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N_Lens 15 hours ago [-]
The amount of damage inflicted by this admin will take over a generation to assess, if circumstances are stable enough to do so.
e2le 14 hours ago [-]
Unfortunately 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 14 hours ago [-]
Even worse, way too many people are still actively supporting this. That can even been seen in the HN commenting crowd
classified 13 hours 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.
Mielin 7 hours ago [-]
I 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.
dgellow 12 hours ago [-]
Fair. Though that’s likely a reflection of the general population
jfengel 12 hours ago [-]
Or 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.
JKCalhoun 12 hours ago [-]
"Unfortunately Americans remain too comfortable…"
I suspect this too will change.
We may get to a point where we'll refer to the Great Depression as Great Depression I.
We'll see change then. It happened last time.
lopsotronic 12 hours ago [-]
If 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.
nutjob2 15 hours ago [-]
I think you'll eventually find that the United States has lost much of its credibility and goodwill forever.
amiga386 14 hours ago [-]
Post 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 14 hours ago [-]
> Pax Americana could've gone on forever.
Hubris is the undoing of all empires. And hubris is basically entropy for humanity.
skinfaxi 14 hours 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.
john_strinlai 14 hours ago [-]
for 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?
ceejayoz 14 hours ago [-]
I'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 14 hours ago [-]
i 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 14 hours ago [-]
A couple generations plus a flattening of most major cities, and the deaths/imprisonment of the leadership responsible.
bcrosby95 14 hours ago [-]
The second half never happened to Japans leaders despite being responsible for many atrocities in the region at the time.
i dont think flattening of most major cities is a requirement...
ceejayoz 14 hours 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 14 hours ago [-]
i can go dig up other examples of countries that did bad things which are forgiven now, if you'd like.
ceejayoz 14 hours ago [-]
Like the Confederacy?
Wait, bad example.
john_strinlai 14 hours ago [-]
just wondering, do you want the US to be hated "forever"? or what is it that you are arguing for?
i thought it was a fairly obvious statement that over the thousands of years of history, many bad things have been done, but after several generations, we are able to heal.
if you think that in the year 2200, the world will still hate the US because of today, i disagree.
the year 2500? i doubt the people of that time, excepting a few ancient historians, will even know it happened.
"forever" is a long time.
ceejayoz 14 hours ago [-]
> do you want the US to be hated "forever"?
No.
What I want and what I get don't always match up.
The US will suffer from this era on the international stage for generations, in a completely self-inflicted blow. Its continued existence as the present-day USA is by no means guaranteed, either.
Present-day Germany isn't Nazi Germany; I certainly hope people will hate Nazi Germany forever.
john_strinlai 11 hours ago [-]
>The US will suffer from this era on the international stage for generations,
this is what i said earlier... generations? sure. forever? no.
so i guess we agree.
14 hours ago [-]
yifanl 12 hours ago [-]
You don't get to decide how you're hated is the point.
12 hours ago [-]
krapp 14 hours ago [-]
Japan and Germany made it illegal to put the evil assholes in power. The US will do no such thing, we're going to keep voting for the evil assholes and every attempt we make at progress will simply be undermined and undone.
I don't see a way out of this without a fundamental transformation of the US. At the very least that looks like a Constitutional convention, repeal of FPTP and the electoral college, maybe even changing to a parliamentary system without a powerful executive. At worst it looks like civil war. Nothing on a lesser scale than than that is going to suffice. Expecting to simply return to normal with a vote for blue and pretend this never happened isn't going to work.
clark_dent 14 hours ago [-]
A 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 14 hours 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?
> 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 14 hours ago [-]
I certainly hope that the US finds a less destructive way of changing their reputation than Germany did.
LoganDark 14 hours ago [-]
the hit to practically all its spy programs will set it back years
dgellow 14 hours ago [-]
Easily a decade
ransom1538 14 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
halJordan 14 hours ago [-]
You mean doge increased HUD personnel/ funding? Or did they cut that too?
Please provide a source.
Also, are you also so sneering about the famine relief and AIDS treatment work that USAID was doing?
jasonvorhe 12 hours ago [-]
As 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.
bix6 14 hours ago [-]
And all you techno futurist republicans voted for this. And you’ll do it again cuz money or whatever.
classified 14 hours ago [-]
But now they have "startup experience" and can fuck up even worse the next time.
xgulfie 14 hours ago [-]
The right's platform has devolved into, essentially, "whatever owns the libs"
saalweachter 14 hours ago [-]
Eh, I'm not going to dispute the validity of Cleek's Law, but ~everything Trump, et al, are doing has been an extremely popular idea with different segments of the right for thirty, forty years.
That goes for DOGE, both the idea of "drowning the government in a bathtub" and the specific cuts they made (eg, wrecking foreign aid), that goes for ICE, even the Iran War, which is widely regarded as the unpopular thing that might actually sink the administration, is something a solid 30% of the base has been salivating over since Reagan and are only upset that he hasn't "finished the job" yet.
If you think it's all purely reactionary you haven't been paying attention for the last 40 years.
dgellow 14 hours ago [-]
What you describe is the definition of reactionary
But they didn't drown the government in a bathtub. They cut a bunch of tiny programs that they were ideologically opposed to, at a savings amounting to a rounding error. All of the things that could be counted as "big government" were left untouched, or expanded.
They didn't even pretend to reduce the size of government. They just engaged in some petty grudges.
Which is, as you say, exactly what his voters want. They just pretend that it's "small government", but it absolutely is not.
Freedumbs 11 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
blitzar 14 hours ago [-]
You mean they didn't save 25 trillion dollars a year from the 7 trillion annual spend?
