What you're describing is a recipe for a few people to get rich while everybody else starves and dies in wars.

British spies in WWII wouldn't do that if the entire concept of what a swastika was baffled them. You have to understand at least basically what the thing you're looking at is in order to use it as a symbol.

If you have _no_ concept of people being made out of meat being possible, you don't dress up as people made out of meat. You do that if it's a common concept to you and you're trying to fit in.

I mean, I already did. You also don't even agree on what _already_ happened, so I don't expect much to change in the next few weeks there. This for example:

> Just a reminder you were wrong about this part: (a lot of equipment on both sides).

You honestly think that the US didn't lose "a lot of equipment", or am I misreading what you're saying there?

But here's my predictions, consolidated:

The Strait will be monetized by Iran and more controlled compared to pre-war. Sanctions on Iran will be reduced or eliminated from their pre-war levels. There will not be any effective controls on what drones or missiles that Iran can build.

In five years, Iran will have a nuclear bomb. Probably much sooner, but I doubt it will be super public or unambiguous.

> No matter what the justification or reasoning is they'll never be permitted to have one.

Why does North Korea have nuclear weapons now, and why does that not apply to Iran in the future?

You hopefully realize that _I_ probably know what I meant, and that I'm in the discussion?

This is what I said:

> The sanctions are gone or heavily weakened so their can sell their oil to the world instead of selling it to China at a relative loss

What about that doesn't match the link I provided? Iran gets to sell their oil more easily and for more money, because we dropped sanctions. I didn't mention the why the US chose to do it, but "we fucked up and need to panic and try to do anything possible to keep oil prices down" doesn't make it any less true.

> Well to date they lost a lot of military equipment that they can't get back - we would bomb it again too. They've lost any progress toward nuclear weapons unless helped by other adversaries like China, Russia, or North Korea, and they've had their leadership destroyed.

I don't know the details of their nuclear program, but my understanding is that they have a bunch of highly enriched uranium and they lost ~none of it. I would guess that they're about where they were before except now they certainly know they need to go for a bomb at all costs and will do so. There's no choice, because the US won't stop until they do. They had a deal where they agreed not to pursue a bomb, and the US broke it, and now the US keeps attacking whenever they feel like it.

> Like, in what world does a comment like this even make sense? "They lost a lot of stuff, but they gained ways to build 100x as much back."

> How did they gain a way to build 100x what they lost when they have no ability to build anything at scale that we don't allow? If they build a factory we just blow it up.

They will come out of this with more money due to having a better excuse to exploit the Strait and reduced or eliminated sanctions.

You think we're going to just sit there and blow up every factory they build for all eternity? Then why did we propose a ceasefire? Will the agreement after this war include that they never get to build another factory? What do you think happens from here?

I think I'm good on this discussion, have a good day. Just look at what the _actual_ outcome of this war is in a few weeks and see if Iran's regime is better or worse off than they started. I think if you actually see the truth of what happens you'll be surprised.

Your view of war seems to be rooted in "well I really blew that thing up good, I win!". It's not that simple.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9d415g55nno

> Well that's the Iranian logic, not my logic or American logic. They believe they own the Straight. Fine then we'll just take it over instead if they believe someone gets to own it, well, we have the bigger guns so we'll own it.

It's the world's logic. If you live there, you own it.

What does the US taking over the strait look like? It's multiple aircraft carriers, and a _large_ boots-on-the-ground invasion of the shore, and even then it's _still_ a mess. And yes, that is physically possible. It's just not politically possible, and it would be forever. The US could never leave.

> No we can just build cheap drones and missiles and we're working on doing so.

Yeah, we're "working on doing so", Iran is _using them_. We're behind in wars of this type. The US is all set to run World War II again. Plus, that would work if Iran was in say the middle of Lake Erie. Where Iran actually exists, we're going to deploy them from where? Aircraft carriers? They're not set up for that, and if they get close enough they'll take on potshots they can't protect against until they have to move back.

Iran has a whole country they control to send potshots from. Unless the US is willing to firebomb the entire country, or invade in force, the US is not winning this war. Neither of those are going to be acceptable politically.

> Doesn't make sense at all. First we can blow up any physical structure in Iran. So where will they make these weapons? Well we'll find wherever they try to make the weapons and boom! Gone in an instant.

Then why is Iran still able to shoot down our fancy jets? Their offensive capability should be already gone right? What are we waiting for?

> The US forced Iran into a ceasefire - remember the US demanded it, not Iran, under threat of massive bombardment, and then Iran capitulated. At least for a short while, rumors are they already broke it because their soldiers in Lebanon (Hezbollah - wait why is Iran funding groups in Lebanon?) continue to strike at Israel so they continue to get bombed.

