I assume it is the same reason Facebook serves dodgy ads: it makes them money and they have had no liability for the material they choose to serve to users. There are a handful of types of content that could generate bad press (some sexual or racist content, for example), so they police those. But ordinary scams generate engagement and make them money, and since they are generally immune from liability for content under Section 230, there's no downside for them. I've always thought there might be an end-run around Section 230 where the algorithm is tuned to preferentially present fraudulent content, thereby implicating the company in the advertiser's fraud. But as far as I know, no one has tested that approach.
It would be more accurate to say Nvidia is the central bank of data center projects. The vast majority of capex associated with AI is for data centers, not the actual technology. Nvidia needs to create data center projects to sell to, hence its role in financing them.
In this case, Jensen Huang's statements can't be taken as informed, unbiased opinion. OpenAI is in serious financial difficulty and Nvidia cannot afford for OpenAI to fail. Nvidia has provided significant direct and indirect financial assistance to OpenAI; this is just another aspect of that assistance.
Shower thought: I wonder if this whole "OpenAI is in serious financial difficulty" thing is a psyop so people will relax and avoid doing what's necessary to stop them.
OpenAI was in serious financial difficulty in 2024/2025 but that's no longer true in 2026. Their revenue blew up massively in the past couple months and their ARR passed $40B/yr.
Most people haven't updated their priors and are fixated on outdated information.
OpenAI lost $12.3B in Q2 2026, which if you extrapolate losses the way they extrapolate revenue, implies north of $40B in losses for FY2026, against their own projection of $14B for the year. Coupled with their postponed IPO (which would have required significant public financial disclosures), and the very recent exit of two high-placed executives, I stand by the assertion that they are in serious financial difficulty.
> yeah and antropic s1 is going to shock many people, its going to be an eyeopener
I am looking forward to audited financial statements. Like, all the interesting stuff will be buried in notes, but they'll have to actually calculate real revenue, not the nonsense that is ARR.
These tools are useful, but I find it hard to see how OpenAI/Anthropic justify their valuations.
Apparently Anthropic's may be this week (the S-1) as they've finished picking all their bankers.
FY2026 losses already far exceed their projections and are widening, not narrowing. They postponed their IPO, and two key executives have left very recently. So the evidence leans heavily toward that assumption, yes. See my comment in the sibling thread.
Profit is a weird metric, in that one can defer necessary expenditure to show increases in it, while having negative profit was a good signal for Amazon as they invested all that money.
The labs are not really in the same position though, as their major capital expenditure is training models, which keeps getting more expensive and they can't stop as the frontier keeps moving.
no profit is very different from running at extreme loss, as an example. A company can be eternally stable with zero profit, while another very profitable vultur capitalist company will eventually run out of companies to gut for good looking on paper flow. In the same way, is the current valuation and i come based on a real good or service delivered that people genuinly are happy to pay for at tge rates current valuations indicate? Clearly that's a no, so, problem.
Informed in this instance implies information aligned with the opinion. He may indeed be informed about Astra's merits, but there may be no correlation between that information and his opinion, because of the overwhelming financial interest in OpenAI's finances.
The problem with government was that wealthy charlatans were rigging the system in their own favor. Naturally, the solution was to put a wealthy charlatan in charge of the whole thing and eliminate the middle man.
It doesn't seem like they asked about specific levels or branches of government, so presumably the respondents were giving a general impression. And in that case, it's hard to believe that a corrupt President wouldn't strongly influence the response.
>...Republicans dropped from 87% to 83% after their guy was elected, whereas Democrats nearly 1.5x'd their number of skeptics.
