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pedroma

105 karma · joined March 14, 2020

Farming negative karma is not trolling when you're expressing your honest views.
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pedroma··on Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz
>This clearly surprises you. It is indeed shocking: that's how far the USA has fallen, globally, in only a year or so.

No, I'm the one who brought up this topic of how Europeans have an increasing unpopular opinion about the US. How is this surprising to me? I literally brought it up. The reason I don't consider East Asia relevant, is because East Asia and Europe do not have the same existential issues. East Asia's dependency on the US is far greater than Europe, and from East Asia's political point of view, Europe may as well not exist at all. Its primary political relations are with the US, SEA, and China. European sentiment about the US holds no relevance there, as it is not Europe, and they are not Europeans. This may surprise you, but the world does not revolve around European sentiment.

pedroma··on Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz
Let's not extend this beyond the European opinion, especially since it's obvious that East Asia does not share the same point of view. East Asia and Europe have very different threats that shape their opinion of the US fundamentally. Europe does not have China breathing down their neck, and with Russia bogged down they have even less to worry about. Europe can freely reject the US, which is what this chain of comments is about, the popular European sentiment. In contrast, if there's anti-US sentiment in Taiwan, it would be in a minority and publicly disagreed with as their nation's existence hinges on positive US sentiment. To a lesser degree, the same thing in other East Asian countries.
pedroma··on Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz
The other poster mentioned the opinions about the US and China being multi-faceted, I like to see it with vectors. My question is, given all the vectors, can you provide an average magnitude and average direction of the vector? If the average vector points left the opinion favors China, if it points right the opinion favors the US.

The American point of view is, yes we did make a claim towards Greenland which is European territory, but we also helped with European security. These are two separate vectors, right? Now average them. And plot China's vectors. I imagine the vectors China produces is much lower in magnitude, and as such provokes a lower emotional response in terms of opinions.

pedroma··on Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz
>This is not a scalar, it is a multi-dimensional array with tons of values that all individually can be ranked. One some of these the USA is better than China on others it is definitely not. You may want to collapse that all to a single 'but we're better' picture but that is just not how the world works.

This is correct... and like I said the common European sentiment. I think we've exhausted this dialogue. We're restating the same things in more words.

>And that's not true either because you clearly checked my account upthread to link it to Europe.

Your post I originally responded to says "Should have worn a suit." and also mentions Europe and Ukraine. That's basically the entire context of our back and forth. If you have many other posts about the US and Europe's relationship... well I have no knowledge of those posts.

pedroma··on Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz
Yeah I can see that. The other poster is right about it being multi-faceted. My question is intentionally somewhat provocative. It forces someone to pick between two bad options, and I always gain respect for people who decide to pick one instead of intentionally avoiding it and just saying "oh they're both bad, idk".
pedroma··on Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz
The reply chain got too long so I will respond here.

>You seem to be completely out of touch with the way the USA has been behaving towards the EU as of late, maybe get with the times and then report back. Last I checked China hasn't threatened to take over either Canada or Greenland, has not started any major wars for which they expect the EU to pay for cleaning up their mess, has reasonably sane leadership and on top of that has been a fairly trustworthy business partner that does not engage in whim driven economic warfare. They also have a bunch of very dark sides that I am going to assume we are all familiar with.

I'm aware of everything you've said. What I've noticed is Europeans just like to bash on the US given any reason. My original point is (proven by the exact quote of your words) that this type of European sentiment is accelerating a two-sided voluntary parting. Nothing much more than that. I am not defending the US's actions.

>Comparing yourself to China is not the flex you think it is.

Once again you are proving my point. Europeans are typically not willing to place the US above China. Any attempt to get them to do so will provoke this type of response.

>Your bio says that "Farming negative karma is not trolling when you're expressing your honest views." and that's all fine, you have a right to your honest views but if they're indistinguishable from trolling to the point that you feel you need to pre-empt that classification then maybe HN is not the place for you?

Calling me a troll is just an attack on me and not my argument. That's ok though, no offense taken. The bio is provocation for people who dig into people's profiles. I don't like to do that. I just take the person's posts as is.

pedroma··on Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz
>Why do I have to prefer one over the other? I don't like the way either is behaving on the world stage, and each for different reasons.

This is the perfect encapsulation of what I mean in my original response to you. This IS the popular European sentiment. And this is what is off-putting to many Americans. The weight of China and the US is not even worth preference, despite the US having contributed positively to the Ukrainian conflict and European defense. We are not even WORTHY of being placed above China, we're either just as bad or worse is the typical response I see.

pedroma··on Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz
Does this mean the person I'm responding to is a Russian disinfo agent?
pedroma··on Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz
Would you say we're worse than China these days (if so, what % of the time did China help Ukraine in the conflict)?
pedroma··on Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz
This sentiment is very popular in Europe. From the perspective of the American, it's like, help was offered for 90% of the time in the Ukraine conflict, then we took a break and suddenly we are more an enemy than China. From my point of view, the pushing away is not one-sided like Europeans like to portray, but has been mutual for awhile.
pedroma··on Oracle slashes 30k jobs
I've always been skeptical of happiness statistics. In many cases, self-reporting happiness offers an objective floor for happiness, but the ceiling is entirely relative/subjective.

