blix · HackerTrans

el mes pasadodiscuss

Patronage programs for people with advanced degrees is a woefully inadequate solution to the current economic pressures. Large segments of the first-world working and middle classes hollowed out by globalization had already turned against it before AI even came on to the scene. People are generally hostile to patronage directed towards people above them on the ladder.

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hace 3 mesesdiscuss

the denouncing of heresy may be even more important.

blix

hace 3 mesesdiscuss

You don't want the people to be uneducated, because you have no control over their thought processes, which could be dangerous an unpredictable. And it leaves space for someone else to educate them in way that conflicts with your interests.

Ideally, you would want them to be intentionally educated to a specific type of manipulable gullibility, where they are receptive to your messages, but resistant to messages from other sources.

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hace 3 mesesdiscuss

The effort significantly predates the recent changes in US media ownership. I would actually argue that the ownership change is mostly orthogonal to the ongoing trend of centralization and top-down manipulation of digital information sources.

A shift change of the prison guards more than a material change to the prison.

blix

hace 3 mesesdiscuss

I'm not gonna argue whether it is true or false, but the scale of the conspiracy you are proposing is pretty massive. Multiple orders of magnitude bigger than anything that is currently within the mainstream public consciousness.

In this case, I think a network of mostly independent actors whose interests happen to align makes more sense. But maybe sometimes those interests are a little different than what people commonly understand them to be.

blix

hace 3 mesesdiscuss

It is not jist Bibi, but also the IAEA and other international organizations. And at least the last 5 US administrations. I suppose they could also all be in Israel's pocket though.

Iran's 60% enriched uranium stockpile is really not up for debate. Iran is happy to tell everyone that they have it. With the proper equipment, 60% can go to 90% in a single month. So the question is how advanced is the Iranian infrastructure for the final enrichment step, and (less commonly talked about) how ready they are to actually make a fission bomb out of that material. The latter task is not considered to be very hard, North Korea did it after all, so the main focus has been on the former. There does seem to be some decent information that the centrifuge array has been under active development at various points, and has been consitently, actively targetted by Mossad/CIA for at least the past 20 years or so. For example, Stuxnet was a joint CIA/Mossad operation that begain in 2005 and continued through both GWBush and Obama.

Unfortunately, even with some nice bribes from Obama, Iran was always a little cagey with the IAEA inspectors, and officially kicked them out in 2021. So after that, the only sources for the state of Irans nuclear infrastructure information effectively became Iran itself and Mossad.

blix

hace 3 mesesdiscuss

I am not convinced that a population that just recently had 30k people die in a revolt is gonna immediately rally around their oppressors after a foreign power kills 2k. I have yet to see compelling evidence that formerly IGRC-hostile segments of the population have switched alleigances. It is possible. But one could also imagine an exhausted population that is tired of a goverment they despise putting a target on their backs. The Iranians I personally know suggest that the second idea is more true, but it is anecdotal evidence with heavy selection bias. Another factor is that Iran has an unstable food and water supply, and people who lack food and water tend to focus their anger on whoever is closest that has food and water.

The Trump administration is actively interested in the dissolution of the current global economic order. This is why they are relatively unbothtered by the global economic shock that is a Strait of Hormuz closure, whereas the globally-oriented neoliberal administrations of the past wanted to avoid this at all costs.

blix

hace 3 mesesdiscuss

Destroying the gulf states would dramatically reduce the importance of the Strait, which would make mining it or otherwise shutting it down somewhat pointless anyway. It is a bit of mutually assured destruction, but the USA is probably in the best position of anyone to weather that storm.

I suppose it is more powerful in an absolute sense than just temporarily shutting down the Strait, but like Russia's nukes, I think the threat is more useful than the play itself. Unless they are just looking to take others down with them.

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hace 3 mesesdiscuss

What action can Iran take today that they couldn't take a year ago? No one who has been paying attention should be surprised that Iran can shut down the straight. It has been a known factor for decades.

They have less leverage. The have so much less that they are forced to openly use their last and most powerful card for their survival, when they never have had to before. That is a position of weakness, not strength.

blix

hace 3 mesesdiscuss

All policy aimed at preventing nuclear Iran has one goal: buy time. I think it is hard to argue that time has not been bought (though how much and whether the price was right is another question). The only semi-stable long term option is a friendly Iranian government. The IRGC's main purpose is to occupy Iran, so anything that makes them weaker, less stable and more decentralized improves the odds of successful internal revolt in the long run. It is really hard for me to see how any of this has made the IRGC more stable in the long run.

The threat of the strait closure has always been a major factor in Iran policy from all relevant nations, it is just now explicit. It's hard to take the Russia point seriously when the war forced both Russia and Iran to shift resources form the Ukrainian theater to the Persian Gulf; it seems to be close to a wash. It's also kinda silly to gas up using interceptors for their intended purpose as "heavy damage" or catastrophize about rounding errors in damage to USA assets, while simulatenously writing off the total effect of all USA/Israel actions as inconsequential.

Disruption to global fossil fuel supply chains was also a goal of this war, so I am not sure you should list it as a negative. In the current state of the world, USA interests and global economic interests are becoming increasingly decoupled, and one shouldn't assume they are automatically aligned.

Also this has probably done more to hasten the world's weaning off fossil fuels than any action by any other government.

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hace 4 mesesdiscuss

The Pax Americana was already over when Russia siezed Crimea.

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hace 10 mesesdiscuss

I inspect and modify my own weights literally all the time. I just do it on a more abstract level than individual neurons.

I call this process "learning"

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hace 2 añosdiscuss

My doctor told me after an intestinal surgery that I would never be able to eat vegetables again.

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