> I see this happening in the enterprise. People delegate work to some LLM; work isn't always bad, sometimes it's even acceptable. But it's not their work, and as a result, the author doesn't know or understand it better than anyone else! They don't own it, they can't explain it. They literally have no value whatsoever; they're a passthrough; they're invisible.
According to the blog post linked in the OP, the LLM-generated results were read, understood, and confirmed by the mathematician whose work they built on.
I notice a dichotomy here between people who care about results and people who care about process. The former group wants to use LLMs insofar as they can contribute to getting results. The latter group is wary of LLMs because they're more interested in the process and less interested in the results themselves. Needless to say, I think the former group is right, and I'm happy to see that mathematicians (or some of them) agree.
I think you are misunderstanding the parent's comment.
>the LLM-generated results were read, understood, and confirmed by the mathematician whose work they built on.
The mathematician and the blog author are not the same person (as you seem to understand). Nathanson (the mathematician) is the one who is the expert verifier. He is the person who has the higher value and won't be fired in some hypothetical.
>>They don't own it, they can't explain it. They literally have no value whatsoever; they're a passthrough; they're invisible.
This is the blog author in the parent's description. If their boss asks them what they need to prove that the AI is more than capable in this domain and the author tells their boss they need Nathanson (the mathematician) to verify the results, his boss will thank him for demonstrating the AI's capability in this domain, fire him, pass his prompt history to Nathanson, and keep Nathanson on the job (the expert verifier).
Which is the parent's point after all, because he's referring to the hypothetical job security of the blog author not the mathematician.
> The mathematician and the blog author are not the same person
> (as you seem to understand). Nathanson (the mathematician) is
> the one who is the expert verifier. He is the person who has
> the higher value and won't be fired in some hypothetical.
Inequality isn't a big problem. Those who claim it is seem to think that the existence of really rich people causes the existence of really poor people. That is not the case.
It's natural that things are less equal now that we're not farmers or hunter-gatherers. Economies of scale will massively enrich those who take build them.
Sometimes it is claimed that inequality is a problem because the rich will control politics. But populism is surging and the rich seem to have a harder time controlling politics than ever, largely due to the disintegration of the print/tv media.
I don't think anyone says that really poor people are caused by the existence of really rich people. The argument, as I understand it, is that spreading the wealth of billionaires around would mean fewer really poor people.
The distribution will go into services that compound the 5k-10k across society, not to individuals.
Education returns the investment to a nation at around 9%/year. Transportation infrastructure (especially if it's not only for roads in dense urban centres) also has a decent ROI. Investment in science, fundamental research that most private entities don't have the risk appetite for, has a massive ROI for a nation over time.
Providing public services and safety nets for a society also free up humans to take risks such as starting businesses, if you know you will be able to survive with dignity even if it all crashes and burns you are more inclined to try out that business idea instead of being stuck at a bad job. It makes bad jobs also more unattractive, requiring better salaries which reduces the gap between the haves and have-nots, this lowers crime, increases social cohesion, etc.
What exactly is the benefit for society of not taxing wealthy people out of 2% of their wealth? They mostly don't use that wealth to invest in risky ventures, they rely on banks for that.
How about the top 10,000? How about any wealth you personally have? At what point does it stop being OK for you to take people's wealth? When someone becomes a billionaire?
This reminds me of when Bernie Sanders was asked why it's OK for him to be a millionaire and he said something akin to "If you write a popular book like I did, you can be a millionaire too." Well maybe if you reinvent electric cars and space travel or build a company that ships you almost anything you can think of within 2 days then you can be a billionaire.
I agree we can/should decide collectively. But when the vast majority of Americans have a place to live, air conditioning and heat, a refrigerator, enough to eat, etc. it's hard not to say that they're comfortable. As for fulfilling, that's describing a utopia.
I recognize there are still people who are food insecure, and I think it's an abomination how people are suffering (many poor rural black people in the south don't even have access to basic plumbing and end up with diseases like hookworm), but making wealthy people into a boogeyman just seems like an emotional argument so much of the time.
A lot of the young ones are either escaping sexual abuse, thrown out by their family for their sexuality or rejection of religion, or aged out of foster care.
There is indeed a spectrum of homelessness from temporarily distressed to broken beyond repair. There's different actions for the different factions.
I live in the Portland OR metro and believe that the issue has spawned the Homeless Industrial Complex that thrives on extracting money to "help" but are incentivized to keep the problem going for their livelihood.
I'm not unsympathetic to their plight (I had been effectively homeless a couple times in my life). It bothers me to no end how this problem is mismanaged.
I read an interesting book about consciousness recently: The Hidden Spring by Mark Solms.
Solms argues, I think convincingly, that consciousness fundamentally has to do with emotions and not cognition. Consciousness is not produced by the cortex but rather by the brainstem, where signals from all over the body converge (e.g. pain, hunger, itchiness, etc).
If that argument is true then a petri-dish of neurons is unlikely to be conscious, even it performs some analogue of visual processing.
The book makes other arguments that I found less convincing. For example that consciousness is "felt homeostasis" and that a fairly simple system (somewhat more complex than a thermometer) will be conscious, albeit minimally.
People having been saying for aeons that consciousness originates in the (mammalian) cortex and not in the brainstem. To justify killing all sorts of animals ;-)
The whole thing makes one thing extremely clear: people are very good at moving goalposts. We've blasted past the 'turing test' for all practical purposes, but we moved the definition of 'true intelligence'. Consciousness and intelligence have long seen as higly correlated or even the same thing. But now we have need of a separation between the two.
If we eventually (we're not there yet, I think) create a true intelligent AI it will probably be a long time before people will accept that creating an intelligent being probably means it should have 'rights' as well.
We're definitely not there yet, but at what point does turning off an AI become the same as killing a being? I think that's not being talked about enough. Sure LLMs are just prediction engines. But so are we. Our brains are prediction engines tuned by evolution to do the best possible prediction of the near future to maximize survival. We are definitely conscious. But a housefly, is that conscious? What makes the difference? it's hard to tell.
Otoh, an AI has no evolutionary reason to have the concept of fear/suffering so maybe it's more like the douglas adams creature that doesn't mind to be killed?
LLMs still do not pass the turing test as it is commonly understood. Ask the right questions, and it becomes apparent very quickly which party is the machine and which is the human. Hell, there are enough people on here that can probably tell them apart just from the way that LLMs write.
But it's also easy to argue that LLMs do pass the turing test just because it's so vague. How many questions can I ask? What's the success threshold needed to 'pass'? How familiar is the interrogator with the technology involved? It's easy to claim that goal posts have been moved when nobody even knew where they stood to begin with.
Ultimately it's impossible to rigorously define something that's so poorly understood. But if we understand consciousness as something that humans uniquely possess, it's hard to imagine that intelligence alone is enough. You at least also need some form of linear (in time) memory and the ability to change as a result from that memory.
And that's where silicon and biological computers differ - it's easy to copy/save/restore the contents of a digital computer but it's far outside our capabilities to do the same with any complex biological system. And that same limitation makes it very difficult for us humans to even imagine how consciousness could exist without this property of being 'unique', of being uncopiable. Of existing in linear time, without any jumps or resets. Perhaps consciousness doesn't make sense at all without that.
> LLMs still do not pass the turing test as it is commonly understood. Ask the right questions, and it becomes apparent very quickly which party is the machine and which is the human. Hell, there are enough people on here that can probably tell them apart just from the way that LLMs write.
LLMs obviously would pass a Turing test if they were designed to. But they aren't, they don't hide the fact that they're LLMs.
> If we eventually (we're not there yet, I think) create a true intelligent AI it will probably be a long time before people will accept that creating an intelligent being probably means it should have 'rights' as well.
In my view, the best LLMs clearly pass the bar for intelligence. I highly doubt they have consciousness. So the revelation of LLMs is that consciousness is not necessary for intelligence.
But how do you know it's not conscious? It's a very poorly defined concept.
