RealityVoid

I like this observation very much. Intellectual deflationary spiral is exactly how it feels at the moment and we might end up in a worse place because of it.

Pre-existing infra, designs and know-how?

This line of thinking has baked in the assumption that if something is not brining me money, it's not worth the effort. Obviously life is more than money so I am not sure why you would frame it that way.

Current AI does not decide on its own to gobble up data. The humans creating it do. In fact, a lot of times the LLM models seem utterly un-curious and are focused on just immediate goals.

Would we not see AI civilizations then?

This ideea haunts me in my nightmares.

Maybe, I'm at the point I don't know what to think anymore. But somehow, this feels still non-human. Humans don't need millions of hours of training and millions of samples to learn how do to something. We have proof that systems can deal with low-shot training. So why can't these? My point is when we have human level learning ability, then we're moving, if we expect expansion of capabilities to come from data alone, I'm prepared for disappointment.

Yes, and they used whitelists/blacklists and it worked. But at the rate things are going I would not be surprised to see direct US assistance to Russia at some point in the future.

I'm not smug, I'm disappointed. I don't think hypocrisy is necessarily irrational but it is self-serving, morally bankrupt and, in this particular instance, self-defeating.

Not in the least, people are highly irrational, I don't know how you can say this with a straight face. Even me, here, if I were rational, I would STFU, who am I helping pointing out the hypocrisy of it all? Nonetheless, I still think it's hypocrisy. And being bothered by it does not make it not so.

And not the least, this administration did not appear out of thin air. The US population voted it. I sure view the administration as a mirror (and the responsibility) of the US population.

But I do understand your wider point, and I think you're right, this whole thing is non-prodictive.

No, I think , fundamentally, I agree with you.

The part that irks me the most is the hypocrisy I feel around these issues. Essentially, people pick points that are convenient for them and dress them in moral justifications. People take opportunities that helped them or their families, and then demand others not be given these opportunities. People take a stance only when it advantages them personally and quickly discard it when it's not advantageous anymore. Not because they realized it's wrong or they were mistaken, but because now it's not personally useful. People get up a ladder and then quickly pull it up.

I am obviously an idiot since I believe in moral consistency and I believe the the pie is not fixed and that we can increase the welfare of everybody. Such a fool I am.

The 200$ drones have a couple of kilometers range at best. You won't deliver them from 400 km away. You still need a delivery vehicle. But this discussion went off the rails, it's obvious fantasy land at this point.

It's almost amusing reading this through the lens of the visa shuttering article from yesterday (which a lot were cheering) because none of the receivers were born in the US.

A MOAB apparently has the equivalent of 11tons of TNT. A drone carrying a grenade has up to 180 grams. So you need about 61 111 drones to deliver the equivalent explosive. At that point it might be cheaper to just bring the MOAB.

As someone from outside the US, I was surprised to find out impeachment does not mean removal from office, you need a senate supermajority and (to my even greater surprise) only 33% of senate is up for re-election at each election cycle.

So knowing this, I understand he might get impeached, but unlikely to be removed so I don't see a whole lot changing after midterms, sadly.