simorley

> However it is obvious why this is all happening. And that is Intel and Qualcomm inhibited growth and squeezed too much profit from the market.

It's not that intel and qualcomm have squeezed too much profit, it's that Apple, Google, Facebook, etc have too much profit. Apple and Google are worth $2 trillion. Facebook is worth more than $1 trillion. Intel and Qualcomm are worth $300 billion put together. These tech companies are big enough and monopolistic enough to own their entire hardware stack. It's like when Rockefeller and Standard Oil got so big that they "bought" the railroads that transported their oil.

Apple and Google each make more profit than Intel and Qualcomm's combined revenue.

> You're coming from the starting position that the elites control and decide most everything.

No. Just the systematically important things. Obviously they aren't concerned about every minutiae.

> For those of us who don't share that starting point, you aren't giving nearly enough to be convincing.

What other starting point is there? Who else but the elites create systematically important institutions? Also, you are really asking for the impossible. It's not like the elite come out and say, "we are the elite".

> For example, Japan. Yes, I know about Perry. That doesn't mean that the US was running Japan's foreign policy 80 years later.

That's quite a walk back from "the amount of influence that western elites had over Japanese foreign policy in 1931 was very close to zero.". You just jumped from one extreme ( no influence ) to running the whole show.

> Where is your evidence that the US-imposed vassal status lasted much past the Meiji Restoration?

Other than the fact we currently occupy japan? Can't tell whether you are being serious or not. We are the ones that allowed Japan to have korea.

"Back in 1900, Roosevelt had written, 'I should like to see Japan have Korea.'"

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/opinion/06bradley.html

We are the ones that limited japan's naval growth via the washington naval treaty. You can read up on that yourself. As I said, other than those few years where japan "rebelled", they've been a vassal. Don't ever remember us or anyone else freeing them from vassalage.

> Or the crash of 1929. Where is your evidence that elites pulling money out to fund WWII was the cause of 1929?

All crashes are a result of the elites creating the environment whether money flows out of the markets. Naturally they'd be the first to pull out which causes others to and so forth. What else could it be?

> The conventional position is that it was a speculative bubble crashing in the normal way that such bubbles crash, through mechanisms that are fairly well understood. Where is your evidence that the standard narrative is wrong?

Right. Who creates the environment of speculative bubbles? Are they fairly well understood? Funny how we keep getting speculative bubbles and financial crises. Unless you think the markets are natural entites and not artificial man-made creations. Does mother nature naturally create a stock bubble? Does mother nature naturally pop it? Or do you think it's because your friend stop funding his 401k?

> You think elites set up the system. I agree with that; they do.

But you said you disagreed with me from the very start. "For those of us who don't share that starting point, you aren't giving nearly enough to be convincing."

> Where we differ is that I think things are much more chaotic than you do, and therefore that the elites have much less actual control.

What's chaotic? Things seem remarkable stable. So elites have the power to create a global order but they don't have the power to control it? Makes sense. Once again, so chaos starts wars? Chaos invented the lie about iraq wmds?

Nevermind who created the 2008 financial crisis. Who do you think fixed it? You? Me? Or did the elites come up with a plan to prop up the markets? We can never have any definitive proof because it's the nature of this business. But my educated seems more correct rather than your "conventional wisdom". Good day.

> I honestly just wish the recommendations were better.

Which is sad considering how great youtube recommendations used to be around the time Stripe was launched. Remember when people used to go down the youtube rabbit hole to see where they'd end up? Now there is no breadth nor depth to the recommendations. Youtube used to be a vast ocean, now it's a puddle ankle deep and no more than a step wide.

> Money is just a unit of account. Creating more or less of it should not create more resources or products.

Actually creating money does create more resources and products and vice versa. It's pretty much the modern economic system. More money makes more investment possible which can make more resources accessible and therefore create more products. But there is a physical limit on the resource side. And if society fails to justify the money creation with more resources, products and services, then you have inflation and ultimately a currency collapse as everyone loses faith in the value of money.

It's a balancing act between money and products - whether money has to catch up to more products or whether products have to catch up to more money.

> In chess, it's possible to end the game in a draw, so Zermelo's theorem does not apply to it and OPs claim is wrong about chess.

Isn't it even assumed that a perfect game of chess is a draw. Once chess is solved, it'll be all draws.

> First, how in the world did the Japanese invasion of Manchuria show that the elites weren't caught by surprise by 1929? I mean, you've listed two events, and one came after the other, but that in no way demonstrates that the elites had advance knowledge of 1929.

