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Comment by NalNezumi | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if given the recent "moral" loss of US, we will see a post-WW2 Soviet vs USA style defection of scientists & engineers between USA and China?

When you read the reasoning of people that defected from UK/US to soviet with nuclear secrets it's kinda hard to grasp now, but back then I can definitely understand that a mix of "the soviets are not that bad" and "are we really that good?" could've made people switch, vise-versa.

I feel like that have for the past decades mostly been a one-way street (China to US) but given the recent trends, (chiense scientist leaving US)[1] I could kinda see how some people might start to debate that question internally.

[1]https://youtu.be/voUcv7ydC9o?feature=shared

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Why would a moral loss cause a defection to China, that's fucking hilarious bro. China, the place with a national firewall, subjects you can't speak about, try asking questions about certain things to a taxi driver and they'll call the ccp police on ya.

Absolutely hilarious opinion man, why not suggest the UK or hell, a defection to New Zealand. China on a moral basis? Comedy.

It's already been happening for years. Award winning faculty and scientists are fleeing US universities and institutions and setting up shop in China, often with more funding and talent available, and no McCarthyism accusations of being spies. It started officially in 2018 with the US Department of Justice's "China Initiative", which basically just allowed anyone to go on a witch hunt of Chinese and Chinese American academics. Of course, the vast majority of those cases were bogus and was just a guise for racism.

This isn't the first time. In the 1950s, the founder of Berkeley JPL, an MIT professor who was one of the forefathers of NASA and Manhattan Project contributor, and who Theodore von Karman called a generational genius, Chinese educated Qian Xuesen was humiliated with accusations of being a communist spy and given a multi-year house arrest where he couldn't work so that his knowledge would fall behind the state of the art. He was then deported, and went back to China where he created the Chinese space program entirely from scratch. In China today, he's widely known as a national hero and the "father of Chinese rocketry". If you really want your mind blown, look up his family tree and see how many Nobels and National Science Medals are related to him.

The past few years alone has seen some really high profile scientists taking their knowledge and experience with them to China. These are people who've spent 30+ years building lives here in the US, and were initially being forced out, but now are actually being lured with better pay packages and working conditions since the first wave was treated so well. It's absolutely insane.

https://www.justsecurity.org/82948/anti-asian-prejudice

> Award winning faculty and scientists are fleeing US universities and institutions and setting up shop in China, often with more funding and talent available, and no McCarthyism accusations of being spies. It started officially in 2018 with the US Department of Justice's "China Initiative", which basically just allowed anyone to go on a witch hunt of Chinese and Chinese American academics.

While some of what you write is accurate, there’s also plenty of hyperbole and omission in what you said.

According to research by Stanford: ”19,955 scientists of Chinese descent who began their careers in the U.S. but left for other countries, including China, between 2010 and 2021.”

And: ”Among the scientists of Chinese descent who left the U.S. in 2010, 48% moved to mainland China and Hong Kong, and 52% moved to other countries.”

https://sccei.fsi.stanford.edu/china-briefs/reverse-brain-dr...

So we lost twenty thousand scientists of Chinese descent over roughly a decade, half of which went back to China? That seems horrible. Where’s the hyperbole?

That's going to be a little skewed because the initial years was primarily scientists fleeing to Europe, Australia, Canada. The last few years has been heavily China.

I wonder if given the recent "moral" loss of US, we will see a post-WW2 Soviet vs USA style defection of scientists & engineers between USA and China?

No. The US will experience a brain drain to Europe, Canada, and Australia, but not to China. Trump still has a ways to go to match the excesses of the Xi regime.

Yeah this feels right, Americans will choose leveraging their English before seeking out needing to learn a non-Romance language, I feel.

Language? What about principles of freedom, democracy, and science? I would think that those things would be why US scientists choose Canada and Europe first. I doubt language is really high on the list.

Language and ease of immigration are going to be very important to the decision of where to move. Naturally, those things you mentioned are important, but so is language.

What freedoms would they lose?

