That seems like a pretty normal thing to do.

In open source projects i participate in, "overwhelming" the maintainer gets you banned. It doesn't get your patches blindly merged. In some ways i find this one of the most shocking parts of the story.

This story is different though, the farmer sold the land for cheap in exchange for some conditions. This situation is more like going back on a contract.

I think article 18(a) of the vienna convention of the law of treaties means that once you withdraw your signature, you no longer have any obligations in regards to the treaty.

Maybe you could make some sort of argument that the sanctions violate the purpose of the geneva convention as they are designed to prevent bringing to justice people accused of grave breaches of the geneva convention. Like its an attempt to frustrate the application of article 49 of the first geneva convention [Ianal]

Some of these sanctions are required by international law (i.e. sanctions imposed by UNSC). For the other ones, international law generally lets countries have whatever trade policy they see fit including sanctions, unless they violate some other rule of international law or treaty obligation.

Its literally the dictionary definition.

> Misleading investors is pretty much the greatest talent of all of history’s greatest capitalists - were they all grifters? Is it the extent of the lying that matters?

Some are. Plenty are in the grey.

But there is a big difference between objectively lying like in theranos, and hyping things up questionably. There is a reason why Theranos people are in jail, while many a hype man walk free.

> anyone’s working definition of capitalism.

How about the dictionary definition of capitalism. Private individuals owning and controlling the means of production and subjecting to their whims is as fundamental to capitalisim as you can get.

Maybe there is an exception for monopolies, but i dont think any of the AI companies are monopolies.

> held by few individuals who are not as well-informed and smart as they think they are

I mean, seems to be working out pretty well for them. Can't argue with success.

> The system is supposed to work in the way that we design it to work

Key word being "we". As in society. Not you personally.

> There’s a culture of grift and exploitation running rampant in the US at the moment, and this sort of apologia only serves to exacerbate.

People making heated diatribes instead of cold logical arguments serve to exacerbate it.

Are they actively lying to people in concrete ways? Not just, we think this is going to be big, when that is questionable, but do they say AI can do X right now, when objectively it cannot even remotely do X under any circumstance? Lying is what makes the difference.

> well, maybe there isn’t a word that elegantly describes that situation, but “grift” is as close as I can muster.

I think the word you are looking for is capitalism.

Rich people put their money where they think it will generate more money. The economy uses that to determine what to focus on. Sometimes rich people are wrong and are punished by losing a bunch of money. That is how the system is supposed to work. It is far from perfect but traditionally has done better than the alternatives.

Normally a grift involves tricking someone. The AI situation seems more like a bunch of investors knowingly investing in something very speculative. If they lose their money, while that is the nature of speculative investments.

I mean, do you know what the value of those stocks would be if AI didn't exist. Maybe they would be much more negative. Maybe we would be in a recession. Without a control this type of analysis is meaningless.

And that is even assuming that AI productivity gains are happening now instead of 5-10 years from now.

If that's his message, why is he going on about ecconomic sustainability? Whether or not you have a coherent business model has nothing to do with how morally corrupt you are.

Ultimately i agree with the GP post, the article reads like something preaching to the choir. If you already agree it seems natural. If you don't agree it looks like an incoherent rant that is not particularly convincing.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Public_domain

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Freedom_of_panora...

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Reuse_of_PD-Art_p...

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:De_minimis

Of course sometimes its just a risk trade off, and depends more on how the publisher feels then what the actual rules are.

I think the biggest issue with this conspiracy theory is why Israel would want to take out the liberty? It seems like the events would be strongly detrimental to Israeli interests. Nobody has really come up with a compelling motive, which suggests to me the most likely scenario is accident/miscommunication.

I could understand why anyone who starts a joint venture with trump would be nervous about trump selling them out. It is trump after all. Probably is a logical thing to be concerned about.

If the use is half decent people just dont notice it.

A very mild one, but yes. Particularly for things outside the field they got the nobel for. I think this applies to fame in general.

> I mean there’s the whole field of mathematics and most of modern physics that use mathematical proofs instead of experiments, including the main article this thread is on

Math is not science. It does not deal with things that depend on the real world. Consciousness is a phenomenon that allegedly actually exists in the real world. It is not a polynomial.

I dont see the relavence. Penrose didn't provide a mathamatical proof. In fact from first principles it seems like any pure math proof of properties of conciousness would be impossible.

> I’m arguing that it’s unscientific to call a theory bullshit because it sounds “woo” or “new age.”

Taken literally, sure i would agree with you. However usually when people make claims like this, what they are really saying is that its not a scientific theory so there is nothing to discuss.

What does penrose's theory predict? Is it testable? Has anyone tested it? If the answer is no then there is no merits to debate.

Surely you must appreciate the irony when your primary argument is an appeal to authority, while on the other hand you dismiss everyone who is unconvinced as "dogmatic".

As for Penrose's specific ideas, i'm not familiar enough with them or the field to make an informed judgement. Hence i would defer to other experts in that field, who as far as i understand are unconvinced. However, the fact he previously won a nobel does not lead me to give him any more credence than i would anyone else. If anything its a negative signal.

That said, if i was going to bite:

> Penrose’s main argument is that consciousness can not be computational. If you can’t argue against an idea with reason

The onus is on Penrose to show consciousness is non-computational. Preferably with some sort of experiment (or are we in the realm of pure philosophy here? Arguing how many angels are dancing on the pin). Science is about creating hypotheses and testing them. Admiteddly im not super well-read on this topic, but i don't think this theory has yielded testable predictions not explainable by other theories that have been verified.