This is not surprising; a big reason that Republican voters were able to justify voting for Trump and open corruption was that they were bombarded with claims that there was a "Biden crime family" in office for four years. No real evidence of that was ever uncovered, but it didn't stop Fox News and every Republican leader from constantly referring to the accusations as if they were true. One the other hand, Trump is openly accepting huge payments from foreign governments, and never even bothered to separate himself from his companies. Republicans were at 87% due to general distrust of government and the rumor of phantom corruption, while Democrats (who tend to be more trusting of government) rose to the same level only on clear evidence of real corruption. The authors don't break it out by parties, but the overall level during Trump's first term is about the same as Biden's. Since the article notes that Republican skepticism is higher in general and more consistent, this implies that Democrats' perception of corruption is much higher in Trump's second term than his first. Which makes sense, the Republican leadership was much more responsible in applying guardrails in the first term than the second. Trump is getting away with a LOT more in his second term.
Well, obviously not an appreciation for the distinction between evidence and opinion. The fact is that there is clear, uncontroverted evidence that Donald Trump has profited directly from his presidency, and no clear evidence that Joe Biden did. Not everything is symmetrical in politics, and it's not always "both sides."
The implication is that even if I might agree with you, we ought not be subjecting each other to incoherent rants in lieu of substantive arguments. Just don't say anything, if the only thing you have to say is They Watch Fox News.
Even if you're inclined to believe the conclusions, this should recognizably be a silly rant and I don't want to live in a world where we justify sloppy arguments if we agree with the conclusions. If it triggers your defenses to the point where you can't see that this is a poor rant, it could be instructive to copy/paste it into an LLM and ask for an analysis or some counterarguments.
> Trump actually isn’t corrupt? Or Biden was actually secretly as corrupt as Trump is?
Incredible to me that you could think this is anywhere implied. Maybe you understand something better than I do, but I submit that it's brainrot to think my comment was somehow "Trump is not corrupt and/or Biden is equally corrupt".
However, the question of whose corruption rises to the level where a person is morally suspect if they don't speak out, is one that certainly cuts conveniently, isn't it?
> Maybe you understand something better than I do, but I submit that it's brainrot to think my comment was somehow "Trump is not corrupt and/or Biden is equally corrupt".
I don't really think you realize how that initial post comes across, because I'm re-reading your previous and struggling to come up with any other interpretation besides "both sides are bad".
If you are intending to say something different than that, maybe try stating it directly rather than sarcastically
When you vaguepost, you shouldn't be surprised when you receive follow-up comments asking for clarification, which was what I was doing. The most charitable interpretation, as another commenter noted, was that you were essentially saying "both sides bad".
> Even if you're inclined to believe the conclusions, this should recognizably be a silly rant ... If it triggers your defenses to the point where you can't see that this is a poor rant, it could be instructive to copy/paste it into an LLM and ask for an analysis or some counterarguments.
It seems to be triggering your defenses as well, to be frank. The primary claim:
> "A big reason that Republican voters were able to justify voting for Trump and open corruption was that they were bombarded with claims that there was a "Biden crime family" in office for four years."
Is essentially how I'm keeping my sanity living amongst people who voted for Trump. The only way I could find it justifiable is that somehow people believed that corruption wouldn't be this bad, or it was just as bad under Biden. I also know that there's a large contingent of nihilistic, psychopathic, "libertarian", chauvinistic technocrats that probably had no problem voting for Trump because they genuinely believed they would be able to make more money under a Trump presidency rather than a Harris presidency - but I choose to believe there are more people who were misled about relative corruption levels rather than pure psychopaths.
I don't know how to say this except by repeating myself: I recommend you ask a thoughtful person, or a capable LLM, to argue against "a big reason that ... [ad hominem patronization presented without evidence]"
In the age of LLMs, it's pure negligence to let your perspective be this uninformed and low-resolution. And it's violence against the attentions of others to share it with them, to be hyperbolic.
If this is your honest, best faith rendering why 50% of the country votes differently than you, then I recommend you leave politics alone. If you won't try and understand why people are the way they are, and instead are going with "they're all too stupid to know they're being fooled, unlike me" then yes, this is an unhealthy worldview which can damage your sanity.