Right to bear arms (only Yemen and Idlib is stronger here) and some of the loosest regulations on non commercial speech.

Right to bear arms? How about Finland or Switzerland? It is pretty easy to own guns in both places.

Where I live now you can 3d print an unregistered and unserialized pistol then stuff it under your shirt (loaded) and walk into the unsecured part of a public airport without breaking the law, all with zero paperwork or licenses or checks. Can I do that in Switzerland?

And why is that a good thing?

Well for one, Europe has a history of gassing disarmed people and those on registries, for two locking your gun up to pick someone up from the airport just presents an unnecessary opportunity for it to be stolen.

Why is it a good thing to put someone into a tiny cage for victimless possession crimes?

Why must I convince you why whatever I do is good to preserve my rights? Fuck all that.

Europe is a pretty big place with a lot of disparate governments. Abstracting it to merely "Europe" is ignoring how the world operates. Many European governments have been actively expanding and enshrining rights of individuals.

Secondly, none of your points are pertinent to the day-to-day of anyone in academic research/science. Perhaps only to the irrationally paranoid.

It was relevant to Einstein.

Look, I am from Spain, currently living in Japan, two very safe countries with some of the lowest rates of crimes in the world. I have met plenty of Americans living in both places, and do you know what they told me? 1) They love having a functional healthcare system that won't bankrupt them, and 2) they also love being able to walk around, specially at night, without the fear of being shot by a random asshole.

So it turns out that with safety comes real freedom, the freedom to go on with your life without fear. Their words, not mine.

So please, tell me again why having guns is a good idea.

I'm absolutely open to the idea that some people find more freedom with less liberties and more safety.

There are plenty of nice things about Japan. Most Americans who are capable of moving to Japan do not, for one reason or another. The ones capable of doing so generally self select because it jives with their desired way of life. I know of Japanese who moved here and are now gun toting Americans.

Perhaps the spice of life is if you value certain liberties more than life itself, maybe America is an option for you. I'm not totally convinced this is even the case with guns in the long run -- it does seem disarmament buys some short term safety for some people at the expense of long term vulnerability that their government, or external or internal forces, can exploit their disarmed state. This has happened in the US to the Indians, to the Jews in Europe, and to the Filipinos by the Japanese.

I'm saying there is a place with some of the most liberal non commercial speech and strongest gun rights in the world, certain people value this, and if they are like me they're not living their life in fear that these liberties might come with certain additional risks.

Please just avoid Europe. There is no need to argue. You can stay in freedom-loving America, and the rest of us can move to Europe.

I wouldn't rule it out iff the other candidates can't stump up the resources to play the game. I very much doubt AGI will come out of Canada or Australia; Europe is making some overtures, but it'll take some time to get the machinery rolling to the same extent.

That would be my guess too.

But as I read scientific paper regularly, I can't ignore how vast majority of the author names (well at least in STEM, ML/Robotics, latter is my interest) are Chinese. I don't think those young talents would mind moving to China, especially when anti-asian sentiment have been on the rise since Covid. But since many renown European universities/research center also have those bright young Chinese mind, I guess the Chinese in US can also just move to the more friendly part of Europe (Switzerland etc).

There's also HK, where you can get by with English just fine. And they're making new research centers as we speak. (although my HK friends tell me it is getting more Mainland Chinese day by day and expats are leaving).

It's not a brain drain - it's not Americans moving into China. It's Chinese people getting educated and doing stuff themselves.

Most of Europe (notable exception france), Canada, and Australia will happily betray their own citizens to extradition to foreign countries. If things get bad enough that science immigration becomes 'defection' they'd be safer from the US in China.

Are you OK with a person committing a violent crime in a foreign country, then returning home to a country that "protects" them against extradition? I never understand the pushback against extradition. You can extradite carefully. Also, "most of Europe", Canada, and Australia are highly functional democracies. If extradition is so bad, why haven't they outlawed it?

Also, most people overlook the fact that, "any French citizen who commits a crime according to the French law, even abroad, can be prosecuted in France." So that makes extradition moot in my view.

