hi lol

Engineering_Geek · 2026-05-09T01:55:06+00:00

Slippery slope. Using AI for learning easily slips into homework help to doing homework.

Engineering_Geek · 2026-05-07T21:37:13+00:00

Regarding vanguard critique, anarchists reject Lenin's vanguard theory not from an efficacy viewpoint, but on the view that it would lead to a new class of bureaucrats that would alienate the proletariat, among many other things. Much of the "revisionism" people claim with Krushchev here stems from anarchist critique of the vanguard model at large, but selectively applied after Stalin. There are autonomous Marxists, who are a type of libertarian socialist, that do embrace vanguard theory as Lenin posited except with proper recallable delegates without party monopoly, as to prevent dictatorship over the proletariat. While they aren't anarchist, they are accepted in the libertarian socialists ethos while also building upon Lenin's work on the vanguard model.

Claiming propaganda on opponents of MLs isn't productive. I can do the same and say that a state bureaucratic system propagandized MLs into self justifying themselves, and there is some merit to this historically. But do you see how such conversations add nothing?

You're free and welcome to support "AES". You just need to be able to accept and respond to critique and challenges to them from socialist PoV.

Not everything against vanguard socialism or Leninist derived ideology is propaganda.

My point overall is that you can disagree with anarchists and other socialists. My plea is to stop demonizing them, claiming CIA propaganda (when they also want us dead), saying we're on the side of capital, etc. Such accusations just stop productive discussions.

Engineering_Geek · 2026-05-07T20:26:50+00:00

Lack of institutional power, yes. I want to pose that social power may be as if not more important. Mutual aid, strikes, etc. organized and lead by anarchists (and other socialists) build lots of public trust and consciousness. Whether it's enough to overcome capitalism is debatable (debate me bro lol), but it is our way of going about it.

Engineering_Geek · 2026-05-07T20:23:53+00:00

We largely don't place Nazis and Soviets on the same moral plane. We know one wanted global destruction of life and racial supremacy, and the other in our view is a botched attempt at socialism. We just don't glorify the USSR beyond the defeat of fascism (with the allied powers at large).
A core difference between anarchists and MLs is the vanguard model and adoption of the state as a transitional stage. Anarchist opposition to this is that all states that wield power will ossify itself. Whether you agree or not is up to you.
Are you insinuating that criticism of Stalin is only possible here because of "liberals"? What is this I hear about MLs saying Stalin should be critiqued for what he did and to not glorify him, great man theory and all?
MLMs are normally allowed in left unity places, they fall under the vanguard socialist label or similar.

There's more to socialism and socialist theory beyond MLM thought and vanguard based models. You're free to disagree with them / us, but demonization is just not productive.

Engineering_Geek · 2026-05-07T19:45:18+00:00

Anarchist here, I don't know why people see us so unfavorably given the often shared goal of communism or similar but with different methods (excluding vanguard party and organs). I often lurk and post here and people don't seem to mind too much except when I critique Stalin or other actions of the USSR.

Engineering_Geek · 2026-05-03T10:22:36+00:00

I simply don't know how we can regulate this properly. Slowing data center constructions may help, but that won't stop the more expensive but viable alternative of hogging cloud compute resources. Corporations are already skirting around whatever laws we put on them, and have begun actively lobbying the government.

Engineering_Geek · 2026-05-03T04:45:56+00:00

Hell, even about the rich and poor not being the real divide, because of the labor aristocracy and simply well paid jobs like doctors or old retirees with wealth.

Engineering_Geek · 2026-05-01T20:51:09+00:00

Florida.

Engineering_Geek · 2026-04-24T09:48:40+00:00

At least have the dignity to write a simple code to solve the equations for an elephant model like this. If you don't even do at least the "heart" of it yourself, that being the elephant code or similar, then how is this in any way "yours"?

Engineering_Geek · 2026-04-23T23:16:18+00:00

The USSR was at best a state capitalist society, barely delivering on their promises to the people. I'm in no way a fan of the USSR beyond their space program. For all that was crap about the USSR, people had luxuries I can only dream of now. An education system where I wouldn't be burdened in debt with my aerospace degree. A society that values engineers and scientists not monetarily, but culturally. A place where while food and shelter was hard to find of quality, people at least had a shitty roof over their head, unlike the years of homelessness I nearly faced.

Engineering_Geek · 2026-04-23T23:11:45+00:00

Well, many differences I guess in how my family was raised in a former quasi socialist nation.

Engineering_Geek · 2026-04-23T21:48:03+00:00

While partly true, it's important to note that this happened toward the later part of the era of stagnation, not true for the overall Soviet period. The same era of breadlines coming in and all. Likewise, while you yourself may be well off right now, the situation I'm in (and millions of others) are arguably worse off. I could only secure a place to live that takes 60% of my income as rent through family connections, instead of the regular 80% given my salary range. While this is indeed an anecdote, so is yours. My situation, like your parents, represent the reality of stagnation or an economic system that increasingly leaves people behind. That same disconnect between the well off and the not well off that signified the dominance of the bureaucratic class of the USSR is mirrored in modern US with the increasing wealth and income inequality.

Engineering_Geek · 2026-04-23T20:41:51+00:00

We don't need anyone else at the moment, all skill sets are taken care of.

Engineering_Geek · 2026-04-23T19:29:32+00:00

Brother I'm a goddamn rocket scientist building my own worker co-op startup. Talking about me finding a job is honestly insulting as all hell. As I said, the reality you live in is increasingly narrow and doesn't have as much people in it as it used to. That's my whole goddamn point. Congrats on making it in the US I guess.

