It's a historic tech-related government coup, which I'd think is of great interest to "Hackers". It's very rare that a bunch of tech whiz-kids are so directly embedded in current events. For better or worse, Musk and his minions are very much at the forefront of tech related news for the forseeable future.
Yes, yes, we know. You won't believe us until we actually are living in the feudalist society they're working, right now, to create brazenly in public. Enjoy gloating about crazy we are until you realize we really are not.
The narcissist is incapable of being incorrect and will always find a scapegoat to explain the consequences of their poor decision-making.
The world is now run by these people, and because most people are more ape than man, they will emulate and elevate these people until some other stronger ape comes around to convince them to emulate and elevate them instead.
This is a really unfortunate perspective. The people that you are casting as "more ape than man" believe you to be doing the exact same thing you accuse them of; emulating and elevating people they think are also ruining the world.
I genuinely don't understand how you can comfortably make such sharp insults towards people who don't agree with you. I understand that it's easy to get caught up in echo chamber - which any website that uses upvote/downvote based ordering and hiding schemes inherently encourage - but the people that disagree with you politically aren't apes. They're not narcissists. You are not special or above others.
Ironically, I'd say what characterizes a "man" vs an "ape" is their capacity for self reflection... which is your moniker.
A narcissist, as described in the article, has no capacity for self reflection because it requires them to enter a reality outside of their ego from which to observe themselves objectively.
I can comfortably make these observations (not insults) because I'm describing what I have observed over the last many decades, not reacting to some news ephemeral news item.
What amazes me is that this is a conversation about Elon Musk and Donald Trump and their sycophants... people who are even more caught up in echo chambers and more insulting to our fellow humans, all while being far more insulting in their online speech.
And what is rich is you trying to cast me as the one who thinks they're special because I'm insulting the people who blindly follow Musk and Trump in their naive belief that they're helping to "save humanity" or "America" or whatever.
I live in the real world, not echo-chambers, this is the place I post most frequently and it's still like once every other week/month (and declining). My comment was directed at a group of people in general, while yours makes all kinds (very incorrect) assumptions about me personally.
You actually sound very much like the person who is "too online" and "in an echo chamber" since you seem to respond to the least charitable interpretation of what is said in order to score internet points.
It's certainly a lot easier to respond to my comment as if I was dehumanizing entire swaths of the public based on their voting choices or political beliefs... much more difficult to consider that I'm speaking about a very narrow segment of the population defined by their specific belief that Musk and Trump are special and can do nothing wrong and will not countenance any evidence to the contrary.
Might I ask, which specific decisions are you talking about? Please provide supporting evidence.
I don't write this flippantly. You may have some excellent points, but in this environment, I would love to read more than just a broad statement. This website is one of the last places where we might expect such a thing.
World Affairs - I suppose you could concede portions of the Ukraine to Russia. Those aren't my politics. Maybe you believe in conquest by violence, though.
Afghanistan withdrawal was Trump's plan. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-51692546. I credit Trump with ending this conflicting. It should have been ended a long time before that. But he signed a weak deal in February of 2020 that left a lot political pain for his successor.
There were only 6000 troops left in Afghanistan, actually much less than that, when the date got there. It’s like, hey, let’s leave at the last minute with a skeleton crew and see if that isn’t chaotic. Trump wasn’t an idiot, he knew the position he was handing off to Biden. Biden had two choices, a chaotic withdrawal, or put more troops in for a secure one, but that went against what Trump agreed to with the taliban (so not really a choice). You know who the POS is in this story right?
You don’t withdraw the bulk of an army, leave a token force in place, and expect that to go well. You just don’t do that, and Trump the very stable genius he is, did. And it worked out well politically for him, so I guess it was smart.
Again, Trump left Biden with a token force, there was no way that was going to work out for him, you just can’t drop more troops in when the security situations degrades but you are leaving. And Trump didn’t care about those soldiers deaths, his disdain for the military is well documented, this was a political win for him, it makes sense why he invited the taliban to 9/11 remembrance ceremony. The guy is just the worst kind of life form.
Why leave the base that has more security and airfields just to use the local airfield and rely on terrorists to run security because you pulled the troops out first?