Quote source: https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-reasoning-behind-Frances-law...

I'm Canadian, we have an estimated 250k-300k citizens living in China. All the ones I've spoken with were pretty impressed with the place.

For comparison, Canada has 73k citizens living in the UK, 90k in France, and 800k in the US.

Do you count Hongkong as part of Mainland China? Most surveys do not. (The line is certainly more blury than 5 years ago.)

I found this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_diaspora

    Hong Kong 300,000 Zhang and DeGolyer, 2011
    China 19,990 Chinese Census 2010

Remember though, China is still a totalitarian dictatorship at least as bad as the USA. It's not the same situation.

I don't think we'll see born-in-the-USA Americans moving to Shenzhen anytime soon.

But a huge fraction of our workforce is immigrants who have given up their homeland and distanced themselves from their families and communities in search of opportunities here. The fact that we're driving them away now does not bode well for our future economy.

A lot of immigrant communities actually voted for Donald Trump this time though. I don’t understand it. But it happened.

Analysis: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/americas-immigrant-voters...

It is very simple. Nobody hates queue jumpers more than the people that stood in line.

Those who stood in line as you say also want to take people out of today's queue. Legality doesn't have much to do with it. In Britain it's called pulling up the drawbridge.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drawbridge_mentality

If someone said "Americans do X", there would be some pushback about "not all Americans". But somehow it's normal (expected even) to bunch all immigrants together into the "they were all desperate and decided to jump the fence" pile.

It's actually surprising that this point is so hard to understand.

If the immigrants that we've allowed to come here are so fickle that they would leave for China if China presents better opportunities, I would prefer that they leave now and get it over with. My country is not an economic zone for extracting value. It's my home.

> extracting value

Did you mean creating wealth?

I'm not talking about land speculation. I'm talking about creating businesses and jobs for everyone. I'm talking about hard labor that's necessary for our society to run. We're not better off picking crops while China's tech economy becomes #1.

You should visit Shenzhen. Plenty of born-in-the-USA Americans (+ European etc) there.

> It's not the same situation.

Yet. It is not even two months in, we have not seen nothing yet.

Out of the two, now China seems to benefit from keeping global peace more, since USA is checking out from global trade with tariffs.

I think a more practical framing is to ask what you enjoy doing in the US that you wouldn’t be able to do in China.

As a practical matter, the things that affected me the most when I traveled are the great firewall, language barriers, and time zone issues.

For example, I don’t protest the government. If that was an important part of my life China would be a bad choice.

Probably another question you might ask is what are the things you’d be able to do in China that you wouldn’t in the US.

As an EU-based employer, I'm seeing a post-WW2 soviet vs usa style defection of engineers between USA and Europe.

By the way, if anyone US-based is in this situation and wants to "defect" to an EU-job, send me a message, I can help you.

My hiring manager mates are seeing this in Australia too.

Sydney's beaches and weather helps a bit too.

OTOH we’re educating engineers and then not letting them stay. Like chinas worried about having talent poached (or controlled in some way) and here’s Australia providing world class education and demanding they go back afterwards.

https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/am/deepseek-engineer-...

What’s your take on near-term stability for American immigrants in Europe? I was looking at options for moving last year but the work visa situation seemed fairly precarious (although that’s a relative thing in comparison with what may end up happening here in the US).

Personally I’m pushing my (Belgian) government hard to provide a streamlined path for American immigrants, especially tech workers.

In general, it’s easy, just highly bureaucratic. If you compare to what most other countries have to go through, getting a work visa as a skilled us citizen is quick.

As one of the many Americans who wants to contribute to a society whose values match their own, thank you. Is there somewhere to follow your efforts in that front?

A lot of it is small-scale lobbying, so not much to follow :)

If you want to support some of the efforts I'm pushing hard for, check out EU Inc: https://www.eu-inc.org/

Many entrepreneurs here know what the advantages are in the US compared to EU when it comes to startups etc and understand what needs to change. There's real willingness to get it done and the trump election has been fast-forwarding through so many of the steps, giving the EU the kick it needed to wake up.

