The part I don't like about it is that the premise is too often:
"Imagine some theoretical technological advancement. Now take it out of context, put it in the worst possible circumstances, and imagine it appeared into a society like ours without any prior thought or discussion about the possible downsides of that technology."
For example: in a society where autonomous security guard robots kill intruders, there would not be people sneaking into warehouses. In a society where people can play back and re-live prior memories, it would not suddenly come up that one can relive experiences with past lovers. In a society where one's consciousness could be contained inside a "cookie," being unexpectedly in a strange place with no explanation would immediately have one questioning whether that's what happened.
It just feels ham-fisted. In their defense, I'm sure it's tough to introduce an entirely new concept and world and sell a brand new story all in the scope of a single episode, but the formula felt a little stale, at least while I was watching it.
> Imagine some theoretical technological advancement. Now take it out of context, put it in the worst possible circumstances, and imagine it appeared into a society like ours without any prior thought or discussion about the possible downsides of that technology
This is precisely why I love Black Mirror. Despite the warnings, we're allowing companies to build killer robot and are running a large scale experiment to build a god. For a long time, I thought ethics is what prevented us from cloning human but recent years are showing balance sheet will outweigh it. As Netflix is 99.9% garbage, watching something like Black Mirror is refreshing
We always have moved forward technologically despite doomers. They were there for first person shooter games, the Internet in general, dating apps, etc.
That’s not to say those things didn’t have significant downsides. They do. But it took years to get there and they weren’t an overnight surprise, like they seem to be in the Black Mirror episodes I saw.
Imagine what a few Black Mirror episodes would look like if they were made in the 50s or 60s about some technology we have today. It’d be silly. Our culture and values have changed so much since then over time as the technology came about.
“Tonight's story on the Twilight Zone is somewhat unique and calls for a different kind of introduction. This, as you may recognize, is a map of the United States and there's a little town there called Peaksville. On a given morning not too long ago the rest of the world disappeared and Peaksville was left all alone. Its inhabitants were never sure whether the world was destroyed and only Peaksville left untouched, or whether the village had somehow been taken away. They were, on the other hand, sure of one thing. The cause. A monster had arrived in the village. Just by using his mind, he took away the automobiles, the electricity, the machines, because they displeased him. And he moved an entire community back into the dark ages, just by using his mind.”
>We always have moved forward technologically despite doomers
Have we? There's a de facto moratorium on gene editing in humans that all nations have so far adhered to (except for one person who promptly went to prison), there's a general moratorium on gene terminator seeds that so far all nations have adhered to, and we're in discussions for a deep sea-mining moratorium. Not all technologies move forward without impediment.
The problem is I feel is that the "value system" tied to tech. innovation is very simplistic and often doesn't really have any forcing functions other than short term profit for a small number of people.
Things like AI, surgical bots etc. can definitely be useful and can better our condition. They probably are doing that too but the amount of serious long term thinking from a traditionally ethical standpoint is limited compared the amount of research that goes into making the technology more powerful.
Feels like a car with an overpowered gas pedal but very rudimentary brakes and steering.
> Imagine what a few Black Mirror episodes would look like if they were made in the 50s or 60s about some technology we have today. It’d be silly.
It might be silly, but that doesn’t mean it would be wrong. We depend heavily on a number of technologies with significant downsides, which are downplayed or ignored or can-kicked into the future.
It isn't like it didn't happen. Here's an example [0] where a factory owner started replacing the workers with automation/robots. This was in 1964. There's another episode [1] where a scientist creates a computer that can converse with him and it goes all wrong.
These kinds of plots were actually quite common as people wrestled with the unknown future of the coming nuclear age.
> We always have moved forward technologically despite doomers.
We nowadays always introduce technology no matter what. Focused on 'users' as a small subgroup for which we rationalize and validate the introduction. Success measured by profit and damn the externalities. It got reasonable outcomes in terms of (technological) progress for a long time. Today if the technology isn't outright owned by a billionaire class who get their hands on the innovations first, it is stock market driven development that not necessarily serves society. Today all the externalities are compounding into a real Black Mirror mess.
That's a very simplistic and deficient way of stating a half-truth. The dangers of technology and their ethical implications have historically been a serious consideration in the way we regulate a lot of stuff, from TikTok to nuclear development.
You are also biased in the way you only see what came to be and ignore what did not.
There have been enough declassified "close call" stories that I don't think "we haven't had nuclear war yet" doesn't carry much water for me. Kind of like "I have never died", which is technically true but I have lots of info that makes me think extrapolating my past doesn't mean I'll never die in the future.
>We always have moved forward technologically despite doomers. They were there for first person shooter games, the Internet in general, dating apps, etc.
You say as if they weren't right about those things, and they aren't the toxic to society crap they're today.
> Despite the warnings, we're allowing companies to build killer robot and are running a large scale experiment to build a god.
I am doing everything I can think of to stop AI companies from building a god (to borrow your words). Last year and this year I've donated five figures to nonprofits that are trying to slow down AI development. I write letters to legislators whenever the opportunity arises — I wrote a letter to Gavin Newsom urging him to support SB-1047, which unfortunately he did not do; also wrote a letter to Scott Weiner offering support and encouraging him to keep trying.
You could do the same. I'm not confident about what's the best thing to do and I think the things I've done probably didn't help, but they are worth trying anyway.
> […] and imagine it appeared into a society like ours without any prior thought or discussion about the possible downsides of that technology."
Which is basically how most technologies appear{s,ed} in society: without prior thought / discussion.
There's certainly a lot of talk while it's being rolled out, but rarely prior.
> For example: in a society where autonomous security guard robots kill intruders, there would not be people sneaking into warehouses.
People do crime because they think† they can get away with it, because if you knew that you'd probably get caught why would you do it in the first place? How many people purposefully do crime in order to get caught?
In your specific example people will think they've figured out a way to get past the automated system. (Not even getting into the fact that in some jurisdictions it's illegal to set traps, e.g., Canada Criminal Code §247.)
† When they think at all, and it's not just a heat / spur-of-the-moment action (often when drunk).
> Which is basically how most technologies appear{s,ed} in society: without prior thought / discussion.
> There's certainly a lot of talk while it's being rolled out, but rarely prior.
This is a semantic argument about timing. One could argue the Internet is still "being rolled out" today, but it's certainly widely available and we've had decades to reflect on its impact on society. It's not like the Internet was suddenly thrust on 1950s Mississippi and nobody considered that hackers might exist until everyone was on it.
The point is that some of the basic questions posed by the show would have been asked, answered, and accounted-for by society long before they seem to be in the societies depicted in the show.
> People do crime because they think they can get away with it, because if you knew that you'd probably get caught why would you do it in the first place?
