Amusingly, I ended up writing about this very thing yesterday. The whole mythology about western liberalism being a superior system rested on the US having had a massive head start after WW2. And now we see that China was able to match that starting completely from scratch. https://dialecticaldispatches.substack.com/p/the-stress-test-liberalism-never
Except they weren’t. What makes this all really funny is that China literally publishes 5 year plans, and the west keeps acting like China is inscrutable.
Definitely betting on China given they’re the only major country that is able to do a sustained decades long investment needed to commercialize this tech.
A FAFO moment for Burgerland
You’re right that there are many unexpected ways things can work out, but many of the advantages that the current US empire is propped up on would not have existed. Even the US and UK together would not have been central to the world economy. The Soviet bloc would’ve been by far the bigger player in that scenario. It’s hard to overstate just how much the US benefited from WW2.
The US was able to develop nukes because a bunch of German scientists fled there and the war provided the justification for running a massive nuclear research program.
That is very true as well. The imperialism does a lot to prop up support for capitalism in the west.
The labour movement in US was very strong after the great depression, and I expect it would’ve kept growing. Also, if the war was between the US+UK vs all of Europe and USSR, then the balance of power would’ve been very different as well. The reason the US became so dominant was because it sat out the war while the rest of the world burnt.
I’ve thought about this before as well. If German communists succeeded, then there wouldn’t have been a WW2. The rest of Europe would’ve almost certainly become communists, and the US would not have become the superpower it is today. Instead, the workers in US would’ve likely overthrown capitalism as well following the example of Russia and Europe. We literally could’ve been living in the Star Trek future right now.
When I say that Trump’s plans are lacking, I am referring to his overall geopolitical strategy. I might have missed out on some development that happened recently since I haven’t kept up with the news this week, or maybe I just don’t see the big picture yet.
Oh yeah, I very much agree there. I expect that the end result will be that the west is in a complete disarray, while BRICS is going to be significantly strengthened. The US will almost certainly find itself in a much weaker position than it is today.
They will need some level of hard power maintained in europe to pressure any European government or left-wing movement against doing things that will harm American investments.
It seems like the plan there is to just fund domestic fascists and outsource the work to them.
I don’t think it matters what Trump’s genuine beliefs are or aren’t. His administration’s ability to execute his plans is severely lacking, that’s even assuming that his words line up with what the admin wants behind closed doors.
I don’t see how his plans are lacking actually. They’ve already established dialogue with Russia. It’s going well both according to the US and Russia. Seems to me that there’s a very good chance they will come to an agreement this year.
I think it will prove to be much more difficult to divest from Europe than people are expecting, and that like most of Trump’s gambits, his admin will half ass it and call it a day.
Ruining the relations with Europe could be part of the strategy here. He can create such a hostile environment that companies will have no choice but to divest. The tariff war certainly seems to be moving in that direction right now.
It has to maintain a hard power and soft power presence in the continent to safeguard its capital. If Europe starts buying large quantities of American weapons (as Trump wants them to), it only strengthens American interest in the region.
I disagree here. Whom do they need hard power against if they normalize relations with Russia exactly? Meanwhile, the soft power strategy appears to be to try and break the EU, then support right wing parties that are US aligned. This also aligns with the tariff strategy incidentally. Trump policy tends to be very blunt, and that’s precisely what we’re seeing here.
Well, the Americans and Russians will have to work something out at some point to end the war.
Right, and once that happens, the US can pull back a lot of the assets they have committed to Europe currently.
I think that’s exactly what’s happening.
I think Trump genuinely understands that the war is a sunk cost, and on top of it he knows that it’s going to be an Albatross around his neck if he doesn’t end it. You don’t need to be a genius to realize that ending it as quickly as possible is the best course of action. Furthermore, the rapprochement with Russia will allow him to divert resources to Asia which is where the US sees a real threat now. In the grand scheme of things , Europe is just not that important anymore from the US perspective. Another aspect here is that there seems to be a belief amongst the republicans that Russia is a white christian nations and they can somehow unite over that to take on China.
Meanwhile, Europe is in a deep panic over the fact that the US will no longer be there, and they will have to deal with Russia on their own. This of course plays into Trump’s hands as well, as it’s necessarily going to mean a lot of military contracts going forward.
I expect that either the US and Russia work something out, which I think is most likely, or the US will simply bail on Ukraine and cut their losses. The reality is that the US is unable to keep the war going much longer materially, and unlike the Europeans, they actually acknowledge this fact.
The whole point of cutting aid was to let Ukraine know who’s boss. Now that dominance has been established, things can go back to business as usual.
Was this an actual output from an LLM or a hypothetical example that you wrote up? It’s not quite clear to me. It’s a lot of output but I don’t want to insult you if you wrote all that yourself
That was copy pasted straight from the DeepSeek chat response.
Adding the replies as full items, that is going to absolutely murder performance.
Like I said earlier, you still have to understand how to code and what the code is doing. Thing is that you could literally paste what you said in, and it’ll make adjustments. Or you can just make adjustments yourself. As a starting point I find that sort of output useful.
Another example is that I have to use node for an application for work right now. I haven’t touched js in over a decade, I’m not familiar with the ecosystem, and DeepSeek lets me quickly get things running. Things I would’ve spent hours looking up before and doing through trial and error just work out of the box. As I pointed out in an earlier reply, most apps aren’t doing really complex or interesting things. Most of it is just shuffling data between different endpoints and massaging it in some way. LLMs can do a lot of this boring work quickly and efficiently.
No worries, and thanks for taking the time to read through it.
