> There were very few foreigners. In Beijing I might have seen half a dozen cumulatively across entire seas of people
Most foreigners from US and Europe have left after the COVID lockdown - they've seen with their own eyes the true nature of authoritarian/dictatorship regime. Also, the closer relationship of Russia and China has many unable to stomach supporting a regime that attacks Ukraine, another democracy. The foreigners are now from Africa, Middle East, or Belt and Road countries.
> Outside of Shanghai, almost nobody spoke English.
This is why China will be irrelevant in a few decades, as it recedes into its own shell. When most export manufacturing will have moved to Southeast Asia, when domestic goods is preferred over foreign goods, when export dwindles due to sanctions and tariffs, when it gets harder to harder for average citizens to obtain passports. China will be closed off just like the 18th century, just how Xi Jing Ping wants it.
> many young people expressed feeling stressed or overwhelmed
Imagine that you just graduated, and no one is hiring in your fields. And you can only drive didi or meituan, but the pay is decreasing fast, and there are 20+ idle drivers at lunchtime every day, and you are only making $300/month. And next year, there will be another 12+ million graduates - the size of the entire population of Sweden. You are trying to look for a job in another country, but travelling outside the country is discouraged and passports are hard to get.
> The biggest surprise from talking to Chinese VCs people at AI labs was how capital constrained they felt
Concrete quality requires vigilant testing, testers, and enforcers backing up the testers when they find bad concrete. It's a constant battle. A job as a concrete inspector is no fun.[1]
Concrete testing machines are big, heavy, labor-intensive, and often require a forklift to move.
This is why much third-world concrete is so bad. You need hard-ass honest inspectors with real authority. And backup inspectors to inspect again.
There's a market here. Design an automatic hand-held testing device you can hold against a concrete surface to get a good evaluation. Ship it with a set of small test blocks, known good and bad, as a check. Market it to home buyers, real estate agents, etc. in countries with poor inspection. It's a hard problem, but a combination of ultrasonics, cameras, ground-penetrating radar, and mechanical probes might do it.[2]
Tofu dreg is not as large of a problem as it once was but I agree on the other points. I am interested to see if their monoculture experiment works. My armchair analysis has always been they made mistakes alienating foreigners as much as they historically did pre covid. With the lack of any way to get citizenship and the general hostility towards non Chinese.
The video you posted is from Falun Gong, a cult that is roughly analogous to Scientology. A few pictures of bad concrete do not say much about the quality of construction as a whole in China.
> This is why China will be irrelevant in a few decades, as it recedes into its own shell.
Given that China is the largest trading nation on Earth, China "reced[ing] into its own shell" is highly unlikely. China is highly interconnected with the rest of the world.
> "the pay is decreasing fast" ... "travelling outside the country is discouraged and passports are hard to get"
You're just making this all up. Pay has been increasing steadily in China, and is now higher than in Mexico, for example. Chinese citizens can get passports easily, and travel is not discouraged at all. Outbound tourism took a plunge during the pandemic, but it is recovering and is now approaching pre-pandemic levels (about 150 million outbound Chinese tourists per year).
> Outside of Shanghai, almost nobody spoke English.
This is why China will be irrelevant in a few decades
that assessment seems completely off since in only a few years every visitor of China can bring their own babel fish. also there is hope that after Xi there will be a renewed opening up
"One explanation I heard while there is that there are plenty of menial jobs available, but today's educated youth - who've gone through high school and college - just won't take the low-skilled positions their parents and grandparents did. Meanwhile, there's a real shortage of the high-skilled jobs that would actually match their education and aspirations. It's a mismatch between the jobs available and the jobs young people feel qualified for and willing to do."
Same problem the US has. Too much education for the job market. Only about half of US college graduates have jobs that actually need a college education. The last time China had this problem, Mao said "It is very necessary for the educated youth to go to the countryside and undergo re-education by poor peasants." 40 million students were rusticated.
Historically, this leads to unrest. Egypt hit this, with good education but, especially post oil boom, not many jobs that needed it.
This is happening all around the globe, I would argue. There is title (hyper)-inflation. In the EU are just lots of PhD, doing jobs that hardly require more than some basic training.
This comment inspires a more philosophical observation. I tend to notice that it's an illusion that education exists for the sole purpose of preparing human labor for future jobs. Partially it does, but another part is fixing progress consequences. Imagine you traveled to the past where 99% of workers were agricultural ones and explained that there would be a future when only 10% is required to fulfill needs for food for others. They obviously complain that it would be terrible because so many jobs would be lost and so on. But humanity is great at inventing new occupations. Fast forward from the past to present. We have many schools, universities where there are many paid jobs (tutors, clerks, management) and many unpaid occupations (pupils, students). In our hypothetical past only a tiny fraction of the population could afford to belong to these two categories. And the latter can afford to be unpaid because progress allows their parents to pay for them in order for them to be occupied without a paid job.