It's not a binary decision. Of course you don't do it if you think you will be caught, but the likelihood of being caught and the consequences if you do are also significant factors in the decision.
If people were executed for stealing candy bars from convenience stores, we'd have a lot fewer people stealing, even if we put the same effort into catching them as we do now.
I think context matters as well. In your final example of death for shoplifting we would have less shoplifting, all other things being equal. We might also have other unexpected consequences like more embezzlement or more knock offs or more people selling things that "fell off the truck".
Additionally, even if I know you'll kill me if you catch me, I'll still try to steal food if my family is starving and there is no way for me to earn it.
For example: in a society where autonomous security guard robots kill intruders, there would not be people sneaking into warehouses.
We have a society (in the US) where cops often shoot first and ask questions later, but many people still do crimes. People will take risks about things that desperately matter to them, and indeed stories of such risk-taking are common cultural fodder. Are you not just generalizing from your own behavior?
I am not (see below) and in any case this is not relevant to the question posed to GP, which was why s/he thinks people would abstain from risky behavior just because risks exist.
> In a society where people can play back and re-live prior memories, it would not suddenly come up that one can relive experiences with past lovers.
I think this episode was one of Black Mirror's strongest, because not only would it suddenly come up, it does to a lesser degree with the technology we have today. I've been the guy obsessively replaying painful memories from old photos I have. I don't think it was really presented as though the characters are the first ones to ever think of the idea.
Correct. Kinda like it suddenly came up when Facebook started showing memories of dead friends and relatives to people that didn't want it nor enjoyed it. There's many instances of humanity plowing headfirst into some technology thinking "this will be great!" only to haphazardly run into the unanticipated not-so-great parts.
Not to mention there's literally people creating tech out here _today_ that's recreating _exactly_ what some Black Mirror episodes were talking about years ago. Like interactive chatbots model after dead people from voice samples, videos, and messages.
I liked "Crocodile" too, if I remember the name correctly. The other one that got to me was the one with the two astronauts. It raised a lot of ethical / moral dilemmas in me.
> without any prior thought or discussion about the possible downsides
In BM's defense, I think it needs to be that way to a point, to have the viewer react and acknowledge these downsides within their current frame of reference.
It can be hard to swallow both a world that has evolved for 10~20 years, and also think about a whole new paradigm that matches that unfamiliar world.
> Imagine some theoretical technological advancement. Now take it out of context, put it in the worst possible circumstances, and imagine it appeared into a society like ours without any prior thought or discussion about the possible downsides of that technology.
Isn't this the premise for the original Terminator ? Sure it was "unnecessarily" pessimistic, but man oh man it really hit a nerve and it set a tone for (all?) subsequent societal conversation.
"Imagine some theoretical technological advancement. Now take it out of context, put it in the worst possible circumstances, and imagine it appeared into a society like ours without any prior thought or discussion about the possible downsides of that technology.... It just feels ham-fisted."
So like exactly what is happening with driverless car technology.
A technology that was in its infancy in lab settings; taken out of that context and thrust upon our public roads by capricious impulsive billionaires in "beta" form, which has predictably killed people; but instead of pulling back and having a discussion about the possible downsides, this technology is allowed to plague us; because thought or discussion about possible downsides are short circuited by platitudes about how you have to crack eggs to make an omelet.
Can't get a driverless car future free of car deaths without first killing some people with driverless cars, ya know?
> In a society where people can play back and re-live prior memories, it would not suddenly come up that one can relive experiences with past lovers.
I am not much of a TV watcher so this is the only episode of black mirror I've seen but this really got me - for a show that got so much hype - this is the first couple to have jealousy issues around this technology? Really?? And he has to cut it out of his head with a double edged razor? Really??? People want to forget things all of the time.
It's TV and the other shows I watch are mostly because they're terrible, so it was better than those, but it definitely felt like, cmon guys, we can do better.
My take was that it was not about jealousy or wanting to forget, but about the obsession for an objective truth. The main character was rewatching his memories looking for the objective truth of what had happened, only to discover that all his memories were, in fact, a lie (because his wife was lying to him all the time).
I agree with this take, aside from a plot nuance about all his memories, there was one base factual lie (paternity) that propagated through his memories. I also occasionally rewatch that episode to try to convince myself that the Willow Grain would not be a panacea for so many of the worlds ills that it would outweigh any shame-motivated reason to dislike it.
Put another way, easy and on-demand access to objective truth seems to present a resolution to so many stupid arguments that it just has to net out as a positive where people quit dying on rhetorically silly hills.
As you correctly identify the weakness is when you want access to the objective truth of another. They need not be inclined to share it and this presents a social issue, as opposed to a technical or factual issue.
The EYE Tech Zoe implant and the Willow Grain were similar but the Willow Grain was usable by the users while installed and the Zoe was generally only accessible after it had been extracted from the user after the user had died.
>"Imagine some theoretical technological advancement. Now take it out of context, put it in the worst possible circumstances, and imagine it appeared into a society like ours without any prior thought or discussion about the possible downsides of that technology."
So, exactly like the real world case with all modern tech advancements?
Try to be as objective as possible when evaluating that tech debt. It's possible (in many cases, probable) that the tech debt actually isn't as bad for the business as an engineer perceives, and it's quite possible there are other engineering efforts that are more worthy of development time and resources.
Being willing and vocal about acknowledging and accepting that reality is also quite helpful.
With non-unique units paladins can only be countered by upgraded halberdier, heavy camels or a huge mass of arbalesters. Monks counter them in small numbers but in late game when they're massed they're almost unstoppable unless you have halb/camel in equal numbers.
Well even arbalesters get slaughtered by Paladins, unless we are able to push them behind a wall or a corner with only a very tiny attack area for the Paladins.
I think even in open ground if you have a big enough group you can still trade well. Ethiopian arbs fire 25% faster. If you micro the arbs to focus on individual paladinsthey can one shot paladins and their attack surface area increases with the sqrt() of their numbers. For sure it's a lot more work than spamming halb.
The Vikings are an incredible civilization. Berserks are one of my most favorite units. Not sure where they are today, but they totally matched Paladins in terms of attack strength back in the day.
> I'm not just glomming on to everything one "tribe" or another stands for ... one group actually reflects everything I believe.
I don't think that's unreasonable, but if you're in the US, you should really re-evaluate if this is true just because there are several significant issues over which the parties have flipped over the past few decades (and more if you go back further).
Obviously you didn't specify a party, but as one example: In the 1990s, the left wing party was where the free speech absolutists were. If you were a big "free speech" enthusiast back then and you still are now, then great! If your views have changed, that's fine, too, but there should be alarm bells going off in your head that your views changed along with the tribe.
