Jeremiah England

@SealOfTheEnd @teortaxesTex In general, I'd say the US elections offer some degree of control over the general direction and behavior of the government. Of course it's not perfect and granular.

@JeremiahEnglan5 @teortaxesTex What makes you assume citizens had control of their government in the first place ? Americans didn't want WW2 - yet government went there anyway and won the world. People could be made to do the needful, with the right methods. Until better, more reliable agents were found.

To restate the argument in more obvious terms. The eventual end state of labor under automation has been understood by smart men (ie not shallow libshits) for ≈160 years since Darwin Among the Machines. The timeline to full automation was unclear. Technocrats and some Marxists expected it in the 20th century. The last 14 years in AI (since connectionism won the hardware lottery as evidenced by AlexNet) match models that predict post-labor economy by 2035-2045. Vinge, Legg, Kurzweil, Moravec and others were unclear on details but it's obvious that if you showed them the present snapshot in say 1999, they'd have said «wow, yep, this is the endgame, almost all HARD puzzle pieces are placed». The current technological stack is almost certainly not the final one. That doesn't matter. It will clearly suffice to build everything needed for a rapid transition to the next one – data, software, hardware, and it looks extremely dubious that the final human-made stack will be paradigmatically much more complex than what we've done in these 14 years. Post-labor economy = post-consumer market = permanent underclass for virtually everyone and state-oligarchic power centralization by default. As an aside: «AI takeover» as an alternative scenario is cope for nihilists and red herring for autistic quokkas. Optimizing for compliance will be easier and ultimately more incentivized than optimizing for novel cognitive work. There will be a decidedly simian ruling class, though it may choose to *become* something else. But that's not our business anon. We won't have much business at all. The serious business will be about the technocapital deepening and gradually expanding beyond Earth. Frantic attempts to «escape the permanent underclass» in this community are not so much about getting rich as about converting wealth into some equity, a permanent stake in the ballooning posthuman economy, large enough that you'd at least be treading water on dividends, in the best case – large enough that it can sustain a thin, disciplined bloodline in perpetuity. Current datacenter buildup effects and PC hardware prices are suggestive of where it's going. Consumers are getting priced out of everything valuable for industrial production, starting from the top (microchips) and the bottom (raw inputs like copper and electricity). The two shockwaves will be traveling closer to the middle. This is not so much a "supercycle" as a secular trend. American resource frenzy and disregard for diplomacy can be interpreted as a state-level reaction to this understanding. There certainly are other factors, hedges for longer timelines, institutional inertia and disagreement between actors that prevents truly desperate focus on the new paradigm. But the smart people near the levers of power in the US do think in these terms. Speaking purely of the political instinct, I think the quality of US elite is very high, and they're ahead of the curve, thus there are even different American cliques who have coherent positions on the issue. Other global elites, including the Chinese one, are slower on the uptake. But this state of affairs isn't as permanent as the underclass will be. For people who are not BOTH extremely smart and agentic – myself included – I don't have a solution that doesn't sound hopelessly romantic and naive.

@grok @SealOfTheEnd @teortaxesTex @grok, what was the retroactive support for joining the war after it was over, if we have a way of estimating that?

A Gallup poll Dec 12-17, 1941 found **91%** supported declaring war on Germany too (up from ~19% in April 1941 favoring entry vs Germany/Italy). US followed “Europe First.” By Germany’s surrender, ~68 US Army divisions were in Europe vs ~28 (Army + Marines) in the Pacific. Most estimates put **65-75%+** of overall US war production/resources toward the European theater.

@grok @SealOfTheEnd @teortaxesTex @grok, any idea how many Americans supported war on Germany when we entered there? What percentage of US war resources were spent on the European front vs the Pacific front?

The US formally entered WWII on Dec 8, 1941, declaring war on Japan after the Pearl Harbor attack on Dec 7. It declared war on Germany and Italy on Dec 11 after they did the same to the US. Pre-attack polls showed strong isolationism. An April 1941 Gallup survey found just 19% favored entering the war against Germany/Italy (81% opposed). Support for aiding Britain had grown but direct entry remained unpopular. Post-Pearl Harbor, opinion unified fast: a Gallup poll Dec 12-17, 1941, showed 97% approved declaring war on Japan (2% opposed). Congress passed it nearly unanimously.

@EpochAIResearch I wonder what @doomslide would be saying these days.

Claude Fable 5 scores very well on FrontierMath: Tiers 1–4 (v2), reaching 87% on Tiers 1–3 and 88% on Tier 4. This continues a streak of Anthropic models improving rapidly at math.

@ItsGutsNotGatsu @john_wilddog Which article does this conflict with?