TBF very simple (not easy, but anticipated) structural problem: currently PRC ~5 years into ~20 year period where the intersection of cohort from when PRC had higher TFR - was generating 15m+ new borns while simultaneously massively expanding tertiary capacity and enrollment (single digit to 60% and increasing). Unsurprisingly (and again anticipated when scale of academic reforms was being proposed) sought after air conditioned office jobs hasn't kept pace to frankly stupendous tertiary expansion, meanwhile tuition doesn't drive PRC student into crippling debt, and parents have high savings % to doddle kids who can afford to fuck around. Broad unemployment is steady ~5% - sooner or later youth will enter workforce doing less desirable jobs when they realize they're not tier1 material. Same with all the ones now chillaxing in tier2+ cities, not everyone makes the grind in NYC either. West simply had to deal with academic inflation earlier and culture have already learned to live with paper degrees.
If one followed the domestic/elite debate 30 years ago (project 211/985), it was exceedingly obvious CCP decided it was more useful to max out the dial to brrrrt teritary talent generation even if it means eventual talent oversupply and opportunity mismatch. At end of the day, more useful to have excess talent where top minds are discovered and coordinated, then not. Teritiary talent can fail back to delivering DiDi, but undereducated DiDi driver not going to work in fabs.
Still given PRC youth unemployment rates, the % employed is still integrating ~2-3x more STEM workforce per year vs US (excluding non STEM technical fields). They have massive relative youth unemployment, but massive absolute youth employment that has closed the STEM/technical #s with US in last decade, and set to lead for decade(s). Like if current trend/ratio continues, PRC set to add 40M stem in next 20 years, about as much US projected to gain population total (births + immigration). The talent:opportunity gap will eventually close since new cohorts moving from 15m new birth years to 9 million (and declining) new births, i.e. if PRC keep pace with high skilled job generation (difficult), they'll eventually experience (skilled) talent shortage, but by then they may well have OECD combined in high end talent in the workforce.
There isn't going to be rustication, unless you count mediocre people realizing they're doomed to mediocre work in mediocre location rustication. And ultimately, that's what all the developing tier2/3+ cities and interior provinces is about, why CCP was lolling at all the naive (western) urbanists trying to convince them to increase tier1 density to increase productivity and follow zipf scaling. CCP solution is to tell people NYC is full, but here, we build multiple NYC alternatives, with comparable amenities, slower pace for the mediocre/mids (not meant to disparage but mere statistic reality), but you'll end up making 1/2 the money but have same or better QoL because local PPP is scaled accordingly. They're not moving people to the countryside, they're moving people to other world class cities.
Curious what led to the decision to use "burner" devices, was it fear of confiscation? I spent 2 weeks in China in 2024 (Tianjin, Tangshan, Chengdu, and Beijing), used Astrill as my VPN on my iphone and macbook pro and didn't experience any connectivity issues or app crashes. I even had a 45min signal voice call with someone state side. I was using Astrill's VIP add-on however.
> It's a good reminder that what's lacking in life is not time. It's focus. If you're working on what matters, you can advance leaps and bounds in 8 hours. And if you're just clearing the slog, you can spend a lifetime staying in the same place.
This. Incredibly obvious yet incredibly difficult to put into practice day-to-day. Another underrated perk of traveling internationally. All of a sudden, trivial nonsense starts to reveal itself through absence, allowing you to sort accordingly - carries over when you're at your home-base as well.
> > It's a good reminder that what's lacking in life is not time. It's focus. If you're working on what matters, you can advance leaps and bounds in 8 hours. And if you're just clearing the slog, you can spend a lifetime staying in the same place.
bahahaha literally spoken by a 24 year-old. Let's see if he thinks time is not a limiter at 48.
With any self-awareness the profound truth he should be saying: Life can be abnormally easy when you're handsome and charistmatic.
> Curious what led to the decision to use "burner" devices,
When visiting you are required to install a tracking app. At that point your phone is considered compromised. So you bring a burner that gets infected instead and you toss afterwards.
> When visiting you are required to install a tracking app
Do you have details on this? I visited a little before Covid went down and that was not the case at the time. Been wanting to go back before my visa expires
I spoke to someone who traveled there post COVID in 2022. They started they had to install a tracker app, perhaps COVID tracking? Perhaps I am misremembering something.
At one point, there was a WeChat mini-app with a health-related form that needed to be filled out. However, a paper version was also available, and it's no longer required.
Why is this guy so popular of late? Is it because he manages to book interesting podcast guests? He doesn't seem to have any particularly interesting or impressive original thoughts on display...
He's pretty good at curating very smart people and interviewing them. There's no shortage of interviews with double talking politicians and polemicists so podcasts like his are a breath of fresh air. I'm not watching his podcasts to learn about Dwarkesh, but to learn what his guests have to say.
The bar for wide-audience podcasters and interviewers is low. They're expected to be generalists who can ask good questions, not experts driving the conversation.
Now, expertise is valuable for focused Podcasters like Peter Attia for fitness or Razib for population genomics. But, Dwarkesh is trying to cover all tech and wider HN-friendly content. For that purpose, his CS education and knowledge of the tech industry workings are solid.
He does a better job than Lex, Rogan, or other tech-adjacent Podcasters. Nowhere near as personable as some of the more mainstream successes. But, when those podcasters get tech guests, we're stuck with tired questions like:"Will AI kill us all?".
Tend to agree. His interview with Leopold Aschenbrenner and subsequent interview with François Chollet revealed a pretty obvious LLM maximalist position. Kind of off-putting.