> If you won't try and understand why people are the way they are, and instead are going with "they're all too stupid to know they're being fooled, unlike me"
Unfortunately, being more aware than - and immune to being fooled than - the majority of a specific voting bloc is not a historical anomaly. Take, for example, the Jews who were privileged and fortunate enough to have the foresight to flee Europe during the rise of Nazism. They saw the writing on the wall, and were wise to the foolishness and depravity that was on the horizon.
Most populist movements are very much the case of “they’re all too stupid to know they’re being fooled, unlike me” - although I wouldn’t necessarily use the word “stupid” and I wouldn’t necessarily limit it to “me”.
"He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that."
Everyone thinks they know better than others, and that's why their group and way of thinking should lead. Because of this, reasonable people ought to feel the need to present results, or at least make credible and compelling arguments, for why their way should prevail. All I'm seeing here is hackneyed, and very strained, WW2 analogies. And weepy moralization.
The only thing exceptional here is the gall you're showing, in suggesting that these tired, middling arguments are reasons why actually "the voting booth is wrong and I'm right, even though I (presumably) value democracy"
The most corrupt things Biden has done were:
1. Hide the extent of health issues. Par for the course in politics at this point for some reason. This is broadly just downstream of him believing he could continue before a precipitous health decline as election season began
2. Pardon his son who was teed up by the Republican world to be target number 1 for low level drug and tax charges.
Trump on the other hand has made literally billions of dollars since starting his presidency, not to mention the fortunes of his family and various associates. 100x is not even just a few orders of magnitude off.
There are immigrants who commit crimes. Sure, it's not _every_ Mexican is a rapist and we're probably talking about basis points of basis points here. But it's a foundation.
Hunter Biden did get money from people who wanted access to Joe Biden. Sure, Joe didn't actually help them out. But it's a foundation.
The problem isn't the unfoundedness it's that it's extrapolated beyond what the foundation supports.
>The problem isn't the unfoundedness it's that it's extrapolated beyond what the foundation supports.
The purpose of creating a "Biden crime family" was to implicate Joe Biden in the actions of his son without needing any evidence that Biden himself traded on his presidency (because there was none). I see the point you're trying to make, but evidence that Hunter traded on his dad's fame simply isn't evidence of any wrongdoing by Joe Biden.
Regarding immigrants, unless it is shown that they commit crimes at a higher rate than the rest of the population---and it hasn't---that isn't a foundation either.
I don't think you understand what a foundation is.
If I make the claim, immigrants cause crime and I show a bunch of mug shots of immigrants who were arrest for crimes. That's a foundation.
The solution isn't to pretend things aren't foundations. The solution is go expand the equal air-times rules so that if you want to argue for political change (official immigration policy) you have to allow the other side to show arguments of immigrants commit crimes below average.
>The only thing I got out of this article is that both parties + the F500 need to be destroyed.
I don't know, if we'd had an overwhelmingly Democrat-dominated government, we'd have comprehensive bans on government insider trading and we'd correct the bad ruling in Citizens United. Corporatism is definitely a bipartisan issue, but at least Democrats recognize it as a problem, while to Republicans it's a feature. Not everything in politics is symmetrical, and misguided nihilism is actually how we got where we are. Turns out the road to hell is paved with "it's both sides."
> I don't know, if we'd had an overwhelmingly Democrat-dominated government, we'd have comprehensive bans on government insider trading
We had two years under Biden with Democrat control of the House and the Senate. They passed no legislation to ban insider trading.
It probably didn’t help that the poster octogenarian for insider trading was Speaker of the House
> and we'd correct the bad ruling in Citizens United.
CU was absolutely the correct ruling as it just means I can take money from wherever I’ve earned it and spend it on publicizing my message.
Prior to that you had to buy a media company to have the same effect. It was perfectly fine for Fox News or The NY Times to focus articles and segments on what they deem newsworthy to push their narrative. But if I made my money selling widgets, I couldn’t spend it the same way.
It’s a perfectly reasonable ruling.
> Corporatism is definitely a bipartisan issue, but at least Democrats recognize it as a problem, while to Republicans it's a feature.