I cant believe they would lie about this ... i am sure that this is a totally isolated case and they have been straight forward and honest about everything else.
The DOGE refund cheque is due to arrive any day now.
jasonvorhe 12 hours ago [-]
Who ever claimed these numbers? Wtf.
chevman 14 hours ago [-]
They'll just extend the forecast horizon when questioned:
"Oh, those projections were over the life the expected costs,forecast out 10/15/20 years into the future. Everyone knows this is how you calculate such savings..."
akagusu 13 hours ago [-]
DOGE was never about saving money, it was about cutting aid to the poor.
jondwillis 12 hours ago [-]
Accelerationism more like. Not just cutting aid to the poor.
mingus88 14 hours ago [-]
Oh, it saved money for someone all right
JKCalhoun 12 hours ago [-]
Suspect this was flagged for being obvious.
TimorousBestie 14 hours ago [-]
I won’t be surprised when the GAO’s budget is cut next as retaliation for this embarrassing report.
JohnTHaller 8 hours ago [-]
Overstated is doing a hell of a lot of lifting in this headline
adamrezich 10 hours ago [-]
It's a good thing we can now all agree that the US federal government is completely devoid of corruption and taxpayer money misuse, and that all future attempts to discover and curtail any of such are irresponsible and futile!
It probably saved money for some very special companies.
14 hours ago [-]
14 hours ago [-]
fabian2k 14 hours ago [-]
The goal wasn't to save money, but to destroy the administrative capacity of the government. And to eliminate programs Musk, Trump and their cronies disliked, while circumventing the legal procedures.
Of course it didn't save any money, and it was obvious from the start that the numbers they put out were entirely fictional.
metalliqaz 14 hours ago [-]
Its purpose was not to save money but to disable government regulation of capital.
dgellow 14 hours ago [-]
Specifically on Musk, that directly benefited his companies
nutjob2 15 hours ago [-]
This was fairly obvious from the start.
ryanmcbride 14 hours ago [-]
WOW YOU DONT FUCKING SAY?????????
watwut 12 hours ago [-]
Aaaand flagged
drcongo 13 hours ago [-]
"No shit" everyone else says
micromacrofoot 14 hours ago [-]
people were saying this literally as the cuts were happening, we need to get over the delusion of powerful men knowing something the general population doesn't
hn4yci687u 14 hours ago [-]
[dead]
classified 14 hours ago [-]
If there's a government watchdog left, then Trump, Musk, DOGE, etc... haven't done their jobs. They are all too incompetent to even do a proper work of destruction. Or did someone fail to bribe them right?
ransom1538 14 hours ago [-]
Last night a jam was canceled in Brazil: "bee-conservation musical". People say it's a waste of US tax payer funds (USAID), but they don't understand the real cost. 600 people are now suffering from PTSD and attending survivor therapy after being deprived of the bee-conservation musical. Our homeless can wait, the "bee-conservation musical" must go on.
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.
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.
I suspect this too will change.
We may get to a point where we'll refer to the Great Depression as Great Depression I.
We'll see change then. It happened last time.
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.
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?
Hubris is the undoing of all empires. And hubris is basically entropy for humanity.
At least cynically, there is nothing ignorant about it, it is intentional undermining probably for personal gain.
edit: woops, i guess everyone apparently still hates japan and germany and will hate them forever, too. does everyone still hate spain?
They're basically brand-new countries.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Military_Tribuna...
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.
Wait, bad example.
i thought it was a fairly obvious statement that over the thousands of years of history, many bad things have been done, but after several generations, we are able to heal.
if you think that in the year 2200, the world will still hate the US because of today, i disagree.
the year 2500? i doubt the people of that time, excepting a few ancient historians, will even know it happened.
"forever" is a long time.
No.
What I want and what I get don't always match up.
The US will suffer from this era on the international stage for generations, in a completely self-inflicted blow. Its continued existence as the present-day USA is by no means guaranteed, either.
Present-day Germany isn't Nazi Germany; I certainly hope people will hate Nazi Germany forever.
this is what i said earlier... generations? sure. forever? no.
so i guess we agree.
I don't see a way out of this without a fundamental transformation of the US. At the very least that looks like a Constitutional convention, repeal of FPTP and the electoral college, maybe even changing to a parliamentary system without a powerful executive. At worst it looks like civil war. Nothing on a lesser scale than than that is going to suffice. Expecting to simply return to normal with a vote for blue and pretend this never happened isn't going to work.
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-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_ca...
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.
https://www.cbpp.org/blog/doge-driven-hud-cuts-will-make-it-...
That goes for DOGE, both the idea of "drowning the government in a bathtub" and the specific cuts they made (eg, wrecking foreign aid), that goes for ICE, even the Iran War, which is widely regarded as the unpopular thing that might actually sink the administration, is something a solid 30% of the base has been salivating over since Reagan and are only upset that he hasn't "finished the job" yet.
If you think it's all purely reactionary you haven't been paying attention for the last 40 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactionary
They didn't even pretend to reduce the size of government. They just engaged in some petty grudges.
Which is, as you say, exactly what his voters want. They just pretend that it's "small government", but it absolutely is not.
I cant believe they would lie about this ... i am sure that this is a totally isolated case and they have been straight forward and honest about everything else.
The DOGE refund cheque is due to arrive any day now.
"Oh, those projections were over the life the expected costs,forecast out 10/15/20 years into the future. Everyone knows this is how you calculate such savings..."
Of course it didn't save any money, and it was obvious from the start that the numbers they put out were entirely fictional.
(Europeans: this is sarcasm)