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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 25th, 2023

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  • Sadly, the only way I can imagine to obtain experimental confirmation of this hypothesis would be unworkable.

    It would be necessary to take a population of infants, raise them in strict isolation and teach them nothing of religion, carefully excluding anything that even hints at the concept, while giving them the scientific method and lots of understanding of reality otherwise. Then allow them to develop their own civilization and monitor them for several centuries to see if the concept ever emerges.



  • If it was me in their place, I’d try giving up as little as possible then seek some sort of binding defense agreement, whether NATO or something else. And if necessary do it in secrecy so Russia doesn’t hear about it until the agreement is fully in force.

    Honestly I just think the US is simply not reliable, and with Ukraine seemingly relying heavily on the US, they need to be looking for the quickest exit strategy they can come up with at a moment of strength.

    Hopefully, if Republicans prevent continued US support, other countries will still provide enough…I just fear it may not be, and that seems like a worse outcome for Ukraine’s people.


  • I hope they do, but this is why I’ve always thought Ukraine needed to be a little less hard-line on not giving up any territory. Because I figured it was only a matter of time before the Republicans (and other similar parties/groups in other countries) ratfucked the support away from them.

    I don’t know if Russia was ever open to negotiating, but if they were, Ukraine may find themselves wishing they had negotiated at a high point, instead of their support being pulled out from under them.

    Sadly, the US is simply not a reliable ally or source of support right now, and probably won’t be until getting the internal insanity under control. Until there are two parties actually willing to govern instead of one party trying to govern and the other acting like a deranged shit-flinging baboon, the US will be unreliable.


  • Well…without a reliable way to stop the rockets shooting into Israel, I guess they’d have to make sure the rockets aren’t launched in the first place.

    So yeah, they’d probably step up the war, only now with the explicit objective of wiping out all of Gaza since it’s the only way they can prevent attacks.

    Israel is VERY aware that support might disappear for them someday. That’s the entire point of the nation, so that Jews, who have been persecuted for over two thousand years, do not need to rely on the benevolence of others to defend them. They have their own munitions stockpiles and factories and are themselves an advanced technological nation, not dependent on the US to fight Hamas. They are perfectly capable of wiping out the Gaza strip without outside assistance.

    Plus, your question is based on a false premise anyway. Iron Dome is a system invented, developed, designed, and built in Israel. The US did put some money into it, but not an amount Israel could not have. So without US aid, Israel would be somewhat worse off, but overall totally fine.





  • Get every flagship CPU and GPU from 2000 to today that I can get my hands on. Also as much open source code as I can get hold of. And especially AI stuff - there’s several fully open source models, so bring those, and as much technical writings on them as possible.

    Speaking of which, download every science paper published since 2000 that I can get hold of, in every possible field.

    Get as much info on the 2000 election as possible, to hand to Al Gore, see if he can win that election with a solid unassailable margin.

    Research stocks, lottery, and everything else I can to get fast money within the shortest possible period of time after I get there, so I can get super rich before the butterfly effect makes predictions impossible, I need billions in seed money and I need it fast.

    Then use that money to start a private research group, and hand them all the scientific papers I brought. Get those experts to work studying all this knowledge and figure out what can be turned into practical technology. Turn some of this into profit-making devices to fund continued development, but release as much as possible for free.

    Essentially, deluge the world in as much new technology as possible, mostly free and open source, holding back only as much as necessary in order to fund continued research.

    And oh jeez the pharmaceutical industry. Release for free every drug made since 2000, so the pharmaceutical industry can’t get their patents in them.

    Big list of stuff there, but if I pulled off even half of it, the world would probably be a much better place in 25 years than in my original timeline.


  • Some of these actually do have an effect, but it’s difficult to impossible for a person to know whether this particular one is a placebo button or not.

    This is especially the case with elevator close door buttons. Those buttons are always hooked up, because they are needed during emergency operation with the fireman’s key. They are sometimes programmed to cycle the doors marginally faster under normal circumstances, but more often aren’t.

    Also, some of the traffic crossing buttons don’t make the walk cycle come sooner, but they occasionally are needed to insert a walk cycle at all, because some intersections don’t trigger a walk cycle unless the button has been pressed.



  • People whose jobs can be taken by AI means every human. ALL OF US. It’s just a question of how soon. Some jobs will still need humans for several decades, others will not.

    What we all collectively need to do is acknowledge that we are winning. This is the endgame of civilization, and our victory condition is 100% unemployment, because no one should be required to work.

    But we need to acknowledge that tying a person’s means of living to a ‘productive job’ is no longer viable, and people need to live even without doing something ‘productive’.