When a global war is planned, the money tends to flood out of speculative consumer goods because that money is needed to fund wars. Why do you think the markets collapse in 1929? Everything was running smoothly and it all crashed down just before the start of the greatest war in human history.

> Second, the amount of influence that western elites had over Japanese foreign policy in 1931 was very close to zero.

Japan has been a US "vassal" since the 1850s. We used Japan as an attack dog to protect our interests in china/east asia and of course to keep the russians at bay. If you are interested, go read about a bunch of black ships sailing into tokyo bay in the 1850s. Sure, Japan got off leash for a few years, but we corrected such "misbehavior" rather brutally. The idea that the "the west" had no influence over japan is laughable.

> I notice that you don't name any of these "elites", just "not Bernie Madoff".

I imagine the elites are people who I will never hear of. I don't know. The people who decide to sanction cuba, venezuela, etc. The people who decided to open trade relations with china in the 1970s. The people who decided to invade iraq. Certainly the people didn't decide any of it. Certainly madoff didn't either, but that's my assumption.

> You're sounding more and more like a conspiracy-theory nut case. If you've got an actual case, you need to do a better job presenting it.

What is "conspiratorial" about saying the elites set up any system - national or international. Who do you think set up the global order? Aliens? The people? Who do you think sets up governments? Who do you think starts wars. Who do you think artificial man-made systems are created and broken down.

Resorting to silly ad hominems doesn't make you look great. I'm not saying there is some crazy "conspiracy" for the elites to collapse the system to turn humans into batteries. I'm saying that artifical human systems are created by elites and usually broken down by elites. The exceptions being natural causes.

Beethoven's Ninth was apparently used to set the size of the CD, though there are disputes whether this was actually the case or corporate advertising.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322951358_Shannon_B...

> How many rich people, active in the stock market, got caught by surprise by 1929?

When I wrote "elites", I wasn't talking about "rich people" in the common sense. I doubt many elites were surprise considering the 1929 crash happened because the elites decided to start ww2 - japanese invasion of manchuria in 1931.

> How many rich people, active in real estate, got caught by surprise by 2008?

Once again, I'm talking about elites. Not bernie madoff.

> You say "causing it". They may be, but I suspect most of them aren't actively, deliberately causing it.

Of course they are. The masses don't decide when to go to war, when to upset the global world order, etc. It's the elites.

> So they can still be (and are) caught by surprise when it happens.

Absolutely. When the catalyst is external to the system or they are the elites who are left out of the loop ( aka when on group of elites decides to turn against another group of elites ). Unless you think the man-made and controlled system is an organic and natural system.

Shocks to a man-made system can result from natural disasters or it can result from the elites themselves. In the former, it most likely will be shocked to the elites. As for the latter, it won't except for the out-of-the-loop elites.

> The history of vaccines shows a phenomenal success rate.

Absolutely. I'm vaccinated against a lot of the terrible diseases. Grateful for it. But the history of vaccines is also littered with missteps and unethical behavior as well.

> The problem is your definition of "moderate" is flawed. You have included craziness as part of the spectrum which isn't correct.

Nope. My definition of moderate is moderate. Being open to the facts and weighing the data and the ability to question orthodoxy - especially when orthodoxy has been wrong so many times.

> And most physicians are in support due to the enormous impact vaccination has on hospitalization rates.

Sure. Especially for the most vulnerable population - the elderly, people with immune system issues, etc.

> We aren't past herd immunity. At all. 70% is a low ball number for herd immunity, many suggested a large rate is needed given the fast spreading of the virus. California is sitting at 58.8%.

You are conflating "vaccinated" with herd immunity. Isn't vaccinated + those who had covid ( the original and natural vaccine ) over 90%? I may be wrong. Is 70% a "low ball"? I remember the original herd immunity was 60-70% and 70% was the high end. Then what's the herd immunity number?

> I mean the US has had 43 million cases and 693,000 deaths. It has so far killed 1.5% of the confirmed cases.

Now add in the "nonconfirmed cases" and how low does that 1.5% go.

I was for lockdown. I think the states that locked down should stay locked down for the duration of the pandemic so that we have useful data to compare against the non-lockdown states/countries. I'm for people getting vaccinated - especially the at-risk people. But why are you being so intentionally misleading? You try to mislead with only "confirmed cases". You try to mislead by conflating vaccination rate to herd immunity. If you have truth, science and data on your side why be so sneaky with the data and labels?

If you truly wanted the pandemic to be over, shouldn't you be celebrating the vaccine rate + people who got covid? Is your goal the end of the pandemic or that everyone get a shot? Because they aren't the same thing.

