domain:alexepstein.substack.com
hydroacetylene
23hr ago
The etruscans predominately were not enslaved and conquered, they joined Rome as Allies like other italic peoples. And while the Gauls were conquered, the majority of the population remained intact and Gallic-speaking until after the edict of Caracalla granted them citizenship.
Browser
23hr ago
I don't deny their second-class within Israel but is an independent Palestine likely to develop living conditions that are on aggregate better?
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
23hr ago
Do you really believe that if Israël fell the entire citizen population wouldn’t be welcomed into the west with open arms?
If Israel fell, it would because the West (including the US in particular) had decided it was the bad guy, and no, the entire citizen population would not be welcomed under those circumstances.
Browser
23hr ago
If Hamas laid down their arms and initiated an actual unconditional surrender Gaza would likely be a below-median but perfectly functional part of Israel within a decade. Vice-versa hahahaha.
Browser
23hr ago
Probably would be some scruples about the orthodox population since they're not the most enthused net contributors
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
23hr ago
To be clear, you think that Gazans aren't starving, and the population is growing, during the war? What a strange take. (Statistically anyways in the pre-war period it's quite possible for a subset to starve while a different subset is above-replacement fertile, so I kind of wonder if you're just conflating headlines)
In the interest of full disclosure, I've sat down to write a reply to you three times now, and the previous two time I ended up figuratively crumpling the reply up and throwing it away in frustration because I'm getting the impression that you didn't actually read or try to engage with my post so much as just skimmed it looking for nits to pick.
Let me go back to this:
Imagine that you are someone who is deeply interested in space flight. You spend hours of your day thinking seriously about Orbital Mechanics and the implications of Relativity. One day you hear about a community devoted to discussing space travel and are excited at the prospect of participating. But when you get there what you find is a Star Trek fan-forum that is far more interested in talking about the Heisenberg compensators on fictional warp-drives than they are Hohmann transfers, thrust to ISP curves, or the effects on low-gravity on human physiology. That has essentially been my experience trying to discuss "Artificial Intelligence" with the rationalist community.
I hope you realise you are more on the side of the Star Trek fan-forum user than the aerospace engineering enthusiast. Your post was basically the equivalent of saying a Soyuz rocket is propelled by gunpowder and then calling the correction a nitpick. I don't care for credentialism, but I am a machine learning engineer who's actually deep in the weeds when it comes to training the kind of models we're talking about, and I can safely say that none of the arguments made in your post have any more technical merit than the kind of Lesswrong post you criticise.
In any case, to quote Dijkstra, "the question of whether Machines Can Think is about as relevant as the question of whether Submarines Can Swim". Despite their flaws, LLMs are being used to solve real-world problems daily, are used in an agentic manner, and I have never seen any research done by people obsessing over whether or not they are truly "intelligent" yield any competing alternative or actual upgrade to their capabilities.
hydroacetylene
23hr ago
I mean, senior partners routinely bill out at double thé rate of junior partners. And associates/junior partners bill at about double the rate of a high end plumbing or HVAC company. Law school is basically meritocratic and has no shortage of spots, but there’s a brutal prestige hierarchy.
JTarrou
23hr ago
And apparently that's the skillset that wins the presidency.
What's your point?
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
23hr ago
It's kind of incredible how the Vietnam war has seemed to fade so quickly from the public consciousness over the last decade or two. Maybe deserves a main thread post at some point.
Browser
23hr ago
Yes it is? There's a sizeable Israeli Arab population. Cease the nonsense and they'd be better off
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
23hr ago
It might be an exaggeration to say they were all genocided, many merely had their cultural identity destroyed through enslavement and conquest.
You win the prize! You are the 3rd person in this thread to tell me something I already know and said! Have a star.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
23hr ago
To me this underscores that a one-state solution is actually the only plausible solution with a degree of stability or peace.