In Seattle, in the summer we have anti-CPC protests almost every Saturday run by Chinese Americans I assume, I think it is driven by Falan Dafa though.
The biggest critics of the CPC seem to be ethnic Chinese though (well, or other ethnicities present in China or Asia as a whole), not generally European descended Americans.
CPC is the official acronym, since the party’s name is the Communist Party of China (CPC), only in English does it become the Chinese Communist Party. They don’t use the CCP abbreviation in China.
CCP is a closer translation of how the party name is written in Chinese. It has never made sense why they decided they would be referred to as CPC in English, when the original party name in Chinese reads as CCP.
Chinese doesn't even have adjectives, so there's no difference between CCP and CPC in Chinese.
The whole issue is just a shibboleth. The party itself prefers CPC, while CCP is more common in the US (where it's increasingly used as a slur for anything related to China, as in "TikTok is a CCP app").
It’s definitely because they want to be known as the communist party of China (place distinction) rather than a Chinese (ethnic or nationality distinction) communist party. The former definition is one of land and the other one is bound to people, and not all Chinese live in china, and not all people in china are ethnically Han. This probably meant more during the Stalin years (before the Sino-Soviet split) when they were strongly a branch of the communist party of the Soviet Union. The same ambiguity pops up in their acronym: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_the_Sovie...
And what do you think was the first language translation for the communist party of China? Definitely Russian. I bet we find the same pattern in the other affiliated communist parties.
The organization conventionally known in English-language media as the CCP consistently refers to itself as the CPC in its own communications, although there seems to be a pretty broad consensus that both acronyms are fine.
I used to share this view but it turned out to be naive. After living in China for over a decade I can confidently say that the majority of Chinese actually support the CCP. I know, it's hard to believe for us Westerners.
Most Chinese are apolitical and won’t express strong support for or against. I would say they are even less political than Americans since they don’t have much say in it anyways.
I worked at an American tech in Beijing for 9 years, and some of my colleagues would express some nationalism, especially when the South China Sea conflicts started, some of them were always subversive, most didn’t care. Everyone thought the political education courses they were required to take in college were a waste of time.
You don’t have to openly support the party as long as you don’t openly oppose it. China has a lot of grass mud horses (people who aren’t at harmony with the party) and most of them are never sent off for re-education. The central government doesn’t really have that level of surveillance or control, and local governments have even less of that.
Nothing. In fact, most Chinese people tend to be apolitical and show little to no interest in politics. You'll occasionally see portraits of figures like Mao or Deng hanging in restaurants though it probably serves more as a historical symbol than a political statement.
As much as Castro in Cuba. Last week I had a conversation with a man from Cuba, who escaped and is living in Europe… he said sooo many good things about Castro and his mother.
That's bullshit. If the party was really popular in China, there would be emigrants that are looking just into making more money, but actually loved how the country is run.
> Americans: we're not anti you, we just want to overthrow your government and install a puppet.
I don't think Americans want a puppet government. We'd be perfectly happy if they just stopped the IP theft, spying, and maybe treated the Chinese people better. Kind of a shame when you can be thrown in prison just for saying your government did something wrong, or trying to look up history like Tiananmen Square.
>I don't think Americans want a puppet government.
The average american doesnt but the elites who feed the average american opinion forming propaganda certainly do.
And this is why the average american would draw this distinction - the opinion forming propaganda they are fed draws this distinction.
>We'd be perfectly happy if they just stopped the IP theft, spying, and maybe treated the Chinese people better.
America had a perfectly good relationship with China when it was weaker and it did all of the same stuff in the past. Now it has become powerful what was once tolerated is now unforgiveable.
For American elites China's real crime is being powerful. It tolerates genocide (Israel), spying on America (Israel), BRUTAL disrespect for human rights on a scale that far eclipses China (Saudi), but what it doesnt tolerate ever is imperial rivals.
The political and financial elite have not advocated for a puppet government ever. Like Europe benefits from cheap Russian gas, American businesses took full advantage of China's ignorance of human rights. The prevailing American diplomatic strategy since the 70s has been to use globalist reform to force hermit kingdoms to sit at the discussion table. It ultimately worked in the case of the USSR - extreme sanctions and paranoia forced a collapse of their government after their leaders refused to fully cooperate with NATO.
China is unique, in that this strategy was squarely aimed at them but ended up being turned around completely. China used their autocratic authority to embrace international trade and create incentives to develop a surplus even when their own citizens couldn't keep up with enough demand. Where the USSR denied progress in civilian industries, China embraced and sponsored it. Capitalism saw the benefits, cheap plastic garbage started getting shipped worldwide, and the free market became addicted to unsustainable, low-margin products that were often made in the hands of indentured political ideologues. It's a problem you can solve without a "puppet government" if you create a reasonable basis of accountability and negotiation for both countries. America doesn't reject that, China does.
> For American elites China's real crime is being powerful.
America tolerates all sorts of morally reprehensible and powerful nations. We sell half of them weapons and then turn around and deny responsibility on a regular basis. China knows they could be an American ally... if it benefit them. The whataboutism spread by the CCP is meant to frustrate American nationalist sentiments, but it doesn't explain why their approach is superior.