Only if the cause is external to the system - like an asteroid. If the cause is internal ( war, shift in global order, etc ) the people with the money are the ones causing it so they aren't surprised at all. Only the ones out of the loop perhaps will be caught by surprise.

> Is your claim that moderate voices are causing people to not get vaccinated then?

I suspect that's the case for the vast majority of the unvaccinated. Do you think most of the unvaccinated people are unvaccinated because of "metal chips in the vaccine" or "it's the serum of the devil"? Or do you think they are unvaccinated because they read up on the history of vaccines, talked to their doctors, etc?

> If that is the case maybe silencing them isn't a bad thing so that we can get past the pandemic rather than wallowing in "would we should we" territory.

But aren't we past the pandemic. I remember being told that we needed herd immunity. Remember "herd immunity"? It was all over the news and social media just a few months. Now we are way past herd immunity. It was the gold standard. Remember? To question it was to question science. But everyone forgot about herd immunity.

It's never good to silence moderate voices as it only leaves you the choice of extremes which tend to be wrong. And sadly, as it pertains to covid, the extremes have been wrong about covid - everything from death rate to mandates to metal chips...

Also, I can't think of another time moderate voices were silenced - other than the lead up to the 2nd iraq war when you absolutely could not question the lies about wmds. Can you?

> I think we have to ask if this won't have a chilling effect on open discussion by moderate voices.

That's the point of all censorship. It isn't to censor the truly outrageous wackos spouting nonsense since hardly anyone believes them and most laugh at them. It's to censor the moderates who critically analyze and perhaps offer some truth.

Heliocentrism has been around since the ancient greeks which the church leaders could easily write off as being the ideas of backwards pagans. After all, you can see for yourself that the sun rises in the east and crosses the sky and sets in the west. They could "prove" it to the laity. It was only when telescopes and scientific evidence proved that the sun doesn't revolve around the earth that the church started censoring, excommunicating and killing people. The censorship wasn't to silence the uneducated wackos, it was to silence the likes of galileo, copernicus, etc.

> Especially sometimes when the most toxic users were also some of the most popular users.

If the "toxic" users were the most popular, how do you know you were not the "toxic" one instead? If the community is supporting the "toxic" material, how could it be "toxic"?

In my experience, it's not the toxic users that's the problem. It tends to be the toxic mods. You can ignore toxic users. You really can't ignore the toxic mods.

I also have a problem with the term "toxic". It ultimately means "something I don't like". Mods should never ban "toxic" content. They should ban illegal and perhaps non-pertinent content. But that's just my opinion.

> Isn't it a bigger/more important mystery why proto-indo european language was so successful at supplanting the local languages it intermixed with?

Language domination tends to stem from conquest and/or domination of the population or flatout genocide. Also, if the established elites speak it, the population will most likely follow. The spread of PIE probably mimicked the spread of european languages around the world.

Why is english spoken in us, canada, australia, nz, etc? Why is spanish spoken in much of the americas. Why is english, german, portuguese, french, etc spoken all over africa? Conquest, genocide, mass rapes, etc.

The real question is what technology/tool/etc gave the PIE speakers an advantage over speakers of non-PIE languages ( semitic, basque, etc.). Also how were central asians, east asians, southeast asians, etc able to withstand the PIE onslaught.

> It's an arbitrary choice made on the foundations of very shaky knowledge.

Nothing about down syndrome, autism or gender qualifies as "very shaky knowledge". It's the woman's choice. It's her body and she has the right to abort for whatever reason she wants.

> There's legitimate reasons to terminate a pregnancy that are completely unrelated to trying to screen for a "normal" kid.

The only legitimate reason is the woman doesn't want to carry the pregnancy to term. If it is wrong to abort an autistic baby, then all abortions are wrong. Think about it.

> But this study does not appear to be coming from a good place, or a place of genuine understanding.

A good place? You get to decide? If you want an autistic kid, you have one. And if another person doesn't want one, they don't have to have one? What ever happened to the choice in pro-choice?

Not to mention that if we are going to have a systematic collapse, it will be caused by the elites around the world and no "news" entity will gives us a heads up about it.

Remember that Trump was going to collapse the global system with his "war" against china? Apple and Microsoft have gained 2 trillion dollars in market cap since Trump. That's 2 trillion with a T. The media tells us there is going to be a collapse but people with money are betting that there will be significantly more global trade, even with china.

Who knows what they are actually talking about? Someone working at CNN or the monied elites?

How can you believe in a "computationalist view of metaphysics" when computable numbers make up a tiny insignificant portion of real numbers? Most real numbers are not computable.

> However, let's not forget that 50/80 years were dominated by a two-headed fight for world hegemony under the threat of nuclear war and potential apocalypse.

