churchill (u/churchill)

churchill commented on China is eating the world apropos.substack.com/p/ch... · Posted by u/sg5421

skeptrune · 6 days ago

To me, Western ideals are things like freedom of speech, democracy, and individual rights.

I hear you though.

churchill · 6 days ago

>freedom of speech, democracy, and individual rights

For those within the imperial core. War, death, sanctions, and dilution of wealth for everyone outside it/whoever attempts to disagree.

churchill commented on China is eating the world apropos.substack.com/p/ch... · Posted by u/sg5421

skeptrune · 6 days ago

>Deliver growth, maintain order, forget the voting. It's spreading.

I think it's mostly this that makes me uncomfortable. I value Western ideals and am hopeful that they continue to spread.

churchill · 6 days ago

The purpose of a thing is what it does. If Western ideals condone and actively fund atrocities like what's happening in Gaza, while failing to match the infrastructural pace of auth. regimes like China, it's only logical that people will gravitate towards the model that works.

For instance, California's Intercity High-Speed Rail Commission was created by the California legislature in 1993 (before my parents got married) to develop a plan that was to begin construction in 2000.

32 years later, it's still not done, yet China has built nearly 50,000 km of HSR in less than 20 years. The differences are as blatant as that between oranges and orangutans.

churchill commented on China is eating the world apropos.substack.com/p/ch... · Posted by u/sg5421

glimshe · 6 days ago

There is a certain group of people who love this narrative/propaganda for political reasons. I'm tired of it irrespective of whether it is true.

I'm ready to say "China is the greatest superpower ever and so much better than my US" so we can move on from this type of article.

churchill · 6 days ago

You can simply ignore it, but you can't wish China and the progress they've made out of existence.

There are also Europeans who feel uncomfortable with the US having 1.5* Europe's GDP with less than half the population.

It's an extant truth and it'll become even more blatant as many Western countries struggle to do basic stuff like build out infrastructure.

churchill commented on China is eating the world apropos.substack.com/p/ch... · Posted by u/sg5421

churchill · 6 days ago

Funny how much stuff you can build when you're not spending insane amounts of money bombing farmers in the Hindu Kush, achieving full-spectrum dominance over everyone, or catering to entrenched interests.

Brown University's Costs of War project estimated that by 2021, all post-9/11 wars had cost $8T. When you factor in inflation since then, it easily exceeds $10T spent murdering farmers making $2/day in the Middle East. With nothing to show for it.

That's roughly a third of America's GDP/current debt wasted on making the world a measurably worse place.

churchill commented on Are OpenAI and Anthropic losing money on inference? martinalderson.com/posts/... · Posted by u/martinald

wongarsu · 7 days ago

But they don't have to be retained frequently at great cost. Right now they are retrained frequently because everyone is frequently coming out with new models and nobody wants to fall behind. But if investment for AI were to dry up everyone would stop throwing so much money at R&D, and if everyone else isn't investing in new models you don't have to either. The models are powerful as they are, most of the knowledge in them isn't going to rapidly obsolete, and where that is a concern you can paper over it with RAG or MCP servers. If everyone runs out of money for R&D at the same time we could easily cut back to a situation where we get an updated version of the same model every 3 years instead of a bigger/better model twice a year.

And whether companies can survive in that scenario depends almost entirely on their unit economics of inference, ignoring current R&D costs

churchill · 7 days ago

Like we've seen with Karparthy & Murati starting their own labs, it's to be expected that over the next 5 years, hundreds of engineers & researchers at the bleeding edge will quit and start competing products. They'll reliably raise $1b to $5b in weeks, too. And it's logical: for an investor, a startup founded by a Tier 1 researcher will more reliably 10-100x your capital, vs. Anthropic & OpenAI that are already at >$250b+.

This talent diffusion guarantees that OpenAI and Anthropic will have to keep sinking in ever more money to stay at the bleeding edge, or upstarts like DeepSeek and incumbents like Meta will simply outspend you/hire away all the Tier 1 talent to upstage you.

