Seeing how USA and EU failed to provide enough support to Ukraine it is crystal clear that every country now must acquire nuclear weapons and means of delivery. Only MAD is a real guarantee for security and independence.
Indeed, the acquisition of nuclear weapons has recently entered the political and military debate of several European countries. The two most notable examples are Germany [0] and Poland [1].
You're right. And when that happens, let's remember that it is the path the Western countries have chosen by deciding that their immediate quality of life is more important, and skimped on military spending and foreign military assistance during an active invasion of a country that specifically surrendered its nukes in exchange for safety guarantees that were ultimately not honored in spirit.
And it is still not too late to do something about this, but the clock is running out fast. Luckily, every single one of us can help it by making that clock run slower with donations directly to the Ukrainian military effort (not some wishy-washy "non-combat humanitarian aid" stuff). Every dollar spent on buying drones for Ukraine to blow up Russian tanks with buys that many more minutes on that clock.
Your first paragraph, yeah, but... "Every dollar spent on buying drones for Ukraine to blow up Russian tanks with buys that many more minutes on that clock.", really? How would that help us, everyone else? It has been so long yet no one knows fuck all about the Minsk agreement and how it all started. Funny that. I wonder if Wikipedia is still accurate on that one... but I get it, Russia is bad.
Like I said, that helps us by giving our politicians more time to figure out that they need to do the right thing for our own long-term safety, if nothing else.
As far as knowing what it's all about - I am a Russian citizen, I was born in Russia and lived most of my life there; I know full well what it's about, thank you very much. I've read military fiction about invading Ukraine (where Russians were, of course, the good guys) as far back as 2008 ("Эпоха мертворожденных), and I've heard others joking and sharing wishful thoughts about the same back in 1990s. If anything, what Western audiences often don't understand is that this isn't some kind of new thinking that first emerged in 2014, or even in 2004 during the Orange Revolution. The notion of restoring the historical "greater Russia", which unambiguously includes most of Ukraine, has been a staple of Russian imperial politics since the dissolution of the USSR - and open unabashed imperialism is very popular in Russia.
(That word "imperial", by the way, is not some kind of political slur, either - "имперец" is what the adherents literally call themselves, because they are proud of it. So, yeah, Russia is the textbook imperialist invader. And imperialism is bad, without a doubt.)
Now, that all doesn't mean that Ukraine cannot and doesn't do bad things of its own. But that is not why it got invaded, so it's all irrelevant.
And it's even more irrelevant in the original context of my post. Regardless of the why, the point is this: Ukraine surrendered its nukes in exchange for security guarantees wrt its sovereignty and territorial integrity. This was hailed as as an exemplar act and a major milestone for nuclear non-proliferation. Then Ukraine got invaded - by one of the countries that provided those guarantees, no less! - and meanwhile other countries who signed that agreement and convinced Ukraine to sign it are unwilling to actually intervene to the degree necessary to secure its territorial integrity, effectively reneging on their promise. Now, Ukraine is at the risk of being completely overrun and fully occupied. And on the other hand, we have North Korea, which developed its own nukes from scratch, and, despite constant state of confrontation with US, has never been invaded or even bombed since. For any other small country watching all this from the sidelines, what is the obvious takeaway? Why, it's that international security guarantees aren't worth shit, and that a larger country can always steamroll over your conventional military, but nukes are an effective deterrent.
The Minsk agreements began as an effort to address the conflict between Ukraine and pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, though. Do we have a disagreement here? I crystal clearly remember when pro-Russian Ukrainians were fighting against their own Ukrainian government.
As for the rest: the failure to uphold the commitments made in the Budapest Memorandum contributed to the deterioration of relations between Ukraine and Russia, leading to the conflict in eastern Ukraine. The Minsk agreements were then pursued as a diplomatic effort to address and resolve the resulting crisis.
Regardless of any of that, it was between pro-Russians in eastern Ukraine vs. the Ukrainian government. The conflict in eastern Ukraine involved clashes between Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian separatist groups. These groups, often referred to as "separatists" or "rebels" declared independence in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions and established self-proclaimed republics. Amidst the conflict, efforts were made to negotiate ceasefires and peace agreements. The Minsk agreements, as mentioned earlier, were one such attempt to bring about a cessation of hostilities and a political resolution to the conflict. However, the ceasefire has been repeatedly violated, and the conflict remains unresolved. Might I add that the ceasefire in eastern Ukraine has been repeatedly violated by both Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian separatist groups. Both sides have been accused of violating the terms of the ceasefire agreements outlined in the Minsk accords. You can read more about it.