It's not that he was pulling them out. It's HOW he pulled them out.
If it were a Republican you would have criticized that shit show too.
Because you didn’t have the troops to secure it. Isn’t t obvious? You don’t have the troops to secure your own base, and you have to rely on the party Trump made his deal with that was binding to Biden. It was lose lose for Biden and win win for trump.
> The agreement stipulated fighting restrictions for both the US and the Taliban, and provided for the withdrawal of all NATO forces from Afghanistan in return for the Taliban's counter-terrorism commitments. The US agreed to an initial reduction of its force level from 13,000 to 8,600 within 135 days (i.e. by July 2020), followed by a full withdrawal within 14 months (i.e. by 1 May 2021) if the Taliban kept its commitments. The United States also committed to closing five military bases within 135 days, and expressed its intent to end economic sanctions on the Taliban by August 27, 2020. The agreement was welcomed by Pakistan, China, Russia and India,[4][7][8] and unanimously endorsed by the UN Security Council.[9]
> Insurgent attacks against the Afghan security forces, however, surged in the aftermath of the deal, with thousands killed. However, withdrawals per the agreement continued. By January 2021, just 2,500 US troops remained in the country, and NATO forces fully evacuated by the end of that summer. The US completed its full evacuation on August 30, 2021, as the Taliban took control of the country by force.
> Critics of the deal claimed that the then Trump administration appeased the Taliban and ignored the then Afghan government for a quick withdrawal from Afghanistan.[10]
Where to begin? I'll just mention a number of foreign policy failures since, not being an American, those failures of the 'Biden regime' (between quotes because it is highly unlikely that it was actually Biden who called the shots and way more likely for someone like Blinken to have been the ringleader here) are the ones which have caused most problems for non-Americans.
- the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. Biden pulled out troops before getting out civilians, green card holders and allies. Not everyone was evacuated and billions of dollars worth of equipment was left behind for the Taliban to take over
- the way the Biden regime botched the burgeoning Abraham accords by turning their backs to the Saudis while opening up to the Iranians - why? All this achieved was the intensification of smouldering conflicts which begot the world the rise of the Houthi's, the 6th of Octoboer incursion by Hamas and the resulting carnage and more
- the way the Biden regime botched the situation around Ukraine with him hinting at a 'minor incursion' not being taken seriously. With the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal and this weak-kneed response from the USA Putin deemed the time ripe for invasion
On the domestic side I can mention the 'border crisis' caused by the intentional import of millions of illegal immigrants, the failed energy policies, the mis-named 'inflation reduction act' and similar financial boondoggles which caused rampant inflation, the weaponisation of the justice department and the FBI which has led to trust in the judiciary sinking to a record low level, the similar weaponisation of the IRS, the authoritarian push around the SARS2 unpleasantness with the whole web of lies around both the origin of the antigen as well as the efficacy of the only allowed treatment regimes, the mishandling of the military which has seen record low recruitment levels since the regime has tried to push the military towards 'progressive' political goals, the endless parade of lies around just about any subject which cropped up from the 'laptop from hell' through the 'summer of love', the clear examples of corruption where Biden pardoned his family for their influence peddling, etcetera. There is far more to mention but this is enough for starters.
If you want evidence I'd invite you to do a cursory search on the 'net, you'll find tons of it. Be aware of the political bias of whatever source you refer to but even the most biased sources will be unable to hide the last regime's failures since they are so blatant and visible.
This is an extremely weird thing to say. I don't know a single node dev who wants more dependencies. Anyone with a modicum of experience in the space knows the cost of bringing in more external code.
I'm certain they've thought of this and have decided that the alternative—a firehose of whatever data the AI has in its grasp—is worse than the "censored" version. I'm curious to know what your ideal approach would be.
Open weights and open models with open tools that allow user-defined alignment and realignment is, I believe, the only really humanist path forward. We can't choose for people. It's wrong to think we know better than they do what they want. Full stop.
Some of those people will make terrible decisions, some will make objectionable ones, but the alternative is just full thought control, basically. And, sadly, nobody in the "bad" scenario need be anything but super well intentioned (if naive).
