lurk2

Perhaps this is a topic that isn't easy to discuss openly?

Give it a few years.

J.D. Vance might represent a kind of domestic counter-force in the U.S. that leans more toward 'America First' rather than prioritizing Israel.

Do you mean like he’s going to drain the swamp?

This video was extremely disingenuous.

In 2014 it was Chile, in 2017 it was Honduras, then Colombia and El Salvador in the early 2020s. In Chile and Colombia they were coasting on tax authorities not pursuing them and relying on the cultural cachet of being thought-leading risk takers who were forward-thinking enough to take on a new frontier (remember this is when they started flying south for ayahuasca ceremonies). In the case of Honduras and El Salvador, they were setting up in tax-free zones (which is effectively a transfer of wealth from those outside of the zone to those inside). Notable that the periods of Chilean and Salvadorian history that these “libertarians” tend to celebrate were periods of political repression. I can’t imagine these ventures will be any different.

There is a ground-level appeal of the China-style panopticon because it delivers public order and clean streets.

Correct.

Larry didn't just buy his way to digital dictator by bribing the right people

Incorrect.

it answers a question in a way other people are avoiding, because answering it requires a lot of work and uncomfortable tradeoffs.

Larry Ellison is not interested in public order. The surveillance system isn’t going to be for normal people, it’s going to be for Larry Ellison. California isn’t filthy because it lacks a panopticon; it was cleaned for visiting Chinese dignitaries without one. If Ellison had wanted to clean up the street and has the appeal you think that he does, he could have just run for governor.

He’s talking about shifting attitudes towards China online, not within China itself.

This article was posted by a brand new account that has submitted 4 articles from the same blog in less than 48 hours. It also looks like it was written by an LLM. How does something like this even make it to the front page?

You’re right that my reasoning was off. I don’t think it helps the point OP was trying to make. The argument being made in favor of labor isn’t “The only way for someone to be happy is to have a job” but instead “The majority of people will be unhappy without an occupation,” which is testable. The existence of people who are happy without any sort of structured, purposeful activity would not invalidate that the majority of people may well need structured, purposeful activity in order to feel fulfilled.

If you tested the claim it wouldn’t tell you about human nature, because it’s possible (and I think likely) that most people are simply conditioned to believe they need purposeful work to be fulfilled, so you could just as well argue that if society were to be radically re-engineered, it would be worthwhile to re-engineer it at the psychological level (such that no one felt the need to work), rather than the economic level (such that work was made available to everyone).

We're ruled by people who don't work.

I don’t have any data to support this but I suspect the majority of those people that we would characterize as happy are still engaged in an occupation (not a “job” as such, but purposeful work that goes beyond mere leisure). I’ve seen dozens of well-to-do retired boomers who waste away on Twitter or YouTube and don’t seem to do much of anything anymore, which is what I’m guessing is the behavior you’re imagining when you talk about oligarchs not working, but I don’t see much evidence that the oligarchs are like that; most that I can think of have made no indication that they will ever retire. Now, granted, work looks a lot different if you’re Warren Buffett, but what we’re looking at is not the social benefit of work as such but the impact of structured, purposeful activity on an individual’s psychological sense of wellbeing. In that sense, I think it’s unlikely that these people would disprove the premise.

I have no opinion either way but this doesn’t follow. I can imagine a world where people don’t need oxygen to breathe but they still do. If we say people need oxygen, the argument is obviously about the world such as it is rather than the world as it could hypothetically be.

Those industries have been reshoring for more than 5 years.

WeWork, Theranos, FTX

Private correspondence corroborates how the founders felt about these issues. They would not have seen things your way. You’re appealing to them as a disingenuous rhetorical technique to validate your own ill-conceived arguments, not because you actually know anything about who they were or what they thought.

Which group do you think the Founding Fathers would say better reflects the American spirit? To me immigrants are clearly the better reflection of the best aspects of American culture.

United States Congress, “An act to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization,” March 26, 1790:

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That any Alien being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof on application to any common law Court of record in any one of the States wherein he shall have resided for the term of one year at least, and making proof to the satisfaction of such Court that he is a person of good character, and taking the oath or affirmation prescribed by law to support the Constitution of the United States, which Oath or Affirmation such Court shall administer, and the Clerk of such Court shall record such Application, and the proceedings thereon; and thereupon such person shall be considered as a Citizen of the United States.

Note: “free white person […] of good character”

US Constitution Preamble:

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

Note: “ourselves and our Posterity”

The flow of students between China and the USA is effectively unidirectional and always has been. What insight do you have to suggest that this will change in the near future?

It’s irrelevant who you ask because it isn’t how the word is defined.

The overwhelming majority of current US residents were immigrants themselves at some point in the last 150 years (only natives were there, everyone else immigrated from somewhere)

Having an ancestor who immigrated to one’s country does not make one an immigrant.

Most people in the US are immigrants, including white people.

If they were born in America they aren’t immigrants.

To think otherwise is anti-American, and you do not belong here.

United States Congress, “An act to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization,” March 26, 1790:

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That any Alien being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof on application to any common law Court of record in any one of the States wherein he shall have resided for the term of one year at least, and making proof to the satisfaction of such Court that he is a person of good character, and taking the oath or affirmation prescribed by law to support the Constitution of the United States, which Oath or Affirmation such Court shall administer, and the Clerk of such Court shall record such Application, and the proceedings thereon; and thereupon such person shall be considered as a Citizen of the United States.