Truly, China can be as powerful as they want, as long as their interests are aligned with the international community and not the other way around. If the world lets China use their strength to decide who is morally correct, then it's the international community that is the puppet government.
Frankly, human rights is mostly a talking point. The US allies itself with plenty of other countries with poor human rights records. Saudi Arabia kidnapped a US resident and cut him into pieces but I have never heard any serious noises about ending that friendship.
Is Saudi Arabia’s treatment of gay people or women even a consideration? No. Political expediency is. China is the US’s chief geopolitical rival, Saudi Arabia is not.
You'd be surprised to learn that most Americans also do not like how Saudi Arabia treats its citizens as well. How we feel about a government, and how we interact with it geopolitically, are two different things. We do not like how either of these two governments does things, but we coexist with them to the extent necessary because we share a planet. We trade with both for instance.
We are free to feel how we want, and talk about it, and its the government's job to safeguard that freedom with pragmatic and necessary relationships.
> Is Saudi Arabia’s treatment of gay people or women even a consideration? No.
With a reductive enough set of criteria, you could say this of any ally of any nation anywhere in the world. If China was allied with the US instead of adversarial, you'd probably be calling out American tolerance of the Xinjiang cotton industry. But there is serious scrutiny of it, enabled by a remove from Chinese politics and party-aligned thought. If China respected the criticism they received from abroad, they would have a much clearer path to being a respected international power.
From an American perspective, partnership with the Saudis isn't completely irredeemable. In fact, things are going pretty well - womens rights were enhanced (albeit not fixed), cultural reform succeeded, Sharia law was partially denounced and minors were exempted from the death sentence. As opposed to what would have happened without diplomatic relations, these citizens would have suffered even greater injustice. Giving Saudi Arabia an obligation to the international community actually did improve the conditions of their government and the people living there. It didn't magically correct things overnight, but the thaw is working.
If you really want to make Americans piss their breeches, just mention Israel. That is a proper example of an unrepentant US ally that has abused the trust of the international community and continues to deviate from the global basis of human rights. Khashoggi dies, and the world is up in arms. The Mossad or the IDF does the same thing, and everyone asks why you're surprised since Israel has been targeting journalists for decades.
Of course, American nationalists treat Israel the way Chinese nationalists treat Tiananmen Square. The idea of it being a problem is denied - instead, it's a "small chapter in history", "it was justified", "it all happened so long ago" and "we can't do anything to fix it".
My opinion of America would probably be a bit more positive if it only behaved aggressively towards territories that were internationally recognized as being part of America.
This isnt to excuse China's belligerence, just to put its actions in perspective, something which American nationalists vehemently object to.
To put Chinas actions in perspective, they continue acts of aggression towards the Philippines in internationally recognized Philippine territory that they wish to control.
I'm not sure what you mean. In the US, anyone can accuse anything of being a populist slogan, and there's generally no penalties for repeating or adhering to a slogan someone else feels is populist. I've never faced even mild consequences for my vocal belief that the US should stop fighting regime change wars.
I've faced no consequences at all for repeatedly telling people that the US has committed war crimes and pointing them to evidence of said war crimes. It's true, of course, that you'll go to jail for a bit if you obtain a security clearance and then violate it, but even then I don't think it's reasonable to characterize that as "nailed to a tree". Chelsea Manning lives freely in the US and is quite popular in some circles; my understanding is that China generally imposes the death penalty for similar leaks (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/6/china-hands-death-s...).
This leaves out the fact that the President of the United States commuted her sentence. She was originally sentenced to 35 years in maximum security prison, which is longer than some murder sentences.
If your point is that speaking out against the government carries fewer penalties in the US than China, we should assume whistleblowers will receive the full punishment for doing so. While a 35 year sentence is probably better than a death sentence, its not something I would plant a flag in.
>If I was the US President, and I wanted to win hearts and minds in China, here's what I'd do. In every single speech where I'm talking about China, I'd make a conspicuous effort to complement Chinese people, Chinese values, and Chinese culture. I'd talk about how my Chinese staffers are the smartest and most hardworking people I've ever worked with (which honestly is probably true). I'd talk about how much my daughter is obsessed with ancient Chinese dresses. I'd talk about how I'm learning Mandarin in my free time, and have a live "Aw shucks" conversation in Mandarin.
It's kind of incredible this is a serious suggestion. "Our foreign policy is to punch you in the face, but now we're also going to lie about our enmity to gaslight you, because we think you're that naive and stupid". PRC nationals also not going to buy a word of it when the central narrative is economic / military containment. New gen of patriots/nationalisms doesn't seek western validation anymore. Few in PRC is going to be fooled as long as sanctions / export controls are ongoing and US military bases are around. People not that gullible. There's also the 100,000s of international students and millions of diasphora to report back all the sinophobic shit happening in the west despite honeyed words.
> I asked him what the hardest part of ramping up production is - apparently constructing factories is just not an issue - tons of construction firms can make you a new facility quite reliably (along with the adjacent dorm room building for workers).
He never finishes this thought but moves on to a new topic. I want to know what he said in reply!
