I can understand this position and have always admired Kasparov's principled ideology, but I think this is too narrow of a look. More things could've been done to peacefully attempt to oust Maduro with the cooperation of other countries.
I am perpetrating the exact wrong the parent poster referenced but: this is why liberalism is such a good principle and political position. It's almost a meta-position, and it provides clarity in circumstances like these.
> requires stronger justification, like active, extreme mass killing.
… which actually did happen under Maduro, btw.
> Protests following the announcement of the results of the presidential election in July were violently repressed with excessive use of force and possible extrajudicial executions. Thousands of arbitrary arrests were carried out against political opponents, human rights defenders and journalists; hundreds of children were among those detained. Detainees including women and children were allegedly tortured. Detention conditions continued to deteriorate. Impunity prevailed for human rights violations.[1]
Is your argument that his dictatorship wasn’t repressive or bloody enough to warrant that? I don’t think that argument has legs - I think it is reasonable for him to be ousted based on the repressive regime argument. Yes, there are bloodier regimes around the world, but that’s like a speeder complaining to a police officer, “why did you stop me? I was only doing 80, the guy in front of me must’ve been doing 90!”
To me, the strongest argument against overthrowing Maduro is geopolitical destabilization and the general, “don’t mess with other countries because it erodes the norms that keep peace around the world.”
I am unsure. It's certainly very good that he's gone. I don't know if it meets the threshold. There being bloodier regimes is I actually think a reasonable counter-argument: should we topple all them, too?
If polls show over 95% of Venezuelans are happy with this outcome after three months, I may shift my position a bit. In general though, I think it's a bad precedent for the world superpower to bomb countries and abduct rules because the ruler is bad. Plus, Trump's motives here are not remotely pure.
Now it’s not clear who is running the country. Maduro’s administration is saying they’re still in charge via their VP, but the opposition has said they are “prepared to assume power,” wherever that may mean.
I fear that there could be so much suffering as a result of this. Power vacuums and forced regime changes don’t seem to go well.
This reminds me a little of when the US toppled Saddam Hussein in Iraq - initially there was celebration, which soon gave way to, “oh shit… now what?”
I think his removal has a lot more to do with his willingness to cooperate with the “bad guys“ in the Middle East. I think this also has a lot to do with why we suddenly care about Somali fraud rings that have been operating since the 1990s. The stage is getting set for another regime change in the Middle East. It’s pretty amazing what you can buy with a $250 million campaign donation.
Are asylum cases from Venezuela legitimate or not? One cannot support asylum claims while simultaneously believing Maduro didn't deserve to be arrested.
I absolutely believe that asylum claims from Venezuela are completely legitimate and that Maduro completely deserved to be arrested. I am just saying under international law and norms, the United States government did not have the legal or moral right to go in and abduct him to arrest him. And also, I am not necessarily sure if he deserved to be arrested to be charged with the odd charges the United States is saying they'll charge him with (drug-related offenses) as opposed to all the things related to human rights violations and being a despot. And double-also, Trump's motives here are almost entirely ulterior and impure, as opposed to a moral desire to bring a horrible dictator to justice and free a nation from his clutches.
On one hand this is true. On the other hand it does seem possible, in theory, that through enough post-training and other measures they could become a bit closer to human minds and not just be token guessers.
The human brain may at its fundamental level operate on the principles of predictive processing (https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/05/book-review-surfing-un...). It might be that it has many layers surrounding that raw predictive core which develop us into epistemological beings. The LLMs we see today may be in the very early stages of a similar sort of (artificial) evolution.
The reflexiveness with which even top models like Opus 4.5 will sometimes seamlessly confabulate things definitely does make it seem like it is a very deep problem, but I don't think it's necessarily unsolvable. I used to be among the vast majority of people who thought LLMs were not sufficient to get us to AGI/ASI, but I'm increasingly starting to feel that piling enough hacks atop LLMs might really be what gets there before anything else.
It worked out well for Europe because the country that took over its position of leadership position post-WW2 (USA) was aligned with it in all ways (politically, culturally, scientifically, economically), and so (western) European countries could still enjoy all the benefits. It will not be the case this time around, because the next generation of innovation and leadership is going to come from China.