All the momentum is there, now. I'm feeling super optimistic about Europe. But the recession will be hard to weather.

I would have loved to come work for imec but the only immediate internship budget they had was a studentship with accompanying stipend and visa. They told me it would have taken too long to sort out the employee route.

Check out the companies they fund, instead. Those will have an easier time hiring you. And then there are paths to working directly with Imec.

Thanks for the advice - maybe I will have more questions in near future about this

As someone who has been looking; the EU Blue Card through Germany seems pretty stable and straightforward, with a 21/27 month path to permanent residency, depending on language ability:

https://www.make-it-in-germany.com/en/visa-residence/types/e...

The politics there are a little concerning at the moment but should be stable for at least 4 years. With residency, the rest of the EU becomes a lot easier if things change.

Thank you for the link. How is Germany looking RE economic stability for the next couple of years? I was looking into Sweden but even the Swedish citizens I know there are having a difficult time finding / keeping engineering jobs as the economy has been doing poorly.

Like anything, really hard to say right now.

My impression is there's some weakness from the auto industry struggling which is flooding the job market; but there's a lot of upside. They're investing big in a lot of new industries that don't even really exist in the US (energy related).

Rheinmetall and the rest of the defense industry seems like its set to really take off over the next few years, which even if you aren't eligible for (citizenship requirements), it'll lead to other industries needing labor though.

I'm not from there and don't follow it super closely so am not an expert, but that's kindof been my read on it.

For what its worth, this started because I struggle to find 2-3 jobs in the US per week worth applying for in my field. I can find 8-10 a day over there without much trouble (had several interviews, 2 final rounds, 1 "you weren't a fit for this role, but we really want to talk to you again in May").

> How is Germany looking RE economic stability for the next couple of years?

Not great. Its economic growth has stalled. European Commission forecasts GDP growth of 0.7 percent in 2025, the slowest in the EU. Since 2017, the German economy has grown by 1.6 percent, while the EU average has been 9.5 percent.

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/german...

I want to be vocal about it for third world country people like me.

If you own a home in your own country, please stay there. From my experience with EU it is not worth it. On the surface it looks crazy good. But west has their own share of problems.

The cultural mix is difficult, second class citizen is always going to be a thing. There won't be racism or anything like that. It just the aura of people change when they speak with natives vs non-natives.

Ask this important question before moving to EU: is it worth trading your family, culture, connection, and your ability to communicate for a foreign land where you are going to be second class citizen, your struggle will only give a glimmer of hope for your children?

Left EU for my home. Never returning there. The promise of paradise isn't appealing at all.

Experience it once in your life, but do not stay.

Not many will take a massive pay cut only to pay more taxes

You’re incorrect. Many will and do.

US life is more plentiful in terms of cash but not in terms of hard value. Why do you think we get so many American tourists?

Unfortunately Europe is full of self inflicted wounds, especially around entrepreneurship, but we are working on those.

> Why do you think we get so many American tourists?

Because the US is a young country compared to most of Europe?

Listen I'm not a supporter of this administration but what is this argument? As if there aren't also tons of tourists coming to America. Tourism has little to do with getting people to immigrate.

It’s an odd phenomena to see someone refute personal observations.

Something to consider, a huge number of people feel personally alienated and under threat of harm by the current administration’s party rhetoric.

Those people may, bizarrely, value life and liberty over top dollar. The revulsion expressed on the matter of taxes may also seem odd to the people for whom paying taxes means the state can provide for their safety and wellbeing.

There's bigger problems in the US for a researcher than just the salary in the US nowadays.

That salary comparison was valid pre-Trump.

> salary comparison was valid pre-Trump

Is it not valid now?

Not anymore no, the research environment is even more important than the salary itself.

Salaries must be weighted by risk. Right now, there is a high risk that researchers funded by grants or working in government labs will lose their jobs and faculty will lose their grants and labs. Industry researchers are in a more stable situation, even though layoffs may be more common than on the average.