Internally the US has free movement of both labor and capital, so any single state trying broad social programs without federal support will run into free rider and arbitrage problems pretty quickly. Since the US can control its border and currency, it’s less likely to be a problem if it’s a national program.
Some types of growth, yea that's the theory. But I don't think there's any theory of UBI with freedom of movement between borders where UBI isn't present. If every single person who doesn't want to work shows up to your state, you won't be able to keep UBI running.
> Internationally, capital and labour are also mobile.
Capital yes. Labor ... not really? Even historically immigrating to the US is kinda difficult. Immigrating into any developed country is hard.
> If the argument for UBI is basically North Korea, I’m not seeing it.
No it's not even NK. It's socialism but no central planning. NK (and really any prior long running example of socialism in US history) doesn't do free market do decide e.g. who picks up the trash.
So it could well be that UBI works, but a lot of grunge jobs just don't get done. Maybe people are happier and have more free time, but there's fewer janitors so things are dirtier, and a much higher percentage of money goes towards paying people to farm so good is way more expensive.
Things definitely wouldn't be the same as they are now, even if it did hypothetically work.
> Put simply, if a UBI scheme doesn’t work at the state level, it won’t federally in the long run.
There could easily be things that break it at the state level (especially, freedom of movement of people), that don't apply federally.
It might also fail at a federal level, but you can't claim there aren't major differences between a single state UBI and a federal UBI
> don't think there's any theory of UBI with freedom of movement between borders where UBI isn't present
Then you need to define categories of good and bad people. And explain why the former will stay (or continue to immigrate). In the long run, borders are porous. If it doesn’t work at the state level, and it doesn’t cause inflation, I’m deeply sceptical about the claim that it doesn’t require categorising by productivity.
It's definitely more porous going out. So yeah, UBI needs to be not so bad that people can do better elsewhere that's easy enough to immigrate into. The same is true of basically any policy though, that's not really a unique thing to UBI.
That's true, although there's a pretty strong overlap of UBI proponents and supporters of pro-immigration policies.
If you want to say, "Of course UBI can't work if we allow whoever wants it to move here and receive it," I agree, but that's often not a qualifier made by proponents.
The fed does have the ability to control monetary policy.
This is akin to why some problems in the EU - individual countries gave up monetary policy rights, which means they have to do what Germany wants w.r.t. the euro. They can't control interest rates like the US Fed can, can't expand or contract money supply, and have fewer tools to deal with problems that arise.
Imagine if NYC couldn't build buildings over 1 story because of a state law. That would complicate adding new residents. It might work for awhile and they could get creative, but eventually it would become untenable.
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This is not all to say that there aren't any problems with UBI specifically. We haven't really tested that level of socialism anywhere with still trying to also do free market and no planned economy.
It could well be that a lot of stuff wouldn't get done, or at least not done as much. There's a lot of shit jobs that are done for cheaper now because people gotta eat & put a roof over their head.
Unless you do a U"B"I solution which isn't actually covering the basics, but is lower than necessary.
> you could also ask the uberwealthy to pony up instead
Then you don’t need monetary policy. Saying it cannot happen at the state or local level is basically admitting it isn’t solvent or requires a population filter to keep the wasteful people out.
I was curious what your answer was? What argument was refuted? I explained clearly why the program needed to be national and not at the state level. Good grief.
Your argument rests on mobility of capital and people being less federally than statewise. At both levels, that becomes less true as income goes up. And it virtually disappears in the long run. If the argument for UBI is that it must be federal because of monetary or mobility reasons, it’s either reliant on causing inflation or locking down the population à la North Korea.
Ah, ok, finally! You made an argument clear enough to respond to. I think your point is ridiculous! There is an entire range of possibilities between total global freedom for capital and North Korea.
First, North Korea is a bad example, because I'm certain that Kim Jong-Un and his key cogs are able to stash their cash in London, New York and Geneva like all good autocrats and oligarchs do. The average North Korean lives in poverty by western standards, why would they need capital mobility?
Second, the US had capital controls in place throughout the New Deal Era, surely you aren't comparing regulated capitalism with socialist qualities with a statist monarchy that impoverishes its' people?
> the US had capital controls in place throughout the New Deal Era, surely you aren't comparing regulated capitalism with socialist qualities with a statist monarchy that impoverishes its' people?
Sure, if you say we need capital controls and exit visas to implement UBI, that is consistent with breaking continuity between state and local experiments and the federal proposal. But I’m not sure how much buy in there is for those policies.
> North Korea is a bad example, because I'm certain that Kim Jong-Un and his key cogs are able to stash their cash in London, New York and Geneva
And American oligarchs wouldn’t?
> You made an argument clear enough to respond to
Isn’t it presumptive to use one’s own ignorance as an argument?
They scan for everything they can and report on that. They don't claim to be able to tell you if you're 100% compliant--they just claim to be able to alert you if some subset of the requirements are out of order.
And that still provides a lot of value to the right customers.
Agreed with the points in OP. Though we did have the story that came out shortly after the election that apparently internal polling for the Harris campaign never showed her ahead [1].
Obviously it says in the article that they did eventually fight it to a dead heat, which is in-line with a 50-50 forecast, but I do wonder what, if anything, failed such that this key detail was never reported on publicly until after the election.
As the article notes, public polls started appearing in late September showing Harris ahead, which they never saw internally. Are internal polls just that much better than public ones? Is the media just incentivized to report on the most interesting outcome (a dead heat)?
> As the article notes, public polls started appearing in late September showing Harris ahead, which they never saw internally. Are internal polls just that much better than public ones? Is the media just incentivized to report on the most interesting outcome (a dead heat)?
Intentional bias for motivational purposes is a thing - it doesn't make any logical sense, but people want to vote for the winner.
Don't rule out Harris' internal polling just being bad and the public polling was superior. We're looking at a team whos message was "our opponent is a racist, homophobic, sexist, rapist, felonic avatar of Hitler" and then saw him gain margin which is quite remarkable. What did voters have to see in Harris' team for that to happen? They're clearly doing something wrong. If the team managed that I wouldn't assume their pollsters were a lone beacon of competence.
It seems quite plausible they hired bad pollsters and their internal data was off.
What they did wrong was picking the candidate - she wasn’t popular. It wasn’t the time to try this kind of candidate, but they did it because of their own priorities. It’s OK, they won’t learn.
Democrats need to start nominating famous actors and influencers.
And who is the mythical hollywood figure untainted by the culture war that could pull voters from the other side. The only thing you have to do with any hollywood celebrity to thank their presidential campaign is just post screenshots of their Covid and BLM tweets. And if they don't have stupid Covid and BLM tweets then they will have antisemitic ones.
