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#31

Off the Record / Re: What does a TRUMP presiden...

Last post by DGuller - Today at 12:31:33 PM

I find the whole NATO spending/burden sharing discussion to be kind of pointless.  It's a big alliance.  Some members spend a lot on defense; some don't.  Poland and the Baltics spend a lot, because they are at immediate risk from the Big Bad Bear. Spain (as an example) doesn't spend a lot, because they face no immediate threat.  It doesn't make sense to blow up the whole alliance, just to spite Spain for not spending a lot on defense.  I suppose you could kick Spain out, but to what benefit?  As for the US, what exactly would the US be saving by withdrawing from NATO?  From a pure hard calculation of cost-benefit, it seems obvious that the US is better in than out.

That's not to say the US and other high spending members shouldn't go through the exercise of shaming low spenders.  Sure they should.  But keep perspective.

I do think that fairness and benefit are different concepts and should be discussed separately.  I don't think Yi's restaurant analogy is the most fitting one, I think a more fitting analogy is that of an outpost where someone has to keep sentry at all times.  Let's say some people in that outpost really don't feel like doing their sentry duty, because they figure others would do it.

What is the calculus for the non-freeloaders?  It's in their interest to pick up the slack, because they won't benefit from getting slaughtered in their beds.  That said, they're perfectly justified to feel resentful, because everyone avoids getting slaughtered, but they have to pull double duty so that others not getting slaughtered can spend more time getting drunk and playing poker.  Ultimately, the only way the conscientious ones can enforce fairness is to play a game of chicken, which they may not be willing to do.

#32

Off the Record / Re: TV/Movies Megathread

Last post by Sheilbh - Today at 12:14:34 PM

Enjoyed Death by Lightning a lot.

Weirdly I've read a book on Garfield on the assasination (Dark Horse - which I think I got because I read about the controversy over whether or not it was the assasination or the medical treatment that killed him). The show's a little on point but I suppose that's necessary with the "what if" implicit in a drama like this, but fun script, great cast who do very well.

In a really weird way it reminded me a little bit of The Favourite in that I think the Gilded Age is probably really important in thinking about America now but I suspect it's probably one of the least studied, known about eras in American history. Hugely contentious politics between groups like the Stalwarts and the Half-Breeds but that often focused on issues that, from a distance, seem really abstruse, plus lots of forgettable one term presidents etc - and figures like Roscoe Conkling, hugely important in his day but with very little real legacy. All of which apples to the 18th century in Britain in that it's the start of the party system and the creation of our system of government but no-one really knows anything about it because the fights are about very weird things (to our ears). They feel both long ago and very different in terms of what people car about, but also lacking the heroism of say the Civil War era or the Founding Fathers.

#33

Off the Record / Re: What does a TRUMP presiden...

Last post by crazy canuck - Today at 12:09:00 PM

I find the whole NATO spending/burden sharing discussion to be kind of pointless.  It's a big alliance.  Some members spend a lot on defense; some don't.  Poland and the Baltics spend a lot, because they are at immediate risk from the Big Bad Bear. Spain (as an example) doesn't spend a lot, because they face no immediate threat.  It doesn't make sense to blow up the whole alliance, just to spite Spain for not spending a lot on defense.  I suppose you could kick Spain out, but to what benefit?  As for the US, what exactly would the US be saving by withdrawing from NATO?  From a pure hard calculation of cost-benefit, it seems obvious that the US is better in than out.

That's not to say the US and other high spending members shouldn't go through the exercise of shaming low spenders.  Sure they should.  But keep perspective.

And that is the flaw in Yi's argument.  We either believe that there is a potential threat for NATO, or there isn't.  I don't think anyone disputes that for a long time, most NATO members neglected miltary readiness because there was no perceived threat (a calculus that changed dramatically in the last three years).  And we kept up military readiness because we had lots of other obligations/interests in/outside of NATO...even after the fall of the USSR.

If we really cared that much only about expenditures...we could have just as easily pull out of bases in Europe, and reduce the spending specifically oriented towards Europe, while still also saying "we are fully committed to NATO and Article 5". 

But nope, our current administration has to be stupid for no apparent gain.

Yes, and the more offensive flaw in his logic is the notion of freeloading. That is a derogatory term used to denote that nothing was given in return.  You called me out for swearing last time. But that is fucking offensive. Said with the greatest of respect on behalf of all members of the Canadian military who have died fighting in wars that were mainly started by or in the interests of the United States of America, with Remembrance Day coming up.

#34

Gaming HQ / Re: Europa Universalis V confi...