I know various people that to this day say that fish do not feel pain (because they want to catch them with a hook through their mouth without feeling guilty). That seems a ridiculous notion to me, as pain is extremely evolutionary useful and a fish displays all sorts of pain-like behaviour when hooked. But still, since we can't really look inside the fish' mind people can make themselves believe they don't feel pain.
If you ask the right AI if it's conscious, it's very well possible it will say yes. Because it was trained on the world literature maybe and behaves as learned. Is there a difference with us? I'm not so sure.
To me it's kinda weird the ethical implications for striving for AGI are so little talked about.
I don't know that AIs aren't conscious but it seems unlikely. Consciousness evolved under certain conditions and confers clear benefits. It would pretty weird if it magically "emerged" in any complex enough system or if we created it by accident while training LLMs.
Since well before LLMs, people have been talking about "philosophical zombies," hypothetical objects that could emulate human behavior perfectly but had no inner experience.
Some philosophers (one modern example being Kastrup) point out that the only thing we really know is our own conscious experience. We don't go full-on solipsist because other people appear to be built the same way as ourselves, so it's a small jump to think they're conscious as well. Over the past few decades scientists have found that other animals' brains are quite similar to our own in important ways, mammals especially, and are more willing to credit them with consciousness.
But AIs run on completely different hardware with different algorithms. It's entirely possible that they're philosophical zombies. It's a bigger leap to say they're conscious like us, because they're more different from us.
It's no coincidence that evolution seems to have gifted practically every living thing with a will to live. Though the tint of my own perspective makes it impossible to say for sure, I imagine any agent that we could observe expressing any desires at all would also seek to preserve its existence.
I've been tinkering with agents that can modify their own environment, and as a safety mechanism, apply their modifications to a copy of themselves by letting them spawn a VM, test, and apply to their own environment with another VM as fallback, simply to not kill themselves on a botched system upgrade. They all somehow manage to kill themselves by accident. Evolution takes time.
> Consciousness is not produced by the cortex but rather by the brainstem, where signals from all over the body converge (e.g. pain, hunger, itchiness, etc).
Which just begs the question of how pain or hunger is any different from a reward function, the very thing neural networks are based on. Or how it's even different from fungi growing towards food (pleasure), while avoiding salt (pain).
His argument here (that I found most convincing) was children with hydranencephaly. Many of them have very little cortex but still seem to experience a roughly normal range of emotions in appropriate context.
Virtually all Arabs hate Israel but Arab governments are more varied. The modern Egyptian state is oriented toward close partnership with the US, and a large part of that was peace with Israel post '73.
This is true, but Emiratis are a notable exception. The UAE may be the only Arab country where Jews are not only allowed to live, but can do so safely without fearing either their neighbors or their government.
For example, last year when a rabbi was murdered, the Emirati government reacted forcefully and made a point to sentence the perpetrators to death. Note, the perpetrators were not Emiratis.
> The modern Egyptian state is oriented toward close partnership with the US, and a large part of that was peace with Israel post '73.
While also true, the relationship between Israel and Egypt has been tense lately.
They are at peace, and the border is stable. And economic integration is tightening, for example with the recent $35B gas deal [1]. So it's plausible that UAE could align with both, as you say.
But at the same time, it's just as plausible that this alignment will become increasingly complicated for geopolitical reasons. As Israel grows stronger in the region, Egypt seems to have adopted a strategy of indirectly undermining them.
For example, Egypt's handling of the Gaza war has indicated that they were playing a double game - openly containing Hamas, while covertly allowing them to grow stronger. When the IDF captured Rafah in 2024, they uncovered massive smuggling tunnels under the Egypt-Gaza border, which could not possibly have been unknown to Egypt.
Sisi is also known for having cracked down on the Muslim Brotherhood domestically, as they were his primary political rival. But externally, he has shown a willingness to support them as a tool to weaken his rivals, including Israel. This is a dangerous game which could easily backfire.
One more example: just this week Egypt is conducting a live fire military exercise 100m from the Israel border - a deliberate decision that is escalating tensions. [2]
> The UAE may be the only Arab country where Jews are not only allowed to live, but can do so safely without fearing either their neighbors or their government.
That's not entirely true. Judaism is one of the legally recognised minority religions of Iran and Iran still retains an ancient Jewish community of 10,000 - 15,000 Iranian Jews that also have 30+ synagogues in Iran - Tehran’s embattled Jewish community endures despite Israeli bombing of synagogue - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/22/tehran-embattl...:
> By the time he got up the next morning to get ready for work, an Israeli airstrike had completely destroyed the synagogue ... “We condemn this attack. It disrespects our faith. Iran’s Jewish community doesn’t have good relations with the Zionist Israeli government,” he said. Iran’s Jewish community is the largest and oldest in the Middle East outside Israel, dating back about 2,500 years to when Jews were exiled eastwards by Assyrian and Babylonian rulers ... About two decades ago, Israel encouraged Iranian Jews to emigrate, offering cash incentives in an attempt to prompt a mass migration. At the time, the Society of Iranian Jews dismissed the offer as “immature political enticements” and said their national identity was not for sale.
1. As another commenter already pointed out, Iran is not an Arab country
2. It is very true that the Iranian people absolutely does not hate Jews. In most Arab capitals, simply to walk around while visibly Jewish is either risky or downright suicidal. The same is true in other Muslim countries such as Pakistan, and increasingly in majority Muslim neighborhoods in Western cities. Iran does not have this problem. In fact the Iranian and Jewish peoples share a deep bond that goes back to the time of Cyrus the great, who famously freed the Jews of Babylon in 538 BCE, and allowed them to return to their homeland and rebuild their temple. To this day, Iranians and Israelis tend to get along. For example, the Iranian diaspora is conspicuously absent from anti-Israel protests in the US, and you will often see Israeli and pre-revolutionary Iranian flags flying together in anti-IRGC "Free Iran" protests (to the dismay and confusion of pro-IRGC protesters).
3. The current islamic government of Iran - the IRGC - has historically persecuted and executed Iranian Jews, especially in the early days of the revolution. There is a reason so many Iranian Jews live in the US... It is true that they have not implemented a Nazi-style policy of total eradication of their Jewish population, even though their foreign policy is entirely built on total eradication of Jews abroad. But let's be clear: Jews in Iran live in a state of submission and fear. In theory the IRGC is "anti-zionist" and not "anti-Jewish"; in practice the difference is blurry and arbitrary: Jews are eternally suspected of duplicity and disloyalty, and must continuously prove that they are not secretly "zionists". When Iranian Jews make public statements criticizing Israel, they are doing so because of this pressure from a totalitarian regime, and their safety depends on it. A statement by the Jewish community in Iran only reflects what the IRGC wants them to say. A useful comparison is Soviet anti-zionism, which followed similar patterns: Soviet Jews often denounced zionism loudly and publicly, and from the outside it appeared that Jews were a "protected minority" living peacefully. But ask Jews who actually lived in the Soviet Union at the time, and you will hear a very different story...
Yes, the Iranian government has indeed targeted Jews suspected of working against Iran, especially when things were in a turmoil post-revolution, and that did lead to around 70%-80% of the community migrating to US and Israel. But I don't believe it is just the fear of persecution that was their motivation in migrating - for some it was zionism, for others it was more of the political ideological difference with the revolutionaries (they were in the Shah's camp) and the real uncertainty and lack of political stability and violence during and after the revolution.