Michael Bloomberg already tried the "hey, I'm like that guy but without the wrong think" xerox strategy and it didn't go well. Mark Cuban has toyed with it too but keeps getting cold feet, maybe due to lack of confidence or maybe due to analysis that shows being Them-Lite rarely works.
Trump's reality tv show is not a major part of what got him elected but if someone wants to fund and convince Mark Cuban to try a doppelganger campaign, a fool and his money are soon parted. Cuban seems to know better than to try with his own fortune.
Their mistake was much more basic than that. They kept assuming that they could re-run Biden until it was too late for a switch to work.
When they did decide to switch, it had to be Harris, because she was the only one who could legitimately claim to use Biden's election funds, and they didn't have time to raise money for anyone else.
From there, they didn't fix the other mistake - the one Democrats have been making for at least a decade. The Democrats' natural constituency is the working class. They can't win without it. But much of the working class is rather socially conservative. The Democrats have spent the last decade telling working class people that if they, the working class, don't think gay marriage is a good idea, or don't think trans people belong on womens' sports teams and in womens' restrooms, or aren't comfortable with abortion, then they are moral lepers and their entire culture needs to be completely eradicated. Well, the natural result is that at least some of those people are going to flip you the bird and vote for the other guy. Democrats wonder "how could people be so stupid?" I ask, "How could you be so stupid? What did you think was going to happen?"
They didn't "have" to run anybody. They could've, and should've gone with someone else. Everyone knew when Harris was selected that the Democrats had lost. The DNC tried to turn that sentiment around, but they started from a losing position and never recovered. There were alternatives...
The gay and trans thing was a wedge issue pushed by Republicans, because they saw that it worked, and the only way Dems could have appeased the riled up masses would be to straight up start oppressing LGBT people.
I don't hold it against them that they didn't budge on this one. Beating up on a minority for political points is morally repugnant, and the whole appeal of Democrats is that they have some kind of integrity.
The "moral lepers" thing feels to me like a distortion of reality. The actual Democratic politicians generally didn't engage in denigrating their base. Maybe you mean people on the disgusting website.
It was picked as a wedge issue but the Republicans chose very wisely, as the Democrats' incessant pushing of trans issues without any consideration towards the negative impact upon women and girls was unpopular even amongst many traditionally left-leaning voters.
If you mean that the Democrats' policy of supporting transgender rights through legislation was hard to defend (not from a scientific or medical standpoint, but from a populist, political one) and Trump effectively attacked it then yes you're right.
If you mean that the messaging on trans rights alienated swing voters then I think it's probably true, but moderates and swing voters do support general anti-discrimination laws but are wary of policies on sports participation and youth medical care.
If you mean that it was the centerpiece of their identity and everything that were campaigning for, and their pivotal, most important issue, then I don't think that's accurate.
But they did deliberately elevate transgender rights as a moral and civil rights issue. This was a trade off (energize progressives, lose some moderates). Conservatives effectively focused on targeted attacks (bathrooms, sports).
I think that maybe the gamble didn't pay off. The messaging should have probably been about protecting from discrimination, and debate should be focused on attacking republican establishment for being aggressive and hateful.
But really all of this doesn't matter. A better candidate, a white or latino strong charismatic man would have beaten Trump.
Exactly my thoughts even as a complete outsider. Democrats seem to became overconfident in their own internet agenda and forgot that most people at least don’t care and on average just tolerate. Through years it seems that tolerance (which we just learned is the normal mode of operation within diverse groups) turned into mandatory praising and hitler if you don’t.
The inconvenient thing is, average people are -phobic naturally or historically. That’s just the fact of life. Tolerance, the conscious inhibition of natural processes, is a good-enough contract that keeps them away from negativity, but you cannot tell everyone they are hitler if they feel otherwise, as opposed to act against. That’s bullshit and emotional hegemony. Some of the left figures (can’t name, just echoing some clips) even explicitly enjoyed disturbing these phobias. It all seemed like contrasting mockery rather than integration. I understand that most of it was addressed at far right, but you can’t target them with such negativity without affecting the rest as well.
How could you be so stupid? What did you think was going to happen?
I think they only gained more momentum. They would do so with or without Trump winning because they demonstrate levels of illusion far beyond all return points. They are de-platforming, de-employing people, ostracizing their own people who dare to speak any sort of reasonable thought, and they cheer after doing so. Do you really think they can pause and reflect? It almost feels like US needs a third force that isn’t hitler or hitler and cares about just normal society.
Oh, I would love to have a third force. Both sides are moving to extremes, and the bulk of the population is not extreme in either direction, and just want some sanity instead of extremism. A large majority is there for the taking. Will someone wake up and take it?
This pretty much covers it. Harris ran a terrible campaign in 2020 and was never popular. Biden picked her anyway, against his better judgement, because that was what the Left wanted and he was trying to appease them. His disastrous decision to run again for so long left the party with no other options.
Harris tried to correct some of her past mistakes and did better this time around but she should have never been in that position to begin with. Most of the blame should go to Biden and the activists who want to self-immolate the party on the altar of tokenism.
> What did voters have to see in Harris' team for that to happen?
Biden should have pulled out a lot sooner. When? At least a year before the election. But you can easily make arguments for earlier and earlier all the way back to having been too old to run for President in the first place, despite having had a really good term.
Also Harris needs to fire her consultants, who were still trying to play "fair" in an unfair fight and pulled back on the one attack line which was working: that Republicans are "weird".
Things are unlikely to improve until voters start primarying out anyone still trying to do bipartisan equivocation.
His approval rating was in “it would be unprecedented if you won” territory early enough that he should have been out in time to have a real primary. Folks who think switching was any kind of a mistake are going on gut and not numbers. The mistake was that he stayed in as long as he did. Even so, switching was better than not, despite still losing.
And yes, it’s so goddamn frustrating that Clinton-era consultants are still given meetings.
Clinton era consultants were the only ones saying the obvious: “it’s the economy stupid”. On the other hand it was the Obama era consultants who were fixated on the massive loser that is identity politics
Democrats are screwed on economic messaging until they join Republicans in dropping neoliberalism. Was never popular, but both parties could stick to it as long as neither "defected". Now one has.
Even when the economy's good, they're going to be hindered on messaging until they drop that.
Meanwhile a bunch of them are running around like "the problem's that we were too nice to trans people!" lol no, the problem is the latent one that's been hanging there waiting to be triggered by one party or the other since the '80s, the one any expert should have been watching for a shift in—or looking to move first on—this entire time.
> Democrats are screwed on economic messaging until they join Republicans in dropping neoliberalism.
