re-passes the martial law declaration every 90 days with the precision of a metronome. There are no plans for an election in the near future. I’m not seeing any stunning Ukrainian rebuke of what Antony Blinkin said.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
18hr ago
The whole Ukrainian govt is on US and EU payroll, about half their money comes from the West vs Ukrainian taxes.
"So I'm on trial for war crimes. Where is the justice? We are all individuals, making our own decisions. I never forced anyone to do anything. This prosecution is based on spooks, naïve conceptions of conspiracy and a simplistic understanding of a complex world of interrelated cause and effect."
"Well you did pay the soldier's wages. You provided them armaments, training and intelligence. You're responsible for their actions, your support is implicit."
Even assuming that this is true, could they really have done it without support or at least acquiescence+aftercare from the US?
Acquiescence+aftercare from the US was reportedly that the Americans told the Germans before the attack, as well as soon after.
As for being puzzled by regional parties whose security concerns Germany dismissed and ignorred in pursuing Nord Stream, I suspect you believe they have a far greater fear and/or positive opinion of Germany than they do. Germany's Nord Stream policy was not exactly considered a benign or neutral policy by its Baltic neighbors. German politicians had not only insisted it was ridiculous to oppose Nord Stream on grounds of Russian concerns, but also that it was ridiculous to believe Nord Stream interests might sabotage Germany's willingness to support its European neighbors security if Russia did do something stupid. Both of these concerns were validated by the German response to Putin.
If anything, rather than a snub the non-cooperation was both a retaliation and a warning. Germany could not defend Nord Stream when it was warned in advance. Germany could not pursue Nord Stream saboteurs without the cooperation of its neighbors in the present. And Germany would not be able to protect any future Nord Stream in the future, if it disregarded its neighbors security concerns. The Nord Stream concept was not a German-Russia bilateral concern. It was a concern of far more people, and far more veto authorities in practice.
Germany was never so adored and/or feared that it could expect other countries to defend Germany's privileged energy relationship with Russian at their own expense. If that surprised the Germans, well it wasn't for a lack of being warned.
phailyoor
18hr ago
The Taiwanese are Chinese. They may be die hard against Communist rule, but they have no history as a state that wasn't thoroughly Chinese. Unless maybe you count the Japanese occupation but I don't think so.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
18hr ago
I wouldn't be so dismissive of the possibility that solutions exist which simultaneously make Ukraine too weak to make it attractive for it to resume the war at a later point and reclaim territories (what is really Russia's minimum condition) and too strong to make it attractive for Russia to do so and capture more. The most obvious option is for NATO to provide a binding, boots-on-ground guarantee to defend it should Russia attack again. As far as I can see, the problem with this option is strictly that neither the current Ukrainian government (which surely would collapse in such a situation) nor the West (for whom a neutral Ukraine with present borders is of little value, and they would have to credibly signal that they would defend it, vs. the option to have it cheaply continue killing Russians and gamble on the absolute bonanza that a surprise Russian collapse would be) would actually want it.
Without EU membership/emigration opportunities/gibs, even the Ukrainian people (who are largely happy to accept a chance of death for a chance of climbing the butter mountains and swimming the wine lakes) would see no reason to accept such a peace, though I thought Russia at one point softened its stance on accepting an Austria-like "EU but no NATO" arrangement.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
18hr ago
I get ya, I just have a hobby of linguistic nitpicking.
phailyoor
18hr ago
their sole foray into Russian Territory
From a purely military perspective the invasion may have been the right move. They inflicted serious losses on the unprepared Russian defenders and diverted an impressive amount of manpower away from the main attack in Ukraine.
But from that perspective they should have cut their losses and run when the Russians brought their entire war machine to bear on the pocket. Trying to replicate attacks like the Kursk attack in other places along the Russian border would probably have been smart. But the fact of occupying Russian land was probably too much to just give up without a fight.
UwU
18hr ago
The population would mostly flee and be happily snapped up by European union which needs wagies. Baltic sea navigation wouldn't be improved, actually seizing the Baltic state could possibly make western Europe close the Danish straits.
If you read the latter part of his post, I think it's pretty clear he means we shouldn't mind the Baltics getting invaded, but of course correct me if I'm wrong.
I kinda hold a similar opinion. I don't really want to care about the Baltics. But they are in NATO, and we (the US) are allied to them, so we do have to mind the Baltics getting invaded. If there's a politically feasible way to extricate ourselves from having to protect the Baltics, like somehow removing them from NATO, then I would support it.
phailyoor
18hr ago
If it's just the position of the front, most available maps should be accurate enough. As biased as the reporting may be, they can't fake the front more than a few miles.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
18hr ago
This social structure is extremely common in history and is dishonestly presented as proof of how people can be “multilingual”.
I do not see what's dishonest about such a claim. Being multilingual isn't the same as being equally or maximally fluent in all the languages of concern. Being able to be conversational at all is the bare minimum, and counts by itself.
anon_
19hr ago
They fought way harder than was reasonable to expect when this first started.
And, for many purposes, they established a very credible lesson about it for the future.
That is to say, even if they end up losing some eastern territory, they will have demonstrated that the cost to get it was extremely high -- both in absolute terms and relative to expectation.
Fortunately the story was fake from start to finish and from top to bottom. Anyone who felt an iota of shame over it was played for a sucker, a cheap mark.
So I think the right choice is to continue to be unashamed and unrepentant, especially when people who hate you are tying to stop the things you want done.
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
19hr ago
Or maybe you just can't stop yourself from expressing it in maximally vitriolic ways.
He doesn't, though. AFAICS @WhiningCoil is a lot less vitriolic than SteveKirkland or Bernd.
Like, yeah, he might not be the most pleasant person to have around, but neither is @The_Nybbler. WC's not, TTBOMK, a flaming jackass who tries to drive out his opponents and claim the space.
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