Kind of adjacent: Can somebody explain why the LW/EA/rationalist types all seem to be so ardently against China?
They're otherwise generally in support of doing the greatest good for the greatest number, at least ostensibly, so I wonder what it is about China -- which has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty domestically and is looking to export wealth abroad (most notably in the form of accessible "luxury" goods such as electric cars) -- that seems to trigger them so much.
China's political economy is also far more "rationalist" than anything you'll find anywhere else.
And yet I swear, and I'm not exaggerating about this in the slightest, that the average EA/LW poster hates China far more than the average /pol/ poster -- and is perfectly comfortable making sweeping generalizations where 1.4B Chinese are concerned. Guys like Scott Alexander rarely (if ever) have a good word for them; Zvi Moshowitz discounts and belittles every technological advance they make, despite otherwise being very fair; and you see what LW itself is like...
I don't understand where you're getting "hates China" unless that's a framing of "disapproves of the Chinese government on the whole".
I have seen Zvi pushing back against the narratives that open-weights models and Chinese ICs have caught up to the frontier. Was he wrong? But I can't recall any animus against Chinese people or their talent there.
It's rather obvious Zvi is biased if you consider the totality of his work on China (since Covid to the current AI boom), not only because of his statement of facts or his policy positions but rather his writing style, which betrays his view the Chinese are somehow not only technologically but morally inferior. And he expresses them with an emotional valence similar to his treatment of Trump.
A_D_E_P_T · · focus · HN ↗
They're otherwise generally in support of doing the greatest good for the greatest number, at least ostensibly, so I wonder what it is about China -- which has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty domestically and is looking to export wealth abroad (most notably in the form of accessible "luxury" goods such as electric cars) -- that seems to trigger them so much.
China's political economy is also far more "rationalist" than anything you'll find anywhere else.
And yet I swear, and I'm not exaggerating about this in the slightest, that the average EA/LW poster hates China far more than the average /pol/ poster -- and is perfectly comfortable making sweeping generalizations where 1.4B Chinese are concerned. Guys like Scott Alexander rarely (if ever) have a good word for them; Zvi Moshowitz discounts and belittles every technological advance they make, despite otherwise being very fair; and you see what LW itself is like...
abecedarius · · focus · HN ↗
I have seen Zvi pushing back against the narratives that open-weights models and Chinese ICs have caught up to the frontier. Was he wrong? But I can't recall any animus against Chinese people or their talent there.
Leary · · focus · HN ↗