domain:alexepstein.substack.com
netstack
Texas is freedom land
22hr ago
How?
British customs laws were rarely particular in their enforcement. Judges could issue “writs of assistance” compelling bystanders to help with searches. This was an obvious moral hazard, and Americans remained bitter about it for decades. Here’s an article talking about it as part of an argument over probable cause jurisprudence, and here’s explaining how it got into the Bill of Rights.
The pockets rule removes particularity, pitting it directly against the Founding Fathers’ intent. It makes it easier for petty tyrants to impose an inconvenience on anyone they don’t like. That’s a poor choice.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
23hr ago
Well, it'll be more costly, but it'll be possible.
HONG KONG/SHANGHAI/LOS ANGELES, May 13 (Reuters) - The U.S. will cut the "de minimis" tariff for low-value shipments from China to as low as 30%, according to a White House executive order and industry experts, further de-escalating a potentially damaging trade war between the world's two largest economies.
Things move quickly. I think fentanyl stuff will also get resolved.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
23hr ago
There is something to the French case, but modern fertility collapse is uncharted territory in that it happens globally, for new reasons, in conditions of rapidly rising productivity via technological progress. I do not believe that “this country has higher TFR”, alone, is now predictive of much of anything, except the population age structure itself.
And yet it is unable to employ all of those workers
Fair enough, and yes, this goes to show that they're not on the verge of economic decline through labor shortages.
I think the US Deep State was capable of winning this, just like Russia was capable of winning in Ukraine, in theory, if we were to ignore the actual level of Russian governance and corruption and ability to prosecute the war rationally. I knew of that one and so didn't expect Russia to win, and overestimated the US mainly because I did not account for the immense capacity for self-sabotage.
The US State department isn't staffed by geniuses who can shape the world to their liking.
I think they have enough talented people to do this, it's just those people have lost in internal politics.
simply because the world is too hideously complex a system for someone of any intellect or means to meaningfully manipulate
Manipulating the world is made much easier when you own major causal factors of that world. It doesn't take 200 IQ, though intelligence helps not to manipulate yourself into the ditch. All of great power politics is such manipulation. Suppressing competitors, strengthening allies, capturing international institutions, and yes, it's done by networks of high-agency people, not by vague sentiment of the electorate. Sorry, that's just what we can observe happening.
Nothing is set in stone; despite triumphalist propaganda directed at the public, I think the USG is aware of the problems by now and still has major cards like monopoly in crucial technology (ASML is a de facto American company), global reserve currency and, most of all, global goodwill, everyone anxious to go back to normal. Trump has improved his standing in the Middle East with a single speech. Americans are losing time but they can undo the self-inflicted damage with a few more such pivots, apologize for tone-deaf Greenland-posting, revitalize their alliance networks, actually reindustrialize, implement very liberal issuance of citizenship to all Chinese talent and brain-drain the nation – and that's not all. Maybe the AGI God plan will work out too – after all, the attack on Huawei and broader semiconductor supply chain was a resounding success of the sort I expected, it did delay China by years. Maybe Starship makes Brillant Pebbles a reality and forces China to disarm and sign unequal treaties… The US Hegemony is very much a viable project, except some Americans are in the way.
I recognize that my median prognosis has changed in a way that seems discrediting, but it's basically down to high-noise human factors on the US side.
All of these criticisms can be leveled at the Chinese as well - you've never heard them rant about 5,000 years of civilization?
