As another European it amuses me that Europe cannot give up this smug attitude and keeps looking at the US in such a condescending way. Meanwhile Europe has been in freefall for a decade and nobody here seems to notice.
Like I said the EU falls slower.
Yes, I can. Do you remember what happened when it came out that the USA was tapping Merkel's cell phone?
Maybe she sat on the table but shots were still called by the US.
Just compare US debt rising to US GDP rising.
Where exactly are we seeing this? AFAIK, most people in Europe still has access to healthcare, and still be able to have a job + free-time, with parental leave and more. Has that disappeared from any countries where it used to exist?
I think the constant worry and focus on GDP is a great example of the differences of mindset between Americans and Europeans. As long as "number goes up!" is true, Americans seem to think that most things are fine and working alright, while a European might be more focused on things on the ground and around them in their daily life, rather than judging their quality of life based on how the economy is doing for the rich people.
What are you referring to here, specifically? Something that is a net-positive for society, and that would be legal in the US but is illegal in Europe or EU?
AFAIK, things like specific the text and data mining (TDM) exceptions would allow you to even train on copyrighted materials without permission in certain cases, in the example of LLMs.
Mistral also seems to be making progress, and I'm not aware of any African, South American or Australian efforts that are further ahead, so while it might not be number 1, Europe is at least not last.
Siemens, Bosch, Mercedes-Benz, etc. etc. were innovative startups once that defined their industries and they put the foundations of the high standard of living that you enjoy now. Where are the similar European innovations of today?
Well, your argument was that it wasn't possible, so at least we both agree now that you were wrong there.
> they put the foundations of the high standard of living that you enjoy now.
Again, the crux of the argument is that I believe our institutions and governments are the reason we have high standard of living, not because there was three German companies who were innovative ~100-200 years ago.
I don't even understand how the innovations of those companies are related to the quality of life in Sweden, for example, but I think we've lost the thread in this discussion a while ago so maybe better to not continue at all.
And OpenAI just burns money, maybe we should wait if it will survive.
We all have different values that matter. Europeans (for better or worse) tend to prefer stability, probably because of past experiences, over oligarchy and free capitalism, while the US is almost the exact opposite.
So both parties look at the other and see "freefall decline for decades", both being smug about the other being worse, while we in reality care about different things.
I'm not sure how familiar you are with the history of the continent, but this is probably the most stable and peaceful time-period of the continent since humans started populating it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Europe is a great introduction to the subject.