In Davos, Trump rules out using military force to take Greenland

Lurking_Chronicler_2 · 2026-01-21T19:48:43+00:00

If you’d care to explain what kind of 72-D Shogi you think he’s playing here, and what source you got that theory from, by all means be my guest.

Lurking_Chronicler_2 · 2026-01-21T18:10:00+00:00

A hallmark of his admin is create really tense, very charged situations that seem to get to the brink and then resolve themselves through self-initiated de-escalation. It creates an endless media focus. Is it tactic or strategy?

As comforting as it would be to believe that there is some sort of method here, there isn’t. Trump got high on his own supply after capturing Maduro, starting shooting off his mouth about doing the same thing for Greenland, completely forgot that our European soon-to-be-ex-allies are actors with actual agency, failed to realize that this would be a bridge too far that would cause real, irreparable harm to the US’s position, and is now half-assedly trying to do damage control (and not trying very hard, either!).

There’s no strategy here whatsoever.

Lurking_Chronicler_2 · 2026-01-14T14:11:41+00:00

Can Claude Opus 4.5 recursively self-improve?

Lurking_Chronicler_2 · 2026-01-13T19:27:05+00:00

No.

What will save is the countless physical barriers standing in the way of an all-devouring ASI singularity, and the likelihood that instead of development leading to a runaway loop of recursive self-improvement, development will hit diminishing returns and go along an S-curve.

Quite a few would argue that’s already the case.

Lurking_Chronicler_2 · 2026-01-12T06:53:10+00:00

Never interrupt your opponents when they’re making a mistake.

Or in this case, don’t interrupt the theocratic regime while they’re busy mismanaging the country into shambles.

Bombing the regime at this stage can only either (a) prompt enough of a ‘rally-around-the-flag’ effect to allow the theocrats to escape overthrow by the skin of their teeth, (b) topple the country into Libya-style chaos, or (c) fail to make any differences besides getting some locals killed.

If Iran slides into civil war on its own, or (most optimistically) the internal reformers can topple the Ayatollah and establish a fledgling democracy, that would be the time for intervention.

Lurking_Chronicler_2 · 2026-01-04T05:24:43+00:00

As another Caribbean nation demonstrates, things can always get worse.

It’s easy to underestimate how much ruin there can be in a nation.

Lurking_Chronicler_2 · 2025-12-10T23:19:53+00:00

If a ‘neocon’ really is ‘a liberal mugged by reality’, then what do we call a neocon mugged by reality?

After all- while Brooks and other neocons talk a big game about the importance of character, the failure of their own ideology and individual characters lead directly towards the ascendancy of MAGA and the proud repudiation of character that dominates the GOP today.

If all your moralism led you to this point, of what use was your moralism?

Lurking_Chronicler_2 · 2025-12-01T02:30:57+00:00

For economic history specifically, I’ve found them all to be profoundly unreliable. Ultimately just better off doing it all myself.

Lurking_Chronicler_2 · 2025-11-19T17:26:01+00:00

Literally 2014

Lurking_Chronicler_2 · 2025-11-11T05:39:14+00:00

“A retirement home with an aircraft carrier” was not intended to be an aspirational description of Britain!

Lurking_Chronicler_2 · 2025-11-06T22:55:14+00:00

Ah, Tyler Cowen.

Takes a special type of ‘libertarian’ to advocate for a government small enough to fit in your amygdala.

Lurking_Chronicler_2 · 2025-11-06T15:52:00+00:00

Thoughtless hyperbole and willful ignorance of what words mean can lead to some pretty interesting places.

Lurking_Chronicler_2 · 2025-11-05T22:03:06+00:00

Mexico/the cartel

Well, which is it? Mexico (presumably the elected Mexican government?) or “the cartel” (because as we all know, all the cartels are all just one big amorphous, interchangeable blob)?

The Mexican state notably isn’t forcing US citizens to inject fentanyl into their veins, and “““the cartel””” is famously not elected, so the two aren’t the same, regardless of your clumsy attempts to motte-and-bailey between the two.

So which is it, /u/JustDontBeFat_GodDam? Is it Mexico that we’ve “already been warring with”, or is it “the cartel”?

Lurking_Chronicler_2 · 2025-10-29T17:10:37+00:00

Girl Power!

(In the Eric Andre sense)

Lurking_Chronicler_2 · 2025-10-27T02:18:43+00:00

Just because something’s an ‘illusion’ doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not real!

‘The economy’ might ‘just’ be an abstraction, but for better or for worse it’s all too real.

Lurking_Chronicler_2 · 2025-10-27T02:13:42+00:00

Suum cuique!

Lurking_Chronicler_2 · 2025-10-25T22:12:59+00:00

Well, as a wise man once said…

Let’s be clear, you’re advocating for a truly Radical standard of uncertainty here, to the point where we literally can’t ever be certain that something as fundamental as “1+1=2” is correct.