The only companies that'll reliably print money off AI are TSMC and NVIDIA because they'll get paid either way. They're selling shovels and even if the gold rush ends up being a bust, they'll still do very well.

churchill commented on Are OpenAI and Anthropic losing money on inference? martinalderson.com/posts/... · Posted by u/martinald

Workaccount2 · 7 days ago

The difference is the money printer right now only prints for ~6 months before it needs to be replaced with an even more expensive printer.

churchill · 7 days ago

And if you ever stop/step off the treadmill and jack up prices to reach profitability, a new upstart without your sunk costs will immediately create a 99% solution and start competing with you. Or more like hundreds of competitors. Like we've seen with Karpathy & Murati, any engineer with pedigree working on the frontline models can easily raise billions to compete with them.

Expect the trend to pick up as the pool of engineers who can create usable LLMs from scratch increases through knowledge/talent diffusion.

churchill commented on We regret but have to temporary suspend the shipments to USA olimex.wordpress.com/2025... · Posted by u/CTOSian

throwawaylaptop · 8 days ago

Maybe not, but it's a good goal and if someone implemented a plan to make it more common I would be for it.

churchill · 8 days ago

Americans willingly stopped farming their own food because it's more economical for farmers to grow in bulk and sell for a little profit. The only way to make more people farm their food would be by government compulsion.

Why would you want that?

And any time they spend growing their own food is time they don't spend on some other economic activity they're obviously better at.

churchill commented on We regret but have to temporary suspend the shipments to USA olimex.wordpress.com/2025... · Posted by u/CTOSian

throwawaylaptop · 8 days ago

We do make our own beef and our own corn. But beyond that, even at my house we make our own lemons (2 trees), tomatoes (60 plants), grapefruits (6 trees), and then process and freeze enough to last as long as possible. Because the stuff you can buy in stores is a fraction of the quality you get from home if you know what you're doing.

If only this specialization was focused on making good products instead of making 3% more money.

churchill · 8 days ago

So, is it feasible for all Americans families to grow their own food like you do?

churchill commented on We regret but have to temporary suspend the shipments to USA olimex.wordpress.com/2025... · Posted by u/CTOSian

throwawaylaptop · 8 days ago

If a US made Bolt is $1, and a Chinese one is $0.50, I buy Chinese. If now the Chinese bolt is $1, I buy American. If China tries to reduce the price of their bolt to $0.40, making it $0.80 for me, I still buy American because of quality and speed and reputation and returns, and more. So China makes the Bolt $0.25, I pay $0.50, and all is back to normal.

Yes I technically paid the tariff.... Except really China lost money, the US gained money, and I paid the same because that's the price difference required for me to buy Chinese.

Will it always work out like this? Idk. But this is what they are referring to when saying the exporter will pay it in the end.

churchill · 8 days ago

Except, the price difference will be more like $1 for the Chinese product & $20-40 for the American product. The Chinese have tremendous scale that no one else can really compete with. Some factory floors have rows of thousands of workers assembling just one stuff. Maybe pressing irons, kitchen utensils, knives, etc. Their wages are significantly lower, so you just can't compete.

There's a video on YouTube now of a manufacturer that tried to onshore his grill scrubber product. Couldn't find the components, no matter how he tried, and ended up subsisting with Indian parts, probably laundered from China, with a complementary markup of course.

The way Americans talk about these tariffs show you don't know what it takes to build a strong manufacturing economy. For decades, China has suppressed their workers' wages, diluting their wealth to transfer it to Western buyers as cheap good. They've invested in scale, building factories worth hundreds of billions, which often don't make profits for years on end.

In America, every CEO has to show a stock bump by the end of the quarter of get tossed.

If you take the logic of tariffs to their natural conclusion, why not farm your own corn, raise your own beef, pick your cotton, etc. Specialization is the reason why we can enjoy abundance because things get made where it's cheapest and then get shipped to you. The average American waiting tables at a restaurant makes more than the Chinese working the manufacturing jobs you're trying to get back, and I'm supposed to feel sorry for them?

In summary, America doesn't know what it's doing. Those of us who come from countries who put excessive tariffs on everything, know that it never leads to local production, but serves as just another government revenue channel. But what do I know?

churchill commented on Australia Post halts transit shipping to US as 'chaotic' tariff deadline looms abc.net.au/news/2025-08-2... · Posted by u/breve

CoastalCoder · 14 days ago

Friendly reminder to please not confuse the Trump administration with all U.S. citizens.

About half of us are shocked and revolted by pretty much everything he says and does.

churchill · 14 days ago

.