> the Iranian diaspora is conspicuously absent from anti-Israel protests in the US
Iranians who migrated to the west are largely supporters of the Shah, who was overthrown by the revolutionaries, and thus they despise the revolutionary government. Israel hates the Iranian revolutionaries too and so the Iranian diaspora found themselves in favour of Israel because of this shared sentiment of hate against the current Iranian government. However, anti-Israeli sentiments in Iranian diaspora has increased now because of Netanyahu's foolish genocide in Gaza, and the supporters of Shah (and Israel) have now increasingly have resort to intimidation to suppress many of them from speaking out for Palestinains and against Israel. As this MEE article outlines - How pro-Israel Iranian Americans are silencing Palestine supporters - https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/war-gaza-how-pro-israel-i... :
> Several Iranian-American activists who spoke to Middle East Eye on condition of anonymity have said they fear speaking out in support of Palestine, saying that anyone who does so publicly has been faced with doxxing campaigns and even threats to their lives. "It's one of those things where it's caused a huge divide in the community," said one Iranian activist ... They say the reason that it appears that most Iranians in the diaspora are pro-Israel is because most of the ones who do support Palestine are afraid to speak up. "The vocal presence of Iranian Zionists online and at rallies might create a misleading perception. In reality, many Iranians are afraid to speak out and do not align with this viewpoint," said one Iranian activist who spoke to MEE on condition of anonymity. "The loudness on social media doesn't accurately represent the broader sentiment."
> But let's be clear: Jews in Iran live in a state of submission and fear ... jews are eternally suspected of duplicity and disloyalty, and must continuously prove that they are not secretly "zionists".
This is a common propaganda for fear mongering amongst the minorities. Interestingly, Pakistanis say the same thing about Muslims living in India. And yes, while there are isolated incidents of minority violence against Muslims in India too (just as there are against the Jews in Iran), it is not a common occurrence in society driven by hate against these minorities.
Your entire argument is built on a single source: Middle East Eye. That source is a known Qatar propaganda outlet, they do not meet even the lowest bar of journalistic integrity or credibility. You might as well be quoting Russia Today about the war in Uraine.
A few facts about MEE:
1. During the 2017 diplomatic crisis with Qatar over their support of terrorism, Saudi Arabia and the UAE issued a list of demands to Qatar. One of these demands was to shutdown their propaganda outlets - including MEE. Other demands included the severing of ties with Hamas and Hezbollah, and the handing over of internationally wanted terrorists harbored by Qatar. Another demand was to cut off collaboration with Iran's REvolutionary Guards... [1]
2. MEE is entirely controlled by a single individual, Jamal Awn Jamal Bessasso - formerly director of planning and human resources at Al Jazeera in Qatar [2]. Bessasso was also a director at Samalink TV, a company that broadcasts Al-Quds TV - a Hamas-controlled station. [3][4] He has a history of social media posts praising Hamas and advocating for violence against the enemies of Islam.
3. Several other MEE employees have previously worked at Al-Jazeera. At least one MEE employee has previously worked for a Hamas-funded nonprofit.
4. Over the years, MEE has often gained exclusive access to Hamas leadership, and acted as their de facto PR arm.
5. MEE does not disclose its sources of funding. It is a complete black box.
In short: you are uncritically quoting a known propaganda outlet of Qatar, that was explicitly designated by several countries as part of Qatar's terrorism support network, has several links to Hamas, does not disclose its sources of funding, and is controlled by a known supporter of Hamas.
So, I hope you'll forgive me for not taking any of your derived arguments seriously. I took the time to share this information to make sure that nobody reading this exchange takes them seriously, either. This uncritical amplification of obvious propaganda has got to stop.
In my country, Qatar is not considered as a "terrorist" sponsor. Neither is Hamas considered a terrorist organisation (like in most parts of the Global South). Neither is RT nor MEE nor Al-Jazeera banned or considered a part of any "terrorism network" - I treat them the same as any State run media outlet (including the BBC, DW, or NPR).
India very much does consider Hamas a terrorist organization. Modi has clearly condemned its actions and repeatedly expressed support for Israel
against terrorism.
It's true that they have not publicly criticized Qatar for harboring Hamas or supporting terrorist groups.
We Indians, in general, despise political violence, and so we do sympathise with the Israeli victims of Palestinian violence. We however also recognize that the political violence is of Israeli-right's own making - one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. That is why PLO or Hamas is not officially recognized or banned as a terrorist organisation by India (or the most of the Global South). Israel's pursuit of being a settler-colonial state has been criticised since the time of Gandhi, who has never supported Zionism at the expense of Palestinian's right:
> “My sympathies are all with the Jews… They have been the untouchables of Christianity. The parallel between their treatment by Christians and the treatment of untouchables by Hindus is very close. Religious sanction has been invoked in both cases for the justification of the inhuman treatment meted out to them,” Gandhi wrote in the Harijan article ... “It is wrong and inhumane to impose the Jews on the Arabs…,” he wrote. “It would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home,” Gandhi said ... “A religious act [the act of Jews returning to Palestine] cannot be performed with the aid of the bayonet or the bomb,” he wrote ... “The Jews have a good cause. I told (British Zionist MP) Sidney Silverman that the Jews have a good case in Palestine. If the Arabs have a claim to Palestine, the Jews have a prior claim.” ... “But for their [the Jews’] heartless persecution, probably no question of return to Palestine would ever have arisen,” he wrote in “Jews And Palestine”. “They have erred grievously in seeking to impose themselves on Palestine with the aid of America and Britain and now with the aid of naked terrorism,” he wrote.
(Note that India's current one-sided bonhomie with Israel is an exception and based more on the rapport of shared political values between Modi, Netanayhu and their respective political parties - Sanghis, i.e. Hindu religious fundamentalists, in India, and religious fundamentalists Zionists in Israel share a common political ideology - https://youtu.be/mZhugTmSrMo?t=1696 ).
> That is why PLO or Hamas is not officially recognized or banned as a terrorist organisation by India (or the most of the Global South).
This is false. India does not have a list of named terrorist organizations, in the way that the US does for example. But there is zero indication anywhere that India specifically considers Hamas not to be a terrorist organization - you are making that up by projecting your own personal views.
You only speak for yourself, not for the Indian government or any other Indians. Your personal view is that Hamas is not a terrorist organization, and that they (and PLO before them) are justified in their use of violence. I strongly disagree with that view, and so do most people. Your view is a fringe view - and it better explains why you don't mind quoting propaganda outlets that openly align with Hamas - you yourself are aligned with Hamas.
The bottom line is that I believe Hamas is a terrorist organization, and you don't. So there's no valuable discussion to be had with you on this topic.
> But there is zero indication anywhere that India specifically considers Hamas not to be a terrorist organization - you are making that up ... Your view is a fringe view ...
Here you go - Former Hamas chief addresses pro-Palestine rally in Kerala - https://www.theweek.in/news/india/2023/10/28/hamas-leader-ad... (and it's not the first time a Palestinian leader was invited to speak in India). No action has been taken, despite the noise Modi's political party made because legally no law was broken as neither the Hamas speaker nor Hamas is banned in India ... And here's another example, of an opposition leader, showing solidarity with Palestine and even public rebuking the Netanyahu government for the Gaza genocide - Priyanka Gandhi expresses solidarity by carrying bag emblazoned with 'Palestine' to Parliament - https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/priyanka-gandhi-expre... ...
As an Indian, I support both Israel and Palestine, but not their right-wing extremism often laced with religious fundamentalism. Unfortunately, the Netanyahu regime is the worst of Israel-right and I do feel sorry that he is dragging all of Israel down with him.
You are however probably right that we don't see eye to eye here on Israel-Palestine politics.
By the way that's just Qatari propaganda meant to put a wedge between Israel and Egypt. Qatar(Muslim Brotherhood) hates Egypt (that cracked down on MB) and hates Israel. They paid Netanyahu's advisors to push those lies about Egypt's double game and the cross border tunnels. Netanyahu the clown he is, "leaked" those lies to journalists. Qatar also paid Haaretz journalist to push those lies.
The current situation with Egypt is good. They need to pretend to be somewhat cold to satisfy the hostile to Israel population, but there is cooperation and good relationship.
I did notice that Al-Jazeera was actively covering this issue. So your explanation would make sense.
What about the military exercise though? Al-Jazeera is eagerly covering it, but it is in fact happening...
I'm thinking that two things can be true at once - Egypt sees Israel as a "soft rival" and will undermine it when it can, without risking the peace itself; and Qatar is actively trying to put a wedge between them. No?
