Comments by "clray123" (@clray123) on "Tom Nicholas" channel.

  1. This advice is (obviously) still correct. Bringing new people into a world where you can't support them is the ultimate act of narcissism and egoism.
    115
  2. What do you propose instead? Keen to offer you own real estate as accommodation for the many "asylum seekers"? Remember, the better treatment they get, the more you will have on your doorstep tomorrow, that's just how economy works, sadly.
    18
  3. I'm sorry to break the news to you, but for 99.9% technical topics AI is already indeed smarter than you are. But so is Wikipedia.
    7
  4. How do we identify potential witches and should we burn them or drown them?
    6
  5.  @ccaagg  Researchers are able to extract the exact copies of some training data from trained LLMs. So it is quite accurate to say that the models "regurgitate" what they have seen. Another part of the proof is that they never come up with what they have not seen, for example if a certain sequence of symbols was never present in the training data, the model would not "know" the "correct" probability distribution for it, and hence would not produce it (except by pure chance from the uninitialized weights). If you train an image generator only on cats, it won't produce dogs.
    5
  6.  @keithparker1346  Worse off? They get free living during the "processing" period and later a chance of earning multiple times what they could in their home country. Source: I moved from a poorer country to a rich one for economic reasons. (I did not have to pretend to be an "asylum seeker" back then, student visa was enough.)
    5
  7. You only have to consider that these vehicles are driving by the state-of-the-art AI who has no trouble recognizing objects in images and making elaborate arguments about philosophical topics, but sometimes get stuck while trying to count to 12.
    4
  8. Come on Tom, they are not hard to spot at all! If you are an actual communist like yourself, then everyone who is not also a communist is a potential fascist.
    4
  9. It kinda defeats the whole argument he is trying to make, but well, as a well-trained communist he can hold many contrary ideas in his head without blinking.
    4
  10. Here's a crazy idea: what if the non-wealthy people do not force people who do not want to have more kids to pay for other people's kids? I would call it "no tax".
    3
  11. Capitalism is not an ideology, but simply an observation that by acquiring means production (investing capital) rather than spending on consumption, you can better your existence. There's nothing wrong with that per se. It becomes complicated when government (together with big capitalists) gets involved in preventing everyone else from using their capital as they see fit. As it inevitably does. But still better than communism, which doesn't even pretend not to rob you.
    3
  12. Not sure if that's a wrong thing. It's more worrying that those who train the models decide what constitutes a "balanced set of training data". (But then, who else should decide it? They pay for it, they make the rules.)
    3
  13. The big advantage of AI over search is that it can give the answer already tailored to your specific question. For example, if you ask for a specific mathematic formula, it will pick up like a teacher would and explain that formula to you, and you can ask followup questions. Whereas using search you first have to find a page with that very formula (which might not even exist) and do all the adaptation yourself. It can really save tons of time.
    3
  14. It's just like standard pandemic accommodation in China. And Australia, New Zealand etc. as a matter of fact.
    3
  15.  @cargo_vroom9729  No. "Fascist" is just a lazy ass label used to generalize and denigrate people, just like "communist". The typical argumentation goes like that: 1. some fascists believe X,Y,Z, ... 2. this person appears to me to believe X 3. therefore the person must be a complete fascist 4. accordingly, you should hate them and cancel them. There is no deep analysis involved here, just shallow labeling and bullying.
    3
  16. ​ @keithparker1346 Because not all of them are seeking asylum (implying that they were persecuted in their home country). Many/most are just seeking to relocate for economic reasons.
    3
  17.  @keithparker1346  Not "racist" because I don't care what race these people are and certainly not "jealous" because I am hundreds of times richer than they are. The reality is that social systems in Western countries were never designed to support unlimited inflow of new people. So if we allow that, they are going to collapse, making the rich people much poorer. Is this the sort of "equality" you are looking for? To make formerly rich countries look like Africa? Because if the new people become a majority (as they will in a few decades, as they tend to reproduce much more than local population), they will make their new home look just like their old home.
    3
  18.  @Atmatan You can do all the empathy you wish, just make sure you are not doing it out of someone else's pocket because then there's a different name for it.