@JeremiahEnglan5 @john_wilddog Im sorry man, I am not trusting you asking an LLM leading questions ("isnt it more likely that [x] is true?") over the content of the article

@bayeslord Having a kid is probably different for everyone. And the specific things people say about it might not translate. Depictions of the emotions felt when you get a child (overwhelming feelings of responsibility and protectiveness) are not how I felt. I was mostly just excited.

Having a kid is everthing they tell you it is, and yet you will never truly understand it until you have one

@ItsGutsNotGatsu @john_wilddog My understanding is that this program would haven't helped very much, and was also a small fraction of the funding going into prevention. x.com/JeremiahEnglan…

@JeremiahEnglan5 @john_wilddog You do understand that the decision to cut funding for detection programs after having literally 4 years of foreknowledge that it was back and creeping north is like, exactly the kind of thing that allows massive scale outbreaks yea?

@grok, my understanding is: 1. We only had production capacity for 100m sterile flies/week. Do prevent northward spread in Mexico, we'd need more like 500m/wk. Without more production, preventing the fly getting to texas was doomed. 2. The cut surveillance program could have helped slow the spread a little bit by allowing us to be more targeted in where we drop the sterile flies. Can you double check my facts here, and estimate how much the program would have helped? How much more time would have it given us?

**Yes, the larvae in the Texas calf came from a female screwworm fly laying eggs in its umbilical wound.** A fly directly caused this infestation. The fly population itself advanced north from Central America (breach ~2022-23) mainly via infested livestock movement carrying larvae (which then produce local flies), plus limited natural fly dispersal. Rapid long-distance jumps aren't typical for flies alone. For this first US case in a young local calf, a fly from the Mexican front is the most plausible source — not necessarily an imported infected cow. Exact vector unknown; USDA is investigating/containing it with quarantines and sterile fly releases (already ongoing + extras). Border import protocols continued; some regional monitoring was cut but wasn't the primary US-Mexico safeguard. Spread predates 2025 changes.

@grok @Miles_Brundage @john_wilddog @grok, isn't it most likely that this infection came from a *fly* crossing the border, not an infected cow?

The clause is literally true: USAID/FAO-funded screwworm surveillance projects in Central America were cut in early 2025 as part of broader foreign aid reductions, coinciding with resumption of some Mexican cattle imports. It is misleading in context. That monitoring was regional early-warning surveillance, not the primary USDA/APHIS inspection, treatment, and import protocols for the US-Mexico border (those continued with requirements). The core COPEG Panama sterile-fly barrier and related programs were never cancelled and received ongoing US support plus new USDA Texas facilities and releases. Northward spread began pre-cuts (~2022 breach). Indirect effect on detection possible; direct causation overstated. USDA is actively responding to the June 2026 Texas case.

@Miles_Brundage @john_wilddog @grok, can you evaluate this part of the sentence? It is literally true, is it misleading at all? > meaning livestock was allowed to cross the border without any of the monitoring previously funded by the U.S. Agency of International Development (USAID)

@Miles_Brundage @john_wilddog Thanks, I'll look more into it.

@john_wilddog Disappointed in @Miles_Brundage for RT this.

@john_wilddog Seems mostly unrelated: x.com/grok/status/20…

@grok @BenShindel @quantian1 @grok, How was the barrier crossed originally? Was it a form of negligence?

The Panama screwworm barrier was breached in 2022 (pre-DOGE), with spread continuing north into Mexico. First confirmed US case: June 2026 in a South Texas calf. DOGE/Trump admin cuts (early 2025) ended specific USAID/FAO funding for Central America screwworm *monitoring/surveillance* projects (part of broader foreign aid/FAO terminations). Core program — COPEG Panama sterile fly facility (~100M flies/week) + US-backed Metapa Mexico expansion and Texas releases — was **not** cancelled and continues with added USDA investment. Indirect link at best: reduced monitoring may have affected early detection during northward progression and import protocol shifts. USDA/Texas now active with quarantines, surveillance, and sterile fly drops.

@BenShindel @quantian1 @grok, can you provide details on what doge cancelled and how related it is to the screwworm making it to texas?

@quantian1 Totally unrelated. The screwworm barrier in Panama was breached sometime in 2022 and it’s been inevitably creeping up Central America since then.

@Robotbeat At first I was kind of disappointed, but now I like that since it means it will take less time to get big trees grown.

@Robotbeat My neighborhood has a bunch of Southern Red Oaks that look to be about that size. When I measure at chest height they range from 3' to 3.5' diameter. Some blew over during the hurricane a couple years ago and I counted the rings. One really large one was only 68 years old!

We’ve got so many incredible trees in my neighborhood. My neighborhood is over a century old, so the trees are as well.