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Alexander Kruel Profile picture
Alexander Kruel
@XiXiDu
“We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality” ― Seneca
4 subscribers
Oct 12, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Most perpetrators of antisemitic violence in Europe are Muslims. According to an anti-Semitism report by the European Union, 30% (41% in Germany) of the perpetrators are Muslims, 21% people with a left-wing political view, and 13% right-wingers.

Source: fra.europa.eu/en/publication…
Another study by a German university comes to a similar conclusion: 81% of all physical attacks were committed by Muslims. beratungsnetzwerk-sachsen-anhalt.de/images/docs/Pu…
Image
Jun 20, 2023 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
Ignoring the Russian propaganda about the counteroffensive failing, this is the 4th counteroffensive, 3 of which were successful. If people like Sacks ruled the world, the Roman Empire would have ceased to exist in 212 BC, the remaining Slavs would speak German and Asia Japanese. These are the losers who don't understand the value of freedom and self-determination and would raise the white flag at the first sign of trouble. It's no surprise that they have lost the culture war.
Jun 20, 2023 • 5 tweets • 4 min read
Not even present people are like us. These stats from Papua New Guinea remind us that civilization is a thin veneer over barbarism: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_vi…

This is typical among hunter-gatherer societies:
1. archive.is/secqy
2. archive.is/bx4rs Image "in the 20th century, people [said] … this was racist propaganda on the part of the Greeks & Romans … & that Carthage should be saved from this terrible slander. 'What we are saying now is that the … evidence for child sacrifice is overwhelming" ox.ac.uk/news/2014-01-2…
Jan 24, 2023 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
Most people have no idea how extensive human biodiversity is and only tend to notice obvious features such as those shown in the photos: 1. Epicanthic fold.
2. Occipital bun.
3. Blonde hair among Melanesians. They share 4%–7% of their genome with the Denisovans.
4. Khoisan peppercorn hair.

But the differences are more than skin-deep.
Jan 24, 2023 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Your frequent reminder that the world could have defeated climate change in the 1980s if all industrialized nations had followed France's lead. Image This would have been vastly cheaper than what nations are now pledging to spend in order to combat climate change. Most importantly, it would have been a solution compatible with further growth. But environmentalists sabotaged this technological solution.
Sep 27, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
There is no future for Russia. All outcomes are leading towards doom: 1. Russia occupies Ukraine and faces decades of armed insurgency orders of magnitude worse than what the United States faced in Iraq or Afghanistan. Russia will likely lose most of its oil and gas revenues through targeted attacks on its infrastructure. Inevitable bankruptcy.
May 31, 2022 • 8 tweets • 4 min read
To understand the German attitude towards nuclear power you have to realize how much disinformation is spread about this topic.

Three examples:
1.
2.
3. archive.org/details/sendun… Image The truth looks very different:

UN finds 'no adverse health effects' from Fukushima disaster: unscear.org/docs/publicati…

Japan's 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster has not harmed the health of local residents 10 years on, according to a report published by UN researchers. Image
May 30, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Suppose China was to succeed in invading Taiwan while managing to keep the chip fabs unscathed. How much would they be able to learn without the help of the TSMC engineers and the blueprints? What I mean is, how much value would the chip plants themselves be? Would they just be giant technological artifacts or could they actually learn enough from studying them to produce their own state-of-the-art semiconductors?
May 29, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
On the second anniversary of GPT-3, gwern gives an overview of the political landscape related to AI timelines: reddit.com/r/mlscaling/co…

There are several political decisions that could delay the advent of AGI. E.g., an invasion of Taiwan would severely affect chip production. Image This is also related to the concept of an anthropic shadow: if artificial intelligence was to cause human extinction but required a lot of computing power, you would be more likely to find yourself in world lines in which the necessary conditions for cheap compute are not met.
Mar 21, 2022 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
It is kind of an ominous sign that several people involved with AI are now frequently mentioning artificial general intelligence. It could be hype but I previously made the mistake to dismiss what turned out to be genuine insider knowledge: facebook.com/xixidu/posts/1…
Mar 18, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Giving Putin exclusive rights to make threats is a very bad idea. NATO should firmly commit to actively support Ukraine if China intervenes on behalf of Russia. If you let your fear of nuclear war dominate your response you can as well hand over the world to Russia and China right now. There need to be red lines.
Mar 11, 2022 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
Some quick notes about nuclear waste: 1. Pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere has global effects whereas the effects of nuclear waste are local.
Nov 30, 2021 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
And GPT-3 is already old news. Progress has been rapid and extensive (e.g. Codex, Blender Bot, AlphaFold, ruDALL-E, NÜWA, EfficientZero...).

reddit.com/r/slatestarcod… Image Normies who only read what prestigious newspapers and journals highlight for them won't realize the importance of developments like GPT-3 before the nanobots start converting the hemoglobin in their arteries into computronium.
Nov 5, 2021 • 17 tweets • 8 min read
Any long-term plan or prediction that ignores technological progress is useless. ImageImageImageImage Image
Oct 5, 2021 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
When it comes to major Western countries like the United States and Germany, the left has decisively won the culture war and is now in control of most institutions. BUT it hasn't won the war against reality.

Some examples: 1. Left-wing economic policies such as Marxism have failed spectacularly each time they have been tried.
Apr 2, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Energy-harvesting card treats 5G networks as wireless power grids newatlas.com/energy/5g-ener…

"...it should be possible to harvest around 6 microwatts at around 180 meters (590 ft) from a 5G transmitter." "An energy-harvesting circuit based on graphene could be incorporated into a chip to provide clean, limitless, low-voltage power for small devices or sensors," phys.org/news/2020-10-p…
Apr 2, 2021 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
The Fermi paradox gets worse and worse. Scientists have observed a single-cell alga evolve in real time into a multicellular organism. The transition took around a year and was caused by the introduction of a predator into the environment. nature.com/articles/s4159…
Feb 14, 2021 • 20 tweets • 7 min read
Is journalism even a real profession? What valuable skill could someone like Scott Alexander learn from studying journalism? Some skills you learn as a journalist:

1. How to interview people.
Feb 12, 2021 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Whenever someone publicly "wastes" food for a purpose other than eating, someone else comes along and complains about it by citing "hunger in Africa".

What's your best steel man argument in support of this complaint? For example, if I, living in Germany, was to take a bar of edible chocolate and just threw it in the garbage, how would this behavior negatively affect the food supply in poor countries like Yemen?
Dec 30, 2020 • 14 tweets • 6 min read
Which is one of the reasons why blank slatism and IQ denialism are so widespread among academics despite universally available evidence to the contrary.

The myth of the lone genius is itself a myth rogersbacon.substack.com/p/the-myth-of-… Image
Dec 20, 2020 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
Expert opinion can be a starting point when one tries to figure out the truth but definitely not the last word on a topic.

Prediction markets, rationalists, and generally people with skin in the game are all better sources of truth than experts. How to weigh expert opinion:

- Large penalty if the topic is politicized.
- Medium/large penalty if it pertains soft sciences.
- Medium penalty if the opinion seems to be in conflict with more fundamental principles.
- Small/medium penalty if it involves financial incentives.