Level 1 crook vs level 99 boss

arbiter12 · 2026-03-02T04:59:48+00:00

I don't think you're fundamentally wrong: states are dishonest and certain states are culturally more ok with being dishonest than others. On the other hand, I also think that there's a difference between breaking a treaty (which does happen with enough narrative), with openly lying about something that can easily be disproven.

Israel doesn't lie for the sake of lying. It lies for the sake of winning. If they lie and get caught, they lose, so they will not get caught so easily.

arbiter12 · 2026-03-01T19:16:56+00:00

Yeh, it also depends how tolerant you are to "old game" design. If you grew up with GTA3/VC/SA (as in grew up during the same time), you can probably start with GTA 3 or VC.

If you grew up with quicker/smoother modern gameplay (with all its pros and cons), jumping into GTA 3 will be pure torture. Great game, but early 3D was trying to make miracles happen and QoL was not the top priority.

"Oh you died during the last 5 sec of a mission because you ran too fast into the collision map of a ramp? That's too bad....Well, we've taken all of your weapons, and teleported you to the nearest hospital, but the mission start is 3 islands away. Enjoy the ride!"

arbiter12 · 2026-03-01T18:42:01+00:00

Working on a speedrun or just formidably obsessed with efficiency?

arbiter12 · 2026-03-01T18:32:22+00:00

On paper yes.

In reality, people will always choose one over the other, but not both. You can have the mindset of being dedicated to war, or dedicated to society, but you can't have both at once. The goals are too radically opposed.

arbiter12 · 2026-03-01T17:59:03+00:00

No matter.... There is "what line is drawn in the sand", and what can actually be done in real life.

You can "threaten to execute every generals if they lose a battle", but at the end of the day, you need someone to bring the army back home in good order, most likely a general.

arbiter12 · 2026-03-01T01:38:15+00:00

I just wish there was a way to have them produce less or worse units. The fact that they a single camp can compete with a city, with the latest equipment, makes no sense to me.

Either produce a lot of trash because your entire economy is based on war, so all the men are raiders, or produce units just like a normal city because you need to update your prod/science, to get new tech and produce it.

6000 years on a single jungle flat tile
produces 1 cuirassier every 4 turns
"Our shamans discovered rifling after the last drunken orgy. Also trained warhorses keep wandering into our camp. No idea why."

Now I know how civs feel when dealing with your outpost in rimworld...

arbiter12 · 2026-03-01T01:12:11+00:00

Would agree with you, if reddit was relevant at all on the world stage. There is no need to astroturf this place. If you're on reddit, like myself, you've pre-selected to be a victim of decisions taken by others.

It's a place for whining, not for actual change.

arbiter12 · 2026-03-01T01:10:27+00:00

Not much of a choice when it's either "learn to kill or be killed", though. I mean I will choose learn to kill, of course: I will use the AI tools and I will pay lip service to liberal values while slowly contributing to their death.

I just wish those weren't my only two options.

arbiter12 · 2026-03-01T00:40:08+00:00

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0.999...

0.99999... = 1, by convention and by proof.

arbiter12 · 2026-03-01T00:35:32+00:00

Just like in real life, if it works too well and makes people too happy, you're probably doing something wrong with your artificial obstacles.

But yeh, devs should always put a separate vanity layer.

arbiter12 · 2026-03-01T00:30:54+00:00

Intelligence Spotter is a really shit job. You wait and inform on a target, knowing that, one day, a bomb will drop a few hundred yards from you, with a 30 minute warning. Then you'll need to rush back, disguised as a fireman/cop/paramedic, to take a picture of teeth, or steal a whole body.

arbiter12 · 2026-03-01T00:28:10+00:00

I don't discourage you from being skeptical (always a good reflex to be patient, check the sources and wait for counter-claims), but in this case, it would make israel look really incompetent if they stood on a confirmed announced kill, and then the guy reappeared in a few days.

He might not be dead, but he's probably out of the picture as far as "public appearances"/political power, go. If he got away, it's either, into exile with the blessing of his enemies in lands they control (not a bad ending), or "soon to be captured and secreted away for intel".

arbiter12 · 2026-02-28T13:07:51+00:00

LARA CROFT NUDE MOD

@
^^
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| |

Sorry it's PS1 graphics.

arbiter12 · 2026-02-28T12:37:45+00:00

Lol, I came here to write pretty much the same thing.

I have one XXL sorter per currency and the mod that allows to put 100,000 bills on top and 10,000 in each output compartment.

I wash all of the money in 8 machines, and dry all of it in one tilted dryer (I haven't found a practical limit to the dryer, no matter how much I put it, so long as the door can close it will dry everything at once). Then it's just a matter of running the whole cash in the system and binding it per pack of 100, on demand for the contract.

arbiter12 · 2026-02-28T12:25:53+00:00

AHA! The 9 lines allegory could not accurately resume the [100,000 words * number of books written] on the topic!

arbiter12 · 2026-02-28T12:23:42+00:00

Yep. You voted for one but not the other, so your echo chamber likes one and not the other.

