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America Lost the Mandate of Heaven

geohot.github.io

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Re: America Lost the Mandate of Heaven

#81

Post by fakedang »

leonidasrup wrote: post #73
tristanj wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China is the world leader in Drones, Electric vehicles, Batteries, Solar Panels, Electronics, Robotics, High-Speed Rail, Industrial equipment, Nuclear energy, Telecommunications Equipment, Cameras, Shipbuilding, Scientific research, rapid mobile payments. Tied for AI, Smartphones Semiconductors, rockets, and aerospace are probably the only sectors china is behind in. China is the most technologically advanced society…

> They are far far ahead of anyone else in using technology to make society easier. Many government services can be handled easily on your phone. This is just a side effect of using technology to control the population. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_credit_system

And America doesn't? Palantir, Ring and Flock Safety say hi.

Re: America Lost the Mandate of Heaven

#82

Post by daymanstep »

21asdffdsa12 wrote: post #13
Phui3ferubus wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't expect anything from the guy who declared self driving cars are easy, everyone is just doing it wrong, and he could do it better in a just a year; 5 years ago. The fame totally went to his head :P It is somewhat common issue for Nobel award winners, in this case the scope is limited "I am great at security and reverse engineering, that makes me an expert for anything IT related".

Nobel Nacre.. The nobelprize is hyper destructive to the scientists receiving it. Its hard to one up from there or return to your field- everyone is bombarding you with high expectations. You can only fail after you received olympic gold. Thus, as scientists inflict change on society, and society hates change, it is like a oyster, trying to protect itself from a grain of sand, wrapping it in Nacre, protecting itself…

Nobel prize is usually awarded many years after the work was done and by the time its awarded the scientist is usually well past their prime

Re: America Lost the Mandate of Heaven

#83

Post by fakedang »

roenxi wrote: post #10

> It’s interesting how America believes in these apocalyptic AI narratives while China doesn’t. As the rest of the article alludes to, America is a services economy [0]. An industrial economy obviously doesn't have anything to fear from AI because their jobs don't primarily involve pressing buttons on a keyboard to justify their paycheck. That probably explains most of the difference; for China I'd imagine more AI ->…

China's actually far ahead in the AI adoption race for manufacturing. They're investing heavily into hardware AI, robotics and the like. The only reason we're not seeing fears akin to the US is because the financialization isn't as intense, layoffs are still controlled, and the population is aging out of employment.

Re: America Lost the Mandate of Heaven

#84

Post by sillyfluke »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #20
oezi wrote: post #14

The article is certainly firebranding, but the core tenet strikes a valid point: how has the US lost the plot within such a short time? How did it go from the flag bearer of freedom and progress to isolationist bully that wants to invade Greenland and become best friends with Russia? From the outside it is really hard to comprehend. Was it FoxNews that poisoned the American mind or the social media brainwashing? How…

> how has the US lost the plot within such a short time? How did it go from the flag bearer of freedom and progress to isolationist bully that wants to invade Greenland and become best friends with Russia? American culture has lost its near-monopoly on optimism. We're now almost as cynical as the Europeans. (:D) That cynicism means civic disengagement, technological doomerism and general symptoms of depression. That…

>That cynicism means civic disengagement

By what metric? You have to go through Scandinavia, Germany, Spain, and a few Eastern european countries before you get to the US on voter turnout. Not to mention labor unions striking as a form of political protest (eg Italian labor unions striking against the Gaza war). And depression prevalence also seems to be higher in the US. Did you mean worse than Europe instead of "almost as" bad?

Re: America Lost the Mandate of Heaven

#85

Post by keybored »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #24
direwolf20 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TikTok was a Chinese app that had no qualms against showing Americans what their country does.

> TikTok was a Chinese app that had no qualms against shooting Americans what their country does If one wanted deeply pessimistic takes on America and Americans, there has been a media market for that since at least the advent of cable news. Mistaking TikTok, one expression of a phenomenon, for the general trend is mistaking a tree for a forest.