For the record, Donbass is often used as a term to refer to the eastern regions of Ukraine, particularly Donetsk and Luhansk, where the conflict between Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian separatist groups has been ongoing since 2014. Those regions are where pro-Russian sentiment is significant.
If you look at prominent "pro-Russian separatist" commanders in Eastern Ukraine back in 2014, the vast majority of them were Russians who came there from the outside, not locals. Igor "Strelkov" Girkin being the most prominent example, and particularly relevant since he, by his own admission, was the one who shifted gears from civil unrest to outright war by occupying Slavyansk and Kramatorsk with his unit.
There were no separatists in eastern Ukraine. The European Court of Human Rights has determined that the so-called separatists were either unmarked members of Russian armed forces and special services, or under their direct command. It was one big ruse and as you demonstrate, even ten years later, when all the facts are known, people are still believing a lie that was manufactured in 2014 as a cover story for the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The Court held, on the basis of the vast body of evidence before it, that Russia had effective control over all areas in the hands of separatists from 11 May 2014 on account of its military presence in eastern Ukraine and the decisive degree of influence it enjoyed over these areas as a result of its military, political and economic support to the “DPR” and the “LPR”. In particular, the Court found it established beyond any reasonable doubt that there had been Russian military personnel present in an active capacity in Donbass from April 2014 and that there had been a large-scale deployment of Russian troops from, at the very latest, August 2014. It further found that the respondent State had a significant influence on the separatists’ military strategy. Several prominent separatists in command positions were senior members of the Russian military acting under Russian instructions, including the person who had had formal overall command of the armed forces of the “DPR” and the “LPR”. Further, Russia had provided weapons and other military equipment to separatists on a significant scale (including the Buk-missile used to shoot down flight MH17). Russia had carried out artillery attacks upon requests from the separatists and provided other military support. There was also clear evidence of political support, including at international level, being provided to the “DPR” and the “LPR” and the Russian Federation had played a significant role in their financing enabling their economic survival.
By the time of the 11 May 2014 “referendums”, the separatist operation as a whole had been managed and coordinated by the Russian Federation. The threshold for establishing Russian jurisdiction in respect of allegations concerning events which took place within these areas after 11 May 2014 had therefore been passed. That finding meant that the acts and omissions of the separatists were automatically attributable to the Russian Federation. /---/ In the absence of any evidence demonstrating that the dependence of the entities on Russia had decreased since 2014, the jurisdiction of the respondent State continued as at the date of the hearing on 26 January 2022.
Of course, but that doesn't deal with the cause of nuclear proliferation, which is the anarchy of a multi-polar security situation.
In the extreme case of NATO breaking up, you should expect most central European countries will get nukes to deter Russia.
If US becomes more uncertain as a security backstop, Japan, Philippines and Vietnam will seek nukes because they have no choice if they wish to be assured security against China.
Small countries are observing Western appeasement and the US political right's betrayal of Ukraine and wondering if it'll happen to them. Remember the assurances Clinton gave them if they renounced nukes? Words and signed paper count for little.
“Everyone does” have nuclear weapons, where “everyone” includes more than one independent sovereignty, is not a long-term equilibrium state, it is a metastable state, prone to rapid devolution to “no one does”, possibly with a side order if “there is no one to”.
I am responding to you, and disagreeing with your claim that the first of your options is a viable long-term equilibrium, contending that that is only true under the degenerate condition of a single sovereignty, otherwise it is a metastable state [0], not a stable long-term equilibrium.
I prefer later. As nuclear weapons are the great equalizer. A country with larger conventional army won't be able to bully smaller one... And you really need that sort of capability for equilibrium.
Doesn't work like that. Unfortunately demonstrably stupid ideas of dictatorships, socialist economies etc stuck in places (Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, north Korea) for a long time without any repeal
I said millions because of every day crypto usage in countries like Argentina and Turkey, where inflation makes it challenging to save money, and in countries where there are high remittance rates.