Last post by DGuller - Today at 12:06:06 PM

How much space you have on your C drive?

I have 300 GB free.

#35

Gaming HQ / Re: Europa Universalis V confi...

Last post by Valmy - Today at 12:05:53 PM

So as Lithuania my high maintenance BFF Poland wants some of my land. Probably fine. I have tons of worthless land. But nowhere can I find what land those kielbasa eating bastards want. I am completely at a loss. It's so frustrating.

So I took this to the Paradox forums. It was crazy to see my ancient account right there waiting for me.

Anyway nobody has an answer to this so I guess...you just have to put up with the diplomacy hit. The interface currently doesn't seem to tell you what land your neighbors want from you. I miss being able to see who considered my land a core in EU2.

Also as much fun as I am having the game still...progresses....so slowly. Like I doubt I will make it to 1500 in most of my games. That remains my biggest problem in post-EU2 Paradox games. I miss just being able to breeze along if not much is happening.

And give me a 1492 start please. Or even a 1454 one. As fun as all the chaos this 1337 start is, I doubt the Ottomans, and Muscovites are going to emerge consistently as great powers from their wimpy starts. Even Austria has a long hill to climb. While I don't know how things are going out in Xanadu, I have a feeling that the Ming are also not going to consistently overcome the Yuan. And the Mughals? LOL. Timur has yet to be born, much less become lame. It is just going to be a weird alt history world each time. Only France, Spain, and England are likely to consistently emerge as great powers.

#36

Gaming HQ / Re: Europa Universalis V confi...

Last post by crazy canuck - Today at 12:05:04 PM

Ok so diplomatic capacity is really important. Go over it and you are seriously boned.

And it doesn't take much man. I have one ally but I struggle to stay under the limit.

Yep, a lot of care has to be taken deciding how to spend those meagre resources.  No more marriage/increase relations/alliance spam

#37

Gaming HQ / Re: Europa Universalis V confi...

Last post by Valmy - Today at 12:02:57 PM

Ok so diplomatic capacity is really important. Go over it and you are seriously boned.

And it doesn't take much man. I have one ally but I struggle to stay under the limit.

#38

Off the Record / Re: The AI dooooooom thread

Last post by Sheilbh - Today at 12:02:03 PM

God I wish I as as certain as you guys

There's some other points I wanted to pick up on but some media gossip.

Apparently while it looks like use of AI summaries dropped off a bit recently in early autumn (and are now back to growth - which had been sustained until then) it looks like there's a shift in behaviour recently especially with new models. Which is that fewer users are clicking through. That suggests two aspects to me (and it could be both). One is that people are trusting answers more so taking less of a "trust, but verify" approach of looking at the AI generated answer and then clicking through anyway, the other is that the answers are gettin better and more on point. As I say my suspicion is it's a bit of both.

My understanding is this is so far not really affecting hard news media but is absolutely devastating the more lifestyle/feature/perennial media (which makes sense). The irony is that those are exactly the areas media companies have invested in in recent years because of online behavioural advertising. Basically you get a better idea of what sort of product someone is interested in from their consumption of that type of media than their interests in news (this is also why Instagram is regularly cited by people - including me - as the only platform with adverts that are genuinely of interest to them, because it's all lifestyle). The other aspect is that online advertising allows advertisers to pick the type of content they would like to be next to (while in print the choice is "front half or back half") and basically brands don't want to be next to hard news.

This is a further step along trends that have been at play for a while but it looks like subsidising the production of hard news with lifestyle content may not be a particularly healthy strategy any more. This is why I think the really key thing is licensing and protection of IP so that (unlike Google and Meta in the social media disruption) news publishers and people actually making reported, edited, fact-checked, legaled content get paid for it. Otherwise it's going to either have to rely on subsidies from the state in some way or other or just become a luxury good.

Semi-relatedly, I am certain that the future of online behavioural advertising is AI generated directly personalised ads. We've started seeing this already with Ticketmaster using AI both to target the advert but also the creative (within fixed parameters). This was also flagged by Zuckerberg recently on Meta. Google and Meta will absolutely lead on this as they already own so much of the ad industry (again I don't want to belabour it but in terms of bubbles I can't help but wonder if the 2010s was the bubble - it seems far more reasonable and in a weird way healthy to me that the biggest companies right now are doing things like designing and building chips or building and operating data centres v the 2010s when the biggest companies, with partial exceptions for Apple and Amazon, were fundamentally advertising exchanges....)