> I kept asking young people about the public intellectual landscape in China - who are their equivalents of Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, Lex Friedman, and Sam Harris? The sense I got is that this kind of popular intellectual ecosystem just doesn't exist there
I have never heard of Sam Harris, but are the other 3 the prominent examples of American intellectual ecosystem? I haven’t listened to them a lot, but in the couple examples of Friedman’s or Rogan’s podcast episodes I listened to, they let their guests say whatever anti-intellectual bs they wanted, without trying to correct the guests. Maybe I chose the wrong episodes?
“Intellectual landscape” is way over selling it. Joe Rogan used to host a reality tv show where people ate cockroaches for money. They’re little more than glorified influencers.
To use the phrase “Public intellectual ecosystem” and then to go on mentioning Lex Friedman, Joe Roegan says more about the author than China I think. I had a good laugh at that phrase as well as his examples.
It’s interesting to see China making giant progress in EV, renewables, bullet trains and so on while SV podcasters get high on their “intellectual ecosystem”.
They're part of the "intellectual landscape" in the sense that they act as a gateway for getting people interested in deeper topics, in a culture that has largely been anti-intellectual.
For as long as Hollywood shaped the cultural narrative, being smart was considered downright shameful; nerd was a synonym for loser, geeks were always social misfits. That shifted at some point in the last 10-20 years, in part due to increased immigration from non-anti-intellectual cultures but also because of the popularity of such podcasters and some YouTubers, especially fitness YouTubers.
I'd definitely credit these people as part of the "intellectual landscape" because they showed America that you could remain engaged for hours on something that isn't vapid bullshit, in a way that NPR perhaps couldn't.
When I read this I felt intellectual was the wrong word choice but I think I understood what he meant. Less about being an intellectual but more that China generally does not have very deep discussions in public about state matters or anything remotely related.
Fridman has interviewed some pretty smart people - so I would say the shows are intellectual, rather than the hosts themselves (although Lex is a smart guy IMHO). I like the long-form interview format - it's allowing the listener to make up their minds rather than "old media's" way of pushing certain points of view.
For example: Fridman's interview with John Carmack is my favorite episode (at 3+ hours I think?).
I've never got on with Joe Rogan's or Jordan Peterson podcasts - just not my cup of tea. Sam Harris is no doubt a smart guy but he suffers too much from TDS - which gets annoying.
Jordan Peterson, Lex Friedman, and Joe Rogan are conservative, right-wing entertainers. They are not widely accepted as intellectuals, but rather as entertaining lecturers and interviewers who are quite biased.
That the author would consider them public intellectuals is fascinating and speaks to their worldview and media consumption habits.
A neutral Wikipedia editor would mark your "widely accepted" by a "by whom?" remark.
At the very least, Peterson is an intellectual. He is not my cup of tea, but he worked both at Harvard and at Toronto U as a teacher, and I suspect that you just can't stomach his politics. I would certainly like to see you debating him in his field.
This is an unhinged take. Jordan Peterson and Lex Fridman are clearly intellectuals. Rogan is debatable - he’s more entertainer but he is also certainly more intellectual than those who are normally given that label, because he listens to a diverse set of views, and has more balanced and mature opinions on many topics as a result. The bigger issue isn’t Rogan being labeled that way - it’s all the “traditional” intellectuals who don’t deserve that label or the authority that goes with it.
Joe Rogan is not a fucking intellectual. Regardless of what you think of him he’s the first to tell you he’s just some idiot. Just because he has a lot of listeners and is willing to host just about anyone talking about anything doesn’t make him an intellectual. Talk about an unhinged take.
I suppose it depends on how you define "intellectual". If you define it as someone who can talk for hours on end, and make a success out of it, then I'd say that's pretty smart. He's a comedian too (not seen any of his shows), which to my understanding requires quick thinking - something that most people don't have.
He's whole "I'm an idiot" thing is just a character he plays. You don't get to be a success like that by being an actual idiot.
If you mean intellectual to be "book smart", then yes I agree with you.
Since when is Lex Fridman considered a conservative right-wing? Did something actually change or is this a new label from lefters because he interviewed Trump?
These labels and attacks that you see rampant in this HN discussion are a type of response that is common among dedicated leftists (even in past history like China’s cultural revolution). And HN has a lot of left leaning users since they are often in the Bay Area. What’s behind this response is tendency to not tolerate anyone dissenting from their ideological positions even a little bit, and so they respond with whatever attack they can make - including labels or accusations or fake outrage.
His guest list does cater to right wing listeners, and he absolutely does not meaningfully pushback on his guests, more often than not allowing them to make claims and accepting those claims at face value without any proof or follow on questions of substance
As an outsider (I'm a european engineer with barely any personal connections to the US tech scene) I have the feeling that a significant fraction of Friedman's audience are just more right-leaning at the moment. And Fridman caters to this audience. You know, the kind of people who follow Musk during his current Trump era.
As an outsider to Europe, but living in the EU, and seeing USA and the EU neutrally, I would say the EU as a whole is intellectually skewed a little bit to the left.
This is where I stopped reading. Not to be elitist, but anyone who considers this cadre the “intellectual landscape” of America is not someone whose intellectual contributions I’m particularly interested in.
It's kinda like calling Hunter S. Thompson a public intellectual back in the 70s. Public yes, opinionated absolutely. Intellectual? Ehhh, stretching it.