The same people probably complain the Senate is an antiquated body that should not exist because mob rule is the only true voice of the people.
With just 48 Democratic senators and 2 independents caucusing with them, the 117th Congress had to deal with rampant GOP filibustering, starting with setting up an independent commission to investigate the January 6 riots. https://www.npr.org/2021/05/28/1000524897/senate-republicans...
A corporation is just one or more people pooling their resources for legal and accounting purposes. Theres nothing inherently virtuous or evil about the concept.
Going back to my original example, why is it okay for a media company to use their platform and resources to promote whatever speech they want promoted, but I can’t use money I made selling hot dogs to do the same?
The only way to make the playing field fair is to allow everybody to take part. Otherwise you have a handful of media companies with outsized control of indirect messaging.
>A corporation is just one or more people pooling their resources for legal and accounting purposes.
It is not. That's one aspect, but another major aspect is that those individuals pooling their resources are not liable for the corporation's actions. This immunity from liability for their collective responsibility has a price, and part of that price is that the corporation should not be used in an attempt to manipulate elected officials. Corporations are not people for the same reason that you are not a blood cell. The whole is not only greater than the sum of the parts, it is materially different.
>The only way to make the playing field fair is to allow everybody to take part.
This is one solution, I'm not sure it is truly the only solution.
Why do we treat media companies differently? Maybe we shouldn't. Newspapers traditionally had political coverage, and had no restrictions on political commentary. As a result, their owners wielded enormous political power. Then radio and TV arrived on the scene, and had to abide by the "equal time" rule due to their government-granted broadcast licenses. The internet upended all that. We should look for a good answer, not just an expedient one.
> two years under Biden with Democrat control of the House and Senate
Nobody has controlled the Senate since ‘09. The veneer of bipartisanship created by the filibuster meant that Congress has done nothing since ‘09 (outside of a few stimulus bills and the Green New Deal which was probably a good bill in the long run hampered by bureaucracy). It turns out that’s great for the party that wants to do nothing, and really bad for the party that wants to do something.
You could say that Dems should’ve killed the filibuster. But there was no appetite for it until Trump 2 because things weren’t going great but they weren’t going belly up
No one is excusing them. But it's worth pointing out that in every aspect of government ethics reform, from campaign financing to insider trading by government officials, the legislation promoted by Democrats is stronger than that promoted by Republicans, who often not only don't promote reform but actively oppose it. For example, the recent lukewarm ban on insider trading was opposed by Democrats on the grounds that it was too weak, excluded the President and VP, and included unrelated voter regulation measures. And the Democrats have been trying to pass legislation to correct Citizens United for years. So while it's a bipartisan issue, one party is much more pro-reform than the other.
That's great if you're talking to a high schooler that has never been politically active, but I'm literally a democratic party operative. I've attend state conventions, state nominating conventions, platform conventions, DNC twice. This is not the democratic party I want to part of and why I'm extremely thankful people-led organizations like WFP and DSA are actively trying to change things for the better.
None of what you are describing has any real momentum behind it and for how many decades will you let politicians fails you until you do something in response?
Like bro, the democratic party isn't an opposition party. There is a reason why the party has majority unfavorability rating [1] throughout Trump's entire second term. How do you square this?
This is a fucking terrible sign and it's why progressive candidates have seen a massive insurgency this cycle and why the corporate do-nothing dems are so scared shitless that they might have to actually answer why they are okay with genocide + corporate welfare programs while doing nothing to help people materially.
You say no one is excusing them, then spend your entire comment excusing them.
It's possible that stupid people in government have helped lead to the "5 guys owning everything" though. The world we live in is a result of policy choices, not a natural inevitability. And the people we've put in office over the past 50 years have played a large role. If they were being put in office by a population that was getting dumber and dumber every election cycle, that could certainly be a big contributor to the problems in wealth disparity we see today. I'm not saying that's the case, only that the two theories are not mutually exclusive.