I think that is the most likely outcome. However, if the decline starts occurring too rapidly, I do think violent far-right (and perhaps far-left) paramilitary action could become a major problem, like in 1920s/1930s Germany. Tons of time spent lurking in far-right extremist communities out of morbid curiosity, and the spread of far-right ethnosupremacist sentiment on basically every social media platform, has me concerned.
Yes, nearly all of them absolutely are. (I have talked to many of them and they really truly are.) That fact does genuinely assuage my concerns. Still, I do wonder if a future charismatic far-right politician who does not come across as a loser could do far better than previous generations ever could have predicted. The worst possible person at the worst possible time.
> England “gave up” scientific and technological leadership during the 20th century. (That’s a tongue-in-cheek take on it, don’t read too much into it.)
Was forced to give up, due to the economic devastation of WWII, might be more accurate (though of course there were other factors too).
Quite something to imagine 60 years from now history books (or thought-o-grams) may be written on Gamergate and a microblogging application and a reality TV host ushering in the chain of events that upended the biggest global power.
> I am an American and didn’t vote for this bullsh*t.
Isn't the whole principle about democracy and freedom that you all stick together no matter what political party/parties is in power? If you're just throwing your hands up in the air because your party isn't the one in control, what kind of democracy is that? The whole point is working together with opponents for common goals.
Otherwise, may I interest you in an insurrection? Pretty hot and trendy these times.
Is that hyperbole or do you have actual violent threats against you at this very moment? I'm not the US, so can't really tell what's going on on the ground, but compared to other situations (namely middle-east some years ago) where people are being told "Do this or you'll end up in that grave over there", is this what is happening in the US today?
So interesting how you omit democratic representative Hortman and democratic senator Hoffman from your list, and also fail to mention that all shooters (except the last one -- affiliation unknown) were right wing.
To be fair, it was pretty much the entire western world fucking around before. Brexit was the first shock but I don't think the world learned many lessons from that. However a lot of western nations are taking the US as a cautionary tale and will learn from US mistakes. So 2nd place might be lucky at this point (assuming we're comparing large trading blocs rather than just countries).
I think it's very likely counterfactually better than USSR (now Russian) or Chinese hegemony. Imagine if Al Gore had won 2000 - America at the helm while growing increasingly wary of violent foreign interventions seems like the least bad path for Earth. (I am not sure if such a path still remains.)
China ultra-liberalizing and becoming a democracy and then the hegemon could be an okay path but I am not too optimistic about the prospects of those first parts.
> I think it's very likely counterfactually better than USSR (now Russian) or Chinese hegemony.
Why is it either or the other? Just because the US happens to turn inwards and stop acting like the world police, doesn't mean that other countries suddenly start dreaming of world domination. China and Russian both have plenty of problems in their home fronts and surrounding areas.
> China and Russian both have plenty of problems in their home fronts and surrounding areas.
Do you know how Russia got so large? They started out small.
They solve such problems by doing the one thing they have always done: expanding. Successful conquest temporarily mitigates internal problems, injustices and inefficiencies.
> Do you know how Russia got so large? They started out small.
Do you know how literally any country got the size it is today? They started out small. Some of them are still small today, but they might be larger tomorrow. Some of them will be smaller tomorrow. This is how the world has function and continues to function. Not sure how this could be surprising to anyone out there, even less how you think someone wouldn't understand this very basic fact about countries.
If you are trying to make a counterpoint, try again, hopefully with an actual argument.
And maybe, maybe, you take into account that the size of Russia and its expansionism are on a whole other level and still ongoing, and that other countries are not like that at all, not even remotely.
How is that different from how US acted after 1776? Or China during Qin dynasty?
Yes, today Russia is trying to expand, which they've done before, like most countries in the world. Not sure what makes them special in that regard.
Did any country start out large? Since your main point seems to have been that Russia started out small, in contrast to some other country you're trying to reference that apparently started out large, but I'm not sure which one you're trying to reference here.
> Yes, today Russia is trying to expand, which they've done before, like most countries in the world. Not sure what makes them special in that regard
Sure. Correct. Wishing for the failure of the Pax Americana is cheering on the return of wars of conquest. First and foremost by the great powers.
