I do not really like applying the "if we did it, they will too when they can!" logic to other government's.
China has flaws, plenty of them, but there's no real evidence to believe their motivations or mechanisms of pursuing motivations are that similar to that of the United States.
Are we assuming that any country that achieves the AI supremacy will be benevolent? Every country has its own goals, and they're not always aligned with what's best for the humanity.
It's always adorable the way those who have decided that since the US government is their "enemy" due to ideological disputes (Obvi more common than ever these days), that the most "Anti-American" foreign governments such as Iran, China, Russia[1], Venezuela, etc. are to be outright rooted for.
If Xi Jinping had a button that when pressed, would throw the US into a bloody yearslong civil war, killing tens of millions, he wouldn't hesitate to press it as long as it significantly advanced Chinese economic and strategic interests.
In the set of all governments worldwide, the most anti-American ones are actually the least shy about how highly they value their own national interests over foreigners' (such as our) wellbeing.
[1] I know, that type of American partisan still isn't sure where to place Russia, since they obviously do hate America which is 'good', but also maybe tried to aid Trump which is bad.
I have little artistic ability myself, but I am continuously in awe of what artists create. It makes me hope for the optimistic outlook of AI where UBI frees people to pursue creative and intellectual pursuits, rather than constantly trying to push a stock price uphill.
This is great unless you live in an area of almost absolute geographic and social homogeny in a 100 mile / 160 km radius. "Yo friends, want to drive an hour and see if the fast food in a strip mall is the same as our fast food in a strip mall" just doesn't quite land or "Want to drive 45 minutes and walk in a park that was built in the early aughts and lacks proper shade and had all it's benches removed just like ours?"
Yeah, not everybody lives in Switzerland or the San Francisco Bay Area.
I've been in many a road trip up, down, and across the Great Plains of the US, where I spend a full day driving only to arrive in a town and geography that looks the exact same as the one I woke up in that morning. Only the signs are different.
I love driving around the Midwest and in the plains in the States. If you get away from the large 4 lane highways, there's all kinds of stuff.
I found a strawberry festival and ate enough strawberry things to make myself sick. I found an artists commune and stayed with those weird old hippies for two days..I found a diner with a waitress who was in her 90's and had worked the same job for like 70 years.
We happily spend our vacations just driving around in the middle of the country with no plan.
I lived in Texas for ~20 years and am well-versed in the plains+midwest, I just don't agree here. If all you do is drive through highways in these states, yes those are truck stops. However I'm fully confident in saying everywhere has the places the author is talking about. Like he said, it's about creativity.
OP living in Switzerland is a comically poor messenger for this though. I follow a few accounts on Instagram of people that are good messengers in relatively boring places. A Japanese lady that lives in Texas and always has the nicest things to say about things I wouldn't usually even notice. And another lady from the Midwest that used to travel globally but cannot anymore because of her family and yet still seemingly enjoys her local sights.
I randomly picked Jamestown ND as an overnight stop on a recent trip. The next morning we went into the downtown and were pleasantly surprised. Even found a Seattle themed coffee shop with gluten-free options for my travel companion.
That can be true, but I think even in such areas there can often be something interesting if you have an openness to a certain kind of modern "anti-beauty". I mean stuff like liminal spaces, places that are interesting because they're so uninteresting, etc. Each random shopping mall can be banal and anodyne in its own unique way, each gas station at each dusty crossroads has its own individual whiling away the hours behind the counter.
Would you mind sharing the general region where you are? Based on your criticisms it sounds like the US, but my experience is quite different. I have only lived on the West coast though, and we're quite spoiled with amazing natural beauty around every corner here. I had a great time road tripping around small towns in the northeast around Vermont and Maine though.
The Midwest in particular is extremely homogeneous and flat, mostly plains and farmland for hundreds of miles. The West cost has more in 15 miles than the Midwest has in 100, on average. There are pockets here and there, but not enough to warrant the several hour drive it will take to get there.
Honestly, most of the US is like this. It's huge and very, very sparse.
"extremely homogenous and flat" is a common sentiment, but.. it's just not true.
Flat for example. The southern portion of the Midwest can be quite hilly (the northern portion not as much, due to glaciers).
But even there, the definition of "flat" gets confused with "not mountainous". If the topography varies a lot, but there aren't mountains, is it flat? (Max/min vs variance)
The driftless area certainly has some truly beautiful parts, but my statement is less about the homogeneity across the entire region and more about the distance between any notable landmarks. Hills alone aren't really that interesting either and I stand by my statement that most of the Midwest is boring and flat.