I was just following the parent's wording. I don't really think they were stupid, or even necessarily greedy and shameless though some no doubt have been. I think mostly it has been ignorance. Likewise the general voting population: I don't think they've gotten dumber, but I do think they've gotten more misinformed. As the saying goes, "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble; it's what you know for sure that just ain't so." Never has that been more true in American politics.
Sadly, economics is not yet a science, but still mostly a hodgepodge of philosophy, superstition, and politics, where the fragile beginnings of scientific inquiry and real science are regularly run over by louder, dumber voices shrieking about "free markets" (an oxymoron) and "supply side" (a bald rationalization for providing welfare to the wealthy). Millions of people know Adam Smith only by his "invisible hand" analogy, which appears only once in the entire book and in a completely different context from that which it is usually quoted---he was talking about the tendency of business to buy local because of familiarity, not making some broad claim about the self-regulation of markets.
Nor is there any visible attempt to make it a science.
> Millions of people know Adam Smith only by his "invisible hand" analogy, which appears only once in the entire book and in a completely different context... the tendency of business to buy local.
That's quite a stretch, I mean, it's your right to second-guess Smith as much as you like, and ascribe some "invisible" intent behind his writing, but the text doesn't support your view.
Anyone can read Book 4, Chap 2, where the paragraph in question appears. The whole chapter is full of incessant, obsessive ramblings against regulation in order to "prove" that self-serving, unregulated action always and automatically does better than any regulation motivated by care for the social good. Smith spells it out black on white in par. 4:
Every individual is continually exerting himself to find out the most advantageous employment for whatever capital he can command. It is his own advantage, indeed, and not that of the society, which he has in view. But the study of his own advantage naturally, or rather necessarily, leads him to prefer that employment which is most advantageous to the society
Then Smith uses this insinuation, is if it were a universal principle, to imply the "free trade" rabbit out of his hat - "Secondly, every individual who employs his capital in the support of domestic industry, necessarily endeavours so to direct that industry, that its produce may be of the greatest possible value".
> real science [is] run over by louder, dumber voices shrieking about "free markets" (an oxymoron)
Well, Smith was a free trader, and in that light, he claimed restrictions to free trade are the foundation of all other market regulations, which makes them bad by implication. Smith was a PR BS-generator.
Bk4, Ch 3, part 2 - "Nothing, however, can be more absurd than this whole doctrine of the balance of trade, upon which, not only these restraints, but almost _all the other regulations of commerce, are founded_ ... But that trade which, _without force or constraint_, is naturally and regularly carried on between _any two places_, is always advantageous."
>Nor is there any visible attempt to make it a science.
This will come as quite a surprise to the complexity theorists studying economics as a complex adaptive system. But you prove my point, the cacophony of pseudoscience overwhelms whatever incremental progress real science makes in economics.
>> Millions of people know Adam Smith only by his "invisible hand" analogy, which appears only once in the entire book and in a completely different context... the tendency of business to buy local.
>That's quite a stretch, I mean, it's your right to second-guess Smith as much as you like, and ascribe some "invisible" intent behind his writing, but the text doesn't support your view.
You may count yourself among the millions misinterpreting Smith's reference. Here is your quote again, this time with the relevant context:
"But the annual revenue of every society is always precisely equal to the exchangeable value of the whole annual produce of its industry, or rather is precisely the same thing with that exchangeable value. As every individual, therefore, endeavours as much as he can, both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce maybe of the greatest value; every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain; and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest, he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it."
He's pointing out that people have a natural tendency to buy local, and so, while only consciously intending to benefit themselves, they actually end up benefiting their entire community as though guided by an invisible hand. The language seems pretty plain to me, but as you say, you are free to interpret or misinterpret it as you wish.
>> real science [is] run over by louder, dumber voices shrieking about "free markets" (an oxymoron)
>Well, Smith was a free trader, and in that light, he claimed restrictions to free trade are the foundation of all other market regulations, which makes them bad by implication. Smith was a PR BS-generator.