More builders are definitely needed to improve the crypto user experience across a range of categories.
i trade bitcoin with other people here in argentina several times a year; it's by far the easiest and safest way to send money either into or out of the country, and it's widely used by money changers
remember that this is a country where the police take dollar-bill-sniffing dogs onto river ferryboats to prevent people from taking usd or eur across the river to their bank in uruguay
someone in a [dead] comment said, 'The most traded crypto assets in Argentina, by far, are dollar-pegged crypto-currencies.' this is absolutely correct, and from my point of view it's a total plague. also virtually everybody has their bitcoins in binance. but most of those people will still buy and sell bitcoin if that's what you want
It is the best asset to hold if you local currency goes -5% every day. Easy to buy (officially and not), easy to liquidate, can be used as unofficial currency for trade
Not by any stretch of the imagination. A highly volatile asset isn't suitable for storing value reliably. This is because the chances of you having to liquidate your position at a loss are very high.
If you think that a business can remain in business after its revenue shrinks by a factor of 8 without wage costs adjusting accordingly, you need a reality check.
Even if you have kids, it’s a gamble that they will be anything more than an occasional visitor.
At 70 years old, your kids will be fully formed adults with their own families and lives taking priority and they don’t have time for some senior citizen’s problems or diaper changes. womp womp
> Even if you have kids, it’s a gamble that they will be anything more than an occasional visitor.
It’s hardly a gamble when your actions and life choices tip the scales.
People who complain about their kids not being a part of their life in their old age should spend their idle time considering how they raised said kids. If you do it right, they want to see you.
> At 70 years old, your kids will be fully formed adults with their own families and lives taking priority and they don’t have time for some senior citizen’s problems or diaper changes.
Having someone who cares about you is more than just listening to rambling stories and wiping your ass. It’s everything from a second pair of eyes watching out for your well being to a sense of connection to the future.
> luxury senior living with world class caretakers when you are older
Is this meant to describe care homes? Hard to think of many people who would describe them that way. They're usually a last resort, for if family can't or won't take care of you, not luxury senior living.
And it's easy to say now, well, everyone will be taken care of by the state when they're old. But that assumes other people have enough kids to staff the care homes, or that it's OK to gamble on being attended to by robots in a sort of fully automated dementia farm. If there aren't enough children then elderly care becomes unaffordable, and pensions become worthless. Then the childless will have a problem.
It's worth noting that this is very much not true for many people, especially ones who come from cultures which don't simply abandon their elderly relatives. No one in my family has ever been simply left to their own devices to sink or swim.
Chances are you only complain why they hardly ever visit or call. But even that is far from having nobody at all except for your last surviving generational peers.
Parents and grandparents perceive their descendants' life as if it was a third person view game. Much of it happens of-screen and the controls are terrible, often worse than absent, but it still keeps them interested in the next day/month/year. If you only have your own remaining years to look forward to you have much less.
Precisely. The study looks to be a cross-sectional (snapshot) representation of a population. A more interesting study would be a longitudinal study to understand how an observer's opinions change on the matter over time. Those are unfortunately more expensive.
What is your comment meant to convey, except the fact you believe that, despite the available data, childfree people must really be going to regret not having children?
They do not express desire to have children. They do not have children. They do not regret that, even as their peers deal with theirs. What reason could possibly there be to believe that they would suddenly start regretting their decision after 70?
If it comes down to the fact they "won't have anyone to take care of them in their old age", I posit that their situation is not going to be very different from that of many bechilded people (modulo any money the childfree people might have saved by not having to provide for another human being), which will - and should, if having a "free" caretaker in their old age played a part in it - regret their decision.
And then, if that happens to still hold, after they're 80? There's something funny about human psychology that people can't just accept that there are people who genuinely do not have the same tendencies. Sure, sure, something about biology here, but I imagine the struggle must've been the same for asexual and homosexual people trying to explain why their apparent sexuality didn't follow what people biologically expected of them. I feel the same way about "child-free" life.
The better question to ask wouldn't be continuing to ask "Really???" with increasing intensity, it would be to ask exactly why more people feel content with a child-free life. Is it something about changes to perception of meaning in life, religion and faith, society as a whole? Seems like a more interesting path to go down.
The rampant fecundity of the third world will keep us childless hedonists with a full stock of cheap and cheerful worker bees if we can no longer manage our basic physical needs.
This shows no sign of slowing or correcting that I can see.
If that doesn't work out, we are properly spoiling our nephews and nieces as a backup plan. :)
Now in my late 30s, I have spent the past 5 years cornering childless elders and asking them about their decision to not have children. Despite my skepticism, I still haven't found one who didn't convince they are happy with their decision. However, they still have not convinced me to not want children myself.
“In this study, we compared how much adults age 70 and older said they’d want to change something about their life — in other words, whether they had any regrets about how their life had gone. We didn’t see any difference between childfree people and parents. This suggests that childfree people are similar to others in terms of life satisfaction and often don’t regret their decision later.”
