Not really, they were getting discounted oil prices previously that they are no longer able to get.

Also, they are a large importer of oil compared to the US, which is an exporter. They have much more to lose from high oil prices than we do.

Just look at whats happening now. Iran is shooting missiles at all sorts of countries all over the place. (not just the US or israel). Its clearly in a war with a lot of groups right now. It is a silly handwave to pretend like a war isn't going on now, because of something that happened 50 years ago.

Its clearly not unilateral, given how many other countries, that are not the US, have had missiles shot at them by Iran.

As a similar example Russia invaded Ukraine. There is a war going on between them and Ukraine. And when there is a war, countries attack each other. "Who started it" doesn't change the fact that a war is happening.

Its libertarian because it is fundamentally about individuals acting on their own without going through the government, ect. It is an individualistic framework. Individuals going about achieving their goals, even through powerful corporations, falls squarely within what libertarians support.

Yes, you can make some philosophical point about how if corporations are powerful enough, how is that in any way different from governments.

But, powerful corporations controlling society, in some sort of fallout style or bioshock style dystopia clearly describes a libertarian dystopia, not a left leaning or even fascist dystopia.

And his politics are a derivative of Great Man Theory, and his positions on things like democracy follow from that. This idea, and those espoused by some of the VC/tech elite like Peter Theil are that singular hardworking genius individuals can change the world on their own, and everyone who not in this top 0.1% are borderline NPCs.

They do this both because of their genius/hardwork, and also because they are willing to break the rules that are set forth by this bottom 99.9%.

I'm starting to call this ideology Authoritarian techno-Libertarianism. Its a delibriately oxymoronic name that I use, because these "Great Men" are definitely trying to change the world. IE, they are trying to impose their goals and values on the world without getting the buyin of other people.

Thats the "authoritarian" part. And then the "libertarian" part is that they are going about this imposition of their will on the world by doing it all themselves, through their own hard work.

Think "Person invents a world changing technology, that some people thing is bad, and just releases it open source for anyone to use". AI models are a great example, in fact. Once that technology is out there the genie cannot be put back into the bottle and a ton of people are going to lose their jobs, ect.

A distain for democracy follows directly from things like this. You dont wait for people to vote to allow you to change the world by inventing something new. You just do and watch the results.

True. This is a fair point. But the expected counter argument would be that the exact line isn't the issue instead it's the justification for the principle.

IE why is personalized algorithms more dangerous than general ones.

My answer (because I mostly agree with you) is that the difference is that personalized algorithms almost feel like brain hacking. And this brain hacking simply doesn't work at scale when applied to vague general algorithms.

Ok! But they do have to follow a bunch of extra laws that cost them a ton of money and/or users.

Therefore the same can apply to social media algorithm companies.

The one extreme example, is just like cigarettes, there could be 18+ age verification for social media. There a big deal.

This isn't even going into how all of our geopolitical enemies have lost in the relevant wars.

Who's even left at this point? I guess China kind of, but they have always been a saber rattler and not a doer, as they let their "allies" like Iran fall apart.

They always try with proxies not direct action, and now every proxy has collapsed.

The really funny part is that I only started hearing about this collapsing empire narrative after every.ije of our enemies has been bombed to smitherines.

My guess is that it's a desperate cope, to avoid having to deal with the on the ground reality of all the bombed out ruins of the groups that oppose the US.

I am not sure about you, but I do not know a single developer who isn't using LLMs with a passion, even if its only just cursor and auto-complete.

So, quite the opposite. Instead, literally all games are being made with AI now. I expect the same thing applies to the other professions that you brought up, if not now then soon.

Brewing, always brewing. Never measurable results.

> The software industry is about to be decimated by AI anyway and US isn’t ahead in AI in any meaningful sense.

The US has been far ahead, in terms of actual companies being made actually. China has some models, sure, but the EU is nothing. I have never heard less about the EU and their companies than in the last few years.

All talk, no results. Always years away, but never now.

The USA market belongs to the US, though, and other people are free to play by the rules or simply leave.

I was responding to someone who is claiming that the org is some infringement on free speech. This is an ignorant position, in that the FCC has had the power to regulate airwaves for quite some time. So if it is some free speech infringment now, then it was infringement a long time ago, especially with things like the fairness doctrine.

But you can have either position. Either you think it is all some huge infringement of free speech or you don't and you cant really complain about the stuff happening now. Your choice.

> The very thing that makes it so that planes can safely fly

So... Imagine for the sake of argument that you were capable of steel manning my position.

When someone brought speech related stuff regarding the FCC and I responded to it, did you actually believe I was talking about laws related to airplane communications?

Or.... was it possible that I was only referring to other speech related stuff that the FCC does? Just steelman it for a second if you are capable of doing so.

No it wouldn't be. And if your definition of "politics" includes "literally every time a thing happens" then your definition is so broad as to be useless.

When people say that they want politics banned, they are talking about the extremely controversial arguments that are almost completely unrelated to whatever the community is about. IE, if you run a group about Cheese making, and someone comes in and starts arguing about if an ice shooting on the other side of the country was justified or not, that is... off topic. And everyone with a brain can understand that.

It really isn't that hard to figure out which topics are related to cheese making and which other topics have almost nothing to do with it, even if someone could make a bad faith argument that it is related (EX:, your response would probably go something like "Well what if someone knows a cheese maker who is here illegally, therefore thats why ice enforcement on the other side of the country is relevant!". You could say that but we all would know that you are being bad faith or have some sort of issue with determining what words mean to regular people)

Partial credit in this example could go to political issues that are very obviously and directly related to cheese making. A new tax on cheese that goes into effect in your local town, and very directly is related to the group topic. Stuff like that might be OK.

And your response to this example would go something like "Oh, so are you saying that politics should be allowed!?!? how do you tell the difference between a cheese tax and an ice shooting on the other side of the country? Hypocrit!"

And the answer to that is that we can use our brain. We all know that a cheese tax is more related to the local cheese making group than national politics. And we don't have to argue with clearly bad faith arguments that pretend otherwise.

To summarize, when people say that they want to ban politics, what they actually mean is that they want to ban completely off topic controversial issues that others are trying to shoe horn into a group that isn't related to that issue.

And people are saying that it is OK to compartmentalize things. Every group in the world doesn't have to talk about your pet issue. The cheese making group can just be mostly about cheese making and they don't have to argue every day about national immigration policies.

How about we just call these people the game Producers instead. Thats what a producer does anyway right? They make decisions of how the game is built, what goes into it, ect, ect, ect.

Question 2: If a person cannot conceive that the 1st question is an interesting question, with multiple nuances, are they basically an idiot?