I suspect you may have misunderstood the difference between active service and combat ready. Noting statements like "BUT, and big but, note the active in service numbers. Roughly 1/2 the US fleet is in repair." and the 1033/1005 vs 553/233 comparisons. A ship will normally remain in active service while undergoing maintenance unable to fight or away on training missions. For those interested in trivia last I heard the USS Pueblo currently serving as a floating museum operated by the North Koreans is still listed in active service.

It is normal expected state of affairs to have only a third of your fleet combat ready at any given time. This isn't unique to the west and China is no exception. You can compare force strength all you want and draw any conclusions you want from it. Having 30% or more of your fleet under maintenance is the normal state of affairs globally.

I've personally seen the video of the Bluetti sodium power station going up in flames before the video was taken down from YouTube. The batteries of power station were intentionally punctured by gunfire .. Initially nothing happened... a while later there was some smoke, deformation of case and venting then noticeable flame... it proceeded to go up in a gnarly firework / flamethrower show shortly after that.

All of your points are wrong. The cost of the sodium is as relevant as the cost of the lithium in an LFP battery. Lithium makes up less than 10% of overall cost of an LFP battery which is less than years of progress on cost curve. Even if lithium were free it would not have a meaningful impact on cost. Sodium is less efficient and suffers from massive voltage swings that have to be made up with either higher string voltages or higher material cost of power electronics to handle 2x current loads to produce the same power at SOCs below 50%.

Sodium batteries have a charge cycle life comparable to LFP. The 100x assertion is completely bonkers with no nexus to reality.

Sodium has a similar safety profile as LFP which in both cases is way better than li-poly cells. They can indeed still ignite I've seen a video of a sodium power station igniting and going up in quite the flame / fireworks show as a result of puncture damage.

Back on planet earth...

"Serious human rights violations have been committed in XUAR in the context of the Government's application of counter-terrorism and counter-"extremism" strategies. The implementation of these strategies, and associated policies in XUAR has led to interlocking patterns of severe and undue restrictions on a wide range of human rights. These patterns of restrictions are characterized by a discriminatory component, as the underlying acts often directly or indirectly affect Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim communities."

"The treatment of persons held in the system of so-called VETC facilities is of equal concern. Allegations of patterns of torture or ill-treatment, including forced medical treatment and adverse conditions of detention, are credible, as are allegations of individual incidents of sexual and gender-based violence. While the available information at this stage does not allow OHCHR to draw firm conclusions regarding the exact extent of such abuses, it is clear that the highly securitised and discriminatory nature of the VETC facilities, coupled with limited access to effective remedies or oversight by the authorities, provide fertile ground for such violations to take place on a broad scale."

https://www.ohchr.org/sites/de...

The last time I looked at polling conducted in peace time less than 8% favor reunification and the overwhelming majority is strongly against it. Once attacked the numbers will only grow worse for China. This surrender narrative is a fever dream.

This is nonsense. Nobody cares about pointless political rhetoric.

The Taiwaneese have no reason to lose a war of necessity against a Chinese war of choice. China will get its ass handed to it if it ever tries with vast majorities of its forces being wrecked long before ever reaching Taiwan. Whatever does make it thru shouldn't expect to ever be resupplied.

Welcome to the real world...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

This seems rather fanciful. Taiwan economically is doing great with per-capita economic conditions way better than China. Less than 8% of Taiwanese support unification and blockades are acts of war. Chinese warships conducting them would be sitting ducks to say nothing of attempting to maintain communications lines across 80 miles of ocean.

I doubt Taiwan is counting on the US for anything except weapons procurement. It is obvious to the entire world Trump is an amoral asshat who never met an authoritarian dictator he didn't fall in love with.

All of these points are wrong.

What should we call it when one expects other people to entertain possibilities for which no affirmative evidence exists? Inductive inference is not religion.

You keep yelling physicalism at everyone even when it is made explicitly clear to you no such leaps are being made. The question I have is why? Could it be you are the one clinging to religion?

What you are basically saying is because it is impossible to rule out a magic bunny rabbit that installs the carrot of intelligence into special chosen beings other peoples unwillingness to waste their time considering the possibility of such a rabbit constitutes some sort of a religion.

This a false dichotomy.

I would bet you can't even define what reasoning is much less prove LLMs can't do it.

What I find particularly untenable is if a person were to emit the same words in order to arrive at a conclusion everyone would call it reasoning. Yet when a machine emits the same words for the same purpose it is defined by some as something else. I've heard some refer to this as an elaborate parlor trick. The phrase "not even wrong" comes to mind... what is being asserted seems to be merely begging the question not even in the realm of science to begin with.

The US, France and Iran itself all played a role in fucking up Iran circa '79 when the legal age of marriage went from 18 to 9.

While everyone can point to AI doing something trivially stupid this doesn't erase demonstrated capabilities. Cherry picking and or anthropomorphizing intelligence isn't all that useful in reasoning about actual system capabilities.

The apologizes mostly take the form of post training bludgeons models are made to say which leads to very jarring experiences for users with the sorry but not sorry. Attention schemes are also not perfect sometimes models gloss over important (to you) instructions as a person would a typo or misstatement.

I personally find it insane anyone would give an LLM access to anything much less production systems.

I don't accept your definition and I don't think this is most peoples understanding of what ASI means.

This is just playing with words.

Both are credible possibilities independent of political ideology or personal beliefs.

China has reflected a desire both rhetorically and in military efforts towards a goal of taking Taiwan.

Iran has stated it is actively seeking nukes, Iranians involved with JCPOA have subsequently made public statements of course they were going for a nuke. They have of course been building out all of the technical capabilities necessary to becomes a nuclear weapons state... material processing, delivery vehicles and tens of thousands of centrifuges in hardened underground facilities.

I think the point is a need to retain a suitable manufacturing industrial base to support military production.