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Comment by BobbyJo | Hacker News Reader

What would "this point" be?

China has a population the size of the US and EU combined, and are every bit as capable intellectually. One would expect them to catch up technologically, all else being equal. I don't think that requires any false presumptions.

Also, ime, the west has only ever presumed political superiority, not intellectual. Not unless you're talking about fringe people, in which case I'd point out that every nation has a minority of rabid ethnocentrists, and the west generally denounces theirs to a greater degree than China itself does.

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I think it’s naive to not see globalisation in the context of assuming the nations doing the ‘lower level work’ wouldn’t move up the ‘value chain’. Perhaps that’s hindsight being applied to historical trade assumptions, and perhaps it’s simply capitalism undervaluing long term investments, but I think the question is still relevant in the context of the post which repeats the trope of they must be copying the west

You're engaging in straw man.

Your original post took umbrage with the "downplaying" of the the intellectual/creative capacity of China compared to the West. You also implied that that has led to the current state of affairs. No one said that China was less than the West. It is however fact China has benefited from the stealing of secrets from the West (nuclear technology, stealth tech from the F-117, stealth tech from Boeing, and in this case, chip designs from TSMC). This is not a trope, it is fact.

I’m really not. A straw man is constructing a different argument that is easier to ‘beat’. I’m simply pointing out that the concept of outsourcing ‘lesser than’ jobs to Asia without considering that they will climb the value chain has an implied sense of intellectual superiority in it. I also point out the alternatives to that very point — capitalism tends away from long term investment and it’s possible that hindsight is retrofitting the argument of superiority. If you look at the British Empire though, there is historical precedent of arrogance and that arrogance persists without doubt in European culture. Just check out Musk and his great replacement theory views for a sense of how deeply race is ingrained into the economic psyche of significantly influential people. But, again, this is a point I’m making as a contributing factor — underestimating capabilities is not smart. Citations for your secret stealing points? But tbh it feels like this is a bot/troll engaging in Twitter-esq time sinking

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