terrific

The request created a backlash online with many disagreeing with the practice.

Let me guess, Americans?

try to reconsider your own positions.

Try to go out into the real world and talk to some real people some time. Honestly, I mean it, not as a mean comment, but sincere concern. You are clearly very well read and informed. But there is a world beyond discussing theory with random strangers on the internet.

Who is benefiting from NATO equipment being destroyed? Arms manufacturers. It’s not a null-sum game. They just make more arms. The Russo-Ukrainian war is just what the conservative establishment in Europe has been waiting for. The defense budgets are currently being boosted significantly. Who is befitting? Arms manufacturers. The establishment. This is not weakening imperialism, even in the narrow, Marxist-Leninist, sense. It’s strengthening it.

I agree with the entire second paragraph you write. I just think Russia, and in particular the Russian elite (which runs the country) absolutely benefits from imperialism (again, in the narrow sense). They are deeply integrated in the Western capitalist banking hegemony. They own half of London. Until the war started, they supplied all of Western Europe with gas, and was paid in imperialist money. Hence benefiting from the global imperialist exploitation.

On a side note, I can’t believe what a toxic place this sub is. People keep downvoting my replies simply because they don’t agree with me. This is the first and last time I have contributed to this community. Enjoy your echo chamber.

That’s fair enough. I am familiar with Marxist-Leninist analysis. I even once called myself a Marxist-Leninist. But I personally don’t think today’s capitalism can be described in those terms anymore. I don’t really want to subscribe to a certain way of thinking but if it helps you understand where I’m coming from, I like Kropotkin and more recently Negri & Hardt.

I suppose, from that perspective, it’s possible to define Russia as anti-imperialist. That’s fine, but I think that particular fault line is irrelevant to the global revolution. I don’t see how sacrificing millions of young Russians on the front lines is a net benefit to the global proletariat. That war is a distraction, and a way to maintain the status quo. And, therefore, counter revolutionary.

It’s certainly true that all media is biased but I don’t see how explicitly pointing out their bias can be a bad thing. If you really care about the analysis, as you have said earlier, you should also care about having that kind of context.

I don’t follow, if Russia is fundamentally opposed to western imperialism for its own selfish, pragmatic, even existential reasons, then it’s working against imperialism. Russia is not allowed to be a cog in the imperial machine, it asked to be allowed in 2 and a half decades ago but was denied. Russia is a bourgeois nationalist country, sure, it isn’t a beacon of socialism, but it’s backed into a corner and forced into working with socialist countries like the PRC and working against global imperialism just to continue existing. Russia can’t be an empire, it has neither the colonies to extract from nor the financial capital to do so.

I don’t know if we can converge on this topic. I think our analyses are just based on very different premises. To me, the system that even allows the West/Russia dichotomy to exist is the Empire, i.e. the current world order which centers around the idea of private property. Anti-empirialism is about fighting the right to property itself.

As for being propaganda or not, do you list, say, the NYT as western propaganda in the comments too? I think most people are capable of recognizing pro-Russian and anti-Russian sources at this point, so I’m not quite sure what point you’re serving other than to draw additonal emphasis.

I do, in fact, make a point of pointing out when the media is biased. The Russo-Ukrainian war is not something I debate a lot, and might be a little naive when it comes to the reporting on the issue. I’m sorry if I upset someone by stating something obvious.

You make a good point, but in my eyes Russia is just another cog in the machine. Both sides are the same and the Ukrainian war keeps the engine going. Powerful men sacrifice their country’s youth on the altar of greed. Nothing new under the sun. There are competing empires within the Empire but it all just solidifies the same selfish attitudes. Anti-imperialism (okay let’s get semantic) is something far more subversive in my view.

I didn’t say they were paid propaganda, I said they have a different agenda than just leveling the playing field. Which you now also confirm. I also haven’t said that the post should be discarded. I just said that it’s Russian propaganda (which it is) and I think that’s important context. Maybe it’s obvious to everyone but me, but I think people should know, and that’s why I commented.

Bullying strangers on the internet because you disagree with them? I’m sure your mom is very proud of you.

Thank you for your valuable contribution to this discussion. /s

Working against imperialism for selfish, pragmatic reasons, is still anti-imperialist. There isn’t an ideological basis for it, sure, but the actions fundamentally undermine global imperialism as the primary obstacle towards global socialism.