I disagree. What we're witnessing today is that while people are happy with many of the fruits of globalization (cheap Chinese junk, cheap flights, ability to travel anywhere, remote work, etc, etc) our politicians have just about done everything in their power to increase the price of the things that actually matter: housing, healthcare, childcare, and education.
A Democrat party that could actually deliver on these things (rather than exacerbate the problems as they have done) would fare far better electorally. No need to put in place unpopular, destructive tariffs.
> increase the price of the things that actually matter: housing, healthcare, childcare, and education.
i.e. things that have large skilled labor inputs within the US and can't be exported, plus housing which half the population doesn't want to be cheaper. This is just "Baumol cost disease". The major component of healthcare, childcare, and education is the wages of other Americans.
Let's not kid ourselves that the election was a fair comparison of economic policies.
The economy was doing fine apart from a transitory inflation spike especially in eggs. Meanwhile the US is now involved in a pointless trade war with Canada before even getting to the budget; people are going to have an economic disaster that dwarfs the price of eggs, because they got invested in identity politics of the right-wing.
I predict the Trump term will be an economic disaster on the numbers, but this will have no effect on people's stuck belief that Republicans are better than Democrats at economic management.
Yes, but different kinds of weird. There's dem's "be yourself" kinda weird that supports queer people's right to exist, and there's the GOP "passes laws that require genital inspections of children in the bathroom" kinda weird that Tim Walz was calling out.
I don't know why #0 is even one of your examples: the only reason I have to think "trans?" (with the question mark in my thought) is the flag in the background, because without that flag, they look like half of the elderly women I've met over the years.
The fact you show a picture with no name and I had to figure out who they were from the URL slug and multiple google searches because they're not the most famous person with those name fragments was more confusing.
Having finally found a video, not even the Admiral's American accent causes confusion. Only surprise I've got there is that all the trans women I know in person have had voice coaching.
Me, I can see why the label "weird" would apply to Brinton therefore the Democrats would have a hard time using that word to attack Republicans… except, of course, for the fact that Brinton was fired in 2022.
And if you're going to bring up arrests, then you have to wonder about the mind of a man who frames his own arrest warrant mug shot, on charges of election interference, on the wall just outside the Oval Office: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mug_shot_of_Donald_Trump#/medi...
Or maybe the explanation is that everybody behaved "responsibly" but they never got the changes they wanted, and chances for anything different looked more and more bleak. Why do you treat this like a single event? It is not. Lots of prior experiences fed into this.
For example, as bad as this is for us (I'm German, but I lived many years in the US once), for Europe I think it is good what is happening. Now we are forced to move and mature. Crisis are not always bad. The personalities involved this time make it especially hard to look at the whole thing calmly. I admit I have a harder time seeing what the US may get out of this except for the shakeup as a general chance. However, too much is concentrated on the personalities, and, like you did, on blaming everybody. How about Democrats look what they did wrong? I mean, other than reverting to "we didn't think the voters would be so stupid", in which case I have little hope for them to get anything positive out of this.
Democrats’ mistake was putting up a woman in a leadership popularity contest, even after the previous woman lost to the same
> racist, homophobic, sexist, rapist, felonic avatar of Hitler
And a black woman at that, to further reduce Democrats’ chances.
I’m basing this on the anecdotal evidence from many people who I spoke to, who have zero problem telling me a woman cannot be a leader. Including my own non white immigrant grandmother, who grew up without rights.
Many people don’t like to see people of a perceived lower socioeconomic status pass them up. It makes themselves feel inferior.
I'll counter your anecdotal experience with my own. I can count on one hand the number of people I know well who voted against Harris because of her gender or color. And I live in the rural south. The simple truth is that Harris failed to make a compelling case to enough of the nation in enough of the right states to win. The reasons for that failure are going to be complex and varied depending on area. Any attempt to pin it on a single trait or activity is going to be somewhat wrong. This is way too nuanced a topic for "She lost because she was a black woman" to be at all useful.
> I can count on one hand the number of people I know well who voted against Harris because of her gender or color.
You can count on one hand the number of people you know well who are willing to admit they voted against Harris because of her gender or color. This is a critical distinction.
I know a lot of people well enough that they know they don't have to be afraid to admit such things to me. This is not a critical distinction because assuming you know what people think is a great way to completely misunderstand them.
As someone who spent 30 years living in the rural south, I can state this with the confidence of personal experience: some people will not reveal their worst opinions until they are extremely sure in the safety of doing so. In some cases, they'll only reveal those opinions to someone else who has repeatedly shared the same opinions with them.
So unless you're giving big racist or misogynist vibes in how you communicate with them, the racists and misogynists you know "well" may be keeping their opinions to themselves.
The Democratic white male candidate (Biden) was polling so much worse than Harris that he was removed from candidacy.
Harris was part of the Biden administration, she was the 2IC of the Biden administration, she endorsed the policies of the Biden administration and the only official difference between her and Biden was that she was a different race & gender and polled much better than he did. Although unofficially she looked mentally sharper than Biden.
It is difficult to say it was race and gender when the approved candidate of the appropriate race and gender was clearly unelectable. At least Harris was a close call, Biden had lost before the race started. If the Biden administration had been popular and had some achievements to run on then she'd probably have won.
Why is it so hard to accept that hundreds of millions of Americans are racist, sexist, dumb fucks who don't know what's in their own best interests? They elected a crazy, raging megalomaniac over two sensible women. Twice. "How about Democrats look what they did wrong?" Well, maybe the obvious explanation is the best? They ran with women. So the solution is to only field male candidates in the future? You can see why that doesn't work for a "liberal" (< 100% right-wing) political party.
I always get a chuckle out of this. Both parties are full of NPCs who have mostly lost the ability to reason themselves out of anything partisan. This becomes even more apparent when you see each side hurl the same insults at each other, trying to rationalize the state of the world through ad hominem attacks.
It's depressing not to fit into either side, to be honest. I'm both a racist, sexist homophobe, and a libtard, depending on which echo chamber I am engaging in.
No, they ran with "horrible" women. Had they not screwed Tulsi Gabbard over and pretty much pushed her out of the party, I would have loved to have voted for Democrat woman.
Shes weird. There’s something just very insincere about her. I’m not sure if Russia really bought her off or not, but she definitely has some wacky opinions
Suggesting that she was "bought off" by Russia without even the slightest bit of evidence is pure idiocy. Attacking people as being foreign agents for not fully falling in line with the orthodoxy is really what I consider to be "weird" and straight-up un-American.
Sexism was probably a small part of why Democrats lost, but much more important reasons were the economy, alienating their base with their Israel policy, moving to the right on immigration instead of permissive policies which are popular with their base and strategically important for future demographics, and focusing most of their attention on highly divisive culture war issues that effect a vanishingly small portion of the population.
