politics

Having finally visited China, having read and listened to Chinese techies, and having observed their actual systems this past year; I'm completely convinced that there's no stopping China in tech. They'll win at every single vertical, even at superconductors and English LLMs.

You don't understand - they are efficiently integrated at every level, software, hardware, logistics, sales - EVERYTHING. If the world decides that robots that can feed your hamster are super important, China can ship a million robots that does this task the best in 2-3 months. It's insane how easily they can adapt thanks to the integrations.

I say this as a tech worker in the West: The only tool left in West's toolbox is protectionism and war. Or we need to overhaul our systems to stop corporate & financial greed and refocus on value production. Invisible hand can't compete with intelligent planning.

My cast below was before R1.

It took Chinese only 20 days after I predicted that they'd surpass the West even in English LLMs. They'll win in chips too. If not this year, then the next.

As @catabolismo's thread from yesterday says: Capitalism is not good at allocating resources.

Just like US pivoted to a gov't planned Apollo Program after Sputnik, US will pivot to a planned approach for AI too. Invisible hand cannot compete with intelligent planning.

https://chainleft.art

Dad, data scientist, blockchain native artist.

Power consolidation=evil.

It's no surprise centralized systems (authoritarian China) are more efficient than decentralized systems (democratic USA). You should know better, evolving in the blockchain space and knowing about stuff like DAOs for ex.  It's not a question of capitalism here, China is as capitalistic as it gets.

Does that mean it's the right thing to do? (going authoritarian/centralized)
No.

/monad ecosystem growth | ex telco.in & everwave.xyz founder | /music moderator | writing on web3 & culture https://paragraph.xyz/@alixkun.eth

USA is not a democracy.

And planning doesn't have to be centralized.

Still x1000 times more a democracy than China

I think the point is missed a little. The point is planning, not democratic index  whose description is imposed by those that diminish democracy.

Even if the point is planning, it still stands:
Planning is easier to do/execute in a centralized environment Vs decentralized environment 🤷‍♂️

I do agree with you that whatever US has now (oligarchy? late stage capitalism? inevitable end of neoliberalism?) is harder to plan in than whatever China has now (meritocratic authoritarianism? state capitalism? defacto single party with intra-party elections?)

Yeah but those are two different things though. The capacity of someone born in a humble family to access a power position is very lightly correlated with how democratic a country can be. You can be very democratic , have elections all the time, and still have social structures that reproduces the status quo. It's not mutually exclusive. (cf Switzerland for ex.)

In a longer form, I'd love to explain China's system a bit more in detail. China is definitely not democratic and definitely authoritarian, far from a system I'd want to live long term. And yet, considering the way "access to power & decisions" are distributed, its centralization might not be far off from the oligarchy in the US. Again, I'm not talking about elections, parties or even real democracy here; just focus on specifically an individual person born in a village - their likelihood to become a senior politician in their country might not be less if they're born in China than if they're born in the USA.