> they let their guests say whatever anti-intellectual bs they wanted, without trying to correct the guests
This is correct. Friedman praises himself to listen to "all sides". I think this is good in principle, but he invites all types of professional bullshitters and propagandists and let them go without the slightest pushback which is pretty disturbing.
He probably wouldn't have the same range of guests if he wasn't only throwing soft balls though.
To his credit, I found that Rogan was at least pushing back a bit against (what he perceived as) BS (haven't listened to him for a while though).
In any case, I hope for Americans these guys don't define the US intellectual landscape.
> invites all types of professional bullshitters and propagandists and let them go without the slightest pushback which is pretty disturbing
Do you also say the same thing about traditional journalists, who could also be easily labeled professional bullshitters and propagandists?
I don’t find Lex’s approach disturbing at all. It’s only disturbing to those threatened by new information or different opinions or free speech in general. I find his conversations explore relevant topics surrounding a guest effectively.
When there's a guest who speaks obvious nonsense, and Friedman knows it, I don't think it's right to leave it unchallenged. At least, as a viewer this is what I'd like to hear (whether I like the guest or not). Of course, this applies to traditional journalists. And this has nothing to do with free speech.
Rogan doesn’t really pushback at all, or in cases where he may face more criticism, pushbacks superficially.
He lost all credibility to me (which was already in short supply to be honest) when this became a pattern.
There is no meaningful pushback in Rogan interviews, and while I never fully agreed with most of what Rogan had to say over the years I did praise in the past that he was willing to ask hard questions and press answers, but that was long long ago now.
Sam Harris was/is one of the “Four Horsemen” — a group of intellectuals and public figures in the mid to late aughts and early 2010s. The others were Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens. They had their differences, but they mostly advocated for (classic) liberalism, increased science education, the separation of church and state, and warned against the nascent anti-intellectualism at the time. Having Sam Harris (or any of the other three) in the same group as Joe Rogan and his ilk is like putting a classic Ferrari in the parking lot of a used Yugo dealership.
Think of those test questions that give you 4 pictures and you are tasked to choose what does not belong: a chimp, gorilla, bonobo and a sea turtle.
That Sam Harris is named in the same group is a bit odd. He doesn't really fit with the others as an "entertainer" and from my limited knowledge of all of them appears to be the more focused or contained wrt subject matter.
> they let their guests say whatever anti-intellectual bs they wanted, without trying to correct the guests
I do not like any of the 2 (even I could say I hate them, in the sense I cannot watch for more than 10 s), but what do you mean with “let they say (…) whatever they want” I mean… is that not right?! Do you expect some kind of sensorship? I mean maybe is what YOU perceived as “anti-intellectual bs” whatever that means for you? Maybe they concur?
Also “try to correct”? Sorry, maybe is a language thing, but “correct” seems to imply the guest said something “wrong”. Is the host always an authority to ”correct” a guest?
I’m really not trying to attack or insult you, I’m just totally perplexed by the comment? I would HATE to see an interview where the host is “correcting” the guest in any color, shape or form.
Maybe I am misinterpreting your reply. Maybe can you give an example of what you think is better, ans show a correction from host to guest, as you would like?
I regularly watch these "DW News Desk: Join the news conversation" "podcasts" (video series) - they are long form and a deep dive into a topic, often they have guests who are very passionate about some side of an issue, and it's extreme evident the hosts are well researched in the aspects of the issue that are divisive such that they can call out or steer the conversation in a manner I can more easily see the passion (/biased) of a guest. It's part of what I appreciate about world class journalism. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLT6yxVwBEbi2VrKhg84AD...
I should have said “false” rather than “anti-intellectual”. I know the role of the host is not to be a fact-checker, but when a guest makes a false claim and then they speak about it without questioning it makes it sound like both people believe it’s true.
I don’t remember exact examples, but one was something to the tune of:
Guest: man the crime in America is crazy these days
Host: yeah, totally
Guest: I left city X because I couldn’t handle the crime there
Host: yeah, it’s the worst
Guest: it’s like New York in the 80s
Host: and the mayor and the governor do nothing about it!
Then of course the crime is not only nowhere near the 80s NY level, but also lower than in previous years when the guest apparently lived there.
Again, I don’t expect the host to say “you’re wrong” every time a guest makes a wrong claim, but saying “come on, NY in the 80s was brutal, we’re nowhere near that” at least limits the exaggeration
Have you considered that the other person may be correct? That’s probably what the interviewer is doing. For example in your made up example, maybe the data would correctly show crime was worse in the 80s, or maybe the data is wrong even if it says that. After all, when crimes are not addressed people stop reporting them - as one way data could be wrong. So maybe crime is worse than the 80s in some ways and it’s worth letting the guest continue with their perspective.
Even if exaggerated though, I also find the overreaction to exaggeration to be unnecessary. I’m sure there are exaggerations you let slide when they aren’t important to you or when they’re aligned to your views.
> I should have said “false” rather than “anti-intellectual”. I know the role of the host is not to be a fact-checker, but when a guest makes a false claim and then they speak about it without questioning it makes it sound like both people believe it’s true.
Ok! Now I understand, so you mean, e.g. somebody says “the sun is actually 20 degrees hot”, and they do not interject… I am then at your side on that. On the other hand… maybe they DO agree? Or maybe they just want to give a microphone even to questionable people? So… I’m not convinced, but now I understand you better.