"Free trade" as a useful concept generally belongs on the same trash heap as "free markets"; neither trade nor markets as we know them exist without considerable regulation. We can certainly argue about the degree and nature of the regulations, but the simpleminded notion that "less regulation equals better markets" is simply wrong. As for Smith, he lived in a time where international trade was heavily centralized around governments. When he spoke of "free trade", he was really referring to private trade, independent of the government monopolies of the day. You could certainly think of this as a form of deregulation, but it was really more a case of advocacy for legalization.
>Bk4, Ch 3, part 2 - "Nothing, however, can be more absurd than this whole doctrine of the balance of trade, upon which, not only these restraints, but almost _all the other regulations of commerce, are founded_ ... But that trade which, _without force or constraint_, is naturally and regularly carried on between _any two places_, is always advantageous."
I'd certainly agree with Smith about trade deficits, which fall into the realm of purely political misuse of economics. And when he speaks of "constraints" here, he's saying the government shouldn't dictate specific commodity purchases, not that the government shouldn't have sensible regulations like requiring safety features on private vessels or prohibiting the shipment of dangerous goods without proper inspections and permitting.
> I'd certainly agree with Smith about trade deficits,
So you agree that "Nothing, can be more absurd than this whole doctrine of the balance of trade"?
Further, let's look at these two claims in your quote of Smith:
(A) > "every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it."
So when in (A) Smith says "every individual" and "generally", he doesn't mean it, he means specifically claim (B) "By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry... he intends only his own gain"
Isn't it obvious that Smith uses the sucked-out-of-thumbs claim (A) to "derive" claim (B) as a special case?
You simply refuse to address the text, focusing on your second-guessing instead. Besides, you're completely oblivious to Smith's opinions stated as facts, because in the above quotes, neither the general nor the specific claims are true. They're just "I say so".
>Isn't it obvious that Smith uses the sucked-out-of-thumbs claim (A) to "derive" claim (B) as a special case?
No, it is not obvious. If the general claim were so important, why then focus on the specific case?
>You simply refuse to address the text, focusing on your second-guessing instead. Besides, you're completely oblivious to Smith's opinions stated as facts, because in the above quotes, neither the general nor the specific claims are true. They're just "I say so".
Ha, if that isn't the pot calling the kettle black. You're simply taking the popularized (and incorrect) interpretation and retroactively fitting it to the narrower original without paying any attention to the plain words on the page. When I first read WoN, I was shocked that the whole "invisible hand" thing was not only not the central theme of the book, it wasn't even the central theme of the chapter it appears in. WoN is not about deregulating industry, it's about creating the modern idea of industry in the first place. Smith never gets to the issue of how industry should be regulated, because he's preoccupied with advocating for the very idea of private industry in a world where, internationally, it's the exception.
> If the general claim were so important, why then focus on the specific case?
To make his poorly supported claims look more believable, I've explained that in detail already.
> the whole "invisible hand" thing was not only not the central theme of the book, it wasn't even the central theme of the chapter it appears in.
It's a profusely and clearly expressed claim even without being the central theme. Indeed, why should it be? Besides, what's the central theme? It doesn't seem to be anything related to science.
> Smith never gets to the issue of how industry should be regulated,
His preference for the "invisible hand" and his distaste for regulation are plainly visible, we talked about that too. However, if he wrote these as some sort of passing remarks, he clearly missed the central role of regulation in the economy, without that, it's "economics" without science. Using the invisible hand to sweep the issue under the carpet creates only confusion.
> because he's preoccupied with advocating for the very idea of private industry
Calling his writings "advocacy" is indeed the correct approach. Very far from anything approaching science though.
I don't think we disagree on Smith in general, I certainly never claimed that his approach was science. My point was simply that his "invisible hand" analogy has been extended way beyond its original expression in the book, because it has suited people who claim that the "free market" (whatever that means) is magically self-regulating in all respects, something that Smith never said himself.
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