Cable News America-criticism? Is that when a gaggle of millionaires complain about either the racists in Middle America/how liberals smell like Europeans? Then someone blurts out, Dangit, We’re Americans, We’ve been slipping these pasts five minutes at being the bravest and most freedom-loving people, God Bless. To roaring or prompted applause.

Re: America Lost the Mandate of Heaven

#86

Post by yellow_lead »

> I saw a society that actually works for who lives here – not homeless everywhere, not isolation in cars, not blatant stagnation.

> I know I know, that’s a socialist platitude or something, society that works. What they say right before they argue for a dumbass tax on billionaires or banning plastic straws. Don’t worry I still think most socialists are degrowth morons.

> "it is the Government's housing policy to provide public rental housing (PRH) to low-income families who cannot afford private rental accommodation"

> https://www.gov.hk/en/residents/housing/publichousing/index....

American goes abroad, sees socialist policies working well, then advocates to get rid of socialist policies in America.

From his other post:

> The government should never ever hand out money to anyone. Not poor people, not old people, and not corporations. This creates a society of beggars and lobbyists. You get what you incentivize [1].

What should I expect though? The author couldn't even fix minor bugs in Twitter, and coding is much closer to his specialty than solving social problems.

[1] https://geohot.github.io/blog/jekyll/update/2026/04/18/five-...

Re: America Lost the Mandate of Heaven

#87

Post by ben_w »

conartist6 wrote: post #4
ben_w wrote: post #2

> Take the Mythos vulnerability finding thing. They didn’t just point Mythos at the codebase and say go, they built a harness where they asked it about each piece of code and if it was vulnerable. They triaged and spent more time looking at things that were flagged more, until eventually they passed it up to “uppper management” aka the people. > You could imagine building this exact same thing with humans. Educate th…

It's not a question of quality. If you wanted quality, a motivated team of humans still can't be beat. That's why you may notice that in making AI, companies still use teams of highly motivated humans. Obviously they could have AIs holding the reigns of other AIs. Nothing technical is stopping them

A motivated team of humans is neither necessary nor sufficient for quality (an individual can be high quality, a team can mess up); but even if it was, there's not enough people for such teams to re-examine all the code. This is because the code that actually exists was made by unmotivated teams at varying skill levels from intern upwards.

  I've seen things you people wouldn't believe,
  a thousand lines inside a if statement's main block,
  an entire pantheon of god classes in a single project,
  something something like tears in rain.
> That's why you may notice that in making AI, companies still use teams of highly motivated humans. Obviously they could have AIs holding the reigns of other AIs. Nothing technical is stopping them

1) They report increasingly using AI to improve the AI.

2) Apples to oranges. The best humans can still beat AI in *AI research, per unit time*, but the AI beat the typical team at *finding exploitable bugs, per line of source, per unit cost*.

Re: America Lost the Mandate of Heaven

#89

Post by OutOfHere »

blactuary wrote: post #88

This dude is an absolute nutcase, and a perfect example of being smart in one narrow domain and thinking it transfers to everything https://geohot.github.io/blog/jekyll/update/2026/04/18/five-... In another post he's quoting Curtis Yarvin. Can't say on here what should be said

All the linked articles of his site read like nonsense to me, but also dangerous nonsense.

Re: America Lost the Mandate of Heaven

#90

Post by scruple »

puchatek wrote: post #50
rock_artist wrote: post #33

> When I was younger I used to think more negatively about jobs, I even called it the jobs problem in my 2019 agentic coding startup template. I have since come around, the point of a society is the flourishing of its inhabitants. That’s the key. The world is a delicate fabric that changes over time. It’s nice (or frustrating) reading opinions. Forecasting the future is tricky. While the world and us humans waste our…

So... What's your point? Sounds like what you identify as key is not relevant to the remainder of your comment.

Their point is that the jobs problem or flourishing is a mechanical necessity for maintaining the Mandate and surviving whatever things come next.
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