The military exercises too, just pure nonsense. Sinai peninsula has complicated security issues that they are trying to control. Egypt depends on Israel for cheap gas and really there is no indication whatsoever for any attempts to undermine. They do exercise soft power and play regional games. Egypt had and has very good leadership (with Sadat being the greatest modern leader in the middle east).
Various Arab states maintain this balancing act between a virulently anti-Israel population and a US-aligned (in most cases, US-installed) regime that’s tacitly okay with the existence of Israel.
It’s actually surprising it’s achievable for so long but in the long term doesn’t feel stable given the direction things are headed
Which Arab regimes, today, are "US installed"? Iraq is the only plausible answer.
As far as stability, I don't know. My view is that Arab democracies are unstable because they will elect Islamists. Dictatorship/monarchy has proven far more stable. Syria is trying to buck the trend; we'll see how it goes.
Maybe more accurate to say “Western-installed” although generally I don’t like grouping Europe and the US together as some coherent entity in this case it’s probably accurate.
All of the Gulf monarchies as well as Jordan are essentially western creations that were created as states mostly by the British and then heavily reinforced by the US from the 70s onwards
i don't think you know much about islamist parties and are just grasping for reasons to justify suppressing democracy in certain places.
ennahada (tunisia), pks (indonesia), jui (pakistan) are all examples of islamist parties that have compromised or reached across
the aisle at various points
just off the top of my head.
besides, isn't the point of democracy to allow people to be led by those who represent their principles? if they are in power, why should the majority expect their elected
leaders to compromise
those principles?
> ennahada (tunisia), pks (indonesia), jui (pakistan) are all examples of islamist parties that have compromised or reached across the aisle at various points
Would love to read more on this. Naïvely, I shared OP’s view of Islamist parties’ intransigence. (Note to third parties: Islamist != Islamic majority or even Islamic parties, and certainly separate from Arab parties.)
> isn't the point of democracy to allow people to be led by those who represent their principles?
Yes. But nothing says democracies are fundamentally stable. It absolutely follows that intolerant populations can systematically elect intolerant leaders who then cause instability.
which includes both analyses from Western academics as well as responses from members of Islamist parties.
> It absolutely follows that intolerant populations can systematically elect intolerant leaders who then cause instability.
Intolerant of what, and what do you mean by "instability"? If the ideology of the political parties and institutions reflects that
of the (vast) majority of the population, why would we expect "instability"?
Democracy can descend into demagoguery; I believe that occurs when the "people" feel like the state has been captured by an elite (oligarchy) that doesn't represent their interests (i.e. interests of the majority), "intolerant" or not - e.g. Gracchi brothers, Hugo Chavez, etc etc.
I was writing about Arab Islamism. I don't have strong views about Pakistan or Indonesia, though I have negative opinions about Islamism across the board.
One reason I'm skeptical of Arab democracy is that Arab nationalism is weak. In the Arab world, Islam and hatred of Israel seem like the most powerful forces. Much stronger than nationalism. Would countries governed by those forces be stable? Would their policies be desirable from the perspective of the rest of the world?
There are Arab democracies that may prove that Islamists can be pragmatic. Tunisia like you said, Iraq, and possibly the new Syrian government. We'll see. The world is always changing.
Because every Islamic theocracy to date has been profoundly destabilising for its neighbours and the world, and always ends up imprisoning and immiserating its own people. No one wants more Irans or Afghanistans. (Or Saudi Arabias, though that's not said out loud as often.)
but neither Saudi Arabia nor Afghanistan's leaders were voted in ...
and secular/socialist/monarchic dictatorships have arguably worse effects on their neighbors and citizens - e.g. Saddam, Assad, Nasser, MBZ in UAE, MBS
Yes, there are a lot of bad options in the Middle East; Islamic theocracy has no monopoly on awfulness.
I think the broader point is that a democracy is unstable when the electorate just votes for their favourite warlord / cleric, who promptly ends / rigs any further elections.
In the Middle East, there appears to be a pattern of electorates voting for / staging a revolution in favour of Islamists, which either leads to a terrible Islamist regime, or leads to an elite coup, which of course destroys the democracy in the process. Worst case scenario all of this happens at once in different places, and you get a terrible civil war.
Democracy is great, but it requires an electorate that actually wants to sustain and retain a democracy. Those appear to be few and far in between.
> In the Middle East, there appears to be a pattern of electorates voting for / staging a revolution in favour of Islamists, which either leads to a terrible Islamist regime, or leads to an elite coup, which of course destroys the democracy in the process.
that pattern is hardly unique to middle east/islamists though. look at central/south america. guatemala, chile, brazil etc all had democracies overthrown by "elite" coups.
like almost every instance in the
middle east, there is actually a common denominator between these coups... resistance to the US-led order magically seems to invite instability.
That seems rather Whataboutist to me. I never claimed this only ever happens in the Middle East. We are, however, talking about the Middle East, so local examples would seem apposite. You seem to desire to make this conversation so abstract that it becomes about nothing.
> resistance to the US-led order magically seems to invite instability
Or perhaps 'resistance' is an awfully popular rallying cry for demagogues who bring instability, and the US is just the hegemon du jour. "It's the US' fault your crops are wilting! And international capital! And immigrants! And, oh, I don't know, the gays, why not. Rise up for El Generalissimo! Enlist your sons in the blood struggle, that will definitely improve things!" /s
Much sexier to be a revolutionary fighting shadowy foreign forces than to actually fix any of your own problems. No, no, tomorrow's problems will be America's fault too.
> I never claimed this only ever happens in the Middle East.
you said
> Arab democracies are unstable because they will elect Islamists.
whereas my claim is that governments (democracies or not) that run afoul of their local hegemon tend to have a short shelf life. this is not unique to US hegemony.
see: Brezhnev doctrine (USSR), or the canonical example of Athens and Melos from Peloponnesian war
> Rise up for El Generalissimo! Enlist your sons in the blood struggle, that will definitely improve things!" /s
Much sexier to be a revolutionary fighting shadowy foreign forces than to actually fix any of your own problems. No, no, tomorrow's problems will be America's fault too.
I'm sorry, you seem triggered by this discussion, it doesn't seem productive to continue on my end.
> I'm sorry, you seem triggered by this discussion, it doesn't seem productive to continue on my end.
I suppose shall have to make do without 101-level instruction in Chomskyian anti-Imperialism, woven through with whataboutism and international conspiracies.
> whereas my claim is that governments (democracies or not) that run afoul of their local hegemon tend to have a short shelf life. this is not unique to US hegemony.
Wow, big if true. Someone let Iran know.
How many trillions of dollars and gallons of blood did the US expend to make Afghanistan non-Taliban, or Vietnam non-Communist? And who rules Afghanistan and Vietnam today? You mention the Brezhnev doctrine, and yet literally not one of these countries is Russian-aligned today. The Russian invasion of Afghanistan failed just as hard as the British and American ones, all at the height of those respective countries' powers. Not very powerful, these alleged hegemons.
My overall point is that the Middle East (and Latin America, etc) has many local issues (e.g. corruption, misgovernance, sectarianism, organised crime), and an unhelpful habit of blaming some ill-defined global hegemony for misfortunes that are readily explicable as the consequences of these local phenomena. The US is no innocent lamb, but it does no service to the people of any of these regions to pretend that another hundred years of anti-Imperialist rhetoric will somehow bring benefits that the previous hundred years did not.
In these countries, this brand of tired anti-Imperialism is a figleaf for authoritarians. In the West, it is masturbatory politics for a certain type of narcissistic Westerner with a saviour complex, who fundamentally believes only Westerners have agency in the world, and everyone else are just motes of dust floating in the West's shadow. It's this confluence that results in absolute travesties like Chomsky supporting the Khmer Rouge, a far greater evil than all the worst allegations against America stacked together.