And if we focus specifically on the academia, American salaries have never been that high. Sure the numbers in the paycheck are bigger than in most countries, but the cost of living is also high. Particularly because good universities are often in very expensive areas, such as California, New York, or Boston. I've worked at a foreign university where grad students on dual income could buy a starter home. Now I'm at an American university, where you need to be tenured faculty on dual income to afford a similar home.

On top of those issues there's also a wave of anti-intellectualism and xenophobia from the Trump government.

When the US model used to be to attract top worldwide researchers, that's pretty much the targeted demographics.

    > I've worked at a foreign university where grad students on dual income could buy a starter home.

Where? And why didn't you stay?

Finland.

Back when I was in the job market and looking for a permanent position, we had a rather silly government that did poorly justified budget cuts. Academic positions were scarce at the time. I was looking for a position in Europe, but I somehow ended up accepting an offer from the US. I had never thought seriously about moving to the US, but when you are in the academia, you learn to take the opportunities you can find.

That used to be the American advantage. You had a less competitive academic job market and higher chances of winning grants. The downsides were a bit lower position in the social and economic hierarchy than in Europe. And the American way of life, which is not for everyone.

I've run the numbers a few times for every EU tech-adjacent job I'm eligible for. Except for some opportunities in France, I'd have a lower proportional tax rate (and, except for in France, I'd have enough of a lower proportional tax rate that the free healthcare makes up the difference). The US doesn't actually have low taxes.

What it does have is extremely high wages, and despite my inclinations to the contrary I'm absolutely staying for the next year or three, but taxes aren't to blame there. A small number of tech oligarchs made that possible (FANG driving up wages for certain skillsets).

I'd say this is a self-fulfilling prophecy of the American social structure.

Sure, in America why would anyone move from State A to State B to get less paid and pay more taxes. The social conditions are (in a wide-stroke) the same.

This is ofc not the case if you move to say, Europe or SK/Japan. The amount of money you need to live a similar socio-economic lifestyle is different.

And we already know that many people don't put certain value to increased income past a certain threshold (people want to feel safe and well-off; not necessarily be a millionare). We are in the HN/US-Tech bubble so ofc it feels like "everyone want to be the next Zucc with their startup" but if you once leave that bubble, you'll notice that most people are not a over-fitted model to one metric called income.

Economics are not the only considerations at play. Even if economic considerations do dominate, the social safety nets of many European countries offer attractive alternatives to their US counterparts, even as they existed before Trump. For instance, in the deeply flawed US health-care system you risk medical bankruptcy in the case of serious illness or accidents even if you do have insurance due to policy limits. Insurers will fight tooth and nail to prevent paying out claims. Some folks with chronic illnesses don't want to be tied to their high-paying jobs just so they can have good insurance and some healthy folks want a health insurance policy that won't disappear when they need it most.

Didn't mean for this to be a wall of text. Basically, money's not everything, and even if it was, it could still make sense for a lot of folks from the US to want to move to Europe.

If you have kids the math works out in favour for many European countries.

Funny, I’m literally seeing the opposite. Had two people move from the EU last year due to free speech concerns.

One doesn't preclude the other, but I have serious doubts about free speech concerns. There are moderate and extreme movements in Europe. They all express themselves freely within the law.

blink... They outlawed silent prayer.

The UK left EU some years ago.

No worries though, Germany is raiding peoples houses for offending people online. Please spare me the "only for Holocaust deniers" thing.

I'm sorry but it's normal. You don't have the right to offend people online or not.

You can’t have free speech without being able to offend. And you can’t have democracy without free speech.

Yes, but in this case, there's nothing to stop you from apologizing and possibly discuss the offending point so that it doesn't happen again.

What you just said offends my beliefs in fundamental human right to free speech.

Who do I call to press charges?

I sincerely apologize again if you found my response offensive. You can contact your local police to make a complaint, I suppose.

I find this extremely offensive.

I'm sorry. I'm open to discussion if you can explain what is offending to you

What's normal? You just offended a whole group of people and probably had no intention of doing it. You're proving the point on why the whole thing doesn't work. You should get your comment removed if you seriously believe this to be true and want to avoid being hypocritical.