Russia isn't special. It was–like every other ordinary country–previously restrained. Dissolving the rules that restrained it also dissolves the rules that restrained every other current and aspiring global or regional power.
> Sure. Correct. Wishing for the failure of the Pax Americana is cheering on the return of wars of conquest. First and foremost by the great powers.
So because someone doesn't want the US as a world police, means they want some other country as world police? Can't people just wish/want no one to be world police?
I never understood the lack of nuance in American politics and in lots of conversations with Americans. Just because you don't like A, doesn't mean you suddenly love B, no matter how much you see them as direct antonyms or whatever, what's up with trying to argue in this way? What conversation and discussions are improved by this sort of behavior? What is your goal with doing that, some sort of gotcha?
> Can't people just wish/want no one to be world police?
Yes. This is what happens. Which means various powers fight to establish spheres of influence, regionally and globally.
> Just because you don't like A, doesn't mean you suddenly love B
No. You can hate both. But sometimes, rejecting A implicitly means causing B. In this case, rejecting a world police means–ceteris paribus–incentivizing realpolitik.
(It doesn't mean the only options are America as world cop or anarchy. But rejecting the former without anything to fall back on is embracing the latter.)
> What is your goal with doing that, some sort of gotcha?
Describing reality around power vacuums. Releasing Pax Americana creates a power vacuum everywhere at the same time. (It also releases America from its rules-based obligations, though these pretty much became guidelines after each of the Iraq War, annexation of Crimea and China being China in Tibet and the South China Sea.)
> No. You can hate both. But sometimes, rejecting A implicitly means causing B. In this case, rejecting a world police means–ceteris paribus–incentivizing realpolitik.
Yeah, I think this is the core of our disagreement. Maybe my view of the world isn't US-centric enough, but I don't believe rejecting the US's Pax Americana somehow means I'm implicitly causing China or Russia to suddenly want their own version of Pax Americana played out. But I do know this is a really common view in the US, so I won't really attempt to convince you otherwise, I think it's at this point we just agree to disagree.
> I don't believe rejecting the US's Pax Americana somehow means I'm implicitly causing China or Russia to suddenly want their own version of Pax Americana played out
They don’t. The Pax is expensive to maintain. They want their spheres of influence. Same as America’s elites. Same as India’s, Iran’s, Israel’s, Turkey’s, et cetera.
There is no indication Russia or China want to be world cops. But they—and many others, including America—do want to dominate their neighbours in ways that are restricted by the rules-based international order.
> I don't believe rejecting the US's Pax Americana somehow means I'm implicitly causing
Unless you’re voting in a small handful of European countries, you probably aren’t causing or restraining much in this theatre. (I’m in a single-party state in America. I’m not influencing this through my vote either.)
It seems likely that at least for a few more centuries, humanity and Earth are going to play the typical geopolitical games they've played during the past centuries.
China and Russia are consistently led by ruthless people who like power. Plus, even if China does only just conquer Taiwan and then leaves everyone else alone as the hegemon, there's still the matter of them oppressing ~20% of the humans on the planet (their own people). Even if it's the sort of oppression that you don't necessarily ever notice so long as you always stay in line.
China is the alternative. How many countries has China waged war against, toppled democratic governments, established puppet março-states and invaded since 1949?
There are literally thousands of years of sino-korean wars, so its hard to pin that blame on a specific government. Tibet is a more straightforward case of imperial expansionism from China, although it is also a centuries-old one, dating from Qing dynasty (1700s). The border skirmishes with India stem from mutual dissatisfaction with old British imperial border lines, which both governments disagree with.
Now compare that with the USA list. China's list is, to say the least, much more lightweight, straightforward and understandable. I'd go with that list any day, and most of the world would too.
It could be the case that they become the hegemon and don't ever conquer anyone besides Taiwan and it still sucks due to how they treat ~20% of the Earth's population (their own citizens).
A liberal, democratic China becoming the hegemon is very possibly better than the status quo (especially under Trump and with the surge of far-right mainstreaming in the US), but China as it is now cannot be trusted to be a good steward of a hypothetical Pax Sinica, just as Trumpist America cannot be trusted.
The greatest timeline for Europe in its history? Post WW2 to now.
The greatest timeline for Latin America overall? Post WW2 to now.