Anyway, I do not like them.
Maybe the problem is beaause people expect journalism, but they do more like “friends talking in the bar”
> We saw again and again small paddy farms surrounding a handful of 5-10 story skyscraper, plopped in the seeming middle of nowhere.
Without wanting to invalidate any of his points, but his use of "skyscraper" seems a bit inflationary if he includes 10 story apartment high-rises in it.
Yes, Dwarkesh does speak quite fast, though I think much of it is nervousness and excitement. He spoke even faster in his first few interviews, but learned to tone it down. Bryan Caplan even mentioned it to him in one of his interviews.
I wouldn't say it's representative of westerners, but more of hyper-active, eager intellectuals (over-represented in the programming world, from my experience). Marc Andreessen is another example of someone who talks very fast.
Hmm, I only listened briefly but it sounds a normal rate to me. Perhaps the high end of norma; podcasters do want to convey enthusiasm and that often translates to speed.
As an aside, some people whose first language is not English speak English too fast, because their first language uses fewer phonemes and hence uses a higher syllable rate to reach the same information rate. I wondered if that might be the case here, but this sounds like a native speaker.
Just an aside, notions of "first language" and "second language" don't work well in Indian and other Asian contexts. Often, the language that people learn first (their "mother tongue") would be a local language (say, Marathi) which eventually ends up being the second- or third-best language that they know, superseded by Hindi and English.
So, for many urban middle-class Indians, English is actually their "first language" as in the language they know best, even though it might be the third language in the order that they learned it. (Actually, even the notion of learning them in an "order" applies only loosely because you'd be learning all 3 languages at the same time).
This is also true for many Chinese people. E.g. a person's mother tongue may be Shanghainese but eventually they learn Mandarin and English to a much more advanced degree than Shanghainese.
> This layout seems designed partly for social control - during zero-COVID, authorities could lock down 10,000 people by simply guarding a few entrance gates. The wide roads would also make it easy to move military forces through the city.
This seems like a bit of a leap? Apart from zero covid, which I say is an exceptional scenario, I haven't heard of Chinese people socially controlled en masse into their home through use of force. The idea of military driving through the middle of city is even more ridiculous.
Most western cities were designed with such things in mind. Look at Haussmann's renovation of Paris. Why do you think all those armories were built in US industrial cities at the turn of the 20th century? The odd thing is he makes it sound like China designs its cities with concerns not seen in the West.
It isn't like people sat in smoke filled rooms and pre-conspired their cities for pandemic controls, that part's silly but the way a lot of Chinese cities are constructed has its roots in this high modernist, Le Corbusier, Robert Moses style design[1].
Chinese urban planning is very much heir to this idea of regular, orderly urban development, in the parts of cities that aren't old and premodern. Everything has its place, the apartment complexes, the roads, the recreational areas, how people move, and so on. It's become very fashionable to rail against this in particular in Western intellectual circles but honestly having been to China but also to places like Chandigarh, I've had a pretty positive impression.
Not sure. In post-WWII Warsaw in Poland, a similar pattern was employed (of very broad boulevards). Allegedly so that even after the city is nuked, there is enough space for two-way traffic between the rubble.
Covid was an exceptional scenario and also a convenient test period for that control. As for moving military forces into cities - it would be very viable. Look at any situation on leaked social media where police or state actors are shutting down protests - for example when masses of Chinese citizens demonstrate against their employer or real estate scammers or banks or whatever. The authorities have an easy ability to bring lots of personnel and gear to any situation quickly. Then there’s the dystopian stuff that ranges from social credit scores preventing use of public transit to police drones patrolling the air between apartment buildings telling citizens to stay home. The Chinese society is under mass control all the time from all sides.
It's not a secret or chinese thing.
European kings and emperors also had their cities remodeled to stack the odds in their favor in case they had to deal with uprisings.
Washington, D.C. was laid out to be defensible against the military technology of the time. Hence all those circles and radials with good fields of fire.
> Another person told me that these Chinese nationalists were only a vocal minority, similar to the wokes in America circa 2020.
I have no idea what this is supposed to elicit from me as a reader. "[A] vocal minority, similar to the wokes" ...that won the election?
It feels like you could say this for every American election year and it would sound equally as stupid. In 2012 it was the economic reformists and pro-regulation pundits, in 2016 it was virulent anti-woke crowd and staunch defenders of nationalism. So on and so forth. Were any of these really minority opinions, or was it that they were hot-topic issues at the time that divided voting citizens along party lines?
The point is that, if your only exposure to American public opinion was Twitter, you might get an unrealistic view of how to understand the relationship between public opinion and government policy. It's not the case that the 2020 election proves the American people broadly endorse the most extreme left-wing thought on Twitter, any more than the Twitter ownership change and 2024 election proves that the American people have now become extreme right-wing devotees.
> There are indeed cameras everywhere. This is gonna sound super naive - but I genuinely don't understand why. There's no crime. I know you'll say it's to prevent protests.