I'm sorry if you feel offended. My comments will be removed by HN moderators if they think it's necessary. You can flag and downvote them meanwhile. You can also contact the moderators or your local police if you think it is necessary.

EDIT: It might not be possible to flag or downvote comments. So, I recommend you to contact the moderators or your local police. You can find my name and address on my GitHub profile.

I have no interest in pressing charges against you or getting you in trouble. That would be hypocritical of me and contrary to my beliefs. I was simply pointing out how easy it is to offend people on the internet and why it simply doesn't work at scale. If no one has the right to say something potentially offensive on the internet, then the whole thing needs to be shut down.

Thank you for explaining your point of view on the interest of this conversation. Here's mine, I consider an offense to be something quite subjective sometimes. In some cases, it's possible to offend someone without meaning to. The solution to this problem is to apologize and offer to talk about it. If that doesn't work, and the offense is in some way "forbidden", then the offended person can simply defend themselves by going to the “authorities”.

Of course, we’re probably seeing the normal amount of movement when administrations shift. I work for a global company and have only witnessed the EU to US movement. I’m sure both are happening.

Free speech concerns in the EU go like:

- You can't call people pedophiles unless it was proven in court.

- You can't say black people are inferior.

- You can't say Israel is doing a genocide.

and only one of these is a valid thing to be worried about IMO...

How about I see an interesting street hustler in Munich and put a photo of him on my blog? If something like that is illegal I'd quickly find our two cultures are absolutely incompatible with my continued residence.

I see - you think harassment and privacy violation is free speech.

Please stay away from Europe.

Cool so now free speech is reduced to anything not viewed as harassment. I think I will take your advice, that's dystopic and far worse than just your prior bullet points.

You can also just ask him if it's OK to do that and they're probably going to be OK with it.

And otherwise you simply ensure that you have more than IIRC 5? people in the photo because taking and publishing a photo of a group of people is not illegal.

Privacy and not being harassed and free speech are of course exactly where the rubber meets the road. There is an intersection and naturally people will have differing opinions as to where the line should be drawn. One can always come up with examples where favoring free speech will lead to really bad outcomes for someone and vice versa.

Uh, it's reduced to things that are not harassment. Who said "viewed as"? Are you trying to make everything subjective, so you can argue all opinions about harassment are equally valid?

This is like saying the US's gun law is "reduced" to everything "viewed as" the right to keep and bear arms. I don't think you can legally own a nuclear missile anywhere in the US, even in Texas.

Which part of taking someone's picture is speech, anyway? I didn't see that in the first amendment.

Ban on nukes is an infringement but not as egregious as the ones in Europe. In another comment I admit for instance Yemen and Idlib have a stronger right to bear arms than the US. I absolutely acknowledge this.

US also has free speech issues. For instance, libel has civil penalties I disagree with. However not being able to post a photo I took of someone in public for me is completely intolerable and barbaric, and a harassment against people exercising right to free speech. Opinions differ so I'm pretty pleased with Germany doing their thing and me doing mine and never stepping foot on their soil.

Do you find that not being able publish a book someone else wrote is an infringement on free speech?

I agree that you should stay in the USA and let everyone else go to Europe.

Well, according to the two sources I'm familiar with, it's not necessarily the _current_ laws that are the most concerning, but rather the _direction_ things are heading.

In the past it was like:

- You can't call people pedophiles unless it was proven in court.

- You can't say black people are inferior.

Since October 2023 it's like:

- You can't call people pedophiles unless it was proven in court.

- You can't say black people are inferior.

- You can't say Israel is doing a genocide.

And has remained there since. Is this what worries you?

History proves limiting free speech is a slippery slope. I can't speak for my EU friends, but for me, yes, it's very concerning to begin justifying why some speech is not OK.

In the USA you can't say "I want to blow up this plane" in an airport, so the slope has already begun.

The interesting things is how that list is growing, not shrinking.

