Lmao Israelis basically have nukes thanks to the U.S. and have been leveraging all sorts of underhanded tactics to get the world to back their colonialist project against the Palestinians. Shoot, we already have US politicians like Mike Huckabee quoting the Bible to justify our ME policies. Russians, Chinese, and Iranians wish they could have even a tenth of the leverage the Israelis have over us.

I really cannot see the Iranians being any worse. The IRI is a repressive theocracy but that describes half of the GCC of which we have supported their own foreign misadventures like in Yemen.

Peace through power is hardly a new concept. Romans already had Pax Romana, which funnily enough coincided with some of their greatest territorial expansions. British, Spanish, Han, etc. all argued the same thing. Hardly stopped them from abusing that authority to the detriment of smaller, poorer countries.

The U.S. is doing the same thing here as all the other great powers in history and now has reached the point where it is horribly abusing it to the detriment of the world. Our war against Iran, of which Trump did not even ask authorization from Congress btw, is becoming a massive quagmire that threatens to destabilize the global economy. World leaders are already blaming us for that as we drag them into our messes in the ME.

The nuke issue goes both ways. For the Iranians, they see the U.S. rolling over other dictatorships that gave up their nuclear weapons programs via proxies if not outright invasions, as seen with Libya, Syria, Iraq, etc. Meanwhile NK, a glorified pariah state has achieved nuclear power status and the U.S. has thus declined to retaliate despite the provocations of the Kim family. For the IRI, the nukes are an insurance policy to protect them from the U.S. and the Israelis.

For the U.S., we have hated the Iranians ever since the shah got overthrown. Nukes or no, we have a vested interest in overthrowing them and reinstalling a U.S. friendly regime so we can reconsolidate control over the Hormuz and the flow of oil from the ME. Even if the Iranians give up any ambition for nukes we would still have a vested interest in overthrowing them. We want total influence over all the big oil players in that region. The threat of nuclear capability is just how we sell that to the public.

As for Europe, the Iranians could care less about the continent so long as they do not meddle in their affairs. The fact that Europe however has gone along with supporting the U.S. in wanting to contain and eventually overthrow the IRI via the implementation of SnapBack sanctions however does not help their casez

I think some folks are overlooking the fact that the public is getting increasingly sick and tired of the U.S. getting involved in so many wars since, well our inception as a country. The moralizing angle does not work for a public staring down the barrel of increased cost of living while the admin keeps going around bombing people and hawking the increasingly absurd propaganda to justify it.

We come off a two decade venture in the ME that was waged for very dubious objectives, costed us a ton of money, was used to justify the passage of increasingly invasive domestic surveillance policies wrt the Patriot act, and really did not actually improve the wellbeing of the average American just to get immersed in more wars.

Now I can at least give a pardon for Ukraine, but Iâ(TM)m laughing at the notion that we are waging a war with Iran for what totally is not on behalf of a certain little country looking to off a regional rival while we in return get to consolidate control over a major naval trade route for energy and chemical products. Why should Americans care about what an authoritarian regime does to its own people given we have supported our share of bloodthirsty regimes wrt to the Saudis, Israelis, and the rest of the GCC, or our history in LatAM.

So yeah, I get it. There is no honor in serving an army where the leadership is full of deranged crooks who would have no qualms tossing you aside when you have outlived your usefulness for whatever questionable geopolitical scheme they are trying to accomplish. Back then they could justify it by making the public richer but so far it seems like the spoils of war go to a handful of interests while we bear more of the cost at home.

Because like I said, Tesla is pivoting towards vanity projects instead of focusing on its core business. They had a good idea with the S3XY models for addressing the needs of the median car owner but now Musk wants the company to do a million other things that frankly, will just be burning money for questionable gain while their market share continues to either stagnate or outright decline as competition keeps growing and innovating.

So as a former Tesla shareholder this is hardly a position of jealousy and more a question of priorities. Making niche luxury products is one thing but that alone hardly constitutes the stock price.

Whoever upvoted this as insightful rather then funny sure has a sense of humor.

It makes more sense as investor bait then something that would actually be allowed on the streets. Distract people from the underlying issues of the company and woo them with tech demos.

Honestly this stunt really sums up Tesla today. Spending time and money on investor bait while the core business is flailing around confused and headless especially in light of the disappointing sales of the CT, which no doubt ate up a ton of money and RnD for the company.

But hey, jumping cars amirite.

Appreciate the balanced take. The social media sphere is going wild with the usual doomerism and AI boasters proudly declaring human mathematics over.

Mathematicians are already using AI models for math to decent effect, so I think we can see more interesting developments in the field. But it is clear that despite what the boasters say, humans are still needed in the field.

A better question is how you actually make money off of game development.
With decompiling easier than ever, people can just make forms of your game and then sell it as their own. Copyright or no, there is going to be a huge tidal wave of games competing for our limited time and money.
Personally I think we are heading for an absolute dopamine destruction where people are so swarmed with choice they cannot actually play games without feeling distracted by something else. Even today the majority of gamers do not actually finish their games, so I imagine that will only get worse.

Probably the more pressing issue is how social media effectively killed the old web by writ of monopolizing internet traffic.

Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc. have been gradually consolidating their influence in digital media through a combination of pervasive algorithms, aggressive telemetry practices, and just a complete disregard for privacy or security for the average user. Surfing the web is effectively dead since the majority of users just browse the same handful of sites on a daily basis. The whole rumor spreading is a consequence of having let them control so much web traffic that they can actually exercise an unprecedented amount of informational control. The Arab Spring was a taste of what was to come for the whole world, not just the ME.

Now they are spreading botnets and AI garbage everywhere, further pollution the web.

You do know that AI detection tools are notoriously unreliable right?

Again, you are not addressing my point about current AI harms being unaddressed by these researchers and instead fixating on hypothetical Terminator scenarios. These existential risks are so far removed from not just the public consciousness but also from actual scientific rigor that it comes across as tone deaf at best, and delusional at worst. Climate change is science. Terminator is not.

If we want to talk about climate change, sure but these are not the risks these researchers are usually discussing.

Funny to bring up climate change given data centers here in the USA are drawing upon fossils fuels for energy.

In any case, climate change is way more real of an existential risk than AI going Skynet. We have had way more data on that matter stretching decades compared to AI risks, of which largely only have a handful of supposed incidents of which seem very suspect in details.

Now if we talk about AI risks in the context of creating a surveillance state, causing accidents due to hallucinations, and empowering scams sure there is room for discussion there. Strangely, these issues are not addressed by any of these alarmists. At most they give a cursory nod towards economic disruptions such as job loss, which will likely prompt government action, or so I hope. But still not Skynet levels of existential threat.

The existential risks are so frankly out of the purview of the public that it comes across as almost offensive for a general public scrounging to make ends meet on a daily basis.

Why should people care about hypothetical Skynet scenarios when right at this moment they are seeing rises in cost of living and deteriorating public and private services? Why can these companies not align their superhuman AIs to help deal with these issues? Solving math problems and generating piano medleys may be interesting from a technical and scientific perspective, but people are more concerned about whether they still have a job tomorrow. The only risks they are seeing is their power bill skyrocketing.

Address the immediate needs of the public and maybe they will take these existential risks more. We already went through a Cold War where nukes were being pointed every which way and most people just went about their lives without caring about it. Because they had more pressing matters to attend to like affording groceries.