Nuclear war? And in that 50/80 years, only one side has ever nuked a city full of civilians. Twice.

> This remains true today with China. CPC apologists are all too happy to point out (factually correct) gaps in US integrity and freedom.

"CPC apologists". Did we have any integrity and freedom when we were colonizing china? You do realize that we colonized china for nearly 100 years. It was the "CPC" and the communists who liberated china. You do realize that right?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yangtze_Patrol

How anyone can claim a nation brutally ( and partly motivated by racism ) colonizing another nation is the one with integrity and freedom is beyond me.

> And the primary counterargument from the Communists was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

"Whataboutism" is a well-worn social media propaganda term used a few years ago. Nobody uses it anymore because it exposes the person who uses it.

> The most recent Chinese return of the 2 incarcerated Canadians in return for the Huawei executive is the most blatant current example that China will do absolutely whatever it wants.

China arrested two canadian spies/operatives in retaliation for canada kidnapping one of their spies/operatives? Shocking. What do you expect. It's statecraft. Tit for tat. Like when we kick out chinese or russian diplomats. They do the same. Or are you still pretending china arbitrarily locked up two innocent canadian tourists?

Strangely you aren't worked up about canada kidnapping a chinese national. Kidnapping chinese is fine but kidnapping canadians is wrong?

> For all of the US's evils, Russia and China would not have hesitated to kidnap or execute Assange in identical circumstances if he was hiding in an Ecuadorian embassy on their soil. He would have been disappeared a decade ago.

But two canadian spies were arrested and not "disappeared". Using your logic, china should be shipping two body bags right? China hasn't disappeared the dalai lama. How many chinese traitors hiding all over the west has china "disappeared"? Absolutely none.

You are just stating the same propaganda we've heard over and over again. It gets stale and boring. China bad. Russia bad. US good. Right. At least you didn't bring up anything about genocide.

At the end of the day, everyone has done good and everyone has done bad. But one has done far more evil than good while hypocritely pretending to be the world's beacon of good. This hypocrite not only colonized one of the "bad", it also invaded the other "bad".

It's the hypocrisy that's just unbearable. I don't remember china claiming to be the world's beacon of good. Don't remember russia claiming to be the epitome of freedom and democracy.

> Zero interest in 'human rights and democracy', lots of interests in oilfields, pipelines, military sales contracts, etc.

Is this a shock to anyone? "Human rights and democracy" is the new imperial "white man's burden". We use it to justify invading, colonizing and stealing from others. When have we ever cared about human rights and democracy? I forget if it was chomsky or someone else who said that we've murdered more people, caused more human suffering and stolen more wealth in the name of "human rights and democracy" than nazi germany did in the name of nazism. Think about that.

I wish the non-western world would just collectively laugh at and mock any western leader when they talk about "human rights", "democracy", "western values", etc. How can they stand the hypocrisy? How can we?

> But the notion of trans-Atlantic voyages, the Vikings apart, seems shaky to me.

Why? The distance between western europe and greenland/north america is rather small. When compared to the vast distances that polynesians have been sailing in the pacific, it's nothing.

We know that the inuit/siberians/asians have been traveling between alaska and beyond and back to siberia/asia for thousands of years. And it's almost a certainty that some northern asians knew of "north america". But it was mostly tundra/ice so people simply didn't care. Who really cares if there is more ice beyond the ice that they already knew.

What was revolutionary wasn't that columbus sailed to americas. It's something people ( asians/siberians/inuit ) have been doing for thousands of years and it's something europeans have been capable of for thousands of years. The importance of Columbus's expedition was that he showed it can be profitable or at the very least convinced the european elites of it. That's what separated columbus from the vikings, asians/inuits/siberians, vikings and other europeans who sailed to the americas. He showed there is profit in it. Of course columbus's "profit" came at the price of genocide of the natives he came across in the caribbean, but that's another topic.

> In what way is Matt Levine an influencer?

You could argue his job is influencing people.

> He’s a salaried columnist for a news organization.

In other words, he gets paid to influence people on behalf of a major news publication.

I posit that "influencer" is the general term for celebrities, politicians, journalists, priests, etc. Matt Levine is a traditional media influencer. The pope is a religious influencer. Biden is a political influencer. So on and so forth. The modern social media influencers are really independent influencers as they don't belong to a corporate, political or religious entity.

> As someone living blissfully unaware of the struggles people go through in countries with rampant government censorship

Where do you live? Because I know of no major country without rampant government censorship.