    3
  19.  @Fenriswaffle  Possibly because the current laws make it unlikely these people will be actually kicked out? So it's easier to stall than to "process" them and keep them.
    3
  20. I think our host Marx here forgot about how communists were fond of selling vodka to their dear comrades.
    3
  21. So the lady complains about "government nuns", but is happy to be an incubator for "government taxpayers"? Maybe she should check her head about that?
    3
  22. Nevermind the authoritatian mindset of the covidians (including our host Tom) which has been demonstrated in full three years ago, just focus on the atrocities of WW2 instead.
    2
  23. Or a creation of a revenue stream, which is actually how capitalism has solved most of our problems until this day. If you want capitalism to do its magic for you, you must make solving problems profitable.
    2
  24. I think most of the migrants would disagree with you. They don't care about being helped in their home country, they want YOUR country. Else they wouldn't be paying for the (expensive) trip in the first place.
    2
  25.  @dschingy  Ignorance is not an excuse, nowadays everyone, including in the poorest countries, runs around with a smart phone. If they want to inform themselves about what awaits them, they can - and they do.
    2
  26.  @dschingy  These people are well connected, they use social networks just as everyone else. Those who already migrated and those willing to risk the same are in touch. Nobody is censoring all these private communication channels anywhere, especially not in some backwater low-tech countries where these folks come from.
    2
  27.  @dschingy  I should also draw your attention to the (fairly obvious) possibility that pretending ignorance and having been "misled" is the standard excuse these people rehearse before embarking on their quest, in hope of raising their chances of getting through the system. I mean, if you were in their place, why wouldn't you?
    2
  28.  @dschingy Sure there are exceptions, but making a trip to a country in which you are expressly unwelcome is kind of an asshole move in itself, no matter how hardworking and law respecting you are. And when you start by breaking laws (illegal entry), it's difficult to call that respect. (It's an entirely different story for people who are expressly invited, e.g. students or visa workers.)
    2
  29.  @dschingy Also I should say that if these people were really escaping because of political persecution, they would not be aiming at rich EU countries, they would just move over to any neighbor country in which they are not persecuted. Clearly, flight from peril is not the main motive.
    2
  30.  @dschingy  Technically most of them decide to pay illegal smugglers for the trip in hope of being able to convince the authorities that they indeed had a valid (non-economic) reason to flee their country. Considering that most of them will not stay in the country immediately bordering the territory they are fleeing from (something which a genuinely endangered person seeking safety would do), but rather they pick their target specifically on economic and political grounds (i.e. the country with best social system and "friendliness" toward immigrants), it is safe to say that most of them are in fact illegal when it comes to the definition of "asylum seeking".
    2
  31.  @tnmrvc  but victimhood is so... convenient
    2
  32.  @bleuumscarlett7977  There is nothing inherent in AI which prevents it from proactively outputting sources information, if it's included in the training data. You could also ask the model such questions directly - and if it was adequately trained to answer them, it would. The thing is people like our Karl Marx here are obsessing about AI stealing their own sorry regurgitations, but the commercial trend is more to train models with carefully chosen, perhaps synthetically generated, grounded data, not any random Internet garbage. The garbage is just for the base model to learn the language at all, and good enough for entertainment, but not good enough for reliability (as we have all witnessed with "advice" from Google's Gemini). And when you are training on your own (or licensed/purchased) proprietary data, you may just as well include some references to it.
    2
  33. The notion that capitalism made China poor due to comparative advantage of cheap labor is as absurd as it can get. Compare the wealth of the average Chinese today vs. the wealth of the average Chinese before all that "evil free trade" started. And the labor cost of course has been steadily rising, along with the wealth of the workers.
    2
  34. The not so funny observation is that what he presents us here is the same kind of "analysis" that actual fascists used to perform about the "inherent character traits of the Jew"...
    2
  35.  @Fenriswaffle  Also cruel as it is, keeping the people "in processing" under these conditions acts as a deterrent for new arrivals. There's a fixed capacity as well. While getting them processed quickly means raising the question "who is going to pay for their ticket home" (and new ones will come just to try their luck, as they have "nothing to lose").
