Distant Suns

Polymath. Opinions are my own. I follow many points of view; not to endorse.

[Distant Suns @arasila]

@DabsMalone In particular, the engineers retired and young people didn’t choose this field because of lack of career opportunities and because easy money was to be made elsewhere. The west hasn’t been investing in science and engineering since the Cold War (or 60s/70s).

[Distant Suns @arasila]

@ProfessorCats @bestmenspod Having a degree in philosophy or something does not necessarily give you money or social status in the normal sense but it absolutely attracts women of certain type (depending on local culture). Seen it many numerous times over the years.

[Distant Suns @arasila]

@jm_desp @avaslis @AngelicaOung @ted_huang France is a country that predates nationalism. It was not created as a nationalist project but became monotonic through slow assimilation of minorities like China, so it is not an example.

My point is that if nationalists have their way, the result will not be an improvement.

[Distant Suns @arasila]

@avaslis @AngelicaOung @ted_huang You are completely missing my point. Being a single-ethinicity state does not prevent a country from being successful, but it does not offer any real benefits either.
France is _not_ a counter-example because it predates nationalism and was not created as a nationalist project.

[Distant Suns @arasila]

@hogtownserb @AngelicaOung @ted_huang Germany was a very successful country for a long time and not even particularly warlike (it actually experience quite long periods of peace when compared to its peers mainly beause it did not see colonies), but at some point it became arrogant and went over-the-top.

[Distant Suns @arasila]

@AngelicaOung As a thought experiment, I asked ChatGPT to compare Trump against Roman emperors. He came up as the third from the bottom; only Heliogabalus and Caligula were ranked below him.

Notably, this AI analysis explicitly ranked Nero as more a suitable personality to lead than Trump.

[Distant Suns @arasila]

@AngelicaOung I did learn in school that basically all the Roman Emperors were all madmen because "absolute power corrupts absolutely", and only the democratic system is able to protect us against this (by not giving anyone such powers). 1/2

[Distant Suns @arasila]

@AngelicaOung Nero was first vilified by Roman aristocracy because he was a populist (he started seeking support form common people after failing to impress the senators) and then by Christian historians. Overall, he a moderately successful leader until the endgame period of his reign.

[Distant Suns @arasila]

@avaslis @AngelicaOung @ted_huang I only mean states that have been created by nationalists. Ones that have existed within long-term borders long before existence of nationalism do not count, even if they have largely homogeneous population like China, Japan, etc.

[Distant Suns @arasila]

@avaslis @AngelicaOung @ted_huang It has existed for a very long time (far predating Spring of Nations of 1848, etc.), and initially it was not a nation state. Much later, an initially diverse population converged into a largely unified nation because they lived in a single long-lived state.

[Distant Suns @arasila]

@AngelicaOung @ted_huang The only historical example of a genuine success-story of a nation state that I know is German Empire that was able to unite the small German states into an industrial, military and scientific powerhouse.

But it also gave us an expansionist spree, two world wars, and Holocaust.

[Distant Suns @arasila]

@AngelicaOung @ted_huang If you consider all small nation states that were built in Europe throuhg the 20th century events, it's really hard to say that any of them have been genuinely successful in producing anything that was clearly better than the state/society that preceded independence.

[Distant Suns @arasila]

@AngelicaOung @ted_huang Captilism, communism, liberalism, etc. ideologies have all have their flaws, but at least they have been able to solve some nontrivial problems.

Nationalism does not solve problems, it just endlessly repeats them in a smaller scale until they fall below the media horizon.

[Distant Suns @arasila]

@AngelicaOung @ted_huang Nationalism is a funny type of ideology. It is basically a religion, but there is no god; but just "the nation" that becomes some kind of all-justifying moral excuse after it has been sufficiently victimized by nonsentical narratives about evil others.

[Distant Suns @arasila]

@AngelicaOung @ted_huang All nationalistic (nation building) myths are horrible nonsense that cannot stand close scrutiny or any objective fact-based analysis.

[Anshu @anshuc]

extremely unprofessional. if kimi wants to make it as a frontier lab, they need to act like one: perhaps silently route people to worse models, and maybe write a blog post about the collapse of humanity

[Distant Suns @arasila]

@benitoz They will add capacity. Not from NVIDIA.

[Distant Suns @arasila]

@predict_addict @0xSero Combined with hard work; the often missing ingredient in western academia.

[Distant Suns @arasila]

@KalamCenter 78