Last year is a bit different to this year no ?

And how are they doing now?

Anyway I’m sure people can be in whatever bubble their algorithmic news gives them. At the end of the day, today, it’s shameful to be American and many of my American friends feel that shame right now. The same cannot be said for most European countries.

> Anyway I’m sure people can be in whatever bubble their algorithmic news gives them

> it’s shameful to be American and many of my American friends feel that shame right now. The same cannot be said for most European countries.

So you're proposing you are immune to a bubble? One of the people I referenced was _literally_ ashamed of the German government. It's happening on both sides.

I find the whole thing odd, to be honest. I had a ton of disagreements with the prior administration, and I think the way many things were handled was "shameful." However, I never once felt "ashamed" of being American. Administrations come and go. The will of the people is fickle and changes like the wind.

As a scientist I'm not going to handicap my career by going to Australia or EU when the US is doing science light years ahead of those countries.

I've worked in Australia, Europe and Canada, and the ecosystem of scientists, funding and support for develop of science into products is far much further ahead in the US it's not even funny.

if only one side has nukes slavery will be much more widespread if everyone has them all the slave traders competing with each other will be at least mitigated

kind of crazy they saw all the graffiti license plate games that early

If everyone has them they are more likely to be used over minor issues.

don't believe everything the slavers tell you :)

if everyone had a way to completely disintegrate the planet no one would be above another

All we need is nukes?

I think you might be counting on way too many decision makers to remain rational and wise enough to avoid and defuse non-trivial situations that want to escalate.

In the 8 billion times 8 billion potential nuclear exchanges that universal nuke would enable (64 quadrillion!), there is at least one scary bad one. At any time of day. That you are standing too near.

Please acknowledge my wisdom here. (Hard unblinking stare. Wiggling finger wanders toward red button… “Kind person, I have no interest in harming you, but my sources inform me you have at most one nuke. So I must be prepared to be first. Please keep those hands where I can see them while I only, and with full peaceful intent, rest my finger here.”)

you my digital friend have never met slavers and it shows :)

more than nukes one can survive nukes the ability to completely disintegrate the planet for everyone

Sounds like a very strong incentive for us to find a way to leave the planet and settle elsewhere.

nah jesus says that's a sin we can only stay here with our heavenly chosen barons or go to heaven or hell

And those settlements will be not be full of exactly the same human beings?

If power is not more or less evenly distributed then only the strongest really have rights.

This seems like a tautology. By definition someone with superior political power can grind down someone else with less, if they were maniacal enough about it, or at least negate their efforts.

If they couldn’t, then they wouldn’t be considered to have superior political power.

It's more than that.

With enough power differential that won't even be a consideration.

Even perfect equals in an ideal spherical cow world can still engage in a 1 v 1 drag down fight.

Spherical beef is better than Wagyu!

If you wanted to be ironic via literally meaningless comments, then that is pretty clever.

When?

There’s no evidence that is the case.

It has been eighty years since a nuclear weapon was used in an act of aggression.

It would appear a state sort of only really comes to have nuclear weapons when it has got its act together sufficiently to be well enough behaved to not use them.

A sort of maturation process, if you will.

The meek[1] shall inherit the Earth, and all of that.

If we’ve got data, let’s go with the data. If all we have is opinions, let’s go with mine.

1. this is best as interpreted as those who have the ability to use force, but do not use it, except maybe to defend themselves.

It has been threatened recently by a few nations. It almost got set off by mistake.

Increasing the odds by introducing hundreds of players some willing to gas their own people is rolling the dice. The few countries that have the ability has been responsible but that does not mean that will always be the case or new players will be as responsible.

What does any of it matter?

In about five billion years the sun will run out of hydrogen and expand, engulfing Mercury, Venus, and likely Earth.

In the mean time, you could respond to the argument I actually made.

The level of organisation at the state level required to build a working nuclear weapon, along with the forces working against that, eg. how difficult it’s been for Iran to get across the line, and the fact of the near miss you mentioned, allows most of us, it would seem, to sleep well at night.

