5 ms·
The amount of damage inflicted by this admin will take over a generation to assess, if circumstances are stable enough to do so.
by N_Lens 2mo ago
The amount of damage inflicted by this admin will take over a generation to assess, if circumstances are stable enough to do so.
- nutjob2 2mo agoI think you'll eventually find that the United States has lost much of its credibility and goodwill forever.
- john_strinlai 2mo agofor awhile, sure. but we can look at japan, germany, etc. and recognize that it wont be "forever". edit: woops, i guess everyone apparently still hates japan and germany and will hate them forever, too. does everyone still hate spain?
- clark_dent 2mo agoA good proportion of the older generations still disdain or mock Germany as nazis-in-waiting. There may be an end to the damage done to their global reputation, but it's not here yet 80 years down the line.
- SideburnsOfDoom 2mo ago> There may be an end to the damage done to their global reputation, but it's not here yet 80 years down Let's not forget that in the early part of the 20th century, Germany was the powerhouse of mathematics and sciences such as physics and chemistry, to the extent that top scientists basically had to learn German (1) and/or study in Germany (2). How long did it take Germany to recover that preeminent position? Its a trick question: they did not recover it. 1) https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/162/how-did-german-become-the-language-of-science https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/162/how-did-german-b... 2) e.g. > In 1926, Oppenheimer left Cambridge for the University of Göttingen to study under Max Born; Göttingen was one of the world's leading centers for theoretical physics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert_Oppenheimer#Early_career https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert_Oppenheimer#Early_ca...
- ModernMech 2mo ago> to the extent that top scientists basically had to learn German That reverberates even toady -- I had a physics professor who who learned German precisely because he wanted to read some original texts written by Boltzmann. Apparently he thought he was missing some nuance in the translations.
- fabian2k 2mo agoI certainly hope that the US finds a less destructive way of changing their reputation than Germany did.
- ceejayoz 2mo agoI'd really prefer not to learn the "don't put evil assholes in power" lesson the way Japan and Germany did. They're basically brand-new countries.
- john_strinlai 2mo agoi hope that it is obvious i am not saying that... my point was that a couple generations is usually enough to heal most animosity, assuming the offending events cease certainly in a thousand years, ~no one will remember.
- ceejayoz 2mo agoA couple generations plus a flattening of most major cities, and the deaths/imprisonment of the leadership responsible.
- john_strinlai 2mo agopunishment of those responsible, sure. i dont think flattening of most major cities is a requirement...
- ceejayoz 2mo ago> i dont think flattening of most major cities is a requirement... Both of your chosen examples went through exactly that as part of their reputational change.
- john_strinlai 2mo agoi can go dig up other examples of countries that did bad things which are forgiven now, if you'd like.
- ceejayoz 2mo agoLike the Confederacy? Wait, bad example.
- LoganDark 2mo agothe hit to practically all its spy programs will set it back years
- dgellow 2mo agoEasily a decade
- amiga386 2mo agoPost WW2, the US set up some fantastic levers of power that let it establish and maintain its hegemony at arms length: the United Nations and the UNSC. NATO. The petrodollar. Pax Americana could've gone on forever. However, those levers of power are subtle enough that once the US voted ignorant jackasses into power, they wrongly thought that's just how the world is, they can do what they like, including -- critically! -- dismantling the levers of power. It's like that image of the idiot sawing off the branch he's sitting on. How else can you explain the US trying to fuck up the UN and NATO?
- jermaustin1 2mo ago> Pax Americana could've gone on forever. Hubris is the undoing of all empires. And hubris is basically entropy for humanity.
- skinfaxi 2mo ago> How else can you explain the US trying to fuck up the UN and NATO? At least cynically, there is nothing ignorant about it, it is intentional undermining probably for personal gain.
- e2le 2mo agoUnfortunately Americans remain too comfortable to bother with any serious push back. The destruction of democratic traditions in America will continue and the president will keep using the office to legitimise his scams.
- dgellow 2mo agoEven worse, way too many people are still actively supporting this. That can even been seen in the HN commenting crowd
- classified 2mo ago> the HN commenting crowd That set also contains elements who will swear that LLMs are conscious, so it does not mean as much as we might want it to.
- dgellow 2mo agoFair. Though that’s likely a reflection of the general population
- jfengel 2mo agoOr at least, the tech-bro subset of the general population. It's possible that they're disproportionately vocal on HN, but I think overall it's a reasonably accurate presentation of that (narrow but powerful) demographic.
- Mielin 2mo agoI dont support Trump, but the conscious part is closer to me. Why would you think LLMs are not conscious? Maybe a link to an article that is aligned with your views? That would help me understand your viewpoint. Are dogs conscious? Maybe not, or a bit so. LLMs are more conscious than dogs. LLM are deficient in certain memory aspect - particularly a gap between the generation cycle and the context window. So they seem forgetful. But people with memory loss or damaged hypocampus are still conscious. LLMs are dumb in certain aspects, do weird errors, but we still agree that dumb people with weird errors are conscious. Theory wise thinking is likely substrate independent. Unless you think that biological tissue holds some life force that allows to transend comoutation limitations somehow. Thats probably not what you wanted to read, Im aorry. Just really curious in how do you reconcile all of this.
- ransom1538 2mo ago[flagged]
- halJordan 2mo agoYou mean doge increased HUD personnel/ funding? Or did they cut that too? https://www.cbpp.org/blog/doge-driven-hud-cuts-will-make-it-harder-for-people-to-afford-housing-exit-homelessness https://www.cbpp.org/blog/doge-driven-hud-cuts-will-make-it-...
- apical_dendrite 2mo agoPlease provide a source. Also, are you also so sneering about the famine relief and AIDS treatment work that USAID was doing?
- jasonvorhe 2mo agoAs if Trump was the first to print trillions and start a new war. Americans are so enchanted by their 2 party duopoly, it's not even funny. Bizarre how people view reality.
- lopsotronic 2mo agoIf the rest of the world stayed still, that's a hard "maybe". Since the rest of the world isn't, what we're actually watching is the "Western Flavor" of the Soviet collapse. The fact that these destructive policies are being repeatedly selected - over and over and over again - means that the collapse is systemic; indeed, this could even be seen as a part of a larger "End of the West" which kicked off with World War 1 and then the utter self-immolation of the secular colonial period in WW2. Future historians, with the benefit of hindsight, will probably date the beginnings of the collapse[1] to 9/11, with the actual ceasing of the functional economic system somewhere around the 2008 econopalypse. COVID was something like our Chernobyl. I think Trump is, quite honestly, our version of Yeltsin: the buffoon who ends everyone's faith in "the system". Americans should mentally prepare for an equivalent collapse in, well, everything, from public health to aviation safety. Of course, by the numbers, "you're already soaking in it". [1] The American side of it, anyway. The larger end of the West, World War 1 is a logical place to draw the line, but honestly it started when Europe ran out of profitable/exploitive space on the map.