The greatest timeline for Oceania overall? Post WW2 to now.
The greatest timeline for India? Post WW2 to now.
The greatest timeline for the rest of Asia overall? Post WW2 to now.
Coming up on 80 years. Here's a short list, please tell me which prior ~80 year period in history these nations had it better overall for their people.
Britain, Ireland, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Romania, Poland, Switzerland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, Belgium, Norway, Finland, Iceland, Greece, Slovakia, Austria, Slovenia, Hungary, Croatia, Bulgaria. Russia, Turkey, Kazakhstan. Australia, New Zealand, Canada. China, Japan, Indonesia, India, Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand. Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Peru, Chile, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Panama. Israel, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain.
Just most of the world population in that little list.
Even Russia - the people of Russia have far higher standards of living at the median today than they have at any other point in their history. It's not even remotely close.
'But but but the world isn't perfect.' No kidding.
You have a gigantic confounder of general progress, much of it technological.
Just recently I made a post here in some thread to point out that even wein backwards East Germany made huge gains - my grandfather, born early 20th century, lived much, much better even by the end of the GDR compared to when he was born in the Weimar Republic.
Especially food became a non-issue in the modern world, productivity increases were gigantic. The Haber-Bosch process, very important at the start of that development, was not a US invention, nor contingent on anything US related.
It would be hard to disentangle US influence, but one can assume even if the US had not become so dominant, much of those developments would still have taken place, lifting up much of the entire world.
Right, because counterfactuals aren’t provable. It doesn’t seem to stop people from confidently stating that American hegemony was worse than the alternatives.
We know it worked well, that the entire world seems to be better off now than before ww2.
We know that west Germany did far better than east Germany. We know Japan did far better than the Asian states under the USSR’s influence. We know that things went pretty damned well overall for the whole NATOsphere after ww2.
We know WW3 didn’t happen.
We don’t know how it would have gone if it were another country “in charge” or how it would have gone if nobody was “in charge” to the degree the US was.
So just saying “Pax Americana was a pox on the world” is such an utterly asinine statement I don’t even know how to begin to address it, other than to file it under “trolls gonna troll.”
Correlation is not causation. At the same time, the industrial and technological revolutions happened, which are the main drivers of the "greatest timeline".
It's popular to hate the US but I'd like to know what country you think would be better at the role of global hegemon. What country would you suggest would do a better job? Be specific.
> The concept that living in a hegemony is acceptable is incoherent
Wishing upon a star that humans were better is not a solution.
Revoking the Pax Americana frees America to pursue more wars of conquest. Not fewer. It's a revocation of the rules-based international order that America (and the former Soviet Union) put in place following WWII.
It similarly frees every other wannabe global and regional hegemony to assert their spheres of influence.
I'm American. Why would the largest military on the planet not be ready for rule by might? Revoking Pax Americana (and the rules-based international order it was built on, aspirational as it may have often been) just means our elites can go back to 19th-century rules.
> where small groups of well armed people can compete with state on a more equal footing
Yes. This is happening in Sudan, the DRC, Burma, Yemen, Nicaragua, et cetera. It entertains some people from afar, but is generally a miserable state of affairs for the people on the ground.
> I'm American. Why would the largest military on the planet not be ready for rule by might?
Two years ago, I would have agreed.
Today? Given what Trump is doing? Kicking out military personal for being trans, his poor choice for (not only but in this topic specifically) Defence Secretary, his demand to redesign stealth warships because he won't accept the un-"aesthetic" look is driven by functional requirements, demanding a return of battleships this time with a railgun (to go with the lasers)?
I think there's a very real risk of the USA military rapidly following the same path as post-soviet Russian military.
Well, I say "risk": I'm European, so for me it's a good thing if the person who is trying to break up my home is more interested in flashy demos than functional weapons.
> there's a very real risk of the USA military rapidly following the same path as post-soviet Russian military
Totally agree. That said, Russia's military is a joke. It's still more than capable of making messes. Messes which were once constrained by the rules-based international order.
The greatest era of prosperity expansion and peace in world history courtesy of pax Americana. The best decades - measurably - for humanity overall have taken place since the US assumed that role post WW2.
Depends on where you were during those decades. If you're in one of the unlucky countries that didn't do what the US wanted you likely suffered enormously.