We have the test case for this. When one power had nukes and no one else did they weren’t used…

if you ignore WW2 for some reason?

history is pick and choose these days the blight is spreading everywhere :(

well it was always pick and choose but i had high hopes for the tech barons sigh

famously they were very much used

i’m pretty sure he was being sarcastic

They were on Japan and plenty of people pushed for a preemptive strike on the USSR.

"John von Neumann" was a very famous and influential person defending just that.

Smart guy, von Neumann. We should've listened to him.

lmao think of all the jobs the CIA would have had to cut

bad citizen don't you want all the marines and special forces to be employed?

just wow what would jesus say we both know he hates all the savages but he loves jobs more

Converted to Catholicism in his deathbed and made serious errors in his Book on QM.

Plus all that nonsense on replicators/celular automata in later life.

Not worthy of the hype as far as I'm concerned.

A world with only the USA would have been far worse.

The people of Nagisaki and Hiroshima would like a word.

I'm thinking most of new and established STEM PhDs, who'll decide where in the world to settle in, or relocate to, to do research or R&D.

We Web/app programmers are a dime a dozen, unique-skills-wise.

But the loss of an individual with much more rare scientific knowledge/skill/ideas can be felt much more acutely by the country that alienates them.

(Counterintuitive techbro salaries vs. academic salaries aside.)

People can be become indifferent, which is a win for China.

A lot of developed countries like across Europe and Singapore dont have the same geopolitical history with China as the US does, as such the Sinophobia isn’t really there

Many people really enjoyed Shanghai and other cities and are recipients of expansive social safety nets of China

If you’re middle class and in a big city or some of the planned cities, China is fine, not without its difficulty of adjusting to, some people sour on etiquette and difficulty founding entrepreneurial things. But an academic or programmer would be fine.

So people in the US often try to focus on political edge cases to write off an entire country but its easy to see that focus going away

Sure, just don't practice Falun Gong or be a Christian or an Uyghur.

Exhibit A

And yes, that’s correct.

Regarding Christianity, religious people have the choice of being in the registered religious practices there. Sometimes the registration requirements are incompatible woth the religion, such as a religious leader sent by the state, as opposed to someone chosen or independentally wants to lead/control people.

and unregistered religious practices are cracked down on. western society chooses to masquerade the unregistered issues as the state of religious practices in china. the unregistered population is just as large as the registered one.

> expansive social safety nets of China

can you provide more detail on what you mean by this? Are there labor laws preventing 996, for example? what kind of medical care is there?

Excellent medical and dental care for ridiculously cheap. On par with countries like Germany

If you work, you contribute to a fund that you have access to if you lose your job.

To me, the big three of "social safety net" is education, medical care, and retirement pension. For normies, I doubt any of those are better than other highly developed democracies.

China has never been a place, historically, that has welcomed foreigners as anything other than short-term visitors. To the extent that it has, those foreigners have become Chinese (Manchu, Mongol - and the "welcome" there is uh… being used pretty liberally). From a legal and policy perspective, there are very few paths to long-term residency in China for people who are not of Chinese descent, and of the nominal few there are, there are only a tiny handful of foreigners who live there for longer than a decade or so. By law you can't become a citizen of the PRC without being of Chinese descent. Chinese people are wonderful and on an individual level are incredibly warm and open to all the depths and facets of human relationships with non-Chinese foreigners. As a society, China has, in general, never been a particularly welcoming place for folks who aren't Chinese. I don't see any indication of that changing any time soon. Would love to be wrong.

My impression with the visa situation is that while technically green card is very difficult, in practice most expats have no issue renewing their work visas, so effectively living as long term residents - buying properties, getting married, and sending their kids to (mostly international) schools. I've also seen quite a few who worked for a few years and then started their own businesses.

In terms of how well expats integrate, I've seen people from across the spectrum. There are definitely those who are meshed into the local social circles. Foreigner privilege is a thing, and I find that how you view social status is a strong determinant in how well you integrate. Those with a more egalitarian mindset seem to do well in this regard.

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