That’s what I’m most worried about, but my hope is that the oligarchs will ultimately decide they’d rather rule over a diminished empire than live out the rest of their days in bunkers like rats.

The whole narrative about a demographic crisis in China is largely based on misinterpretation of the data, these are two great links explaining the actual situation

• https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2108900118
• https://asiatimes.com/2023/07/chinas-demographic-doomsayers-cite-the-wrong-data/

It’s also worth noting that the situation in the US is actually worse right now. This is a good video about it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oj_go157Rf0

The gist of it is that the US population is already older than China. The US has almost 18% of its population over 65, while China is only around 14%, and the youth populations are basically the same percentage now. In fact, China doesn’t even make the list of the world’s oldest countries, that’s all Japan and Europe. China also has a higher percentage of working-age people at 69% compared to 65% in the US. While 4% doesn’t sound like a big deal, we have to keep in mind that China has over a billion more people. The gap is a massive in absolute workforce numbers. Finally, China is starting to open up immigration with stuff like K visas. As a result, there’s already an exodus of scientists leaving the US for China.

I agree, stealing Russian assets would be the single biggest blunder of the war. Aside from Russia retaliating, the bigger outcome would be that nobody would ever invest in EU again. And doing things like trying to seize Nexperia isn’t helping either. Why would anybody invest money in the EU when you assets can just be seized on whim using some flimsy pretext.

I think the difference comes down to the material conditions. The US is largely a financialized economy, so the niches for automation are largely in the bullshit economy. In China, there is a huge industrial base and as a result there are a lot of opportunities for AI integration within factories, supply chains, and so on.

It’s also worth noting that AI is a very general term. The hype bubble is around LLMs which is what I was discussing in the article, but this is just one branch of research. They’re great for making chat bots, but you need different types of AI, like symbolic logic engines, for robotics. So, I imagine the AI industry in China is a lot more diversified because automation is being applied in a far broader context. The focus there isn’t just on making chatbots. I wrote an article about that earlier here incidentally.

In my opinion, really interesting AI developments are happening precisely in the area of robotics. Training through embodiment and constructing an internal world model makes it possible to do genuine reasoning about how objects behave in the physical world. We have a continuous feedback loop where we take an action, and see the result. That’s our shared context we lean on when communicating with each other. This context is key for being able to explain why you made a particular decision, and allows for error correction and guidance towards better decisions through conversation. This is largely what we mean by having understanding in a human sense. So, what China is doing with robotics is leading to AI systems that can take over jobs that produce use-value as their output.

How that develops will be interesting to watch because then we’ll have a real test of socialism in China. If China is genuinely socialist then we should expect mass automation of physical labor to start translating into people having more free time and doing less work overall.

I wonder if a lot of the dirt on western corruption will start coming out once the regime collapses. It’s almost certain they have detailed records of how top people in the west were deeply involved in the whole thing.

I honestly kinda dig it. Although, I’d just stick with monochrome.

lol yes

libs are having a really hard time of late 🤣

I get the impression that this is more about shuffling Zelensky out. The article just stops short of saying that Zelensky himself is corrupt, and my guess is that it’s a message to him that he better behave and do what the US tells him to or else.

Definitely not at the expense of their relationship with China. The problem the US has is that everybody knows how fickle their system is and how easily they can do a 180 on anything they agree on. That makes it effectively impossible to make any sorts of long term arrangements with the US. That said, Russia will likely want to cool things down with the US, and find mutually beneficial economic arrangements going forward.

That’s the elephant in the room, the only legal basis for seizing funds would be an open declaration of war or UN sanctions. Everybody knows this is illegal, the people trying to make it happen know it’s illegal. That’s why they keep trying to come up with some loophole to make it happen.

also possible

I expect the EU will implode within half a decade tops. The whole scheme could only work in times of plenty where financial surplus could paper over the internal tensions. Now that the pie is shrinking, countries which are in a better economic position are pulling up their ladders. We see nationalist parties becoming prominent all over Europe now, and that trend will only accelerate. The EU trying to enforce bloc discipline with financial punishments, like they’re doing with Hungary, is another factor. At some point, Hungary might just decide they’re better off leaving the EU and joining BRICS. If either Germany or France end up with a nationalist government like AfD or NR, then there’s a good chance of them bailing on EU as well. Without France or Germany the whole thing would collapse overnight.

which is precisely why Europe won’t do it

at the outset

My cynical read on this is that the US did not want to see the EU become and independent bloc, or worse start aligning with the east. So, burning it down is in US interest. Meanwhile, now that Russia emerged as a serious power on the continent, the US is willing cut a deal to carve up Ukraine with them in hopes of pulling Russia away from China somewhat. The Europeans will get thrown under the bus, while Russia and the US will likely make some development deals in Ukraine. The fact that Dmitriev, who heads RDIF, has been in a lot of the meetings is a dead give away of where things are headed.

It’s kind of hilarious to watch liberals doing manifesting for the past three years.

classic

For some people, hating AI has become their whole identity.

It’s been obvious that he’s not capable of doing serious material analysis ever since he started peddling the whole tech feudalism thing. It’s been a transparent attempt to sanitize capitalism by claiming that what we’re seeing is somehow a deviation from the way capitalism functions as opposed to just the natural progression of the system. Here we’re seeing more of the same, except now he’s mixing in some red scare as the mask finally drops.