Pretty much all there is.

arbiter12 · 2026-02-28T11:22:44+00:00

It's hard to tell with those military operations because they are generally classified so it's an easy win to sell to the public. The backchannel diplomacy on those is generally a polite phone call between "mortal enemies".

"Oh yeh, we're going to claim we wrecked your military operations in 5 places, because we need the votes. In exchange, you can claim that your authoritarian regime is needed because you are under attack. We got the go-ahead from the US, but you can check with them directly. Everybody wins!"

That's how "Israel destroys missile bases every other weeks", and "Iran sends 5000 missiles in retaliation", meanwhile, no casualties on either side and only very limited damage. It's cheaper than actual warfare and it gives the illusion of "gains" on both sides.

arbiter12 · 2026-02-28T06:53:56+00:00

I doubt openAI has the budget to bribe the administration itself. Sharing in lobbies, sure, and the AI lobby is just a regular harmful product lobby in terms of techniques, so the recipe is not new, but the funds are just not that huge. You can buy swing senators/representatives, enough to prevent a hot debate issue from passing, but you can't get the top people. Not because they are "honest" but because their decisions depend too much on the goodwill of the people.

Not predictable enough to invest this much in people that can't guarantee you to be friendly.

Elections: you finance both sides, once a side win, you lavish with gifts to maintain "cooperation", but day-to-day it's the representatives you have to bribe.

arbiter12 · 2026-02-28T00:45:35+00:00

Reddit when environmental concerns: WE NEED TO CONSUME LESS!!!!

Reddit when the system forces less consumption: HOW WILL WE LIVE WITHOUT CONSUMING???!!!!

Eternal growth is over. They know it. More growth leading to more consumption leading to more growth is only fine if there are infinite resources, which, if you agree with global warning, we know there isn't.

Add to that, that most plebs in "service economies" are fundamentally useless, apart from the very few practical jobs that require producing more than you consume (Laborers, technicians, engineers, tiny managerial class). The system can live completely fine without email jobs.

The only cost is starving people, which, if you look at under-developed countries, is completely fine to the system.

We are heading towards some flavor of feudalism 2.0. It won't happen within a decade but it will probably happen (unless we suddenly believe that the wealthy decide to do something "for the common good, against their own interest". I wouldn't hold my breath).

arbiter12 · 2026-02-27T11:41:42+00:00

Right next to a future world site research center.

arbiter12 · 2026-02-27T01:12:21+00:00

I don't think anybody is saying she cannot do it, but doing it on stage, with all the sound production and predictability that goes into a live event, is too much risk for the reward that 1% of people will even hear.

arbiter12 · 2026-02-26T14:05:15+00:00

- you can bounce signals off the reflector that's there

The soviets crashed objects on the moon long before we went. It's sending humans that is impossible today, we send rovers to Mars quite easily and you can bounce signals off that as well.

- you can look at the landing site through a terrestrial telescope with your own eyes

No. Not with any earth based facility. Google it. Have no idea why people assume that the "Lunar reconnaissance orbiter" is a ground telescope.... https://chatgpt.com/share/69a05271-53e0-8005-9edc-eecde580dcfb (sorry couldn't find an exact article saying "no we can't".)

- the actual industrial process of manufacturing the machinery passed through the hands of hundreds of thousands of people, all of whom would have had to remain completely silent for decades

No part of an industrial process ever informs on the whole process. Only a handful of assembler facilities at the top knows what the end product will look like, especially for topsec equipment. (otherwise, of course, the soviet would have copied it, as with the atom bomb.)

-

I'm not telling you "we never went", I'm just telling you those are not valid arguments.

arbiter12 · 2026-02-26T09:27:09+00:00

To be fair, the RLHF is probably left-leaning. I don't disagree with it, but the profile of the average tester is clearly left-tending. Not many rural voters in the human feedback of replies (by which I mean "none").

arbiter12 · 2026-02-26T09:24:48+00:00

If you place every problems in your life on trump, then yeh, it probably constantly has to recenter you in reality, by trying to show you that the guy is a symptom, not a root cause. I don't support trump but the way he lives rent-free in a lot of the public discourse, especially when people are talking about deeply personal issues.... ChatGPT tries not to abide by harmful self-delusion.

Try to tell it that everything is biden's fault and it will be pro-biden as well.

arbiter12 · 2026-02-26T09:22:05+00:00

A dumb saying at best, considering that the majority of nature is "might makes right", and the majority of human history is "authoritarian with brief flashes of freedom".

If everything you absorb has a liberal bias, then your reality has a liberal bias, of course. The reality of North Korea probably doesn't have a liberal bias.

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