    2
  36.  @mousethehuman7179  I doubt that the applicants would be happy to wait for decision inside their home country. After all, this would indicate that they are not really persecuted after all (because they can wait where they live for months). And there is already a process for that - it's called applying for a visa. The reason for deterring new arrivals is not mainly because "they're illegal, dangerous people" (although some are). There are two reasons: the first is the leeching off social systems - just in case they can't find suitable work, which is actually quite likely, given that many of them are unskilled, uneducated laborers - of which there is enough in the target country already. So they do not really bring much with them, but they create an immediate drain on local resources, which their previous generations have not earned. Unless we agree to dispose with social support systems entirely (of which I would be in favor), it is difficult to just open borders to everyone. The second reason, and this is much more critical, is the future development once you allow such mass immigration to take place. Given the demographics and the cultural incompatibility, these populations are going to eventually displace the native population of whichever Western country they emigrate to, which will give them political majorities and political power. They will then take care of their own people's interests (why wouldn't they?) and in turn create worse living conditions for the native populations of the target countries (as it has already happened in some African countries such as South Africa, Zimbabwe). So this is simply a pragmatic concern about increased competition for limited resources, between populations which do not understand nor like each other very much - if only for historical reasons, but these reasons, being historical, unfortunately cannot be made to disappear.
    2
  37.  @catsandcrafts171  Oh so being quartered on a ship is inhumane, but "hard labor low pay" is the solution then to make it more bearable? Interesting morality. Let me explain it to you, these folks are not interested in "hard labor low pay".
    2
  38.  @catsandcrafts171  If you are upset about high prices and people unwilling to work, well you can thank your "corona saviors" for that.
    2
  39.  @JohnIsUber247  Yes dear, the other difference is that I don't have the intent to establish a caliphate in Europe as the "other" non-invited immigrants (see demonstrations in Germany this weekend). Any further questions?
    2
  40.  @JohnIsUber247 Oh, I found another difference - when I got my student visa, I did not get any sort of funding along with it. Ok, the education was provided for free, but they were for free to anyone who qualified to study back then. No social transfer or unemployment of any kind occurred. I had a student job and been continuously employed in my new home country from then on (~30 years). Did not bring a big needy family with me either.
    2
  41.  @Sir_Bucket Haha, and yet, without any choosing most of them miraculously end up in Europe's rich countries with the most protective social systems, not in the poorer ones where the dole is bad and the population is not so welcoming...
    2
  42.  @Sir_Bucket Yeah, those who are caught and grounded in the immigration camps do not leave, the rest do.
    2
  43.  @heitorpedrodegodoi5646  Are you suggesting we should start building new beautiful commie blocks for our guests? (Actually, I grew up in a "commie block".)
    2
  44. In case you think it's evil right propaganda and exaggeration, there is an example of an immigrant girl who got kinds famous cried during interview with Merkel back in 2015. Today she has German citizenship and is an open Hamas supporter. This is exactly the scenario that the opponents of immigration have been warning about.
    2
  45.  @Beowolf-jy5rc The girl is a "case in point".
    2
  46.  @Beowolf-jy5rc No, the argument is that it is a randomly picked sample - not a person who has been specifically selected as bad (as would be the case if I went looking for Hamas supporters to begin with). And the argument is also that it goes against the very common leftist naive thinking that "refugees are just good people in need that we need to care for, and everything will turn out just fine if they are just given the empathy and opportunity". By the random example we see that everything will not just turn out fine; they are a risk and a liability to the West, they are bringing their local conflicts from abroad into Europe, destabilizing society. Having the teary cute girl (of all people) turn out into a Hamas supporter is like buying a whole basket of apples, drawing one apple, and having this very first apple you pick out turn out as rotten. It does not prove that the rest is rotten as well, but getting a bad one on the FIRST draw would certainly make you suspicious about the produce (rightfully so).
    2
  47. Accusing the West of anti-Chinese xenophobia? Maybe our Karl Marx here should try to live in China as a foreigner and see how well he is treated by their government.
    2
  48. Then folks like your host here will complain about cheap foreign labor taking their jobs. Or cry for wage raises for everyone, fueling further inflation.
    2
  49. Ah, but if ChatGPT is acting as an intermediary, you as the oh-so-"creative" YouTuber are also acting as an intermediary...
    2
  50. And ironically the only outcome of their "research" is to prove is that psychologists are assholes.
    1