You’re generalising from some criminals to an entire civilian population. The parent generalized from military to military. There’s a slight difference in the two.
Also, remember that it was the US who declared “no quarter”, not the Iranians.
We gotta imagine a few steps further in time and toss in some game-theory.
Imagine a big swing-state split between Yellow and Purple parties. It's legislature is controlled by Yellow, and they pull a sneaky: They partition into 10x Small Yellow states (5% pop each) and one Big Purple state (50% pop) Let's also assume the whole effort somehow evaded requirements in the state's constitution, referendums, etc.
At first glance, you might think Yellow has "won" by adding more/safer seats on the federal level, right?
Except now the folks in Big Purple are kinda pissed, and they control themselves now. They could choose to split again, leaving things as 10x Small Yellow and 10x Small Blue. That puts the partisan balance is back at square one, except for a shit-ton of disruption and pain and a bunch of Yellow politicians are out of a job. So did they really win? Knowing the likely outcome, would they have tried anyway?
In short, it's very different from district gerrymandering. For starters, every division becomes independent, and it won't even happen if residents are asking tough questions like "Then how do I get my water from the river!?" It'll be a very slow and very deliberate process stretched across multiple election cycles.
I am theoretically eligible to get 60% of my income for 3 months after losing my job, while I look for my new job. But if I actually try to claim that, they demand so many documents and meetings that it's not actually practical to receive that benefit. The only people who can receive benefits are the people who are experts at navigating the benefit system.
For instance, if you do not file a certain form on a certain exact day, then your benefits will not start until 3 months after you became unemployed. That is exactly the same time period this unemployment insurance benefit normally covers. By that time you should already have a job anyway and they will ask you to explain why you couldn't get a job in 3 months, since the benefit normally only covers 3 months.
Nobody will tell you how to navigate this. Nobody will tell you the correct form to fill out on the correct day. If you don't already know the arcane rules, you don't get the money. This is how most European social benefits work. They aren't actually provided to normal people.
There is lot of investment going in to fanning those flames - just look at the way the edges of this are discussed in the Epstein files.
Here in the UK, it is amazing to follow just how much money has been pumped into the various 'right of the Conservatives' parties for the last 15 years, while it might seem like a grass roots movement, the majority of the cash has been coming from those with vast wealth inside and outside the UK.
Probably better that they get their medication rather than waiting for an appointment if it’s keeping them from being psychotic or otherwise causing harm or being harmed.
If it keeps bipolar people on their meds, it will make the world better and safer, but also, those meds should just be able to be setup as "always fill this" in a saner system.
I'm aware that it happened. You seem under the impression that this is some kind of mass exodus based on people you know.
Uninstalls up 300%! What's the baseline?
> downloads fell 13% on day one and a further 5% the next day
Dramatic falloff of new downloads after one day (still plenty of new downloads). Day 3 was likely negligible and, I bet, it was back to normal less than a week after when the story left the news cycle.
> 1.5 million users joined the QuitGPT boycott within days
That's both very few people and a completely meaningless number since all it requires is checking a box. Did anyone verify they were actually human?
> Claude rose to #1 most downloaded app in the App Store and US usage rose by 51% [2].
> New customers are now choosing Claude over OpenAI 70% of the time [1].
Which has nothing to do with cancellations.
> And much more. I think it was just your bubble that didn’t cancel it.
Most people in my bubble have no idea any of this happened and are just using free chatgpt tier if they use it at all. That seems much more representative given your provided statistics of the 1.5m person boycott.
I didn't say that, I just brought that up to contrast it to yours.
The strongest part of my argument goes with your cited 1.5m number. That's not a lot of people, especially when you consider the signing of a petition requires no other action than signing and has no way to verify the signing.
I'm just not seeing how any of this harmed OpenAI more than a government contract helps.
I am right and I suspect you know it... you just don't like the way it makes you feel. Hence your focus on vibes and ad hominums rather than reason.
It is self evident that moderm science is too complex for the average person to understand, and fifty percent of us are less intelligent than even that.
> It is self evident that moderm science is too complex for the average person to understand, and fifty percent of us are less intelligent than even that.
I think you're grossly overestimating the complexity of most modern science outside of physics and mathematics (and computing, as an intersection of the two).
Good science is actually pretty easy to explain most of the time. It may take a long time to become a domain expert thst can perform novel research in a field but it it's well within the understanding of most people to have a single topic explained to them by an expert.
In fact, that very thing happens in courtrooms all the time.
Your condescending attitude is why people don't trust authorities and with good reason. If you can't help people understand science, it's you that doesn't understand it.
Furthermore, I hope you realize how close your "self-evident" logic is to a lot of extremely gross and genocidal ideologies of the past and present.
I originally wrote a long winded response to this, but I deleted it. The more I think about your perspective the more I realize that though I disagree, it is also very reasonable of you to believe the way you do and I can respect that.
The truth is that we're both likely right to some extent, and wrong to some extent.
I now think that maybe there is no hard and fast rule one can apply to every situation to decide when one should decide for themself or just trust the experts. The optimal solution likely varies greatly depending on the specifics of the given situation, and it's very reasonable that we would have two very different takes about it.
There is a kind of rubrik I use on stuff like this. If LLMs are discovering new math, why have I only read one or two articles where it's happening? Wouldn't it be happening with regularity?
The most obvious example of this thinking is, if LLMs are replacing developers, why us open ai still hiring?
I can only say that at family meetings, I hear people talk about contracting with a shop that used to have 4 web designers, but now it's 1 guy, delivering 4x faster than before.
> But it used to be that the US was respected enough that public saber rattling and behind the scenes diplomatic efforts would avoid conflict.
This is isn't true in practice, even if you want to argue it's technically true. Iran has been participating in conflict through proxies continually for decades. US sabre rattling has done nothing to quell that violence.
Houthis open adversaries, Saudi, are aware that they are not really Iranian proxies [0]. Sunnis in Lebanon are Persian Shi'a 'proxy' only since their leadership was assassinated during negotiations in 2024 (also by this very liberal definition of 'proxy', eastern Iranian clans are US/Israel proxies, and killed more Iranians than Hamas killed Israelis, so I'm not sure we really want to get into it). The only proxy Iran had were Iraki Shi'a paramilitary forces, who agreed for a ceasefire to let US troops and diplomats get out of Iraq, and once the evacuation was done, got their leaders bombed. Never trust the US.
Iran gives missiles to the houtis, houtis then use those to fire at American ships. Its the same kind of proxy war as Ukrain, and people call that a proxy.
Thank you, that's my point. If you think Houtis are a proxy, then you think Ukraine is a proxy for the US, as Houtis have to promise concessions to Iran in exchange for armaments. Better yet, they choose their target without iranian input, so they are even less of a proxy than Ukraine who has been forbidden by the US to use the weapons they were given outside of their borders.
If you think Hezbollah are an Iranian proxy, then Israel is an US proxy, and Hamas is a Qatar/Likud proxy (won't be the first time the far right pay agitators to kill their own citizen to stay/be in power, just look at Italy).
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