Why is it so hard to accept that Harris was _that bad_ of a candidate? Democrat voters didn't want her in the 2020 primaries (not a single delegate won) and she was basically invisible during the entire Biden campaign until the massive pre-election astroturf campaign that tried to revamp her image.
You don't get it. I agree with you. She is a woman and thus "that bad" of a presidential candidate. But to argue that it somehow was rational for the Americans to reelect Trump over her is to engage in some seriously dangerous mental gymnastics.
Well sure, but if that is the attitude they're not going to bother hiring good pollsters. Pollsters are going to do what, come back and explain that the Devil himself is outpolling your campaign. Now what? They were already catastrophising as hard as they could and the entire English speaking world knows how the US Dems feel about Trump. A majority (although admittedly a slim one) of voters just don't believe them.
Good pollsters would have been a waste of money in that environment and I'm sure the Harris campaign was judiciously watching their budget.
What's surprising to me is how many ex government employees they're able to find who voted for Trump and just didn't think they would get downsized because they're actually doing what they're supposed to be doing. I think it's interesting that Trump consistently gets the benefit of the doubt even in cases where the people he puts in positions of power pretty clearly intended to demoralize people by firing them.
> If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
This quote doesn’t apply just to white men, or even just men.
That is interesting. Presenting public poll results is not really about poll results, but about shaping opinion. The struggle with the media in general is between reporting on the reality that they see vs the reality they want to create. It's an infantile make-belief: "If I put my gloves on, it will start snowing". But, take a large outfit like WP or NYT and it could sort of work that way, too!
But, this also doesn't disagree with the original article that there was a large margin of uncertainty. In that case, a newspaper had a choice of mentioning the uncertainty and emphasizing it, or presenting the 3% in favor or their candidate. I think they went with the latter.
Also, when Bezos blocked WP from endorsing Harris, I always wondered if he had his own better polling results, and he was pretty sure Trump would win, or he just gambled. It's like there are these secret reliable set of poll results to which billionaires get access too, while the public gets the watered down version. Going by the article at hand, perhaps him or his team could better read the results and didn't drink the kool-aid.
Actually we just want the war in Ukraine to end. Hope that helps.
There's a lot of bloviating from the chattering class about cozying up to Russia, but I've yet to hear a cogent alternative. And no, I don't think "endlessly funding Ukraine to a forever stalemate" qualifies.
It may surprise you but Russia is not winning. It has been exhausting itself for no measurable benefit, at the cost for US taxpayers of roughly a coffee per day.
Up to now, Ukraine has never received the support it would need to win, just enough not to lose. Weapons deliveries been too little, too late, making the war longer and bloodier than it needs to be. In the meantime domestic production has increased to the point Ukraine covers 30% of its needs.
Russia has lost other wars, it can and should lose this one.
How many billions is it worth spending to stop the new hitler from overrunning Europe? The answer naturally depends on who you ask (and how positively they view hitler).
This isn't the US's first go-round with nazis, obviously.
Back in WWII, just as now, there were capitulation proponents.
Then, just as now, they espoused the supremacy of bettering their own position over helping others.
Then, just as now, they advocated for leaving Europe to fall to invaders.
Then, just as now, they allied themselves with American fascists.
Then, just as now, they campaigned on the slogan, "America First" [0].
There's nothing new here, and personally, I'm glad hitler lost. That dude sucked.
> How many more billions do we need to send to ensure Russia loses? Any how many more years will it take?
You have to compare with how much will it cost if the war continues to grow in scale or intensity. Russia is dedicating more and more resources to its war machine. And I have no reason to think it will stop if Ukraine. In 2022 Putin already said he wanted NATO back to 1991, IOW he wants Eastern Europe defenseless.
Russia's economy is just the size of Spain or Italy: not negligible, but not formidable either. Europe should do more, much more, if only for its own sake.
> And what does "loss" even look like? Are you genuinely proposing they will simply pack up and head home from all captured territory?
Territorial issues are somewhat secondary. What matters is that the defeat is clear and Russia's leaders discouraged from attempting to go to war again. It happened to Russia against Japan in 1905, and to the USSR in Afghanistan. It can happen again.
Does it sound strange to anyone that during Iraq war there were many embedded journalists covering the war. I don't see that now in Russia-Ukraine war. What could be reasons?
There are some. But my guess is that there's so few because nobody wants to pay for journalism anymore. Reporters want to get paid, especially if they're going to work in a warzone.
The best plan to prevent Russia from winning would be to cut off Russia's oil revenue. Fossil fuel exports are the only way that Russia can sustain their war effort. First, other European countries need to get serious and stop buying from Russia. Second, give Ukraine enough long range missiles to wreck Russia's fossil fuel infrastructure: pipelines, tank farms, refineries, ports, etc. Russia was heavily dependent on foreign technical experts to maintain that infrastructure and has little capacity to do so on their own.
This can be done with very little US funding. And sharing intelligence with Ukraine literally costs us nothing.
Turning oil into cryptocurrency requires electrical power plants and related infrastructure. Russia has very limited industrial capacity to build this stuff anymore. They're still heavily dependent on pre-1991 industrial infrastructure. I think most people don't realize how weak Russia really is.
You're right. How can any state with nuke-backed right to issue ultimatums slowly get weakened like that? If Russia states limits, and convinces U.S. that they will launch if the limits are crossed, and these limits are within the threat budget of Russia, can they not make U.S. agree to things (and vice versa)?
just because it hasnt worked so far doesnt mean it won't work. the time horizon matters. is russia gonna give up in 10 years? this is a bad plan. in 1 year? maybe not so much.
why do you want the war to end? is it just a moral calculus of lives lost? how can you be sure that ukraine capitulating to russia will lead to less lives lost than one more year of war? 100,000-600,000 people died in the occupation of iraq, why do you think that a russian occupation of Ukraine will be less bloody?
I don't think it is wise or ethical to spend billions of dollars prolonging a forever-war thousands of miles away.
I also don't think it's wise or rational to presume that every aggressive action necessarily means that the aggressor is Hitler or bent on world domination. Or even that opposing them by sending resources to their enemy is the most effective way to stop it.
For the US, this is an extremely cheap [1] way to counter Russia. Ukraine is doing 99% of the work. We give them money which they immediately give back to us to buy hardware. Or we give mothballed hardware slated for destruction. Most prefer this to a future with dead Americans and US boots on the ground in Europe when NATO countries are invaded by Russia, emboldened by a world that gave up on Ukraine.