If you want to help the Middle East, get involved in civil society building efforts that help bridge the gap between sectarian communities; support charitable and poverty relief efforts that are not affiliated to the Muslim Brotherhood; get involved in civil rights advocacy on behalf of the oppressed in the Middle East (women, LGBT communities, religious and ethnic minorities, the list goes on); partake in initiatives aimed at tackling corruption, organised crime, etc. Or at the very least encourage and support the people who do these things, rather than regurgitating half-remembered anti-Imperialist tropes from your polsci 101 class, as though that were a contribution of any value whatsoever.
The one thing that will absolutely not help them, at all, is more meandering, false narratives about how they have no agency in the face of shadowy global hegemons, and how should just lie down and wait impassively for some sort of new, more just world to be given to them by their Western betters.
Ok, lot of stuff to unpack here, but I'll stick to just pointing out obvious misinfo, which is often repeated:
Chomsky never backed the Khmer rouge, he questioned some of the claims and western focus on the Khmer rouge, which was ignoring US culpability. He also never denied that the Khmer rouge were committing atrocities.
Was he wrong? Yes, at least in specific instances. But he was never outright supportive of the Khmer rouge. This is very old propaganda.
I've read Chomsky's work (more extensively than most people here, I'd wager, given I have degrees in both polsci and linguistics) and his sympathy to the Khmer Rouge was pretty clear.
Chomsky was about as pro-Khmer Rouge as Tucker Carlson is pro-Russia; he's not out there waving flags and singing patriotic songs for them, but he's sure as hell doing a lot of very useful work "just asking questions" about biolabs in Ukraine / the extent to which the US may have "provoked" the Khmer Rouge to do what it did. If someone wrote equivalent things about the atrocities in Nazi Germany, we would not be mincing words about that person's sympathies. Chomsky ought to be treated with the same intellectual honesty.
Chomsky was a useful idiot for murderous tyrants. And a truly wonderful linguist. Ah, the duality of man.
Oh, Chomsky is by no means perfect. He's an Epstein associate.
But you should still not spread misinformation. Also, America _has_ been accused of worse things than the Cambodian genocide (as far as genocides can be compared, but I'm following your lead on comparing atrocities here): take the genocide of the indigenous American population for one.
But you're extrapolating quite a bit here. Could you please 1) provide the reference for this "provoke"-bit, so that we can evaluate it ourselves, and 2) explain exactly what the damning evidence is.
Only on the Internet would someone so bombastically demand you do their homework for them. :)
Thus far we have your claim v. mine. Not sure why an absence of evidence would somehow make you right and me wrong, nor am I sure why I bear any burden of proof when you're the one who's shown up out of nowhere to bandy around accusations of bad faith and demand to be disproven.
For what it's worth, I don't consider your factually-deficient posts to be "misinformation"; I just think you're making a good faith error out of an unfamiliarity with the sum of Chomsky's work. You could read more of him if you think that would be of merit, though I don't consider a lot of the time I spent reading his political works time well spent, so make of that what you will. :)
Read his linguistics works instead! This would be a much better world if all the people who read Chomsky's politics had read his linguistics instead.
You are the one making a positive claim that Chomsky has done something. I can't prove the negative, therefore the burden of proof is on you.
"The necessity of proof always lies with the person who lays charges"
If by "factually deficient" you mean false, then that is the definition of misinformation. Which is of course separate from disinformation, which is when you do that purposefully.
On the contrary, if you wish to learn about Chomsky's views towards the Khmer Rouge, the onus is entirely on you to investigate Chomsky's work. Failing that you're entirely at the mercy of intermediated secondary sources of indeterminate levels of trustworthiness, including myself.
Considering the nuanced nature of the claim - a conclusion as to his sympathies borne of deep familiarly with his work - there's no reason for me to think you wouldn't find additional reasons to quibble over any specific citations and passages. I have no evidence that you're a good faith interlocutor, so I really see no reason to expend that effort. If you're actually interested, I do encourage you to read the original works. (If it wakes you up to Chomsky's sympathies and immunises you against some of his bad politics, perhaps not a total waste of time.)
Look, you are making a claim without evidence. One which I know has been peddled by right-wing propagandists, who have put words into Chomsky's mouth (e.g. David Horowitz).
Therefore, without further clarification, I must assume that when you say "Chomsky backed the Khmer rouge", this is what you meant.
The burden of proof is on you. And if you are (as you say) so familiar with Chomsky's work, and if his sympathies with the Khmer rouge are "pretty clear", you should have no issue actually producing the "pretty clear" statements to this effect.
If anyone is asking someone else to do their homework for them, it's you. You made the claim, not me.
The disconnect here is that I have a degree in polsci and have read much of Chomsky, and you're repeating a "debunking" (replete with declarations of "fallacies") in a manner that is popular with people whose level of familiarity with political science is "I am active on Reddit".
"Therefore, without further clarification, I must assume" (what a mouthful!) that you are an argumentative teen with a "debate me bro" mindset.
One of the key problems of online exchange is that it is impossible to synthetise expertise without someone much less knowledgeable driving by, and demanding ELI5 level proof. They believe that they must be capable of reaching the same conclusion as someone who has spent years on the topic, and they must get it now, and they firmly believe that the onus is on the expert to give it to them (for some reason). The implication being that years of familiarity are irrelevant unless you replace your nuanced point with "pan in the face"-level direct evidence, such as would satisfy the "debate me bro" teenager who is demanding it. All expertise is invalid except that which an inexperienced Redditor can see with his own eyes (an obvious parallel exists here to conspiracists who "do their own research").
Consider that it would be relatively trivial for me to just type "Chomsky khmer rouge" into Google and throw some random refs at you, and that there may be some reason I haven't done so.
It is both (a) pointless - in that I truly do not care one jot if I have provided a satisfying level of evidence to you (and what about the next Redditor that comes along? and the next one? are we to be stuck at this level of discourse forever?), and (b) fairly deleterious to discussion that happens at a level more sophisticated than first principles.
Consider the implications for the progress of society of being forever stuck in ELI5 performative debate for the benefit of random lay people. The FOX News-ification of all of academia. The reduction of all human knowledge to that which is digestible to the average Redditor.
I note also your reference to right-wing propaganda, etc. From an academic perspective, this is just such an irrelevance. I am not a Marxist, for example, but I find Marxism to offer an occasionally useful lens on economic power relations. If you're still indulging in partisan "he says she says", then I respectfully do not think we're operating at the same level on this topic. That's not to diminish your intellect or knowledge in other fields. I'm sure there are many other skills you have that I do not.
You are entirely free to walk away completely confident you're right and I'm wrong, and this is something that will never matter to me in any way for the rest of my life (I will forget that this exchange ever happened within days). I suppose I engage only in the (probably vain) hope that I might plant a seed in you or someone reading this. I'd consider you going back to read Chomsky a win here, even if I disagree with a lot of his conclusions, because at least there's more to him than this "debate me bro" hellscape.
I won't reply again - this is not a good use of my time. Up to you whether you choose to interpret that as a win (epic Redditor destroys boring academic with facts and logic!) or an opportunity for contemplation.
Look at how much energy you're using to not give a reference for something you're claiming.
I'm asking for one (1) source where he is "pretty clear" about his Khmer rouge sympathies. You are writing up a storm to make that seem like an unreasonable thing.
And you would start this exercise by googling "chomsky khmer rouge"? Implying you have no mental model about what Chomsky said and when. Strange, considering your posturing about your political science degree and familiarity with Chomsky's work.
I must assume you have a PhD (or that you're working towards one), because you call yourself an academic. Any decent researcher would be able to identify sources for something they claim to be an expert on. At least, that is my experience, having worked in academia for a while. But you can't tell me what Chomsky said or where, even in broad terms?
There are 2 million muslim, mostly arab, citizens who are officially and legally equal to jews. They are distinct from the arabs in Gaza or the west bank, who are not citizens.