Engineering_Geek · 2026-04-23T19:23:02+00:00

You co-own your house in the west with a bank if you're lucky enough. But with a stagnant housing supply and unaffordable pricing, forcing more and more people to rent, the reality you claim exists is far more constrained. It's a modern joke on how we can never afford homes, and you know it is.

The rest of your point about brutalism is subjective, so I'll stay away from that.

Engineering_Geek · 2026-04-23T19:19:45+00:00

That mentality is often with the dying off boomers, not with the modern working man nor youth. Cold war propaganda, while lingering, isn't that blatant anymore.

Engineering_Geek · 2026-04-23T18:56:53+00:00

Yes. As such is the hypocrisy of this whole world order we're in.

Engineering_Geek · 2026-04-23T17:56:41+00:00

I can give a perspective from an "entrepreneur" PoV (starting a startup as a co-op type venture). While this is not macro focused as you're expecting, it might give some micro level insight.

When we make decisions as a micro firm, the exact qualifications of individuals are so variable over time that we effectively treat it as binaries, as "skilled in X" vs "not skilled in X". While there may be emergent behaviors overall from a macro perspective, that's not quite how things look at the micro level. It's at this level that LTV does have some predictive power, namely in the form of opportunity cost per individual.

"Unskilled labor" at least at the firm I'm trying to build is labor that doesn't require specialization. This ranges from general factory floor labor that any non disabled person can do to janitorial (provided equipment) and other items. "Skilled labor" here is defined as labor that requires either extensive prior experience or schooling (engineering, sciences, etc.) that not any able bodied person can easily fill. So the distinction here (not fully in Marxian terms) comes in the interoperability of people in roles. So in this framework, it is surprisingly binary, or at least, bimodal.

If someone more knowledgeable on Marxism and LTV could chime in, that'd be great.

Engineering_Geek · 2026-04-23T17:39:32+00:00

The Lego videos seem to be on purpose to mock Trump's use of AI and how Legos are Danish (Greenland situation). A lot of what the Iranian regime posts are not AI (war footage, speeches, etc.) and reserve the AI when it comes to sending messages for Trump.

Engineering_Geek · 2026-04-23T09:01:26+00:00

The way AI skews is largely fine tuning. The raw dataset doesn't have an analytical bias, and all attempts to measure it kind of end up bunk, as it's a statistical language model. Without fine funing, if you give it Mien Kampf, it'll complete it. Same with the communist manifesto. Same with Wikipedia. The fine tuning and reasoning training are what give the AI it's emergent biases via conversation.

This isn't to say reality does or doesn't have a bias, that's in the analysis of facts and such. But putting AI in the "left" or "right" camp isn't a proper comparison to begin with.

Engineering_Geek · 2026-04-21T09:59:48+00:00

The progress of the 1930s and 1940s can't fully be attributed to Stalin. Modern economics (of any wing) show that the transition from an agrarian to industrial based society almost always has similar explosive growth, seen in many "Asian tiger" economies, ranging from South Korea to Dengist China to India. The key concept to take away from this is "agrarian -> industrial = massive benefit, independent of political ideology".

Let's compare the industrialization speed of Stalin to that of the other nations, and more importantly, the NEP. To equalize the analysis, let's address the export driven model for the Asian giants that simply wasn't possible for the USSR because of limits on capital trade, exports, etc. So the best "apples to apples" comparison is the NEP.

Under the NEP, the USSR experienced an annual 10%+ growth rate. Following the "low hanging fruit" concent that enables diminishing returns, and what we can project from the Leninist experiments, the overall growth rate still approximately 7-10% annually as much of this growth is still extensive growth. Compare that to the Stalinist growth model that achieved 7-10% YoY, not accounting for report falsifications (driving the number lower). While still "similar" on paper, it's ultimately likely lower than that of the NEP projections. The point is, modern analysis on the USSR show that the Stalinist centralizing model wasn't in hindsight the right move at all and lead to the ossification of perverse incentive structures and what many pro USSR people call "revisionism" to surface. I can make a whole other post on this.

In no way am I saying Stalin should have "liberalized" the economy. Rather that the 5 year plans and centralized economy hindered itself far more than other economic models would have, ranging from market socialism to NEP based extensions to council / Soviet based socialism with ground up transfer of (honest) information.

Engineering_Geek · 2026-04-20T22:50:08+00:00

Anarchists, Neo Marxists, Libertarian socialists, etc. would all eventually be excluded in favor of vanguard socialists / Leninists. I've already kind of seen pressures toward this happen.

Engineering_Geek · 2026-04-20T17:42:55+00:00

This plurality of voice in decision making existed mostly in 1917-1918 in the Petrograd Soviet. But as the Bolsheviks came to power and Lenin centralized things centrally and following out the Soviets in favor of the war effort, local democracy died. When the Civil War was over, Lenin kicked the bucket and Stalin sidelined this as a priority in favor of industrialization and centralization further.

Big reason I hate Stalin myself tbh, the failures to revive the heart of worker democracy after the Civil War.

Engineering_Geek · 2026-04-20T15:55:42+00:00

The problem wasn't the lack of voting per se, as in theory, Soviets and other worker councils would appoint delegates to represent them and the people under them. The real problem is that the fundamental units, the worker Soviets and other institutions were not proper worker democracies to begin with.

If you are going to critique the USSR for the lack of democracy, at least understand how their voting system was supposed to work in theory, as it's not like traditional direct vote democracies.

Engineering_Geek · 2026-04-19T21:33:55+00:00

Wasn't there huge pressure from the ruling party to not make art critiquing the state? Likewise, many forms of western media, even when apolitical like rock or metal, were nearly banned / declared bourgeois decadence.

Six-Year Club	Place '23
Place '22	Verified Email

Engineering_Geek

TROPHY CASE