Yes, the peace of the mass grave for the Jews. Although the Palestinians, once they are done with that, will probably start warring with their neighbors.
hydroacetylene
23hr ago
And how much of that is useless Russian citizenship?
Do you really believe that if Israël fell the entire citizen population wouldn’t be welcomed into the west with open arms? The west needs young taxpayers, which Israël has.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
23hr ago
First of all, that's quite an uncharitable take. The comment didn't read to me as Jew-hating.
Equally as famously, most Palestinians in Israel (or the area overall, depending on how you parse the term) are not citizens and live under second-class conditions. If we're being fair, that's partly because the PA is supposed to be in charge but actually are mostly grifters, so they've delegated blame, but ultimately you don't really see Israel trying to expand citizenship to more Palestinians, even though by your own logic that would probably increase their peacefulness?
Skulldrinker
23hr ago
Isnt the Hamas plan to let their citizens get killed by Israelis while they run a propaganda campaign that gets Western leftists to send them money so their leadership can live cushy lives in Dubai and London?
hydroacetylene
23hr ago
The alawites made their own bed. The public mostly isn’t ok with the murders of Druze and Christian civilians; if it was bigger news there would be an outcry.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
23hr ago
To me this underscores that a one-state solution is actually the only plausible solution with a degree of stability or peace. You are correct, you can't get out of a permanent state of emergency or highly militarized watchfulness without low-level police stuff, that's what law and order actually looks like. And to do that, it seems to me that the end goal must be to get to a point where there are Jewish citizens, and Palestinian citizens, and the state becomes more secular. I'm not suggesting that needs to or even could happen overnight, but it could happen with enough dedication. That's obviously not the current trajectory, but I view it as inclement on the Israelis to at least make overtures in that direction if they want to keep any kind of moral-practical high ground.
hydroacetylene
23hr ago
The etruscans and Gauls disappeared because they started going by ‘Romans’. It’s not an option for the Palestinians to become Israelis.
hydroacetylene
23hr ago
She was always crazy, but when she turned against Jews she lost the leash.
DirtyWaterHotDog
23hr ago
Claude Desktop
Do you mean Claude Code ? If you're running a mcp/code setup then claude code will perform noticeably better. In absence of Claude code, I'd try to use Cursor's agent mode.
manipulating a big chunk of json
Yeah, large jsons cause context rot
For any transformation, it's always good to write a strategy document and define a few unit-tasks that the model can orchestrate together. For building houses, asking it to write a blueprint or put foundational blocks on first, may work better. If you can break down your primitives further, that's always good. They don't need to be explicit MCP/tool-calls. A simple prompt stuffed reference will do.
Lastly, creating typed intermediate structures with better semantic flow helps. Json schemas are wonky, I like pydantic (java probably has something similar) for creating large structured schemas that can be validated in real time. Pydantic captures the semantics better than json. It also allows the model to make edits deep into a nested dataclass, without fear of a breaking change else where. This way you build out the entire house in the intermediate structure. And then relegate the intermediate representation -> projection task to a post processing step.
As long as we're talking about data structures, please use dataclasses for storing data and raw functions as transformations. We are in the year of the lord 2025, and OOP should not be used.
not all that experienced with Java
Don't know your familiarity with coding, but Java isn't a good place to start. I would recommend python, but most times it's good to just go out there and do things. Getting stuck choosing between tools is never productive. So, maybe ignore me.
hydroacetylene
23hr ago
I mean he’s not wrong, totalitarian regimes are hard on their ruling classes.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
23hr ago
Honestly I'm not familiar enough with it - were the South Africa boycotts and/or sanctions actually effective in ending apartheid?
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
23hr ago
Not really how weapons sales work in the modern world. Yes, you can get some weapons anywhere, but major systems require government permission to be sold, even by private companies (based in the country in question). It's always felt a little odd to me, but there's a certain logic to it.
That offer is not in the pipeline for the Palestinians.
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