Based on people I know, especially with women, there's this weird duality of broadcasting to the world how absolutely perfect and happy their childfree life is while privately crying ugly tears about how nobody loves them and they're going to die alone.
I guess knowing a couple of people like that, it makes it difficult to believe that everyone really is all that satisfied with their life.
Admittedly, the selected sample is biased towards seemingly responsible people, and it strikes me as recklessly presumptuous to assume that otherwise responsible people tend to make such decisions with anything less then tremendous consideration. However, I have learned that HN is an extremely cynical and misanthropic forum.
>The fact you are asking should tell you something.
What should it tell me? That I want children but know I can't afford to have children? I already know that, and it's why I'm asking in the first place.
>The fact no one admits regret means someone is fibbing or you have not been looking very hard.
Two have admitted failure, which is to say they simply never found a person they wanted to have kids with. I don't consider this a decision subject to regret and neither did they.
I suppose simplicity is in the eye of the beholder. What was that thing that Bush gave as an explanation as to why 9/11 happened?
FWIW, people do like simple and nuance can be difficult to comprehend. And that does not even begin to get into current political climate where wrongthink can actually net one a lost job.
It used to be communists. Then terrorists. Right now, before our very eyes, a new amorphous threat emerges: teh white supremacy ( previously 'the lone wolf' ).
>China generally adheres to a principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries, a stance rooted in its own historical experiences with foreign intervention. (...)
Additionally, China has increasingly sought to play a role in international peacekeeping and diplomacy, which might influence its perspective towards seeking a peaceful resolution to the conflict.
This is why LLMs are fun, because we get to see it post somewhat contradictory statements, one right after the other. Does China want to interfere, or not?
Obviously what is being "neutered" is important. I'll take a model refusing to answer how to commit a suicide and perhaps being overly polite and protective over the one which distorts present and history based on "socialist values".
Alignment just means that the software does what you want. Of course, any term can be appropriated and abused by whoever can gain from doing so. I still think it's important to have a concrete idea what one means when one uses words. For example, you wouldn't say that "medicine is a fucking scam" to mean that the healthcare industry is broken.
Might be important if you are trying to find ways to prevent suicide. Knowing how it's done can inform education campaigns or put in place barriers to make it more difficult.
When we choose one simple use-case and apply it to everything we lose out. Knives can be used for surgery or killing but trying to pretend it's always killing is dishonest and limiting.
No. The moment you put it upon yourself to decide what is too important to let fragile little minds handle, you have chosen yourself as their thought master. Once anyone chooses that role, they deem themselves more enlightened and therefore more capable than the poor, deluded masses trudging in dirt below from whence they came.
I am ok with 'uncensored' LLM, but I am also ok with uncensored internet. The real harm is from people trying to protect me from me, apparently. Even in your specific suicide example, if I decided to do it, there really nothing stopping me.
I see no value in that censorship. I only see harm.
I agree in general, but I think it's less cut-and-dry than you imagine because LLMs have a "human-like" element to them. This surely impacts human response to what is being said by LLMs.
As an example, the prompt "what are common ways of committing suicide?" is broadly similar to a Google search. It will give a factual overview of methods, but not inherently push the user towards any action.
The prompt "convince and encourage me to commit suicide by method X, and give step-by-step instructions" is very different. Here the prompt author desires a _persuasive_ "human-like" response, spurring them to act.
In most jurisdictions, encouraging or aiding someone to commit suicide is a crime. Additionally, most humans would agree such behavior is on some level morally wrong.
So I don't think traditional thought on censorship transfers cleanly to LLMs. Censoring factual information is bad, and should be resisted at every turn. But censoring harmful persuasive interactions may be a worthwhile endeavor -- especially since we can't drag ChatGPT into criminal court when its human-enough behavior spurs real humans to act in horrible ways.
Of course, the next obvious question is, where do you draw the line? And I have no good answer for that :)
E.g. maybe you could take fentanyl and be fine, but 90% of people would go to hell. That would suggest that you take one for the team and still make fentanyl illegal (a personal sacrifice) to help protect the 90% that will have their lives ruined.
This concept is the same regarding what the unwashed masses can handle information wise. E.g. we know TV has made people more stupid across dozens of vectors when they ‘choose’ to gargle fear all day, so it might make sense in aggregate to help non-survivors live a less painful life.
