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We Will Not Be Divided

notdivided.org

71–80 of 912 posts

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#71
post #10

You’re kinda already conceding to some of your opponents points when you use legally invalid names like “Department of War” I appreciate the sentiment but don’t preconcede to your opposition by using their framing.

In this case I think the opponents made a huge mistake by calling themselves Department of War, and it's something that can be exploited.

Department of Defense was the actual lie, the newspeak term. They were not really defending anything, they were using military power globally for pursuing economic interests. However, it was easy to convince people that the whole endeavor was a good thing, because defending your country against the baddies is good, and you should support anyone doing that (otherwise you'd be a traitor!). Thank you for your service (defending us).

On the other hand, the term Department of War is hard to sell, because most people don't want to participate in a war or support someone who wants to start one. Thank you for your service... invading other countries? killing and raping innocents? ransacking resources?

This is an irrelevant detail, but if I'd read the title "Department of Defense vs. Meta", I'd first think Meta is leaking confidential info to other countries. However, if I'd read "Department of War vs. Meta", I'd think Meta doesn't want to promote an unnecessary war.

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#74
post #35

I hope Anthropic will survive this. If they don’t it will just be perfect proof that you cannot be both moral and successful in the US.

[flagged]

Good grief - we happen to have a free market with multiple suppliers. But a defense contractor in deep with the current administration’s ideology might have a hard time remembering that.

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#75
post #68

The problem with forcing public policy on companies is that companies are ultimately made from individuals, and surely you can’t force public policy down people’s throats. I’m sure nothing good can come out of strong-arming some of the brightest scientists and engineers the U.S. has. Such a waste of talent trying to make them bend over to the government’s wishes… instead of actually fostering innovation in the very c…

> I’m sure nothing good can come out of strong-arming some of the brightest scientists and engineers the U.S. has

And where would they emigrate? Russia? China? UAE? :-)

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#78
post #20

They should be collecting signatures from employees at xAI. I think they're probably most likely to fill the space left by Anthropic.

XAI has already announced they are 100% in https://x.ai/news/us-gov-dept-of-war

This kind of screams desperation, but I guess that's what happens when you're niche AI.

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#80
post #35

I hope Anthropic will survive this. If they don’t it will just be perfect proof that you cannot be both moral and successful in the US.

[flagged]

None of this is relevant. They’re saying “our stuff can’t be used effectively for X but you can use it for Y”. It’s like if someone was saying “dude the o ring is going to fail on the shuttle launch” and you respond “if we have random people permitted to stop the shuttle launch every time we will never get off the ground”.

The rhetorical technique of generalizing a specific constraint is very effective in the peanut gallery but hopefully we don’t want our shuttles to blow up.

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