Sorry, that is not what I think. It’s just that surely there was something very similar enough to your JSON to get the prediction to come up with something that looks similar enough.
That’s the thing it’s not that there was something similar to my specific problem. It’s parts of many billions of problems that have been fed into the system have aspects that all come together to produce a solution for the particular problem. You don’t even have to start with JSON, you can ask it to come up a JSON schema by simply giving it parameters.
I’m not nitpicking you, I’m pointing out that what you’ve described isn’t actually how these things worked, and the way they do work is far more useful in practice. Let me give you a concrete example. Given a query of “write a json schema to represent a comment thread on a social media site like reddit”, it’ll do this bit of reasoning:
Okay, I need to create a JSON schema for a comment thread similar to Reddit. Let me start by breaking down what a Reddit-style comment thread includes.
First, each comment has an ID, author info, content, timestamps, votes, and replies. The replies are nested comments, forming a tree structure. So the schema should allow for nested objects within each comment's replies.
I need to define the required fields for a comment. The ID is essential, as is the content and author information. The author should have a username, maybe a profile link, and flags like is_mod or is_admin.
Voting information: upvotes and downvotes counts, and a total score. Also, whether the current user has voted, which could be an enum indicating up, down, or none.
Timestamps for when the comment was created and last edited. Maybe include an edited field that's either a boolean or a timestamp.
Replies need to be an array of comments, which means the schema will reference itself. That requires using "$ref" to point to the comment definition, allowing for recursion.
Moderation aspects: flags for removed, locked, spam, etc. Distinguish between user deletion and mod removal.
User mentions and links: comments might reference other users or contain URLs, so including arrays for those.
Awards or badges on comments, similar to Reddit's awards. Each award could have a name, image URL, and count.
Pagination for long threads? Maybe include a "continue_thread" field with a token for loading more replies.
Sorting options for replies (best, top, new, etc.), so a sort_order field with enum values.
Let me structure the schema with definitions. Start with the comment object, then define author, award, user mention, link, etc.
Required fields: id, author, content, created_at, score. Maybe others depending on necessity.
For the voting, current_user_vote should be an enum of "up", "down", or null.
Ensure that all optional fields are not required. For example, edited can be a boolean or a timestamp, but maybe just a timestamp if it's been edited.
Validation: each comment's replies must be an array of comment objects. Use "items" with "$ref" to the comment schema.
Testing edge cases: deleted users, removed comments, maximum nesting depth. But the schema might not handle depth limits, just the structure.
Include examples to illustrate how a comment with replies would look.
I think that covers the main aspects. Now, draft the schema with these considerations.
This alone is already useful because it goes through the steps of the problem, identifies some corner cases, and suggests what a good way to model this problem might be. It will then produce a json schema based on that:
{
"$schema": "http://json-schema.org/draft-07/schema",
"title": "Social Media Comment Thread",
"type": "object",
"definitions": {
"comment": {
"type": "object",
"properties": {
"id": {
"type": "string",
"format": "uuid",
"description": "Unique identifier for the comment"
},
"author": {
"$ref": "#/definitions/user"
},
"content": {
"type": "string",
"description": "Markdown-formatted comment content"
},
"created_at": {
"type": "string",
"format": "date-time"
},
...
"total_comments": {
"type": "integer",
"minimum": 0
},
"depth_limit": {
"type": "integer",
"description": "Maximum allowed comment depth"
},
"comment_limit": {
"type": "integer",
"description": "Maximum comments per page"
}
},
"required": ["thread"]
}
it highlights key features of the solution
Key Features:
Nested Comments: Recursive structure for replies
Voting System: Track upvotes/downvotes and user's vote
User Identity: Detailed author information
Moderation: Flags for removed/locked/deleted content
Awards: Support for Reddit-style awards
Mentions & Links: Track user mentions and embedded links
Sorting & Pagination: Handle different sort orders and partial threads
Safety Features: Distinguish user deletion vs mod removal
This schema supports:
Infinite nesting of comments
Multiple sorting algorithms
User reputation systems
Content moderation tools
Rich text formatting
Pagination for large threads
User interaction tracking
and it gives an example usage (I’ve truncated it for brevity)
{
"thread": {
"id": "550e8400-e29b-41d4-a716-446655440000",
"author": {
"username": "tech_fan42",
"avatar": "https://example.com/avatar.jpg",
"is_mod": false
},
"content": "This new framework is amazing! 🚀",
"created_at": "2023-08-20T14:30:00Z",
"score": 1542,
"replies": [
{
"id": "3f3e6c60-3d7d-461d-aa7a-5c94f5d5dc5d",
"author": {
"username": "framework_author",
"is_admin": true,
"distinguished": "admin"
},
"content": "Thanks! Check out our [docs](https://docs.example.com/)",
"created_at": "2023-08-20T14:35:00Z",
"score": 893,
"links": [
{
"url": "https://docs.example.com/",
"text": "docs"
}
]
}
],
"awards": [
{
"name": "Gold",
"image_url": "https://example.com/gold.png",
"count": 2
}
]
},
"total_comments": 45,
"depth_limit": 8
}
Now, given that schema, I can get it to produce a SQL schema from that, write the queries to do operations against the DB, etc. So, I can go directly from getting requirements in plain English, to having a reasonable data model, and a persistence layer in a span of a few minutes. I can also ask it to explain design decisions, make adjustments, etc.
This is far closer to pair programming with a second developer than hunting for code to glue together on Stack Overflow.
From what I read, past the loading phase you don’t actually want to take more than 5 grams daily. Your body isn’t able to absorb more than that effectively, and it just ends up putting stress on your kidneys.