[1] as a percentage of the US$850,000,000,000 _annual_ Pentagon budget
Chamberlain tried to bargain peace for Britain at the sacrifice of the Czechs and other nations and in the end his country got bombed to shit anyway. You guys make it seem like Russia has no agency here
I honestly don't know what else Putin would need to say or do to convince you that he is, in fact, a fascist bent on world domination. He's not exactly been shy about it.
If Ukraine stops the fight they cease to be a sovereign nation. If Russia stops they loose face. The former is existential, the latter is not. Why is this so hard to understand?
Any ceasefire or peace without security guarantees will be used by Russia to rearm and try again in a few years time. It will be a continuation of the conflict that started in 2014. That, too, isn't hard to understand.
Giving Ukraine all the weapons it needed and asked for, instead of destroying them soon, would be a good start. Also, you know, not forbidding Ukraine to use its long-range drones to damage Russia's oil industry would also be helpful. This is to get started. I can continue.
Winning the attrition war. They have most likely less than a year left before their economy crumbles. 21% interest rates, capital controls, official 10% inflation, annihilated non military sectors (fe cars), forcing their banks to give loans to anything military adjacent while forbidding them to call them in.......
I am sure the Europeans would be willing to shoulder more of the cost but the US has been cutting Ukraine off from intelligence sources and now also support. There is no cost argument for that.
Also do you really think that these decisions will not cost the US in lost sales, reassurances for everything because of lost trust....
Absolutely. With Russia disintegrating China can get it's lost territories back and dominate Russia's former pacific region.
Right now China is pressuring Russia into lots of one sided deals and is taking over large parts of the economy but that holds no candle to taking over the Vladivostok region.
The real story here, contrary to the framing, is that Rubio admits that a reverse Kissinger - splitting Russia and China - is NOT achievable.
He says that the US will "[never] be successful completely at peeling [the Russians] off of a relationship with the Chinese,” and that the best outcome the US could hope for is "to have a relationship" with Russia so they don't exclusively deal with China.
That's actually realistic and indeed probably the best outcome the US can possibly hope for.
I see many people commenting that the US is trying to pull a reverse Kissinger, wooing Russia away from China, completely missing the obvious truth right before their eyes: if there's a split happening, it's a Euro-US split.
That's a common flaw in human nature, we're often incapable to conceive that the status quo we've lived with our entire lives has fundamentally changed. We look to patterns from the past, seek to refight the previous war; it's far easier and more comforting to believe you're still in the box even when the box has disappeared.
Russia isn't going to split again from China, there is not a single chance in hell, it learned that lesson the hard way... Putin, as a famously keen student of history, understands how much damage that did.
And why would he? What benefit would Russia possibly derive from this? The world has changed: as we've seen during the Ukraine war the West unleashed its entire economic arsenal against Russia, only to demonstrate its own impotence. Russia last year was Europe's fastest-growing economy even when completely cut off from Western markets. So if the West's maximum pressure amounts to so little, its maximum friendship isn't worth much more.
It's utterly delusional to think that the two torch bearers of the Global South would split just as the emergence of the long sought multipolar order is finally coming true, all in exchange for a return of Western trade which they now know is dispensable, and an end to sanctions which they now know don't hurt much.
Also, kind reminder that Kissinger didn't actually split Russia and China: he took advantage of an already existing split. Geopolitically speaking, it's incredibly hard to split powers - especially great powers, but it's much easier to leverage an existing split. And looking at the landscape, those that are already split - or rather splitting - aren't Russia and China, but very much the U.S. and Europe.
A Euro-US split was bound to happen sooner or later, as the cost of the alliance increasingly outweighed the benefits on both sides. Especially with the rise of the Global South, China in particular, which initiated a profound identity crisis: suddenly you had countries "not like us" being far more successful, taking over an unsurmountable lead in manufacturing, and increasingly science and technology.
At some point there are three choices in front of you: join them, beat them, or isolate yourself from them and slowly decay into irrelevance. The West has been trying the "beat them" approach for the better part of the past 10 years and we've seen the results: an increasingly desperate series of failed strategies that only accelerated Western decline while strengthening the very powers they meant to weaken.
It also tried the "isolate yourself" approach with the various plans of "friend-shoring", "de-risking", "small yard, high fence", etc. That wasn't much more successful and the West undoubtedly sees the writing on the wall: the more you isolate yourself from a more dynamic economy, the further behind you get.
This leaves us with "join them", and here Trump's calculation seems to be that if the U.S. does so first, it undoubtedly can negotiate much better terms for the U.S., much like China did with Kissinger back in the late 1970s when it joined what was at the time still the U.S.-led international order. With Europe, like the Soviet Union back then, left with no choice but to accept whatever crumbs remain.
The situation of course isn't exactly similar. We're outside the box, remember... For one the U.S. isn't remotely in the same conditions as those of China back then and, unlike the Soviet Union, Europe lacks both the military might to resist this new arrangement and the economic autonomy to chart its own course. Which means that in many ways, geopolitically speaking, the U.S. is in better conditions and with more leverage than China had (and therefore able to get itself a better deal), and the EU ends up in worse conditions than the Soviets.
Still, the fundamental reality remains that Trump, for all his faults, seems to have understood earlier than Europeans that the world has changed and he'd better be the first to adapt. This was clear from Rubio's very first major interview in his new role as Secretary of State when he declared that we're now in a multipolar world with "multi-great powers in different parts of the planet" (https://state.gov/secretary-marco-rubio-with-megyn-kelly-of-...).
As a European though, I can only despair at the incompetence and naivety of our leaders who didn't see this coming and didn't adapt first, despite all the opportunities and incentives to do so. They foolishly preferred to cling to their role as America's junior partner, even as that partnership was increasingly against their own interests, something which I've personally warned about for years.
Turns out, strangely, that the Europeans were in fact in many ways more hubristic and more trapped in the delusions of Western supremacy than the Americans. The price for this hubris will be very steep, because instead of proactively shaping their role in the emerging multipolar order, they will now have to accept whatever terms are decided for them.
Can you point to a single thing that China did to help Russia at its own expense?
Certainly not resource deals, where China sets cut throat prices.
Talk is cheap and China holds historical grudges, like those lost territories, forever. Having strong dominance over the northern pacific areas would also be far more stable and lucrative than any geopolitical advantages that might be very fleeting.
As for Europe and the US, time will tell. The US is going to pay a high price for the lost credibility. Would you really make yourself dependent by buying US weapons and leave yourself open to such thuggish blackmail tactics we have seen the last weeks? Also the US is a consumer based society that tries to change to a more balanced system. Absolutely understandable but very hard and risky.
We are moving to a multipolar world order and its going to be a time of blood and iron. Russia was just the one making the first move and with the US no longer interested in a rule based world order the mice are coming out to play. I sincerely hope I am wrong.
