Leo Gura

This is where your worldview is flawed. Anarchy is an arms race to the top. There is no other possibility. Global anarchy forces someone to dominate and establish supremacy. If this was not the case, no government would be necessary at all. So your worldview has this fundamental flaw. If your view was correct, China would not need monopoly of power over its people and neither would Putin. Your view is well intentioned but naive in typical leftist fashion and as mistaken as communism was in the last century. You underestimate man's nature. Man is worse than you know. China and Putin are worse than you know. And they would try to dominate the world if given the chance. There is nothing special about the American empire that makes it uniquely evil. That same evil exists in every nation that has a monopoly of power over its people. Because that is the only solution to anarchy. Contemplate deeply what I said here. This is very important. This is very important for your political development.

It was very necessary.

RFK fans live in a parallel universe, alongside their savior.

I'm sorry that happened to you. So sad. Made me cry for you and your dog. But humans are gonna be here regardless and very few humans are that bad. You gotta find the good ones. There are good ones like your dog was. Be careful not to over-generalize. The humans who hurt your dog were bad. That doesn't transfer to all humans. Just like there are some bad dogs, but that doesn't transfer to your dog. Keep in mind how "evil" animals are. A wolf has no problem ripping a rabbit apart. Life is a very difficult and hurtful thing. You have deep trauma from losing your dog. It will take time and some therapy to heal. Hang in there. Sorry for your loss.

I agree. It will be interesting to see how far the Chinese can push their censorship one party state.

@Eskilon Seems to me that even the cost of super-intelligent AI should drive towards pennies over time. I don't see why AI should be expensive. Running human brains is not expensive.

This seems like an unhealthy overcorrection. You definitely can have healthy honest loving friends. You don't need 50 of them, just 1-3 would enough. Just be more selective. Deciding to never again have friends at 24 is extremely limiting. Maybe if you were 60 that would be okay.

Well, yeah, all the problems boil down to selfishness and self-absorption. Multipolar world sounds good in theory but in practice it leads to anarchy, with corrupt actors like Putin thinking he is on par with the West. The West was right that communism was a failed worldview not on par with the West. And the same will happen again with Putin's kleptocracy. It will not outcompete the West. China is a more complicated matter.

The question arises, will there be a market for AI which is not top of the line? For example, if OpenAI makes a super-intelligent AI that is costly, will using something like DeepSeek still make any sense? Is there a market for Walmart AI? If super-intelligence exists, why use anything lower since you will get inferior results?

It's very hard to say how AI will play out. Generally speaking human evolution seems to be moving towards higher consciousness. But that's very long-term. In the short-term lots of weirdness will happen.

You are genetically superior to a dwarf. Not morally superior, just your functional capacities are higher. Ironically, as you complain about woke Europeans who cannot see that men need to fight in Ukraine, you are missing that dwarfs cannot win a war against Russians either, because they are physically limited. Physical strength is necessary to win in combat. But there is also mental strength. A mentally disabled general cannot win a war. This is the reality of life. Be careful not to jump to conclusions about what ought to be done about this. I am merely stating how reality works, not making any policy decisions or moral-worth claims. No matter how much you dislike it, society IS composed of a bell-curve of weaker and stronger individuals across hundreds of dimensions, and these differences are not minor, they are massive. The challenge of organizing society is to figure out how to handle these differences in a good way without abusing anyone.

Remember what corporations are. They are factions of citizens. These factions are designed to serve their own interest at the expense of the larger collective. So what we have is a mosaic of small factions all trying to pull the blanket to their side of the bed while everyone else sleeps naked in the cold. And unless you are a large corporation you don't have enough pull to keep yourself warm. So you are forced to join one of the factions to keep yourself warm or launch your own. So it's a race to the bottom.

I also love this one:

That's easy! Microraptor

America has one of the best geographies possible. America is life on easy mode. Africa is Dark Souls.

It won't happen in our lifetime.

Zero, unless Dems have some miracle mid-term election victory.

When you do this false equivalence you terminate deep understanding.

Not in our system because a truly good man would just be eaten alive by the corrupt pigs who run Washington and the corporate business world. America cannot have a benevolent monarch because it is a system where the top 1% of corrupt rich and famous elites rule together for their own enrichment at the expense of everyone else. We have a corporatocracy. No one man can fix it. He would just be demonized and booted from power by the top 1%. And the bottom 50% would hate him too because they do not have the capacity to understand goodness.

Keep in mind that the real work is happening outside of news headlines. Right now Trump's cabinet of goons is furiously working to disable all checks and balances of the federal government, filling as many positions as they can with corrupt MAGA ideologues and loyalists. This will not be visible in the news. What you see in the news is just the tip of the corruption iceberg. The corruption and rot will be staggering and beyond anyone's imagination. But it will take a few years to blossom.

I appreciate the feedback.

Try eating nothing but steak for 4 years. Let us know how that goes.

Musk should not be underestimated. He has a lot of tricks up his sleeve and could do a lot of political damage, similar to Trump.

He IS in politics. Politics doesn't need to be holding office. Musk has massive political influence and potential to corrupt politicians. Most of politics happens behind closed doors, not through official channels. Especially now with Trump. The only silver lining with Musk is that he is so obnxiously narccisistic that I doubt any leaders in politics or business will want to work with him long-term. Trump will throw Musk under the bus soon. Where that leaves Musk will be unclear. Musk's unhinged behavior will turn off many respectable business leaders and executives because they won't want to partner with a domineering asshole. Musk's #1 problem is that he is incapable of sharing power with anyone. He wants full control over the relationship. But that kind of style cannot work in a liberal democracy where people are your equals, not your vassals.

I do not. That is something I have neglected. I hear Apple TV has some good ones.