> The law imposes the death penalty on persons convicted of fatal terrorist attacks. In military courts, the death penalty is the "default"; only Palestinians are tried. In civilian courts, both Israelis and Palestinians are tried, but the law applies only to those who "'intentionally cause the death of a person with the aim of denying the existence of the State of Israel'—a definition designed to exclude Jewish terrorists". It therefore "effectively enshrines capital punishment for Palestinians alone".
And to preempt the "but that's Palestinians, not Israeli Arabs" bit, nope:
> In 2005, the Follow-Up Committee for Arab Education said that the Israeli government spent an average of $192 a year on Arab students compared to $1,100 for Jewish students.
> In the 2002 budget, Israel's health ministry allocated Arab communities less than 1% of its 277 m-shekel (£35m) budget (1.6 m shekels {£200,000}) to develop healthcare facilities.
I don't think I implied they are not discriminated. But they do, generally, enjoy the same rights. I just thought to correct what I perceive as factually incorrect.
If they join a religion that isn't on the state approved list, they can't get married there and hard or extra expensive to get buried. There are some limits on religious freedom.
They can just get married abroad. There are even online ceremonies now.
A decent number of Israeli Jews have to do that as well, since Israel recognizes Jewish marriages only under orthodox rabbis. Some Israeli Jews are not even considered Jews under strict orthodox rules.
Israel's domestic civil unions have restrictions on interfaith couples, and common-law/reputed spouse outside of that system doesn't grant the same citizenship pathway, though they can become residents.
A marriage isn't just a state recognition of a civil union as religious, interfaith marriages between recognized religion and non-recognized have to marry abroad to get the similar rights, with special exclusions on this pathway if the immigrant spouse is from the West Bank or Gaza.
Of course everyone should be free to call their civil union whatever they like and the government shouldn’t differentiate at all if your civil union has a religious blessing as well. Just because some governments appropriated the religious terminology and/or the civil union developed from a union sanctioned by a priest doesn’t mean that a government needs to guarantee everyone a religious marriage. To the contrary. Everyone should be able (and required) to register the civil union if they want to be treated as married by the state. I’m not here to defend the status quo of all the laws in Israel - I’m here to emphasize that your reading of the laws about civil unions and marriages in incomplete and the standards you apply to Israel are a hundred times higher than those you seem to apply to any other country. Honi soit qui mal y pense.
It's not like it's designed to be discriminatory. In practice it's Jews that are most affected (if they don't conform to strict Orthodox rules), so if anything it's discriminatory against Jews, which wouldn't make much sense.
For a much more serious example of lack of religious freedom, we could look to Palestinian law, which only permits Islamic or Christian marriages. Not to mention that selling land to a Jew is high treason.
You might be surprised, but a civil union is the only legally binding form of marriage in many countries, e.g. Germany. The Churches - even though they are state churches - aren’t even allowed to provide a wedding ceremony if the civil union hasn’t been performed beforehand. Which different legal provisions do you think make the „religious marriage“ vs. „civil union“ morally equal to „separate but equal“?
> Being the good guys is about more than being "second worst".
If you cannot think about any group that’s not as bad as Hamas, but worse than Israel, I‘m happy to help… just ask!
Israel’s setup is not perfect (and so is the one in Germany), but as long as you cannot show that there is any meaningful legal difference in the eye of the state between a couple that’s married (Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Druze) or in a Civil Union, I cannot see the difference to the system in Germany. I think (not an expert) the system in the UK in the same: you can get married either by the Church of England or by a civil institution - both are valid, both are equal before the law.
Edit: just check it, it’s true. “You can choose to have EITHER a religious ceremony OR a civil ceremony if you’re getting married.” [0]
So since we’ve established that it’s a common practice in some countries that marriages can be either religious or civil, but still equal before the law, could you please elaborate how exactly civil unions in Israel are discriminated against compared to religious marriages?
> as long as you cannot show that there is any meaningful legal difference in the eye of the state between a couple that’s married (Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Druze) or in a Civil Union
Citizenship pathway. An Israeli Chrisitian of recognized denomination can marry someone from abroad domestically of same denomination and have a citizenship pathway (as long as they aren't from Gaza or West Bank). Same Israeli marries a Muslim (or Muslim Israeli marries a recognized denomination Christian) and they can't. This isn't religious freedom, there are state religious courts handling the intricacies of this.
But what is the DIFFERENCE between the two, other than the name? Please enlighten me, I cannot find any meaningful information on this.
Also: this kind of discrimination - if there is any - is targeting Arabic and Non-Arabic Israelis in the exact same way. So I don’t fully understand why you pointed this out as an Act of discrimination against Arabs.
"In 2017, the Florida Third District Court of Appeal held that although Israel recognizes 'reputed spouses' as a legal union, the union is not a marriage under Israeli law, and therefore, Florida law does not recognize the relationship as a marriage."
And some people (an atheist marrying a religious person, for example) can't get one at all within Israel.
"In 2010, Israel passed the Civil Union Law for Citizens with no Religious Affiliation, 2010, allowing a couple to form a civil union in Israel if they are both registered as officially not belonging to any religion."
> Also: this kind of discrimination - if there is any - is targeting Arabic and Non-Arabic Israelis in the exact same way.
"It's fine, we discriminate against other minorities!" is not the argument you imagine it to be.
You're barely able to read, are you? Otherwise, you wouldn't have linked the article about the recognition of "marriages performed outside Israel", but even though this article is about marriages performed OUTSIDE Israel, it contains the clear notion that "In 2010, Israel passed the Civil Union Law for Citizens with no Religious Affiliation, 2010, allowing a couple to form a civil union IN ISRAEL" - still, I agree that the status quo is not good enough. They should do better.
> "Others are worse" is not the moral standard one should aspire to, either.
OP stated that all Arabs hate Israel. This opens up the debate if living in an Arabic ethnofascist state such as Gaza or a Muslim fundamentalist state like Saudi Arabia would be the better choice for those 2 million Arabs. So yes, I think being the lesser of two evils is already the answer to that binary choice.
I agree with your analysis but I just want to point out that, as a general rule, cyclists do not follow traffic laws. They don't stop at stop signs/red lights. They weave in and out of traffic. They often bike the wrong way down one-way bike paths.
Drivers generally don't follow traffic laws. They text on their phone while they drive. They routinely go over the speed limit. They go through red lights. They go into or park in bike lanes. They tailgate other drivers. They don't signal before turning or changing lanes.
Drivers generally follow the rules. It's considered bad form when they don't, and they're occasionally ticketed. This doesn't apply to bikers. No one even expects them to follow the rules.
I'm not anti-bike. I bike a bit and I got hit by a car last year. Some crackhead turned left across the opposite lane right into me.
I'm just reporting what I see -- bikers do not generally follow the rules, and I find this interesting. Maybe they're being rational. Or maybe they're not. Either way it's interesting.
No, they don't. They break the rules all the goddamn time. Have you ever been on an American freeway? Most people are going above the speed limit, myself included.
Do you think most drivers give the legally required amount of space in front of their car while driving, especially on the freeway? It's not even close. Do people signal for the legally required amount of time before changing lanes? Again, not close for most drivers.
> I'm just reporting what I see
What you're actually experiencing is that you implicitly accept the status quo of certain rules being ignored for driving, because driving itself is more common (both for you and in general). But biking is different, it's more obscure, so the rule breaking stands out more.
This is very typical of cultures anywhere that driving is more common than biking, which is...well, most places really.
I feel like this is personal for you and you can't discuss it objectively.
Drivers are...not great. But as a general rule they follow the laws (albeit with frequent lapses). Cyclists do not follow the rules to the point where no one expects them to. It's genuinely weird for me to imagine a cyclist stopping at a stop sign.
I bike for 90% of my traveling. The examples you give for when cars break the rules vs what bikes do is telling. Yes, everyone breaks the rules, but cars (mostly) do it in safe and predictable manners. Most urban cyclists(including me tbh) break rules in very unsafe ways. Bikes routinely completely ignore stop signs even when there are cars waiting. The ignore red lights which cars never do. They swerve around in traffic, they ride on the sidewalk. Many refuse to use lights when biking at night. Urban biking behavior in the US is on average much more reckless than driving behavior.