> They want to make sure they have someone by the balls. It's either you personally, or someone willing to step up and take the risk of jailtime on your behalf if you publish anything the Grand Pooh Xi doesn't like.

No offense but you make a good argument for why china restricts access. Your comment seems to come from a political operative than someone trying to spin up some web servers in china.

> Meanwhile, I can spin up a server in Dubai or South Africa or Brazil like... right now. No paperwork. No prostrating myself in front of the Police to beg for permission to be able to post government-approved content.

You make it sound like that's a good thing? It's not. Also, all those countries you listed have censorship...

> Remind me, why do we do business with these people again? Why do we give them our money?

I don't know. Why are you so desperate to do business in china? Shouldn't you be happy since you aren't doing business in china?

I don't understand people like you. You say we shouldn't do business with china. But you whine about not being able to do business in china.

> But you still can trust someone's credentials are better than your own and that they are giving you a better judgement than your own.

You should also understand that scientists are human and subject to all of human foibles like racism, sexism, etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piltdown_Man

Not to mention politics, such as when "jewish science/math/etc" rejected.

You should trust the replicable experiments, not the scientists. Especially so when "science" and politics gets intermixed.

When a "scientist" says "trust me" or when a politician says "trust the scientist I say to trust", that's when you should be the most distrusting.

People praise norway for EVs but always fail to mention Norways produces as much oil as saudi arabia on a per capita basis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_produ...

Apparently FBI agents who escape the FBI also love to do interviews with wired.

"Former FBI Agent Answers Body Language Questions From Twitter"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9SA25OukyM

Wired also has a series with the "former" CIA agents as well.

> And I wonder if we in a Western democracy would ever be able to the same (i.e. pop a residential real estate bubble on purpose).

We do it all the time. It's called raising the interest rate. When we want to create bubbles, we lower the interest rate. Pretty much all bubbles are created and popped by banks and governments. Doesn't matter if it is a 'western democracy' or not.

> Hopefully it'll hit the ocean.

I give it about a 70% shot.

> Look at all the pro China things they have done.

Just because they follow the rules of another nation doesn't make them 'pro China'. Is Apple 'pro-US', 'pro-EU', 'pro-Saudi Arabia', etc? No, Apple is pro-business/pro-money. They are a company selling products and services around the world.

> People committing suicide after being forced to work endlessly.

Isn't that Foxconn, a Taiwanese company?

> Agreeing to the Great Firewall rules to continue doing business in China..

So you think facebook and apple should moderate content but China shouldn't moderate content?

> It is not just China, look at the Nabisco workers

A nice save.

> There is no reason extreme pressure couldn't start to force changes at these companies but mostly we are just glad it isn't us.

Change what? Rather than trying to change individual monopolistic companies, we should allow for more competition so that we can decide where to take our business. We have a problem of monopolies.

> Our whole society has lost all sense of empathy and it is sad.

Everyone has their own version of empathy. And everyone wants to enforce their version of empathy on everyone else. It's a problem humans and human societies have had forever.

It's also an impediment to democracy as it prevents an informed public. Not to mention that the interests of the state and the nation usually aren't aligned. Things like "state secret" imply that the power balance between the state and nation are skewed. But that always inevitably happens as the state gains more and more power.

> You're in shock of the attitude that hackers should stay off mainstream commercial platforms and avoid pandering to a generic audience?

I'm in shock because you believe 17-25 year olds should be barred from knowledge.

> You do realize why we're having this conversation on HN and not on Facebook right?

You seem to have a sense of superiority. Is HN better than facebook? I'm not so sure. You aren't better than anyone because you post here. I'm certainly not better than anyone because I post here. Certainly wasn't given any test or provided any credentials to post here.

> The 2% of the young adults who are genuinely interested in science and tech and DIY maker culture will find him regardless where he is.

This argument is even more shocking. What about the percentage of people who might have become interested if they were exposed to it? Do you know how many people developed interest in something because they were introduced to it? There are millions of minorities/women/men who didn't go into computer science because they simply weren't introduced to it.

> That's how it always works when people actually care, it's a good filter.

Because the hackers ethos is to make knowledge as difficult and impossible to reach?

> I'm not paternalistic, I'm opposed to grifters and attention-seeking.

Why didn't you say so. Why did you write so much about "17-25 year olds", PhDs/engineers, niche forums, etc? Grifters and attention-seeking isn't my cup of tea either. But they don't deserved to be banned. Also is grifting and attention seeking to under-17s and over 25s okay?

Your logic and thinking is what paternalists in the past did to women and minorities. It's why people prevented women and minorities from reading, writing and gaining knowledge because it would be too harmful to them. Nothing more anti-hacker than that.