They do have a strong belief in their civilizational superiority, and this chauvinism and smugness is another reason I was bearish on them. But in assessment of their current relative position they tend to be humble. “Building a world-class navy by 2035” is a typical Chinese goal. “Becoming a moderately prosperous society by 2020”. In 2018, Xi said:
When I met with Chinese and foreign journalists after the First Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee, I said that the Chinese Communist Party was determined to make a thousand years of greatness for the Chinese nation, and that a hundred years was just the right time to be in its prime. At the same time, I said this with a deep sense of worry. From our history, dynasties existed for more than 400 years in the Xia Dynasty, 600 years in the Shang Dynasty, 300 years in the Western Zhou Dynasty, 500 years in the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, 215 years in the Western Han Dynasty, 195 years in the Eastern Han Dynasty, 290 years in the Tang Dynasty, 277 years in the Ming Dynasty, 268 years in the Qing Dynasty, 15 years in the Qin Dynasty, 61 years in the Three Kingdoms, 167 years in the Northern Song Dynasty, 153 years in the Southern Song Dynasty, 90 years in the Yuan Dynasty, 38 years in the Republic of China, and other small dynasties There are countless blips and dynasties. The Qin Dynasty, Northern Song Dynasty, and Yuan Dynasty were all once unbeatable powers, but soon fell into disrepair. Those longer dynasties were also corrupt, socially unstable, discontented and rebellious, and many of them were left to languish and die. This shows that after a regime is established, it is not easy to maintain prosperity and long-lasting peace. Without self-reflection, vigilance, and effort, even the most powerful regimes can come to the end of the road.
It is now 97 years since the founding of our Party and 69 years since the founding of New China. The Soviet Communist Party has existed for 86 years, and the Soviet Union for 74 years. Our Party’s history exceeds that of the Soviet Communist Party, and our Party has not held national power for as long as the Soviet Union. By the middle of this century, the history of our Party will be close to 130 years, and the history of New China will reach 100 years. Comrade Deng Xiaoping said, “The consolidation and development of the socialist system will require a long historical stage, and it will take several generations, a dozen generations, or even dozens of generations of our people to struggle persistently and diligently.” How many years is that? It has to be calculated in terms of millenniums. This means that it will take a long historical period for us to build socialism with Chinese characteristics well and into. In this long historical process, it is an extremely difficult and risky challenge to ensure that the Chinese Communist Party does not collapse and the Chinese socialist system does not fall. Once upon a time, the Soviet Communist Party was so strong, the Soviet Union was so powerful, but now it has long been “the old country can not look back at the bright moon”. A generation does the work of a generation, but without historical perspective, without a long-term vision, also can not do the things of the moment.
This does not look as hubristic as American Main Character Syndrome to me.
The century of humiliation making them temporarily embarrassed hegemons
China has never held more than tenuous regional hegemony, I think this framing is not reflective of their ambitions and self-perception.
And you think that a world where China is hegemon won't see shit like Trump's exploitative trade war on the regular?
Yes. It's a stupid trade war and it's highly likely that no Tsinghua graduate will be so stupid. That aside, China has an official policy of not pursuing global hegemony. This certainly has no teeth, but Americans don't even have an equivalent toothless commitment.
Not to mention I'm fairly confident I've seen you mock Americans hyping the 'Chinese threat' and making them out to be more competent than they actually are as a motivation for more defense spending.
I've been right about that, Americans do hype up the Chinese military threat excessively, and they don't even build military that'd be useful in countering that threat, it's nearly entirely a grift. $1 trillion will go to more nebulous next-generation prototypes and battling the tyranny of distance in distant bases, not to a buildup of autonomous platforms that can compete in the SCS. Again, assuming Americans keep self-sabotaging.
ThenElection
23hr ago
Sure. But I'm reminded of one applicant to Stanford whose admission essay about what matters to him was
#BlackLivesMatter #BlackLivesMatter ... (I'll spare readers the middle portion) ... #BlackLivesMatter #BlackLivesMatter
Neither crassly based nor woke should have a place in universities, but the standards applied for crassness are very much not equal across the ideological spectrum.
ABigGuy4U
23hr ago
Maybe I’m just a cynic, but I don’t think people realize how dark a scenario where 90 percent of people are rendered economically irrelevant could get. I don’t think the first solution contemplated is going to be to start handing out UBI.
4bpp
After January 20th, all orange flairs are considered political
23hr ago
It is still one hour per group and week, plus whatever time you need for preparation (tutors do set and grade homework, to anchor the session and give the student feedback). For a large class this amounts to several full-time staff - and you also need a lot of small rooms, which tend to be scarce at universities. (Some supervisions wind up being held at random locations like local coffeeshops, or in the supervisor's private accommodation!)
I'm trying to imagine an independent organization which tests graduates of various schools after graduation to see what they actually know, and rates the schools accordingly.
EDIT: Guys the point here is a publicly-available ranking of schools beyond extremely niche industries
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