I am right and I suspect you know it... you just don't like the way it makes you feel. Hence your focus on vibes and ad hominums rather than reason.
It is self evident that moderm science is too complex for the average person to understand, and fifty percent of us are less intelligent than even that.
> It is self evident that moderm science is too complex for the average person to understand, and fifty percent of us are less intelligent than even that.
I think you're grossly overestimating the complexity of most modern science outside of physics and mathematics (and computing, as an intersection of the two).
Good science is actually pretty easy to explain most of the time. It may take a long time to become a domain expert thst can perform novel research in a field but it it's well within the understanding of most people to have a single topic explained to them by an expert.
In fact, that very thing happens in courtrooms all the time.
Your condescending attitude is why people don't trust authorities and with good reason. If you can't help people understand science, it's you that doesn't understand it.
Furthermore, I hope you realize how close your "self-evident" logic is to a lot of extremely gross and genocidal ideologies of the past and present.
I originally wrote a long winded response to this, but I deleted it. The more I think about your perspective the more I realize that though I disagree, it is also very reasonable of you to believe the way you do and I can respect that.
The truth is that we're both likely right to some extent, and wrong to some extent.
I now think that maybe there is no hard and fast rule one can apply to every situation to decide when one should decide for themself or just trust the experts. The optimal solution likely varies greatly depending on the specifics of the given situation, and it's very reasonable that we would have two very different takes about it.
There is a kind of rubrik I use on stuff like this. If LLMs are discovering new math, why have I only read one or two articles where it's happening? Wouldn't it be happening with regularity?
The most obvious example of this thinking is, if LLMs are replacing developers, why us open ai still hiring?
I can only say that at family meetings, I hear people talk about contracting with a shop that used to have 4 web designers, but now it's 1 guy, delivering 4x faster than before.
> But it used to be that the US was respected enough that public saber rattling and behind the scenes diplomatic efforts would avoid conflict.
This is isn't true in practice, even if you want to argue it's technically true. Iran has been participating in conflict through proxies continually for decades. US sabre rattling has done nothing to quell that violence.
Houthis open adversaries, Saudi, are aware that they are not really Iranian proxies [0]. Sunnis in Lebanon are Persian Shi'a 'proxy' only since their leadership was assassinated during negotiations in 2024 (also by this very liberal definition of 'proxy', eastern Iranian clans are US/Israel proxies, and killed more Iranians than Hamas killed Israelis, so I'm not sure we really want to get into it). The only proxy Iran had were Iraki Shi'a paramilitary forces, who agreed for a ceasefire to let US troops and diplomats get out of Iraq, and once the evacuation was done, got their leaders bombed. Never trust the US.
Iran gives missiles to the houtis, houtis then use those to fire at American ships. Its the same kind of proxy war as Ukrain, and people call that a proxy.
Thank you, that's my point. If you think Houtis are a proxy, then you think Ukraine is a proxy for the US, as Houtis have to promise concessions to Iran in exchange for armaments. Better yet, they choose their target without iranian input, so they are even less of a proxy than Ukraine who has been forbidden by the US to use the weapons they were given outside of their borders.
If you think Hezbollah are an Iranian proxy, then Israel is an US proxy, and Hamas is a Qatar/Likud proxy (won't be the first time the far right pay agitators to kill their own citizen to stay/be in power, just look at Italy).
>The people of the US were converted into functional Putin-subservient Russians
It's crazy that you continue to push this narrative despite the entire "Russia-Gate" thing turning out to total bullshit oppo followed by Trump being currently at war with one of Putin's allies and having jailed another.
The evidence supporting this claim is what, he wasn't nice to Zelenskyy that one time (despite still financially supporting Ukraine in their war against Russia)?
> but there are a lot of new ideas in terms of architecture that may warrant massive training runs
I don't think the argument is that isn't true, it's that the gains from those massive training runs is diminishing. Eventually, it won't be worth it to do the run for each new idea, you'll have to bundle a bunch together to get any noticeable change.
> No hard evidence of this was provided or is readily available.
That's not their job, that's the governments' job. So much of this (the article and your comment) is putting so much on Palantir when they are just doing the job asked of them. They don't work for the people, the government does.
They likely bribed someone in the government to get that contract though.
Regardless, it is ridiculous to absolve corporations and the people running them from all accountability, just because their aim is ever more money. In fact, that should make you criticize them more, not less.
This has a very, "Trust us, we're with the government." feel to it.
I enjoy Asimov's writing immensely but if you think quotations are some kind of mic drop, I'll leave you with this one.
"The question then is not whether or not a girl should be touched. The question is merely where, when, and how she should be touched" ― Isaac Asimov
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