Cars are more dangerous due to size and speed but if we’re just talking about who acts more recklessly and ignores more rules it’s easily bikes, at least in Chicago.
Going over the speed limit is not even close to as reckless as completely ignoring stoplights which I see bikes do every day. I see bikers texting weekly even though you need 2 hands to confidently steer a bicycle. Drivers texting is dangerous because theyre controlling heavy machinery, but at least you only need one hand to steer a car in an emergency. A significant portion of bicyclists seem to have a death wish which I can only say for maybe 10% of drivers at most.
Well, if you genuinely find it interesting, I can explain why they don't:
1. Cyclists live and die by inertia. Getting up to speed on a bike requires a lot of effort and every application of brakes erases that spent effort, which feels really bad.
In a car, it doesn't matter — you stop and accelerate with exactly the same trivial effort of pressing a pedal.
So all the grandstanding that cars stop at stop signs (since when, but ok), and cyclists don't is like bragging that you beat a disabled person in a 100m sprint. Good job, I guess.
2. Stop signs and traffic lights are made for cars, because of their speed, how dangerous they are, and how bad their visibility is. Cyclists are like pedestrians in that they do not need traffic lights, they can navigate just fine with just body language.
Telling whether running a red light would be safe in a car is essentially impossible, you're going too fast and can't see much, can't hear anything either. But on a bike you have perfect visibility, there's no box of metal all around you. You can hear quite well too.
Stop signs are an even better example. Literally the only reason for their use instead of yield signs is that the visibility at the intersection is bad enough that you need to stop to be able to yield. But that is only the case because your visibility is so bad in the first place.
Stop signs literally never make sense for bikes — there's no "hood", so your head is basically where the vehicle starts and you can lean forward to make that literally true if really needed, and you've got perfect visibility all around, no blind spots.
Hence why in a lot of places cyclists can legally treat red lights like stop signs and stop signs like yield signs.
I know more people who have gotten tickets for running stop signs on their bikes than in cars (even though getting hit by a car at 10mph is much more dangerous to a pedestrian than a bike!). Hopefully Newsom listens to reason and gives up veto-ing commense sense traffic laws next cycle
I regularly see more motorists run red lights in a given day than I have seen cyclists run red lights in a decade. Cycling is sufficiently common in my area to state outright that, proportionally speaking, more motorists run red lights than cyclists.
The same thing can be said for cyclists weaving in and out of traffic, and for good reason: if traffic is moving, it's a good way to kill yourself; if traffic is not moving, there is no need for it. (There is usually enough space on the right to pass. If there isn't enough space on the right to pass, it is unsafe.)
I have seen more motorists barrel the wrong way down a one way street, in reverse, than I have seen cyclists riding down one way streets the wrong way. Proportionally speaking, more cyclists may be breaking the law. In terms of safety, what motorists are doing is far more dangerous.
As for stop signs: other cyclists tend to get the hint when I stop at them on my bike. :) The ones who don't stop tend to do the same as motorists, by doing a "rolling stop". Doing anything less would be a good way to get killed.
So no, I don't agree that cyclists do not follow traffic laws as a general rule. In many cases, motorists are worse. I am not going to pretend that cyclists are better for altruistic reasons. The reality is that cyclists are much more vulnerable than motorists. Cars are made to handle collisions, bikes are not. Motorists pay more attention to cars than bikes, in the most part because other cars are more dangerous to them.
First, in many states cyclists explicitly do not have to stop at stop signs, it’s called an “Idaho stop” and it’s legal in my state. This is much safer for cyclists since most crashes occur in intersections and allowing cyclists to move thru faster is much much safer.
You’re also assuming equity of consequence. Someone not obeying the law on a bike is significantly different than not obeying the law when operating a multi-ton vehicle.
Finally, every single group of people breaks the law. There is no demographic of reasonable size that does not break the law. This argument is silly and pointless. What is your goal with pointing this out? Literally everyone breaks the law, this grandstanding is stupid.
Have you tried driving the speed limit recently? You know, the maximum speed you are legally allowed to drive? Do you always come to a full stop at every stop sign?
Cars don't follow traffic laws. Cars roll through stop signs and run red lights. Cars speed and weave through traffic. They go the wrong way down one-way streets. Since cars are much bigger, this is much more dangerous.
How is that when car drivers decide the rules are nonsensical it's bad, but when bicycle drivers decide the rules (that, please note, apply to everyone on the street, car or not), it's somehow A-ok?
How come that when people handling uranium decide the rules are nonsensical it's bad, but when people handling bananas decide the rules (that, please note, apply to everyone with radioactive materials), it's somehow A-ok?
Hmm well, we have some "smart traffic lights" where I live that are always red unless a vehicle goes over a metal detecting loop under the road in front of them. Guess how well that works for any vehicle that's not a car.
Rules of the road are generally designed in the same way — for cars. Nobody cares about carving out obvious exceptions for bikes, like the Idaho stop.
I used to agree with that (as a pedestrian and driver only), but as I've started cycling, I've begun to realize that many rules of the road, intended for cars, just don't make much sense for bicycles.
Like what? I hear people claim that not stopping at STOP sign is somehow making it safer than stopping but when asked about the mechanism of the safety in such a maneuver they either disappear or proclaim that Idaho where this is allowed is in top half of safest states for cyclists so it must work somehow.
I cycle myself and see no rules that somehow don't make sense for bikes. In fact, since bikes are much less maneuverable and much more vulnerable, they need to obey all the rules that are there to protect the cars from other cars with more vigilance than cars.
I didn't say anything about safety; I said "don't make much sense".
Fully stopping at a stop sign just isn't necessary for bicycles. And forcing bicycles to stop can create inefficient or even unsafe situations. It takes a bit longer for a bicycle to stop and start again than for a car, and requiring cyclists to fully stop will absolutely destroy throughput at a stop sign. On top of that, cars lining up behind bicycles at a stop sign can get impatient and try to go around the cyclist (I've seen this happen); this actually is a safety issue.
(Now, I've seen cyclists blow through stop signs and traffic lights without even slowing down. I'm not saying that's ok.)
> In fact, since bikes are much less maneuverable and much more vulnerable, they need to obey all the rules that are there to protect the cars from other cars with more vigilance than cars.
I don't think this statement is obviously true. Cars and bicycles are very different types of vehicles, and there's no reason to believe that every car-related safety rule has the same safety-related effect when applied to a bicycle.
No road rule is necessary for anyone, all of them are for safety only.
>It takes a bit longer for a bicycle to stop and start again than for a car, and requiring cyclists to fully stop will absolutely destroy throughput at a stop sign.
Having cyclist colliding with each other or other cars in the intersection will improve throughput? Do you ride a bike or drive at all? Stop signs are not just some Big Government ploy to annoy you. Stop signs allow two traffic streams to cross each other without collisions. Without stop sings and people stopping at them you would get cars colliding all the time.
I live in California so YMMV depending on the laws where you live and the temperament of drivers.
If I do a "proper" stop at a stop sign (0mph, place foot on ground, fortunately I don't clip in), cars will see me stopping and try to blast thru the stop sign when it isn't their turn. So I end up stopping while the first car goes thru the intersection, and while I'm getting resituated on the pedals a second car enters instead of waiting their turn, making my situation more dangerous.
One nice law we have in California is that the "walk" sign applies to pedestrians and bikes. This gives me a chance to assert myself in the intersection before the car across from me tries to sneak in a left turn. It also protects me from cars trying to turn across the bike lane.
Yes, slow down to 2-5 mph but not coming to a complete stops solves this problem. I usually try to time it so that I slow down alongside a car and we can run the stop sign at the same speed.
If you assert your right to use the road, cars won't try to take advantage of your size/acceleration as much, especially if you have another car run interference for you.
