Camp 1 are those who dispute the US is in decline.
Many people are in denial. Some get mad if you point at qualitative and quantitative evidence.
But only the paranoid survive. Denial of decline means you cannot even diagnose the cause, let alone take measures to reverse it.
Camp 2 believes the US has declined, but it can be reversed.
While they have *very* different visions of what that reversal means, both centrist liberals like my friend @Noahpinion and MAGA types want to see America “awake from its slumber” and start kicking butt again.
Camp 3 are those who believe the US is in decline, it can’t be reversed, and that this is actually good.
This includes people on the anti-imperialist left, on the paleocon right, and many foreign powers — not just traditional rivals, but others that don’t like US intervention.
Camp 4 is where I am. I think the US was on balance a force for good till recently. I don’t think decline is reversible — it’s barely acknowledged. But I also think we’ll miss it when it’s gone.
The US has now played the role of global policeman for decades. It’s had a mixed record. And the American public has grown justifiably tired of the expense in blood and treasure.
Perhaps sensing this, just months after the Afghanistan defeat, Russia invaded Ukraine.
Leading to many cynical memes from Ukrainians like one below. Of course, we must avoid direct US/RU conflict as it could lead to nuclear escalation.
But decline meant deterrence failed.
Mearsheimer correctly predicted this years ago.
The US encouraged Ukraine to take a more aggressive stance than it would have otherwise. But the commitment was insufficient to deter.
In part because decline has meant decline in foreign policy realism.
If we are realists, we see that in Hong Kong, Afghanistan, and now Ukraine the US — understandably — is no longer ready to pay any price, bear any burden.
There are limits. You can’t rely on them for deterrence. Other countries are realizing this, and arming up accordingly.
Separately but relatedly there is the question of what kind of order the US can even deliver.
The US way of life was once the best. But globalization closed the gap. Others rose. And after years of political chaos, US soft power eroded. Others now think they have a better model.
Putting it together, the US is in decline. It lacks the will — and manufacturing base — to be the “arsenal of democracy”.
As it withdraws from physical intervention, some countries may grow aggressive. Others may arm up in response. Won’t be fun! But there is a *little* hope…
Many of the ideals the US once imperfectly defended with munitions — free speech, free trade, rule-of-law — we can now imperfectly defend with encryption.
Btw, for the sake of completeness there is a fifth possibility: the US has already transformed into a digital power that is now financially nuking Russia.
The physical in this view is actually just downstream, and we have been weighting it too heavily. We’ll see if this works.
There's dark talent around the world, from the Midwest to the Middle East. Backing this talent is the right thing to do morally and the smart thing to do economically.
To be clear: I'm not talking about sending more tech talent to the US. Instead, I'm talking about backing dark talent around the world.
That includes the many white kids from places like the Midwest who've been unfairly quota'd out of Harvard. But it also includes those outside America whose societies were ravaged by war, socialism, or communism...and who are just now starting to become productive again.
The goal is global equality of opportunity. The Internet actually now provides the basis for uniform rule-of-law via rule-of-code, starting with Bitcoin and smart contracts. We just need to execute from here.
Yes. That's what the blockchain is: everyone worldwide gets access to their ideal monetary policy, payments, smart contracts, and entity formation. Enforced by incorruptible & transparent computer-based judges. And opted into on a purely voluntary basis.
Fifteen years ago the far left still controlled almost one third of India.
The Modi government fixed the issue by using force against actual terrorists while addressing the underlying discontent with economic development. It worked. indiatoday.in/amp/india-toda…x.com/iyervval/statu…
Both America and China were invested in the illusion that China wasn't already the world's strongest economy.
Psychologically, it suited the incumbent to appear strong. So America downplayed China's numbers.
Strategically, it suited the disruptor to appear weak. So China also sandbagged its own numbers.
But the illusion is becoming harder to maintain.
In retrospect, all the China cope over the last decade or so was really just the stealth on the Chinese stealth bomber.
Hide your strength and bide your time was Deng's strategy. Amazingly, denying China's strength somehow also became America's strategy.
For example, all the cope on China's demographics somehow being uniquely bad...when they have 1.4B+ people that crush every international science competition with minimal drug addiction, crime, or fatherlessness...and when their demographic problems have obvious robotic solutions.
Or, for another example, how MAGA sought to mimic China's manufacturing buildout and industrial policy without deeply understanding China's strengths in this area, which is like competing with Google by setting up a website. Vague references to 1945 substituted for understanding the year 2025.
One consequence of the cope is that China knows far more about America's strengths than vice versa. Surprisingly few Americans interested in re-industrialization have ever set foot in Shenzhen. Those who have, like @Molson_Hart, understand what modern China actually is.
Anyway, what @DoggyDog1208 calls the "skull chart" is the same phenomenon @yishan and I commented on months ago. Once China truly enters a vertical, like electric cars or solar, their pace of ascent[1] is so rapid that incumbents often don't even have time to react.
Now apply this at country level. China has flipped America so quickly on so many axes[2], particularly military ones like hypersonics or military-adjacent ones like power, that it can no longer be contained.
A major contributing factor was the dollar illusion. All that money printing made America think it was richer than China. And China was happy to let America persist in the illusion. But an illusion it was. Yet another way in which Keynesianism becomes the epitaph of empire.
The first kind of retard uses AI everywhere, even where it shouldn’t be used.
The second kind of retard sees AI everywhere, even where it isn’t used.
Usually, it’s obvious what threads are and aren’t AI-written.
But some people can’t tell the difference between normal writing and AI writing. And because they can’t tell the difference, they’ll either overuse AI…or accuse others of using AI!
What we actually may need are built-in statistical AI detectors for every public text field. Paste in a URL into an archive.is-like interface and get back the probability that any div on the page is AI-generated.
In general my view is that AI text shouldn’t be used raw. It’s like a search engine result, it’s lorem ipsum. Useful for research but not final results. AI code is different, but even that requires review. AI visuals are different still, and you can sometimes use them directly.
We’re still developing these conventions, as the tech itself is of course a moving target. But it is interesting that even technologists (who see the huge time-savings that AI gives for, say, data analysis or vibe coding) are annoyed by AI slop. Imagine how much the people who don’t see the positive parts of AI may hate AI.
TLDR: slop is the new spam, and we’ll need new tools and conventions to defeat it.
I agree email spammers will keep adapting.
But I don’t know if a typical poster will keep morphing their content in such a way.