Did they capitulate or did they break it already? Seems kind of like having it both ways.

I'm sure it will get litigated and argued about to hell, but Israel is bad at ceasefires. Their version of a ceasefire is the kind where they still get to blow up whatever they feel like. Doesn't seem like Israel is too invested in this ceasefire anyway, so it makes sense.

And hey, let's look at the ceasefire. If you have another source, happy to take a look but here's one to start with: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/8/us-iran-ceasefire-de...

In this article, this is reported to be Iran's ask, which Trump calls “workable basis on which to negotiate”:

- Fundamental commitment to non-aggression from the US. - Controlled passage through the Strait of Hormuz in coordination with the Iranian armed forces, which would mean that Iran retains its leverage over the waterway. - An acceptance of Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme. - The lifting of all primary and secondary sanctions and resolutions against Iran. - End of all resolutions against Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency. - End of all resolutions against Iran by the United Nations Security Council. - The withdrawal of US combat forces from all bases in the region. - Full compensation for damages suffered by Iran during the war – to be secured through payments to Iran by ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz. - The release of all Iranian assets and properties frozen abroad. - The ratification of all these matters in a binding UNSC resolution.

If they get basically any of that it's a win for Iran. What did the regime of Iran lose? They lost some leaders, that's bad but it doesn't exactly weaken the regime itself if we just change who's on top. They lost a lot of stuff, but they gained ways to build 100x as much back.

The people of Iran lost a good amount. They're in a worse position even if you ignore all of the dead ones. Does the regime care? No, the Iranian regime fucking sucks, they're assholes. And the US helped them out by going into a war with no strategy and no achievable objectives.

By your own logic, just about anyone can do this. It doesn't really make any sense in practice. What makes the Strait any more ours than Russia's or China's or Belgium's? By this logic of the world, every country in the world should be paying every other country "don't get bombed today" extortion every single day.

> Just like Iran, we don't need to spend a bunch of money, we can just copy what they do.

We can't copy what they do. War is logistics. Iran can send some asshole to drag a $2000 drone down to the shore on a kid's wagon and that's an effective weapon. We have to either send a several-million-dollar missile from ages away or throw a billions-of-dollars aircraft carriers in the strait that can then become a target or invade with enough forces to control the shore (which also becomes targets). All of that would be temporary and unpopular and expensive and need constant resupply and be vulnerable as hell.

Did you notice how many of our planes got shot down in this war, how many expensive bases and military installations got destroyed? These things are ~necessary, but they're as much targets as they are assets these days.

> Yet again the US has to do the dirty work to keep the world safe and stop chaos from spreading and that does come at a cost we are unlikely to recuperate.

We stopped no chaos here, we created chaos. Who is happy that this war happened? Who is thanking us? Russia is happy, their ally got strengthened and some of the heat got taken off of the Ukraine war. China is happy, the US got a lot weaker. Anybody else of note?

> But the Iranian regime has been very weakened, leaders killed, lots of military equipment destroyed.

Some people in the regime were killed. A lot of military equipment on both sides was destroyed. The regime itself was strengthened. The people of Iran now have more of an enemy than their own government. The regime has a hugely improved source of funds. The sanctions are gone or heavily weakened so their can sell their oil to the world instead of selling it to China at a relative loss, they have far more of an excuse to exploit the Strait than they did before.

In what actual way are they worse off? We destroyed some of their stuff, then gave them a way to build it back a hundred times better.

Why did the US accept a ceasefire? Because we ~can't open the Strait on our own and we really can't win this war. We can't open the Strait because we did not meaningfully weaken Iran's ability to create effective weapons.

The US had to have a strategy in this war that made any sense, which it did not. Experts have explained why this approach to attacking Iran would never work for my entire lifetime, and then it didn't work in exactly the way that it was obvious it wouldn't work.

> [...] essentially would get a free education.

How horrible, imagine the world.

> Maybe a toll of, say, $2,000,000 until we recoup our costs for stopping Iran.

The US will never recoup their losses from this unwinnable folly of a war. Nothing positive came out of it unless you wanted the current Iran regime strengthened.

There really isn't a difference. They can turn off the flow at will, they're the only ones who can, nobody can stop them. They control it.

So, this happens instead.

There's smaller models all the way down too.

Like this should be _exactly_ what we want companies to release.

It's super not a publicity stunt, qwen 3.5 is the base of the best local models out there IMO.

There are other means to validate that type of thing though. Trying to come up with those means is a lot of fun. Can you think of any?

Git will happily let you merge branches and preserve the history there. GP seems to like that history being in PRs only on github instead. I don't get why, that just seems worse to me.