I don't think that anyone can seriously predict how things will fall out.
The fact that people who are paid to predict future didn't predict China's unprecedented rise in EVs is all that you need to know how manipulated with lies our information ecosphere is.
Our experts completely misjudged China and its ability to innovate. Now they're ahead everywhere.
@China, sure they got a good thing going. We will see how long it lasts.
@Rare earths. That has been obvious from the start. There are always massive potential resources everywhere. Trillions in Afghanistan, Ukraine....and if you don't have an ambiguous enough surveying report you can always postulate a pipeline is going to be build there, like with Syria. It seemed to me that was always some kind of intentional face saving exercise to please Trumps electorate, but I might be overestimating him. That extortionist act of him is doing so much damage, it is not rational.
If you think Taiwan shouldn't cease to exist, how else can you guarantee that? It's either nukes or US protection and nobody trusts the Americans anymore.
Taiwan makes some of the most complex devices humans have ever constructed! They can figure out the almost 100 year old technology to make a gun bomb nuke.
I'm Australian and I already don't trust the US to help us.
I've literally never thought that the US wouldn't help us before Trump came to shit on everything.
Now I imagine we'd have to buy Trump off with "raw earth" or something in exchange for not being abandoned to China, and our head of state would quite possibly be berated publicly for wanting some kind of security guarantee for his people's future.
It's sad, I still feel like the US and UK people are closest to our values, but Trump only works for himself and his billionaire crony parasites.
He will end up with the loyalty he has earned.
Everyone around Trump hates him, and the US is heading in the same direction.
so your alternative of inaction involves a likely outcome of raping and murdering thousands of civilians in the name of peace for thousands of soldiers.
the us can do plenty of things without spending billions of dollars that are short of this, and yes, i have personally donated to the Ukrainian effort.
An obvious alternative is to increase support to Ukraine to give them what they need to expel Russia. The good old USA has the resources to do that but Republicans have blocked increasing aid at the orders of Donald Trump for years now. And now that he is in power he is finally blocking it altogether.
You must be being deliberately obtuse at this stage. He's not saying the Crimea incursion should have been fought again more. He's saying that allowing the annexation of Crimea to be relatively peacful didn't prevent the subsequent imvasion of Ukraine, and as such, stopping the war now and allowing Russia to keep the gains it has made may lead to a short-term peace, but will likely not prevent another war in the future.
Given Putin's stated wishes, this will only stop if Russia is unable to make such moves (for whatever reason) or states at risk of invasion are defended such that it's strategically stupid for Russia to even try.
I believe a big crux is in definition of "war ended".
You (and Donald Trump) seem to be using "Ukraine and Russia stop shooting at each other right now", while Ukraine operates more under "Russia stops shooting at us for the foreseeable future, 20 years at least." Russia has previously broken a number of ceasefires and written agreements (including the infamous Budapest memorandum) and so Ukraine is not super trusting to agreements not backed by anything.
What Ukraine will accept is entirely dependent on how much funding they will get from foreign powers to continue their war effort.
I've had a lot of responses to my comment, yet I've seen no alternative ideas presented that will result in a different outcome. What is your plan for getting Russia to lose this war?
The alternative is to destroy Russia. Destroy its economy, kill their soldiers until there isn't one left standing, ravage its cities. Set fire to its oil fields. Sink its ships. It's a good alternative. A pleasant sight and a nice thing to look forward to.
I would rather not have to live through an emboldened and desperate autocracy rolling over Europe and opening up the very real possibility of a third world war.
and while we're here, since the US is ostensibly going isolationist, maybe they should stop telling the Ukrainians they need to submit to subjugation.
I think the story is Russia becomes powerful enough to threaten Europe, one state at a time.
Ukraine has an amazing job, but they wouldn't have been able to do even that without convincing others that it was in their best interest to fund the war. That's been clear from the beginning.
The war is the genocide. Putin’s invasion would have killed thousands, maybe tens of thousands and been over in a week. Western involvement changed that into the deaths of hundreds of thousands. What more effective means of self-genocide could Europe conceive? Germany cannot exactly round up a whole class of their own for slaughter again in their current political environment. The West (England, Germany, France, etc) caused WWI and WWII not Russia. Now we (America) should trust their vision to avoid WWIII? We should be clear who the problem is and stay out of it.
This is such incredibly twisted logic. I would have honestly been aghast to see this on HN a few years ago, but now the site seems nearly as infected as Facebook or X with this.
You know buddy, I was there in Kyiv in that first week of invasion, and you know, the Western involvement was no where to be found, except for some infantry weapons (thanks for that). Again, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians joined the military with full understanding that Russia has more of everything, that foreign support may not come and so on.
Yes, the primary effect of the war has been to kill young European men, and both Russia and Ukraine… and now perhaps England and others are all too eager to see it happen.
For Ukraine to continue existing, the russians have to be driven out. Otherwise the genocide will continue. The genocide caused by russians, caused by russians invading Ukraine, caused by russians stealing Ukraine's children.
In america's right wing trump followers, there is utter, sociopathic, monstrous indifference to Ukraine's suffering.
So I'll ask you, personally: If the neighbouring state or country decided to invade and take over an area of your state, and you were told "you've been resisting too long, give in already and give up your fight", would you lay down and welcome the invaders you've been fighting? If you knew that the invaders were stealing children, and murdering whole towns?
Even worse: AFAIK there's no reason to believe that the $20k/mo or $10k/mo pricing will actually make them money. Those numbers are just thought balloons being floated.
Of course $10k/mo sounds like a lot of inference, but it's not yet clear how much inference will be required to approximate a software developer--especially in the context of maintaining and building upon an existing codebase over time and not just building and refining green field projects.
Man. If I think about all of the employee productivity tools and resources I could have purchased fifteen years ago when nobody spent anything on tooling, with an inflation adjusted $10K a month and it makes me sad.
We were hiring more devs to deal with a want of $10k worth of hardware per year, not per month.
"Imagine some theoretical technological advancement. Now take it out of context, put it in the worst possible circumstances, and imagine it appeared into a society like ours without any prior thought or discussion about the possible downsides of that technology."
For example: in a society where autonomous security guard robots kill intruders, there would not be people sneaking into warehouses. In a society where people can play back and re-live prior memories, it would not suddenly come up that one can relive experiences with past lovers. In a society where one's consciousness could be contained inside a "cookie," being unexpectedly in a strange place with no explanation would immediately have one questioning whether that's what happened.
It just feels ham-fisted. In their defense, I'm sure it's tough to introduce an entirely new concept and world and sell a brand new story all in the scope of a single episode, but the formula felt a little stale, at least while I was watching it.
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