Part of it is ideas and ideals. America represents ideas of liberty, liberalism, democracy, and individualism. The USSR/Russia and China represent the exact opposite.
America has failed to live up to those ideals (slavery, plunder, toppling democratically elected leaders to install military dictatorships, unnecessary wars with mass civilian casualties) on multiple occasions, but if you at least look at things on paper, America is selling a better product. And with the (now gutted) aid we provided to the world, and the economic boons of American consumer demand helping to speed up industrialization of poorer countries, benefits weren't just lofty principles.
One nice thing about American ideals is that, domestically, Americans who respect them can fight for them and fight for their preservation and expansion. There exists a noble thing to fight for which can in fact be fought for, and that thing encompasses the principle of not ever permitting people in other countries to suffer so that the United States may gain. Good luck doing any of that in Russia or China in 2025, and likely also in 2050.
“ Part of it is ideas and ideals. America represents ideas of liberty, liberalism, democracy, and individualism. The USSR/Russia and China represent the exact opposite.”
This is just pure John Birch society propaganda and at no point has the US actually ever attempted in any real way to realize this
This just seems pretty wrong. Obviously there were also lots of bad things the Americans did, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t attempting to realize those ideals. The US was quite influential in ending colonialism by Britain and France across much of the world after WWII for example. The US also helped to set up west Germany and Japan as liberal democracies after the war (they certainly weren’t before or during it, and Britain and France were not so fond of helping Germany recover), as well as helping German reunification (again opposed by France and Britain) and post-Soviet states with their recovery (sure, in all these cases the thing that was good for realizing these values was also good in the long run for the US (especially its Cold War political goals) and the affected countries but I don’t think that’s a very good argument that the US doesn’t care about these values).
I think there’s a lot of nuance here, and you have not expressed nuanced or detailed opinions in this thread, so I’m a bit curious about what your actual claims are, but I’m also not particularly interested in debating them.
> The US was quite influential in ending colonialism by Britain and France across much of the world after WWII for example.
The colonized people were a lot more influential there, though the US did exert some force in that direction (as well as plenty in the other direction) depending on its perception of the value of the particular colonial arrangement on its own geopolitical interests.
America has often stomped on the ideas it claims to fight for but to say it has never attempted to realize it is very silly and itself just reflexive anti-America propaganda. Look at FDR's words and actions during and after WWII, look at Eisenhower, look at Carter, look at JFK, imagine a future trajectory where Al Gore won that election.
America has sometimes done the exact opposite of helping other countries become healthy democracies - but they also very obviously have sometimes in fact helped other countries become healthy democracies. America's staunch pro-liberty pro-democracy stance is a big part of why the immediate aftermath of WWII led to Europe becoming a mostly democratic, stable quasi-union.
I am saying it's a gray area but that at least on paper America says nice words. You're just saying it's all bad.
Anything the US does that is beneficial is 1. Incidental to th goal 2. Will eventually benefit them US interest if only because it’s used as further propaganda
That's not true. I just point out obvious bullshit lies about china and others that I've heard over and over again. It's not my fault that people like you spout the same bullshit over and over again and mostly about china.
Ever since some non-native-English-speaking people within my company started using LLMs, I've found it much easier to interact and communicate with them in Jira tickets. The LLM conveys what they intend to say more clearly and comprehensively. It's obviously an LLM that's writing but I'm overall more productive and satisfied by talking to the LLM.
If it's fiction writing or otherwise an attempt at somewhat artful prose, having an LLM write for you isn't cool (both due to stolen valor and the lame, trite style all current LLMs output), but for relatively low-stakes white collar job tasks I think it's often fine or even an upgrade. Definitely not always, and even when it's "fine" the slopstyle can be grating, but overall it's not that bad. As the LLMs get smarter it'll be less and less of an issue.
I will admit to being an LLM workslopper. I don't ever send anything written by an LLM (because anyone who's seen enough LLM writing will recognize it's an LLM) without rewriting it by hand first - with exceptions for parts of READMEs - but for any other task it's pretty much 100% LLM.
I look at the output and ask it to re-re-verify its results, but at the end of the day the LLM is doing the work and I am handing that off to others.
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