I've hiked in the mountains and I've swam in the ocean, and I'm perfectly content to live amongst the hills and streams of the Midwest. I suppose it's relative. I live on the east end of the state, and I find the west end pretty flat and boring. :)
Yeah that makes sense, that's too bad. The coasts are the most interesting places for local travel, but the elites living there don't seem to have the time of day for it. More for me I guess.
I bet there is a river somewhere near you. Explored all of it? What about a hill? Is there a road you've never driven down? It might have some stuff down it you've not seen before. Have you explored all the flora and fauna around you? Obviously you need to stay off private land, but I would be amazed if there is absolutely zero variation in any topology, geology, animal/plant life, or other factor within a 100 mile radius of you.
If that is the case, can you tell us where that is? I want to visit exactly once and never go there again. It sounds both magical and terrifying in one instance, and reminds me of a friend who drove down Route 66 and found the expansive empty plains "the most claustrophobic thing I've ever experienced in my life".
I live in Texas, which is probably very similar to where you’re thinking of, and I could list off at least 10 different places within a 1 hour radius that should be visited.
I grew up in Michigan farm country and have lived in the desert SW and Pacific NW as an adult.
The outdoor attractions out west are world class compared to the attractions closer to where I grew up. Still, there are plenty of places I enjoy when I get back to Michigan to see family and friends. Even the Plains states have some great outdoorsy places, you might have to work a little harder to find them.
Yep. My partner came with me to visit family in the midwest. It's flat and everything is spaced out and there are no sidewalks because no one walks because you have to drive to get anywhere. The best park is a little wooded area that you can loop in 15m. If you haven't lived is a place like that, it's probably difficult to imagine how much nothing is going on.
If you’re an American, I highly, highly recommend the book American Ramble by Neil King, Jr. The one-sentence summary is “a guy walks from Washington to New York” but he connects with history (and the present) at a walking pace along the way, experiencing much more than the typical Washington->NYC traveler.
You are generally correct, despite the rebuttals in the reply comments to yours.
But I think the challenge here is that we can have great places if we do the following:
1. Focus on transportation and ways of living that focus on walking or taking a tram.
2. Create and support medium-density, mixed-use neighborhoods
3. Require good, sound architectural principles. When you think of Paris and those narrow streets or the apartment complexes in the best neighborhoods, we need those. None of this modernist bullshit or 5-over-1s made with recycled concrete. Use bricks, stone, and more. Incorporate design elements requiring skilled craftsmen, and pay for it.
Those 3 alone should get you most of the way there.
My final comment would be, when you're thinking about spending $5,000 - $10,000 or whatever on a big international trip to go look at some nice stuff in some other country, consider spending that money instead on your own home, or garden, or donate to organizations that maintain those things for you. It also doesn't have to be all or none, you can still travel, and still invest locally. Make where you live the kind of place you would have wanted to travel to. Gardens in Great Britain, for example, can happen where you live too you just need to spend the money and build and maintain those things... like they do.
The transit and transportation stuff is much more difficult to fix. Most Americans want a Jeep and suburban house and to wait in line and beep their horn at the Costco gas station and that's a tough hill to climb, but the 3 items I highlighted above are guaranteed to increase quality of life and lower costs long-term.
I'd love to do all 3, and actively push my city council to prioritize rezoning for mixed use + medium density.. and eliminating parking minimums. I previously lived in NYC and it was true like the author said; I could have boundless weekend trips to a variety of places with Amtrak + Bus service.
I do as well here where I live. The one battle I will unfortunately always lose because of upfront cost and because people stopped caring about Western civilization is the quality architecture battle. I get it we should build build build, but I do wish we could build build build lasting, high-quality, architecturally sound buildings which would raise property values and lived experience wherever implemented.
What you're describing is really why the Backrooms is resonating with the kids today - the homogeneity of an environment and culture devoured by capitalism.
And yet, while on HN we're critical readers and can still see through it, there's many places on the internet where it just wouldn't stand out. I try to avoid them, but they would just blend in to e.g. youtube comments.
Unless the YT comments I've read have been bots since forever.
I once saw the bad side of one of these draconian state laws many years ago. People rarely have the misfortune of hitting these laws in some flyover states... and I remember the local judge being really shocked by the mandated penalties for such a simple offense.
idk I just like running 6/8 terminal panes and organizing my workflows / projects in an exact space. I even tweaked my theme. and seeing them all on my side portrait monitor.
The biggest problem is the author didn't even bother to verify it. I've seen big multi-model ralph wiggum or whatevers do a conversion. Run for 6 hours. Upon manual inspection to understand how it handled some tricky calculations / logic I find stubs and hard coded truthy returns. So even if you ran a smoke test suite against it -- you'd think it successful...
Or capital a comparable sum to pay an AI to approximate the skills of humans I guess is the proposed future?
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