Yes that does sound super naive
> In China, liberal pro-Western voices are often censored or shouted down. If I was the US President, and I wanted to win hearts and minds in China, here's what I'd do. In every single speech where I'm talking about China, I'd make a conspicuous effort to complement Chinese people, Chinese values, and Chinese culture. I'd talk about how my Chinese staffers are the smartest and most hardworking people I've ever worked with (which honestly is probably true). I'd talk about how much my daughter is obsessed with ancient Chinese dresses. I'd talk about how I'm learning Mandarin in my free time, and have a live "Aw shucks" conversation in Mandarin.
Perhaps it does. "This is just bizarre" doesn't do much to promote curious conversation, though. Maybe say what you think is wrong with it?
(I mean, sure, you're saying it's self-evident what's wrong with it. And, to many people, maybe it is. Your words are still a shallow dismissal, though.
I listened to one of this guy's podcasts recently. The guest was impressive but Dwarkesh... Not so much. His questions were meandering and made it clear he didn't have much of a grasp on the subject matter. Does not surprise me that he is perplexed about the totalitarian regime's penchant for watching people.
For someone who interviews experts across a wide variety of disciplines (I've watched military professors, anthropologists, AI experts on his channel), I'd say Dwarkesh does a pretty damn good job. His interview with the Naval War college, he asked some mid questions, but the professor was able to use his questions as a launching platform to give informed insight, and it's one of my favorite interviews. I can't think of anyone else who interviews as well with such a balance of depth and breadth. It's clear he's a voracious learner and I'd bet he'll be even better than he is now in a few years. He's also really young, I'm not sure he's 30 yet.
It's not wrong, though. If your goal is purely "win hearts and minds in China," doing whatever the Chinese government wants is good step. It is, however, not clear that this would be a good primary goal for a US president.
Clearly it would only win hearts, the point of winning minds is to persuade them to your viewpoint.
If you really want to win hearts alone, drop all visa and foreign registration requirements, close Pacific military bases, cede Hawaii. There's so much you can do to win hearts.
Yea not knowing why cameras are everywhere is naive.
And the fix to “winning” Chinese citizens over is to dismantle the CCP, by practicing asymmetric warfare - like economically weakening them - until citizens are ready for change.
In the 1980s, "Reagan's great director of Central Intelligence, William Casey, asked the CIA's Soviet Division two obvious questions: Where is the Soviet Union weak? and Where is it most vulnerable? The answer he received was: We don't know. No one's ever asked this before."
Yeah its really weird because the US already did this stuff during Obama's presidency, hell talk of the town was the US and China should form a G2 back then. Trump also recently made same sort of G2 comment, China declined both times.
You had China bailed out the US and what did China get in return the US destabilising Asia with their Pivot to Asia policy. Trump started out this way and what did trump do start a trade and tech war with China. I don't US word or signature is worth shit tho all it has is violence and fear to work with these days.
It's funny how everyone in the West seems to know about China's "social credit score" and meanwhile, in China, no one actually knows what it is or if it exists at all. Probably everything you heard about it is wrong.
Meta??? such a bad example :) I don’t have Facebook or Insta or Whatsup or anything owned by Meta and neither do most of my friends.
My daughter would not get Face/Insta/… account if you paid her $10k and would flat out laugh at your face just for suggesting it. you may as well as said MySpace here… too funny…
US state - maybe not. The state of China - perhaps /s
Jokes aside, I signed up for TikTok over the summer and while it feels like it is not heavily skewed either way it 100% can be gamed (see Romanian elections)…
I believe that the only way social media could be net positive so the society when the comes to politics is with account identity proofing like IAL2. this is also why talking about “freedom of speech” when it comes to social media is ridiculous because while individuals should have freedom of speech (rogue)government-controlled bots are not afforded those same liberties.
And dangerous, and won't last more than a few decades. Just watch some of the tofu dreg videos https://www.youtube.com/shorts/1eyUAZCb3sA
> There were very few foreigners. In Beijing I might have seen half a dozen cumulatively across entire seas of people
Most foreigners from US and Europe have left after the COVID lockdown - they've seen with their own eyes the true nature of authoritarian/dictatorship regime. Also, the closer relationship of Russia and China has many unable to stomach supporting a regime that attacks Ukraine, another democracy. The foreigners are now from Africa, Middle East, or Belt and Road countries.
> Outside of Shanghai, almost nobody spoke English.
This is why China will be irrelevant in a few decades, as it recedes into its own shell. When most export manufacturing will have moved to Southeast Asia, when domestic goods is preferred over foreign goods, when export dwindles due to sanctions and tariffs, when it gets harder to harder for average citizens to obtain passports. China will be closed off just like the 18th century, just how Xi Jing Ping wants it.
> many young people expressed feeling stressed or overwhelmed
Imagine that you just graduated, and no one is hiring in your fields. And you can only drive didi or meituan, but the pay is decreasing fast, and there are 20+ idle drivers at lunchtime every day, and you are only making $300/month. And next year, there will be another 12+ million graduates - the size of the entire population of Sweden. You are trying to look for a job in another country, but travelling outside the country is discouraged and passports are hard to get.
> The biggest surprise from talking to Chinese VCs people at AI labs was how capital constrained they felt
China’s startup scene is dead as investors pull out—’Today, we are like lepers’ https://fortune.com/2024/09/14/china-economy-startup-creatio...