But the key factor I think for me is that I think it's going to allow Meta and Google to do the rest of the ad worlds what social media allowed them to do to news. There's obviously a monopoly bit but a key part of their business (I think over 90% of Meta's revenue is its ads business) was basically allowing "better" targeting and tracking of advertising. So ad spend went from news publishers to the platforms who knew their users well and could target better while the share of the pie for publishers got smaller - even as ad spends increased. The same will happen now on the creative side - which is still expensive and where spend is captured by the agencies. This will make creating ads, testing them (a big thing in the AI age already) - again instead of spending loads of moneys on agencies to create ads you can just spend on Meta and Google who will provide the system for distributing ads, a way of inputting your ideas into an AI that will generate and optimise hundreds of versions for you.

But also this is something that is an easy fit into the existing businesses of some of the bigest companies in the world. That is still my fundamental view of AI - that the LLM that we know about are to an extent slightly marketing tools/the recognisable bit. It is not going to be the consumer-facing products that will drive this but the implementation of AI within existing business models and businesses. As I say I think it is more exciting for Sam Altman to talk about existential risk and post images of the Deat Star when releasing new models than what I think the reality is which is a big "Infrastructure as a Service" business I don't think it'll be through the consumer-facing products but, for example, the change to the ad model that allows Google and Meta to eat the last remaining bit of spend they don't already control, or how Salesforce or Oracle implement it into their software tools.

(Total aside - but FWIW speaking to someone in marketing who was sort of 50/50 on some of this because their agency has an AI tool that helps turn someone's idea into a marketing brief. On the one hand it makes their life easier in dealing with the business - on the other they don't use it for big projects because the fun and interesting bit of working in marketing is exactly in generating ideas and writing the brief. This is where I think the impact on entry level and graduate jobs is interesting - but the social dislocation might not just be in fewer jobs but the chane in the nature of them. It's why I return to the Ned Ludd moment. It wasn't about people being hostile to technology taking their jobs - though that was part of it. It was about their proletarianisation and alienation of their roles. They were highly skilled, artisanal workers who could command a premium, were responsible creatively and intellectually for their economic production and they were getting replaced with fast moving machines where tasks could be divided, there was no creativity, individuals were alienated and you could just employ women and children instead. I think perhaps job losses is part of it but we should think of a proletarianisation of the white collar world and what that means - no doubt to be rapidly followed by a gig economy/platform/piece work world of white collars. In some ways it's just the latest version in that long war against guilds.)

#39

Off the Record / Re: What does a TRUMP presiden...

Last post by Tonitrus - Today at 11:55:00 AM

I find the whole NATO spending/burden sharing discussion to be kind of pointless.  It's a big alliance.  Some members spend a lot on defense; some don't.  Poland and the Baltics spend a lot, because they are at immediate risk from the Big Bad Bear. Spain (as an example) doesn't spend a lot, because they face no immediate threat.  It doesn't make sense to blow up the whole alliance, just to spite Spain for not spending a lot on defense.  I suppose you could kick Spain out, but to what benefit?  As for the US, what exactly would the US be saving by withdrawing from NATO?  From a pure hard calculation of cost-benefit, it seems obvious that the US is better in than out.

That's not to say the US and other high spending members shouldn't go through the exercise of shaming low spenders.  Sure they should.  But keep perspective.

And that is the flaw in Yi's argument.  We either believe that there is a potential threat for NATO, or there isn't.  I don't think anyone disputes that for a long time, most NATO members neglected miltary readiness because there was no perceived threat (a calculus that changed dramatically in the last three years).  And we kept up military readiness because we had lots of other obligations/interests in/outside of NATO...even after the fall of the USSR.

If we really cared that much only about expenditures...we could have just as easily pull out of bases in Europe, and reduce the spending specifically oriented towards Europe, while still also saying "we are fully committed to NATO and Article 5". 

But nope, our current administration has to be stupid for no apparent gain.

#40

Off the Record / Re: What does a TRUMP presiden...

Last post by crazy canuck - Today at 11:48:21 AM

We won't know until you build a navy, will we?  You don't kill people not because you are more moral but because you are simply impotent. 

If overnight Canada and the United States switched navies, here's what would happen. The US would still keep blowing up Venezuelan fishing boats and Canada wouldn't.  Because blowing up Venezuelan fishing boats doesn't turn on the size of your guided missile frigate fleet or your amphibious lift capacity.  It turns on not being completely out of your mind.  Which means that still more than half the nations of the world qualify, regardless of fleet strength.  Unfortunately, it seems the USA is not in that half anymore.

We won't know for sure until the Canadians decide they should have a military.

This tells me that at least some Americans are not able to consider a world in which there isn't something like what the United States used to be.