The floor is universal: starvation, suffering, death.

The ceiling...

For someone who's starving & facing death, would simply be good health, easy access to food, healthy family, house & car.

But the ceiling for someone who already has these things is different. The ceiling for a billionaire is different.

The only way I can imagine not doing this type of subjective self-reporting is... maybe you can draw blood from populations and record cortisol and oxytocin levels?

pedroma··on Trump's global tariffs struck down by US Supreme Court
Another point of irony: Elon was tasked with "draining" the swamp and the left immediately goes to burn Teslas.
pedroma··on Tesla Sales Down 55% UK, 58% Spain, 59% Germany, 81% Netherlands, 93% Norway
There is a lot of anti-American sentiment on HN and Reddit. You may think it a bit ironic, but maybe the "YCombinator" part takes a back seat to "Hacker News".
pedroma··on The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling
Looks like the EU can just get a feature flag to use pagination or a "Load More" button? Doesn't seem as big of a deal as enforcing USB-C.

Though if it applies to the YouTube, seems annoying when trying to find a video to watch. I usually trigger a few infinite scrolling loads to look for videos.

And I assume they'd have to specify a maximum number of items per page, or else devs could just load a huge number of items up front which would technically not be infinite scrolling but enough content to keep someone occupied for a long time.

pedroma··on Google Fulfilled ICE Subpoena Demanding Student Journalist Credit Card Number
I don't know why I still lurk on what is essentially r/politicsandtech.
pedroma··on Military models Canadian response to hypothetical American invasion
Chinese bases would certainly be the quickest way for all Canadians to gain US citizenship overnight.
pedroma··on How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips
A good benchmark would be how long the west remains mad at Russia for invading Ukraine.
pedroma··on I'm Kenyan. I don't write like ChatGPT, ChatGPT writes like me
People don't discuss how people walk in daily conversation, so it's a word primarily encountered in literature, and more common in specific types of literature (like romance novels to describe how a man paces about with swagger).
pedroma··on DeepSeek uses banned Nvidia chips for AI model, report says
It's interesting how this sounds like projection to me as well, from the perspective that China does export their ideology. Your post itself seems to be a form of that, whether you're Chinese or not.
pedroma··on PRC elites voice AI-skepticism
Seems about as important as knowing FRG = West Germany, and GDR/DDR = East Germany in the 20th century.
pedroma··on Trump pardons convicted Binance founder
>Do you not believe the GOP eliminating SNAP, medicare, and social security will lead to the deaths of millions of Americans?

I would suggest not equating libertarian policies with systemic genocide. How about we calm down?

>Do you not believe that Trump, who threatened extrajudicial killings of drug smugglers today [1], isn't going to abuse that power to murder any citizen he doesn't like?

I don't see any evidence of that yet

>Do you not believe Trump is a fascist, white supremacist, rapist, 34 time convicted felon, rapist, and pedophile?

I think he's a 34 time convicted felon, but I haven't confirmed the number.

pedroma··on Trump pardons convicted Binance founder
By that criteria, Obama would be one of the greatest mass murderers in history.
pedroma··on Trump pardons convicted Binance founder
You believe the US on the path to killing tens of millions of its own citizens for the sake of some ideology like Mao, Stalin, and Hitler because a non-violent white collar criminal was given a shortened sentence? Interesting.
pedroma··on China has 55% of the high-IQ working-age people
What is that threshold in China?
pedroma··on Nvidia buys $5B in Intel
Will Nvidia continue to exist beyond the current administration? If yes, then would it be prudent to consider the future beyond the current administration?
pedroma··on Private sector lost 33k jobs, badly missing expectations of 100k increase
They might be short sellers, or they might be foreign and view the US as an economic rival. There may be more incentives than just more clicks for the media.
pedroma··on Private sector lost 33k jobs, badly missing expectations of 100k increase
>Nobody is incentivized to share bad news about the economy.

Isn't the media incentivized to keep you watching or reading? The common criticism of media is they like to exaggerate a minor issue to get you to click on a headline.

pedroma··on Trump administration halts Harvard's ability to enroll international students
I would just never vote if that's the case.
pedroma··on U.S. Economy Contracts at 0.3% Rate in First Quarter
Did you forget the Russia collusion thing from 2016?
pedroma··on Overengineered Anchor Links
I'd imagine consumer hardware is the same.

For example, every Thunderbolt dock's internals are basically the same, while the outer shell tries to be as different as possible.

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