I don’t see how Russia undermines global imperialism, sorry. Putin sometimes tries to frame his regime that way, but that narrative crumbles with the slightest critical analysis. The Ukrainian war feeds the military industrial complex globally, creates new oppressive narratives in the West, and overall strengthens the global elites. How is that anti-imperialist?

As for jackeroni posting pro-Russian sources, they’ve stated that they intend on making the information field more even than purely using western sources. Exposure to non-western points of view is helpful analysis.

I completely agree. It just seems from the context that they might have a different agenda. What do you make of their strong-arm emoji in their description of the link?

Thanks for the style tip 😊

Sorry I didn’t mean for this conversation to become a semantic debate.

My original point was merely that the original source is clearly highly biased towards Russia. Mr/ms jackeroni then implied that I was brainwashed by big media, and I was then trying to make the point that just because someone doesn’t like Russian propaganda, that doesn’t necessarily make them an imperialist drone.

Mr/Ms Cowbee then imply that I am calling Russia imperialist, which I wasn’t. I just said they aren’t anti-imperialist, which they clearly aren’t. Just because they are in opposition to the current primary empire, simply doesn’t make them anti-imperialist.

I feel like criticising a news outlet for being biased towards Russia made me the target of two straw man arguments in a very short period of time. Is that normal for this sub?

Trying to brand Putin’s national conservative kleptocratic regime as somehow anti-empirialistic is just bizarre … I want to see an end to the capitalist hegemony as much as the next man, but comrade: Putin isn’t it.

Russian propaganda outlet.

What AI revolution? All I get is fancy spellcheck and crappy image generation.

It’s hyperbole.

I think that’s a very generous use of the word “superintelligent”. They aren’t anything like what I associate with that word anyhow.

I also don’t really think they are knowledge retrieval engines. I use them extensively in my daily work, for example to write emails and generate ideas. But when it comes to facts they are flaky at best. It’s more of a free association game than knowledge retrieval IMO.

That’s true in a somewhat abstract way, but I just don’t see any evidence of the claim that it is just around the corner. I don’t see what currently existing technology can facilitate it. Faster-than-light travel could also theoretically be just around the corner, but it would surprise me if it was, because we just don’t have the technology.

On the other hand, the people who push the claim that AGI is just around the corner usually have huge vested interests.

I’m not sure I can give a satisfying answer. There are a lot of moving parts here, and a big issue here is definitions which you also touch upon with your reference to Searle.

I agree with the sentiment that there must be some objective measure of reasoning ability. To me, reasoning is more than following logical rules. It’s also about interpreting the intent of the task. The reasoning models are very sensitive to initial conditions and tend to drift when the question is not super precise or if they don’t have sufficient context.

The AI models are in a sense very fragile to the input. Organic intelligence on the other hand is resilient and also heuristic. I don’t have any specific idea for the test, but it should test the ability to solve a very ill-posed problem.

I’m not saying that we can’t ever build a machine that can think. You can do some remarkable things with math. I personally don’t think our brains have baked in gradient descent, and I don’t think neural networks are a lot like brains at all.

The stochastic parrot is a useful vehicle for criticism and I think there is some truth to it. But I also think LMMs display some super impressive emergent features. But I still think they are really far from AGI.

I definitely think that’s remarkable. But I don’t think scoring high on an external measure like a test is enough to prove the ability to reason. For reasoning, the process matters, IMO.

Reasoning models work by Chain-of-Thought which has been shown to provide some false reassurances about their process https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.04388 .

Maybe passing some math test is enough evidence for you but I think it matters what’s inside the box. For me it’s only proved that tests are a poor measure of the ability to reason.

Do you have any expertise on the issue?

I hold a PhD in probabilistic machine learning and advise businesses on how to use AI effectively for a living so yes.

IMHO, there is simply nothing indicating that it’s close. Sure LLMs can do some incredibly clever sounding word-extrapolation, but the current “reasoning models” still don’t actually reason. They are just LLMs with some extra steps.

There is lots of information out there on the topic so I’m not going to write a long justification here. Gary Marcus has some good points if you want to learn more about what the skeptics say.

We’re not even remotely close. The promise of AGI is part of the AI hype machine and taking it seriously is playing into their hands.

Irrelevant at best, harmful at worst 🤷