Taxation without Representation was literally the driving force for the creation of America itself

The issue of taxation without representation had far more to do with the founders’ status as Englishmen and British subjects than their status as taxpayers. Paying taxes by itself was not a sufficient qualification for political representation. Felons, minors, and women were also required to pay taxes in the 1770s, despite not being able to vote. Immigrants who believe that the taxes they pay entitle them to this representation have bought into a falsified version of American history that was popularized during the Civil Rights Era.

United States Congress, “An act to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization,” March 26, 1790:

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That any Alien being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof on application to any common law Court of record in any one of the States wherein he shall have resided for the term of one year at least, and making proof to the satisfaction of such Court that he is a person of good character, and taking the oath or affirmation prescribed by law to support the Constitution of the United States, which Oath or Affirmation such Court shall administer, and the Clerk of such Court shall record such Application, and the proceedings thereon; and thereupon such person shall be considered as a Citizen of the United States.

a reputation for a strong engineering culture

We’re talking about the company that shipped the storage bug?

Unlikely anyone in Russia or China would care to offer a service primarily to the benefit of the western world.

Russians are huge on the piracy scene and have been for decades, primarily because it’s an effective way for the Russian Federation to thumb their nose at the Americans. China has more than a billion people in it. I’m sure between the two of them there is at least one person that identifies with citizen of the world style liberalism (and, if I could venture to be an optimist, probably a lot more than one).

piratebay continues to be the -to my knowledge- biggest public tracker out there

It has been compromised for more than a decade. The site is impossible to navigate without an adblocker due to malicious redirect ads and most of the major torrents are being monitored by rights management companies who will notify the user’s ISP of suspected infringement.

They are almost certainly being financed by the AI lobby as they have been open about providing API access to companies training AI in exchange for “donations.”[1][2][3] Having all of this data available online for free gives those looking for training data plausible deniability. It would turn into a huge legal headache if OpenAI had scraped Spotify directly, but if they launder it through a third party they can at least try to argue they weren’t responsible for the infringement.

Spotify got started doing the same thing, though.[4]

[1] https://annas-archive.gl/blog/llms-txt.html (“Making an enterprise-level donation will get you fast SFTP access to all the files, which is faster than torrents.”)

[2] https://annas-archive.gl/blog/duxiu-exclusive.html (“We’re looking for some company or institution to help us with OCR and text extraction for a massive collection we acquired, in exchange for exclusive early access. After the embargo period, we will of course release the entire collection.”)

[3] https://annas-archive.gl/donate (“Enterprise-level donation or exchange for new collections (e.g. new scans, OCR’ed datasets). […] We welcome large donations from wealthy individuals or institutions. For donations over $5,000, please contact us directly at Contact email.”)

[4] https://torrentfreak.com/spotifys-beta-used-pirate-mp3-files... (“Rumors that early versions of Spotify used ‘pirate’ MP3s have been floating around the Internet for years. People who had access to the service in the beginning later reported downloading tracks that contained ‘Scene’ labeling, tags, and formats, which are the tell-tale signs that content hadn’t been obtained officially.”)

It isn't reasonable to ask a platform to host content that is literally about suing them

Explicit rejection is better than opacity but better still is public accountability. Meta’s properties have a combined userbase that amounts to just over 1 in 4 people on earth; these platforms should have been regulated as utilities a long time ago. Suppose I wanted to run ad campaigns advocating for antitrust legislation targeting social media companies and ended up getting booted off of all of the major platforms; what feasible method is there for me to advance these ideas that could possibly compete with the platforms’ own abilities to influence public opinion?

Can you explain to me why a farmer with a financial stake in this argument continues to till his soil? Can you explain the benefits of tillage, or are you arguing that it has no benefits?

Tillage as a practice has existed for around 10,000 years. I’m supposed to believe that 10,000 years worth of people never figured out that the enormous amounts of energy they were investing into tillage was worse than just doing nothing?

We no-till farm thousands of acres in the middle of millions more acres of no-till grain farming.

1) Does this practice work in every circumstance?

2) If so, why do farmers continue the practice of tillage?

3) Why did the practice of tillage originate in the first place?

It seems extremely unlikely that the practice was adopted and then continued to persist for no reason.

Do you have experience as a farmer? If you don’t, why should I believe that farmers who continue to till their fields know less about this issue than you do?

Tilling requires less cognitive and logistical effort: you just apply calories to drag a blade through the soil and then dump seed in it. No-till requires things like “tracking the soil’s water retention levels”, “planting cover crops or even giving a field a year off”, and other such steps that in general can be summarized as “cost centers”.

No-Till is one of those ideas like permaculture or Modern Monetary Theory that attracts emphatic advocates while going against conventional practice. It isn’t clear why it would just be being adopted now if it actually worked. Do you have any actual experience farming?

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What if you used the LLM to generate works that were already copyrighted?

The original Minecraft EULA did not have any of the usual boilerplate language to support unilaterally modifying the terms. I had a Minecraft account purchased under this original EULA which was modified a year or two after I bought the game. Around 5 or 6 years ago, Mojang emailed me about changes to their login system that would require me to migrate my account to Microsoft’s system (no doubt under new T+C), but the migration process never worked and they never responded to my support requests.

When I tried to resolve it a couple of years ago I received boilerplate emails informing me that the migration period had ended.

So if you deal with companies that simply don’t honor their contracts—companies like Microsoft and Mojang—you don’t even need use to imply consent, because they can just lock you out of your purchases and tell you to pound sand.