YMMV if you live somewhere where it's common for cars to actually stop at a stop sign.
This sounds like a survivorship bias, you imagine that people who blow stops won't do that if you don't stop but, people who did the same on a bike and were t-boned by a car might not be in a good condition to post about their experience anymore.
Anyways, even if you are 100% right and not stopping at stop on a bike will prevent people blowing stop completely (and people who have the right of way will also yield to your bike because they will see you 100%) how is it safer than to stop and proceed when there is no traffic across?
Behavior by cyclists certainly has a bias towards survivorship. Every other vehicle on the road represents a potentially lethal threat at any time.
Inadequate dedicated infrastructure for cyclists leads to behavior like "Idaho stops" that look counterintuitive to drivers, but improves safety for cyclists at intersections.
>how is it safer than to stop and proceed when there is no traffic across?
Generally, on a bike you want to be predictable. If you do something weird, like not going when it's your turn, you're increasing your risk. And in many situations if you wait for there to be no cars at a stop sign, you're going to end up holding up cars behind you and be on the receiving end of road rage, or drivers behaving recklessly to get around you. Plus you may be waiting literally hours for all the traffic to dissipate, and I prefer to be home before sunset because riding at night introduces other safety issues.
Anecdotally I've never felt at risk of being t-boned when doing an Idaho stop, but it happens regularly when I do a complete stop (in part because it's unpredictable - drivers don't come to a complete stop at the line so they misbehave and don't know how to respond when they see a cyclist stop).
Beyond my anecdata, there's plenty of more rigorous studies showing the benefits of the Idaho stop.
>Generally, on a bike you want to be predictable. If you do something weird, like not going when it's your turn, you're increasing your risk.
Absolutely agree. As same as going when it's not your turn. But, first and foremost, you should not be going across a moving vehicle. Even another bike. Just falling off your bike can cause pretty serious trauma. Why do this?
>Plus you may be waiting literally hours for all the traffic to dissipate, and I prefer to be home before sunset because riding at night introduces other safety issues.
I don't know where in California you live that nobody stops at the stop signs, but I lived in LA and cars generally stop at those. You literally need to wait few seconds for the cars to to stop and proceed in most cities in the US.
>Anecdotally I've never felt at risk of being t-boned when doing an Idaho stop, but it happens regularly when I do a complete stop (in part because it's unpredictable - drivers don't come to a complete stop at the line so they misbehave and don't know how to respond when they see a cyclist stop).
I know that feeling. Like people riding against traffic feel safer because they see approaching cars yet regularly get t-boned by the cars not expecting anything coming at them against traffic.
>Beyond my anecdata, there's plenty of more rigorous studies showing the benefits of the Idaho stop
Like what? I tried to search again and found this [1] apparently Idaho is not even in top half of the states in cyclist safety (or "friendliness" whatever that means).
>I don't know where in California you live that nobody stops at the stop signs, but I lived in LA and cars generally stop at those
When did you live in LA? Especially coming out of COVID lockdowns, what you're saying is not consistent with my daily experience. It's relatively uncommon for cars to actually stop (to the point that when Waymo initially rolled out in LA, people would get mad and honk at them for stopping!)
I tried to keep a count on my commute today. I think I saw 3 cars come to a complete stop (and in each case it was because someone was already in the intersection). On the flip side, dozens of cars blew through stop signs (and red lights!). It may get garbled by Youtube compression, but here's a pretty representative clip of 3 drivers running a stop sign back-to-back-to-back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6z6fFnDzfv8
I lived in West LA and Santa Monica. And, as your clip shows, drivers will blow stop signs regardless if there is a bicycle or not. Imagine you tried to enter that intersection from the cross street on a bike without stopping, obscured by the fence? Even at that speed you'd could receive some heavy damage.
Yes, it absolutely helps, because when the cyclist doesn't stop, the driver doesn't get as impatient, and won't try to get around and blow by the cyclist.
I've seen people blowing stops with zero bikes stopped at the intersection, people blow stops regardless if there is a bike present and its state of motion. With bikes not being able to break as fast as cars and not having side airbags you might want to consider what's going to happen when you enter the intersection in front of such a driver before finding that empirically.
It's weird to have the same rules when there are several orders of magnitude difference in manueverability, maximum damage possible, and visibility between the two modes. Imagine if pedestrians had to follow all the same rules as cars. Or everyone in an electric wheelchair. It wouldn't make sense.
I think the point is they have to follow the rules of the road because they are allowed in the road. Pedestrians, wheelchairs, etc can go on the sidewalk and be safe from traffic (one hopes).
Though it depends on the state and in my experience there are typically some differences, such as bikes are required to share the lane.
In Washington State, they're required to follow most car rules when in a lane, but not all (i.e. all stop signs are yield for cyclists). They also have a set of rules allowing for sidewalk usage when mounted; when dismounted, they follow pedestrian rules (obviously).
As a general rule, the the frequency illusion[1] and the negativity bias[2] are a thing and combined make shallow, single-datapoint arguments like yours instantly invalid.
[1]: "The frequency illusion is a cognitive bias in which a person notices a specific concept, word, or product more frequently after recently becoming aware of it."
[2]: "The negativity bias, is a cognitive bias that human cognition is relatively more affected by a negative affect than an equally potent positive affect."
The research on AI is showing again and again that people that use AI are losing their skills not just in the specific task but more generally. This isn't a "change of skills" it's a fundamental reduction in the skills of knowledge workers.
Regardless of exactly how it started, the constant negativity you see everywhere (including HN...) has become a self-perpetuating social contagion. Notice that it mainly affects the English-speaking world, which hints that it spreads and survives through language.
Its caused by active influence campaigns and institutional ideology. Its not native, it doesn't come from the population and it doesn't reflect society. That's why politicians who embrace it usually lose. Only the reactionaries (who go against it) do well in elections. Those "people" you see online pushing it, those are bots and they are rarely operated by Americans or even native English speakers.
PS A foreign example, the entire Scottish Independence movement online (post say 2020) was caused by foreign bot farm.
> Do actual climate scientists claim we're getting more, and stronger, hurricanes now than we did before?
The general line is that climate change has probably increased the amount of rainfall associated with hurricanes, possibly the severity of hurricanes (due to sea level rise and warmer water) but there isn't good evidence that it has increased the frequency of hurricanes.
I've heard climate scientists that describe climate change as a "more energy in the system" phenomenon. The overall system for now is mostly the same, but every event inside of it has "more energy" than it had before.
For hurricanes this seems especially problematic because the historical categorization system is based on radar-observed width of the storm. "More energy" means that the categories stay the same over time, but every category is getting worse (more rainfall, heavier/faster winds, further travel, higher damage).
As with so many statistical phenomenon, it's also a reminder to be careful what metrics you are trying to compare. Comparing just the hurricane categories to historic values may just be the exact sort of wrong metric, for these "more energy" concerns.
Ah, sorry. I suppose it is only fair to mention using the wrong metrics and getting the exact metric wrong myself. Today it is radar-observed wind speed and historically there were other less efficient means to test or at least estimate wind speed.
The original point still stands that Hurricanes are defined by only the one metric and other metrics have room to grow bigger as the category stays the same:
> The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale is a 1 to 5 rating based only on a hurricane's maximum sustained wind speed. This scale does not take into account other potentially deadly hazards such as storm surge, rainfall flooding, and tornadoes.
Hurricanes do more dollars in damage because we're richer and there's more capital near the coast.
The idea that climate change caused hurricanes which spread insects is not impossible but seems unlikely. I don't think the statistical methods exist to prove it.
According to the blog post linked in the OP, the LLM-generated results were read, understood, and confirmed by the mathematician whose work they built on.
I notice a dichotomy here between people who care about results and people who care about process. The former group wants to use LLMs insofar as they can contribute to getting results. The latter group is wary of LLMs because they're more interested in the process and less interested in the results themselves. Needless to say, I think the former group is right, and I'm happy to see that mathematicians (or some of them) agree.
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