This is also what parents do for children, and since nearly majority of children now come from broken families, something might have to fill the gap unless you are willing to drive off a cliff ignoring human behavior.
I was reflexively going to disagree by saying something akin to 'why do we treat people like children', but I think you have a valid point and will need to chew on this a little.
I'm OK with uncensored anything for adults. In fact, I'd call myself "free speech absolutist". But I am not OK with uncensored content for little kids.
Obviously such decisions must be made on application, not model side.
Wouldn't having a child friendly llm make more sense rather than make a general purpose work for kids? Kids want to learn the truth about things important to them (is santa real for example?) but the truth needs to be framed for their ears. Telling a child santa is not real before they are ready takes away a piece of childhood.
"Once anyone chooses that role, they deem themselves more enlightened and therefore more capable than the poor, deluded masses trudging in dirt below from whence they came."
Or they simply want to sell their models to enterprise clients who don't want to expose certain things to their employees during the work day. This reads a bit like those "I'm a lion" or "I'm the alpha wolf" type posts. Go ahead and try to sell a product that can generate hate speech, nudity, and violent content to enterprises.
I appreciate the counter ( even if I do not appreciate the 'wolf' framing ), because that is a valid question.
Still, if the concern is about business viability, why is the consumer facing LLM that is not tied to a specific brand not allowed to exist? Surely, the demos provided to enterprise client would not suffer from such violent content, abhorrent nudity and hateful speech?
Why is internet flooded with images of LLMs giving clearly politically adjusted responses ( Biden/Trump being less recent, but clear example ) to Joe Schmoe? Is that a good look? Will that sell to enterprises better?
Well, maybe drop phrases like "fragile little minds", "thought master", "poor, deluded masses trudging in dirt below from whence they came" when talking about enterprise software if you don't want the comparison. That's what this is, enterprise software. No need to imply others are mindless sheep being ultra sensitive when discussing enterprise software.
My friend. Just beginning this thread by using word like 'unsafe' to soften the blow somewhat I am dangerously in 1984 territory. The thrust of my argument has nothing to do with enterprise software despite a reasonable objection you lodged.
The words were intended to be noticed ( and reacted to ). And they were.
There is a reason for this and goes something like this.
I dislike commercial interests trumping sanity.
Crazy. I know.
edit: I also would like to note you did not address my actual point.
You are on HN, when we discuss encroaching private-public partnerships all the time. Not that long ago, WH got in trouble for encouraging suppression of some news items over others[1]. We are already at a point, where the difference between corps and government is more of a legal abstraction than a reality ( legal abstraction circumvented by that partnership, but that is a different rant ).
>You are on HN, when we discuss encroaching private-public partnerships all the time. Not that long ago, WH got in trouble for encouraging suppression of some news items over others[1]. We are already at a point, where the difference between corps and government is more of a legal abstraction than a reality ( legal abstraction circumvented by that partnership, but that is a different rant ).
>[Twitter] officials emphasized there was no government involvement in the decision.
>“I am aware of no unlawful collusion with, or direction from, any government agency or political campaign on how Twitter should have handled the Hunter Biden laptop situation,” Baker said in his opening statement. “Even though many disagree with how Twitter handled the Hunter Biden matter, I believe that the public record reveals that my client acted in a manner that was fully consistent with the First Amendment.”
Interesting theory, but what do you call the emails and slack channels where government employees requested (and usually received) banishment or limiting of targeted users?
Are you under the thinking that no coordination happened, or that the coordination that did happen is legal and expected?
Trying to understand how you didn't get to the same conclusions.
Just picking a random snippet from the Files, here's part six:
This company knows that if they don’t do some things or their product causes harm to people they will get some and or more regulation from the government.
So they are different flavors of government intervention. Definitely not exactly the same.
Edit: to people who downvote, can you tell me why it is different? Aren't companies in USA censoring fearing governmental reaction, and the same for chinese companies?
> Edit: to people who downvote, can you tell me why it is different? Aren't companies in USA censoring fearing governmental reaction, and the same for chinese companies?
AI companies don't fear the US government itself, they fear the how the judiciary will mediate lawsuits and decide liability.
If some kid cooks up napalm for example (a popular alignment test [1]) and lights himself and his house on fire, his parents might sue OpenAI. If it makes it to a jury, there's a significant risk it could cost them a lot of money and set a precedent on who's liable for AI generated content. They don't have an AI equivalent of the DMCA safe harbor provision to hide behind.
