strangegecko

I'm guessing with backstabbing he means China's practice of stealing technology and closing off the market for foreign companies.

Lots of smaller and mid sized companies that tried to invest in the Chinese market lost everything because the government protected and supported local copycats, with no intention of giving the foreign company fair access to the market.

He literally said it for China: stopping an invasion. I would add limiting political influence from autocratic governments that don't respect individual rights, but I know that's opening another Pandora's box.

We all have a health problem that puts an end date on our efforts.

Product does what it should and doesn't what it shouldn't?

Of course it requires SOTA, people will always choose better models over some compact thing that is obviously more limited. You can't control the truth with models nobody wants to use.

His analogy is that a gas station is for putting gas into your car. But he walks there often, so the assumption that you need your car if you go to the gas station isn't inevitable.

You could conceivably walk to a car wash that has similar sundries as a gas station.

Oh sure, Chinese investors and business people share their profits with everyone out of the goodness of their heart. Nice fairy tale.

Did they consider that profits on the build out won't be uniform, i. e. there will be some companies that go under but the rest of them will capture the profit?

Maybe, but you have very similar dynamics in China or other countries. At the root the problem is one of power dynamics, inequality, authoritarianism (whether legitimized by money or politics or both). Or said otherwise, an erosion of democratic and egalitarian ideals.

I find brackets help me understand structure from a distance much better than whitespace.

Misplaced brackets seem like a thing from the past to me when we didn't have IDEs. I don't remember ever having a bug due to that.

Engineering and running a company are very different skill sets. Engineers are often not good at Marketing, networking, sales, ...

Even if you are good at those, for many companies, it's more about connections than about the ability to build stuff. So if you don't know the right people, it is very difficult to get a foothold.

It's a dumb joke considering Germany has been one of the most peaceful countries in decades. And the people making the jokes are often citizens of a country actively engaged in wars.

Personally, I prefer the US approach. At least then everyone knows what they're dealing with and they can openly react instead of being forced into a fake dance between what is said and what is REALLY said.

The covert stuff gives some degree of plausible deniability and it causes a good amount of the population to be complacent and ignore reality. I don't see how this can be considered good for anyone but the people creating propaganda.

I have no idea and for me it's not the central question.

I don't like it from any party, but from a moral standpoint, the more authoritarian someone is about their propaganda, the more invasive and violent it feels to me.

I perceive what the CCP is doing as denying my (and other people's) humanity and individual rights. I simply cannot accept a government that imprisons artists and human rights activists. A world where art is crime is not one I find worth living in.

I perceive American propaganda in the same category as advertising, harmful and annoying, but they won't lock me up or threaten my safety if I speak up against the propaganda. Well, at least that's how it used to be, who knows with the current trajectory.

I'm bluer than 98% apparently. For me, turquoise is green. I didn't realize that's not normal.

If I'm off on a detail like that, then...uh oh.

They're doing a lot that goes against that strategy, you just don't see it in the headlines except in cases such as these or when you dig into how they conduct international negotiations or business deals involving the Chinese market.

Not to mention how they are openly expansionist in the SCS and obviously wrt Taiwan.

Of course they want to be seen as reasonable, their ideal is to control the international narrative just how they can do it internally in China.

What examples do you have of the US government doing to CEOs what has happened to people like Jack Ma and many other public figures?

For China, there are so many examples of people doing 180s and being full of contrition after those interventions, it's hard to imagine anything but severe intimidation or worse happening behind closed doors.

Expand?

German government is certainly slow and overly limited by bureaucracy, but dangerous?

Who are you comparing to?

Reminds me of this article https://aeon.co/essays/instrumentalisation-is-making-everyth...

Doing things with an ulterior motive most likely changes the experience of those things.

There's something inherently stressful in "doing relaxation".

Go to Russia and ask the average person on the street what they think of Putin. Thing is, the people who had to be afraid are already long gone. The rest just didn't care or tried to stay safe rather than prioritizing their beliefs and principles.

You really think the people who are left on the streets feel free to speak their minds if it would conflict with what the Politburo is enforcing?

There is also European AI and probably other places.

You may think only those two are relevant, and so every discussion of one party requires discussion of the other. I disagree with that fundamentally.

I'll be honest, I also disagree that one side is "clearly less evil than the other". For me, living in Taiwan and caring about democracy, the risk of Chinese authoritarian expansion and invasion is not a "speck of wood in the eye", frankly I find that framing disrespectful.

But that discussion is entirely beyond the question of hypocrisy. Again, the guy people accuse of hypocrisy said nothing of the sort that indicates that he doesn't see the problems of the US government. He merely didn't talk about them.