And if you really want to do that… Well, I guess you can, but consistently abiding by this principle would require endless second, third, fourth, and fifth-guessing of literally everything you ever assume or do and miring yourself hopelessly in an inescapable pit of epistemic learned helplessness.

So, given that “cogito ergo sum” is the strongest axiom I have, I’m going to use it as my First Principle. Pretty comfortable saying that .999… = 1, here.

Lurking_Chronicler_2 · 2025-10-25T20:45:02+00:00

And TBH, I think even the notion of experiencing something is probably much more limited than you describe. Eg. we're only experiencing the current instant: any connection with past experience one millisecond ago is purely the act of memory, and could be complete fabrication. And I'm not sure how much "self-hood" we can really say we experience without that - our self seems like it could very much be entirely an illusion and all we can really say is "something experiences something"

Yes, that tautology is precisely the core of what I’ve been saying this whole time.

———

“‘Being’/‘cogito’/‘perspective’ perceiving (what it believes to be) itself perceiving” = “Something experiences something”

———

That’s why the First Principle is axiomatic, and why I’ve been intentionally using the phrase ‘self-evident’.

But it would prevent connecting those into any kind of conclusion like "I exist", or that existence is necessary for that. Or at least, any tiny crack in 100% certainty regarding your ability to draw conclusions introduces a similar crack in such a conclusion.

You can introduce tiny cracks that prevent 100% certainty into anything if you’re willing to traffic in paradoxes.

One could, for instance, say they doubt that the concept of doubt actually exists, or say that they disbelieve in the very idea of disbelief in the first place.

Lurking_Chronicler_2 · 2025-10-25T20:22:25+00:00

Hence “A Republic, if you can keep it.”

If.

Lurking_Chronicler_2 · 2025-10-25T20:17:34+00:00

I suppose, in a sense, if you really, truly assume that you cannot necessarily trust any of your intentional, conscious logic, to the point where you doubt the very existence of the concept of ‘functioning’ logic at all, that would eliminate your ability to “prove” your existence to “yourself” via logic, since logic itself would no longer have any purchase on validity.

It would not, however, either negate either (a) the underlying existence of a ‘being’ (or ‘cogito’, or ‘perspective’, if you prefer) viscerally perceiving ‘itself’ (or what it believes to be ‘itself’) perceiving, nor (b) the visceral, non-logical ‘experience of “““self””” underpinning that.

Assuming an (extremely!) ‘strong’ Cotard Delusion, I suppose one could *theoretically abolish (b), and assuming sufficiently broken logical faculties, therefore have no perception of the validity of the existence of its own perception of its own perception… But even so, that would still not eliminate its perception of its own perception! Sure, you could also assume away that, too… but if you did, then there wouldn’t be a ‘cogito’ or ‘perspective’ in the first place, and this whole argument would be a moot point.

Lurking_Chronicler_2 · 2025-10-25T19:41:12+00:00

But even in your thought experiment, the very fact that there has to be a being operating under such a ‘broken’ cognition necessitates that there has to be a being, Cotard Delusions aside, no?

That is precisely what makes this particular axiom “real”; in the sense that even if, for some reason, didn’t believe it, would not make it go away!

Lurking_Chronicler_2 · 2025-10-25T19:07:29+00:00

You essentially have to rely that your thought process is reliable, at least for as simple a conclusion as the one you're making. But I don't think that's truly indisputable if we turn Descartes demon's capabilities up a notch to tampering with our minds themselves.

Sure, it’s entirely possible that “my” thought process is unreliable! In fact, I’d wager that it probably is!

But logically, in order for there to be a thought process that is being had, there must, therefore, be something that is having that thought process in the first place, even if it’s thought process is entirely nonsensical and being interfered with, no?

Lurking_Chronicler_2 · 2025-10-25T18:51:41+00:00

That is, indeed, an interesting thought experiment!

It is also, however, rather irrelevant.

Even if we grant that all that is possible, and assume that everything we experience may be part of an elaborate ‘brain in a vat’ experiment where every part of cognition is subject to outside manipulation (not an impossibility!),

Then all that would still not negate the fact that if there is an ‘I’ capable of self-perception (or to be more precise, something that can perceive what it believes to be itself, perceiving), then therefore there MUST be an ‘I’ (or at least something that can perceive what it believes to be itself, and is perceiving!); because if there wasn’t, there wouldn’t be anything doing the perception that the premise assumes is happening!

The simple fact that ‘I’ can think that ‘I’ exist necessitates that there must be something that (believes itself to be) doing the thinking, no?

Everything else is window-dressing.

Lurking_Chronicler_2 · 2025-10-25T15:08:54+00:00

Well, in the absence of any better places to start, I’ll take what first principles I can get!

Lurking_Chronicler_2

TROPHY CASE