This isn't "shutting down talk about hypocrisy".

I'll add my anecdote here: I bought a Tern Verge and the accessory bike bag about 1.5 years ago because I imagined taking the bike on the train or public transport and because I lived in a small apartment. With the bag, you can take it like any other bag, but without, even if folded, you need to pay extra and place it in dedicated bike spots.

Now partially that's just my laziness and trajectory in life, but I haven't used the bag once (I'm not even sure how to use the bag, it's...complicated?). And the bike was folded only once, when I moved.

About a year later I bought a road bike because I wanted better climbing and longer distances and more comfort. Ultimately, for me the folding bike - while great fun in general, it's fast and agile - was kind of the wrong choice.

My family had cats when I was young and I walked the neighbor's dog too. I fondly remember reading the translated versions of Catwatching and Dogwatching in the early 90s.

I find the black and white thinking scary and I see as a result of social media. Nowadays you even have to argue for the possibility of nuance because everyone immediately jumps to "for or against" mode.

I strongly believe humanity needs to find ways to slow down, but the prevailing culture is for everything to go faster and faster, which doesn't leave room for nuance and non-emotional reasoning.

I have to say that I don't believe in most people's ability to teach their children critical thinking, compassion, nuance, etc. Most people barely manage to feed their kids and not mess them up too badly on the emotional side.

He said "At the very least you can be sure noone is in this for the good of the people anymore. This is about who will dominate the world of tomorrow.".

I.e. he doesn't see the US as "the good guys" either.

Pointing out the war threat from China isn't hypocritical just because you don't list all the war threats from the US at the same time.

Hypocrisy would be if the person only points out Chinese authoritarianism without acknowledging problems e.g. in US policy.

Not mentioning US problems every time they criticize CCP problems is not automatically hypocrisy, and this idea basically means you cannot criticize anything without criticizing everything someone considers just as bad or worse at the same time.

Calling a discussion on China hypocritical because it doesn't say "but US worse" is essentially trying to build in whataboutism into every discussion.

It's a symptom of increasing polarization and part of the problem.

Thanks for expanding on your story, it means a lot to hear from people with experience.

I've received a lot of thoughtful responses and am a little embarrassed because I'm probably looking in all the wrong places in my search for identity or joy or meaning. My life kind of fell apart in the last few years, first the career, then the relationship, then my sense of self as I realized all I've ever done were coping mechanisms. At this point, I'm essentially looking for a reason to live, and that places a heavier burden on anything I try than is reasonable.

I probably should have provided more context, but it's all rather off topic.

However, I guess my life is strange enough so that people made assumptions around my original statements that don't reflect my meaning.

Quite frankly, I'm friendless and have very low self esteem and have felt "not good enough" for most of my life.

I remember building Lego starships with a friend a long time ago, and I felt that on a fundamental level, nothing I could ever make would match what he could build. It was like a law of nature that I'm flawed in that way.

Any new interest that came into life also came from friends. Nothing ever originated with me, I didn't have the confidence for that. Having others to collaborate with automatically validates what I do, in a way.

It's possible I simply never learned how to self validate activities.

My need for validation is a very childlike one, it's rooted in emotional neglect. I remember my mom praising other people but never finding praise within our family. One of many things that planted seeds of this sense of fundamental inferiority. Then life solidified that in various ways.

I need to force myself to do almost everything. Simply saying it's a waste of time because of that isn't practical unless I give up on life entirely.

In practice, it's not binary. I'm interested because I want to make music similar to that which I like listening to.

Sometimes I get enjoyment out of it, but sometimes I lose interest maybe because I'm facing a frustration.

My question of wasting time is connected to "can I even create something worth listening to". If nothing I could make is worth listening to, then I guess I would feel the process of creation is pointless.

I've heard others write about how what they produce is worth listening to, to them. I think that is enough, but I also think I lack confidence in my own judgement. Almost like I need someone else to confirm my validity. I have recognized that as a result of emotional neglect, but I haven't figured out how to fix it.

For me it is beyond trying to make money or become famous,

To clarify, when I speak of "approval", I'm not imagining a successful career or financial success. It's much more basic, i.e. having a few people tell me they genuinely like something I created would do that.

it is simply to enjoy the journey and the creativity that comes with creating music.

It's unfortunately not simple for me (again, context of long term burnout / depression etc). If I only go by enjoyment, I will watch TV and maybe read and go on bike rides until the end of my days. But that is not fulfilling in the long term. I have a creative drive, but it's rather intermittent and not enough to consistently want to do the work involved. I'm trying to nurture it.